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It's winter 2009 and I'm driving a snowmobile off the coast of Northern

Alaska about five miles out on the sea ice looking for polar bears. It's icy

cold. In front of me on another snowmobile is a local enupiat inuit Dale

Browar. He's part of the film we're here making for PBS and he was our guide

too. It's a dangerous place and not just because of polar bears. The ice went on

in every direction to the horizon as far as you could see. Big flat areas and

then sections where the ice is jagged and pushed upwards. Nothing but white

from the sky down to the ice. Suddenly Dale stops his snowmobile so I grind to

a hole a few feet behind him. He pulls his parker hood down looks out over the

ice turns around and says we got to go in this very calm but urgent voice. What

what do you mean I said? We got to turn around. I had no idea what was going on.

Maybe he's seen a polar bear so I looked around really carefully. My eyelashes

were frozen so it wasn't easy to see anything in detail. But to me nothing

different to the last five miles we traveled on the ice but it did to Dale and

something had spooked him. So he turns his snowmobile around and hits the gas back

...