Polar adventure hits print

Polar adventurer Grant Redvers tonight launches his first book tracing 500 historic days locked in Arctic ice on the frontline of climate change.
The 300-page volume titled Tara Arctic: A New Zealander's Epic Voyage, which was published by Masterton-based Fraser Books, is launching at Aratoi Wairarapa Museum of Art & History at 5.30pm alongside the opening of the Polar Night exhibition of photographs taken during the expedition by fellow crew member Vincent Hilaire.
Mr Redvers, 37, who will speak at the launch, has a masters degree in environmental science and is a qualified yacht skipper and divemaster.
The former Wairarapa College pupil worked as a hydrologist in Masterton and at Scott Base in Antarctica before taking up life at sea.
He had, early in his career, sailed from New Zealand to Antarctica and South Georgia Island on a 45ft yacht for mixed climbing and glaciological research expeditions and had joined the Tara after sailing the Pacific to return home.
Aboard the Tara ( formerly the Seamaster of Sir Peter Blake) Mr Redvers completed numerous expeditions to Antarctica, South Georgia and Patagonia on a range of research, natural history and adventure projects, before setting a course for the Arctic.
He was appointed head of the Tara Arctic Expedition from 2006 to 2008 and was the only crew member to remain onboard throughout the 18-month voyage out of a rotating complement of 20 scientists and seamen hailing from France, Estonia, Norway, Russia and the USA.
The expedition, which echoed the Arctic voyage of Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen in 1893 aboard the Fram, was dubbed DAMOCLES (Developing Arctic Modelling and Observing Capabilities for Long-term Environmental Studies) and aimed to observe, understand, and quantify Arctic climate changes.
He said his book features an array of images and both recounts the science of their mission and the "human element of the voyage and what it's like to be locked in a small space with a crew from around the world during the confines of a long polar night".
"I shy away from calling myself a polar explorer - more like a polar adventurer and scientist. And the Tara expedition was certainly an adventure."
He said some data collected during the voyage had already been incorporated into global climate models. Global warming, in light of his Arctic experiences, is difficult to deny.
"The weather has changed in Masterton over the past 30 years, but that's just anecdotal. Whereas the Tara took us to the frontline of global warming, so to speak, and after what I've seen, and heard, from scientists working in polar regions, it's real.
"It's the rate of change that's most alarming."
Tara Arctic was published in French last year, winning wide readership, and was written over 10 months once the expedition was completed, he said.
He had hoped the original manuscript would roll off the presses first, but he is pleased it was a Masterton publisher who eventually brought the English edition to print. "What to do next is a good question. The only unexplored frontier is the ocean abyss now. I am a diver, but I'm not that keen on going five kilometres down in a little bubble."
Mr Redvers has, since the Tara expedition, also sailed to the west coast of Greenland with a team of glaciologists and climate scientists and early next year will work with two Students on Ice expeditions to Antarctica.
The glacial expedition aboard the sailing vessel Gambo is the focus of a 23-minute film, Greenland, he made alongside polar film-maker and partner Pascale Otis that will screen at the Masterton Town Hall next Thursday from 7.30pm.