This icebreaker has been frozen in the Arctic since October. The only way in is by supply plane, and that's only possible if the runway hasn't cracked open. It's a place beyond civilization's reach, where a meandering polar bear is rare but not uncommon.
Researchers carry guns just in case.
If you hear five blasts, that means a polar bear has been sighted. If you hear seven blasts, that means there's some sort of problem on the ship. The desolate view from the icebreaker's bridge. It's from the bridge of the Canadian icebreaker, where the engines have been at full stop since the ship deliberately rammed into position last October, that the ice camp comes into full view. It's an eerily desolate landscape where blowing ice-crystals look like desert sand, and instruments measuring sunlight look like something Martians have left behind to study us.