French flair in the frozen wild

See scientists at work in Greenland during luxury cruise

- Brian Berkman

A glacier, which is a frozen river, near Greenland's Henry Land.

(Brian Berkman)

he Henriot Champagne flutes clinked softly in the Inuri observation lounge as Le Commandant Charcot carved through North-East Greenland's sea ice a frozen wilderness so remote and forbidding that only Russia's nuclear icebreakers dare venture here so early into the summer.

But, despite lashings of caviar, this wasn't just another luxury cruise.

Through the panoramic windows, passengers watched scientists David Grémillet and Nicolas Loiseau prepare for what most would consider an impossible dive: plunging beneath the Arctic ice to sample DNA and photograph marine life in waters that had never been scientifically explored.

"We do this because, although we have been studying arctic seabirds for the past 27 years, these studies were mainly land-based," Grémillet told fascinated guests during one of his onboard presentations. "All sites we sampled during this cruise were more or less unknown to science."