When most people do a polar plunge, they don't mean the word polar literally.

They're usually dunking into an ice bath or running into the Atlantic in the winter.

But last year, when Carl Watson jumped from the gangway of a cruise ship on his 40th birthday,

it really was a polar plunge.

How was it?

He was off the coast of the Antarctic Peninsula and the water was below freezing.

It's like in Titanic's a thousand daggers stab at your own horse.

Carl has a YouTube channel where he documents all of his trips to places like Taiwan, Switzerland, Pakistan and Egypt.

This trip was on his bucket list for a long time.

Antarctica has this draw to it because it's like this mystical kind of untouched place.

And it was the last continent for me to visit as well, so I'm not one for ticking things off list, but it kind of has that nice kind of,ouched place. And it was the last continent for me to visit as well.

So I'm not one for ticking things off list,

but it kind of has a nice kind of, you know,

a nice edge to it saying you've done all seven.

Carl is one of a growing number of tourists

who have visited Antarctica in the last few years.

A record-breaking 100,000 tourists made the trip in the 2023 season.

Many of them go because they want to check it off their bucket list.

They want to be able to say they've visited all seven continents.

And when they do, visitors say the experience is wondrous, otherworldly, once in a lifetime.

There'd be like some mist on the seas.

Some of the mountains in the distance

...