National Geographic’s latest special, Explorer: Lake of Fire, follows an expedition to a glacial island in the South Pole to see if Mount Michael is home to the world’s eighth lava lake. In advance of the premiere, which airs tonight at 10/9c on Nat Geo, I had the pleasure of speaking with volcanologist Dr. Emma Nicholson and lead climber Carla Pérez about the journey, their discovery, and what happens next.
(National Geographic/Renan Ozturk/Ryan Valasek)
Alex: Congratulations on the launch of Explorer: Lake of Fire. How long had you been looking at Mount Michael as a potential climb or research ground for volcanic activity?
Dr. Emma: The South Sandwich Islands as a whole captured my attention quite a few years ago. It was the result of a chance conversation with somebody after a seminar I'd given, and it planted a seed back in 2018. I actually planned an earlier expedition with some similar science goals, but we left with a huge amount of unfinished business there. And so I thought that I would never get another opportunity to, in the first instance, confirm whether this was indeed a new lava lake on Earth. What we were seeing from satellites, how do we interpret that on the ground? And so when this opportunity came up, I 100% grabbed it with open arms. We had such a fantastic team. And as you'll see from the documentary, we actually managed to achieve our science goals. So this was many, many years of work and a longing from my side.
Carla: From my side, to be honest, I have never had the idea to go in these mountains because they are so far. Almost kind of an impossible dream to go in places. There are so few places in the world that nobody has been. And when you think about that, you say, "Wow, these places are so far from my opportunities and hands." And then when the project came to me, and they asked me if I was interested in leading this expedition, for me it was like, "What you are just asking one of my dream life, the volcano, first ascent." Since then, I have been really motivated to do it. And obviously to do the climbing, because I am a mountain climber and I love to go and try to do the first ascents, but of course also because I love volcanoes. And then, after meeting Emma and sharing tents and having more time close and to share, we were, both of us, really, really focused and motivated to do it. And we shared this persistent way of doing things. We go until we get it.
Dr. Emma: And that's really why we succeeded so much, because the whole team was really united in the goal, and we had such a range of different expertise. Without any one of this team, we could never have achieved what we did.
Alex: I imagine climbing a volcano is different than climbing your typical mountain, which doesn't have a crater of lava that could potentially spew down on you from the top. When you planned the timing of this, what were some of the safety protocols that you had looked at to make sure that it was as low risk as possible for an eruption?
Dr. Emma: You've hit the nail on the head. This whole island arc is very poorly understood. Unlike Etna and Stromboli, some of our most well-monitored volcanoes, we don't have that level of understanding of what is the current state of activity. So we rely very heavily on satellite observations, and particularly time series of heat emissions and gas emissions. We know from other volcanoes that we understand better, that generally, when you get increased gas emissions and it becomes hotter, it's slightly more unstable. So actually, for the months to years ahead of the expedition, we paid very close attention to piecing together lots of different satellite observations, looking for any major earthquake activity along the arc. When we were there on the island itself, just using our eyes and trying to link very carefully to other experiences I've had elsewhere. If anything had given me cause for alarm, for example, if there were a lot of ash emissions in the plume, if it looked like small explosions were happening in the crater, then straight away, that would've rung alarm bells for me, because we're already very much on the limit of what is safe to do so. So very much going by gut instinct.
Alex: As you mentioned, you achieved your goal in this Explorer special. What are the future research opportunities? Will it strictly be satellite-based, or is there more we can learn from the surface level? What technology developments will be required to aid that research?
Dr. Emma: Discovering that the lava lake is indeed present was really just the tip of the iceberg, and there's so much more work we can do. So, while we were on the expedition, we were collecting a whole range of different data sets, from the gas chemistry to snow samples, to tell us about how the volcano is impacting the environment. We were measuring the earthquake activity. So, really, on one hand, we want to piece those pieces of the puzzle together to learn more about actually what sustains the lava lake at Mount Michael. But what we really want to be able to do is take what we've learned here and apply it to other volcanoes around the world. There are very few larva lakes worldwide, and they really are our natural laboratories for studying volcanic processes. Because you've taken the lid off, you can compare inside, and it's a unique opportunity to relate what you measure to what you can see. So we're already using some of the data from Mount Michael to feed into improving our physical and chemical models that we can use volcanoes close to populations where we can't peer inside. We are trying to relate what we see at the surface to something that we think is happening deep below. Just as one example, we were collecting snow samples and looking at how the volcanic activity was making that snow very acidic and undrinkable. This is a real problem at other volcanoes that have lava lakes, like Messiah in Nicaragua, where the water quality is severely impacted. So, we are already taking what we are learning at Mount Michael and using that to help inform our management of that hazard in a populated area.
With regard to technology, we learned a lot on the expedition about what we need to do to improve the resilience of our technology. There were a lot of equipment failures where the cold temperatures and the high humidity were just too much. We would really love to go back, having reinvented some of the technology, to install permanent monitoring stations that can then send data back via satellite. That really is the golden opportunity in volcanology, and it is so close for us to do that. We're within touching distance of being able to achieve that.
Alex: Fingers crossed we get that tech and that you guys are able to get back there to install it. I wanted to ask about filmmaker Renan Ozturk, who does a lot of these National Geographic Explorer specials and is also a climber. What did having somebody with his level of expertise as the defacto filmmaker on the crew lend to it?
Carla: Well, to have Renan and Matt [Irving, Cinematographer], they are both very experienced climbers and very strong people. So just makes the work much, much easier, because they can run in the mountain without rope, obviously in the safer place. And then they just run up, go with the camera. And even in this strong wind, they were fighting faster and going and trying to catch every moment. It was just, that really amazed me. I have been doing expeditions with people that film and all that, but this time, I was sure that to film, you need to be as strong as the athletes when you film things, even though you cannot follow. So it is just amazing. Also, the knowledge to make decisions it's super helpful. The whole preparation of the expedition. And as well as we were sharing with Freddy Wilkinson. During the whole expedition, we were co-leading, and he was taking more care of the base camp and all the organization there. Me more in the climb. But anyway, we were doing everything. And it was just an amazing team. I am honored to have this chance to meet them, learn from them, and share.
Dr. Emma: When you are doing a science expedition where you're collecting data in real-time, and having cameras available at that moment, that can be quite stressful. Because you are trying to work out what the data are telling you at the same time as that actually being potentially recorded to be broadcast to the world. So there are a lot of things going on. And that team, because they have worked on so many other explorer episodes, worked with science expeditions worldwide, they were so conscious and conscientious of almost blending into the background. So we were free to discuss ideas between us and actually get on with things without anything having to be repeated or anything like that. It was a very natural process. So, a lot of my early concerns very, very quickly evaporated.
Alex: Dr. Emma, as a volcanologist, is climbing something that comes with that profession? Did you have a lot of climbing experience before this particular expedition?
Dr. Emma: I've been incredibly lucky. My parents are both passionate mountaineers, so they have taken me into the mountains basically as soon as I was old enough to walk. My dad, in particular, would take me climbing my whole life. And my mom was a geologist. So actually, they have very much shaped my direction. Although I have climbed and led expeditions to remote environments quite a lot, I've little experience on high mountain ascents and glacial ascents. And this is where it was amazing to learn from Carla and the team because that was an experience that I hadn't really encountered. A lot of the volcanoes I work with, they're in tropical climates. We have a lot of different hazards related to jungles, et cetera. But actually, working on glaciers at the same time as then trying to manage your experiments was a very new experience for me.
Carla: And not only glacier because it's a glacier, but with all these white-outs and the strong wind and using the mask for the toxic steam, it was just a hard experience for going for the first time. Emma was crushing it.
Dr. Emma: It just adds to the stress levels. We're wearing the gas mask, it increases the urgency of the situation. So you go in with a very well-defined plan, but when the wind is blowing, you can't hear each other, you've got this mask over your face, suddenly your heart rate just rises, and it is really difficult just to calm down and follow the plan.
Alex: Carla, as a climber, is climbing a volcano a goal for a lot of people?
Carla: Well, probably not everyone, but I have a lot of passion for volcanoes. As Emma told her story, that's very interesting because we share some parallel lives, we say. Because when I was a kid, my dream was to be a volcanologist. And I am studying geochemistry in order to become a volcanologist. But in the end, I switched my direction in the mountaineering world. But this dream and love for volcanoes are very special to me. And I also was born surrounded by big volcanoes in Ecuador. So being able to be there may be something more personal, not just because I'm a climber or mountain climber, it's also because I love volcanoes. But anyway, for me to be able to go to a place that’s unexplored, that nobody has been there, just exploration in itself feels amazing. Arriving there, watching this volcano after almost two weeks that we have been super sick in the ocean. So it's the whole experience in itself. And then the climbing was, it's not that high, and it's not that long, not that steep. But I can say that it was really, really, really hard and very dangerous.
Alex: I'm glad you both made it back safely and congratulations on achieving your goal. That doesn't always happen in an Explorer special. Freddie Wilkinson published an article for National Geographic announcing the good news and sharing some of the highlights this past March. Was he reporting on it live? Was this last February and March?
Dr. Emma: The expedition was in November last year. We were putting together some of the story with him in real-time on the island as we were coming back. So the announcement in March came out quite quickly after we'd got back and we'd started getting the first insights from the data.
Alex: That’s awesome. Thank you both so much. I appreciate your time, and congratulations again.
Explorer: Lake of Fire premieres tonight at 10/9c on Nat Geo. Stream it on Disney+ and Hulu beginning October 27th.