Snow business! FROM SCIENCE LAB TO LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION

Wellington's Jacqui Stuart swapped microscopes to movies after her Antarctic adventure inspired a powerful new documentary

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When marine ecologist Dr Jacqui Stuart was awarded a scholarship to go to Antarctica, she never imagined the opportunity would lead her to a role on the silver screen.

A keen surfer and scuba diver, the 34-year-old's also a talented graphic artist and musician, who's so passionate about the microalgae she studies that she even writes and records catchy tunes about what she finds living beneath the sea ice.

“Originally, I thought, ‘What kind of sad sack studies microalgae?’ But those littlest things helped me better understand my own place in the environment,” Jacqui tells.

It was while she was midway through her PhD at Victoria University of Wellington that she got the opportunity to be part of an expedition to the world's most isolated continent to collect samples for her research.

“While we were down in Antarctica, a documentary crew was making a film about climate change. But it was Natalie [Robinson], our expedition leader, who was the focus of that film. The rest of us were just in the background, which meant we could be ourselves.”

But once back in New Zealand, the film's director, Vanessa Wells, called to say she'd watched the footage and wanted Jacqui and another scientist, Professor Patricia Langhorne, to have larger roles.