Damian Carrington

It was a small Inuit village in a territory called Nunavut, so about 17 degrees north, roughly.

Cambridge Bay is a very small place, about 1,500 people.

These kind of weatherized houses on stilts, one shop, one cafe, and a lot of rocks.

The sea ice was still there, but starting to melt, which is what this story is all about.

They want to see if they can make the sea ice last longer in the Arctic summer so that it reflects more sunlight and curbs climate change.

Well, I mean, take the climate change thing first.

The melting of the Arctic ice is one of the biggest climate feedbacks on the planet, a very dangerous kind of vicious circle.

So the ice reflects about 70% of sunlight.

Dark ocean, which is underneath, reflects only about 7%.

So as you lose the ice, more sunlight gets into the ocean, it heats it up more, and that melts more ice.

And so you go round in circles.

So that's really important from a climatic point of view.

Obviously, for the Inuit people who live in the north of Canada and all around the Arctic, the sea ice is kind of fundamental to their way of life.

They use it for travelling, for hunting.

Hunting is their main way of gathering any food.

For travelling, it's incredibly important.

It's so much quicker to get to places on the ice.

And then for the wildlife and ecology, ice is really important.

Seals and polar bears, for example, build dens in the winter snow on top of the ice where they have their pups and cubs.

So Real Ice is the name of the company.