For millions of years, the Arctic Ocean has been covered by a permanent sheet of ice. Within a generation, it will melt in its entirety during summer for the first time in human history. HEALY follows a crew of scientists and sailors through a two-month research mission setting out to try to understand why the northern ice cap is melting even faster than climate models have predicted – and how the transformation is altering life on Earth.

We follow the crew of USCGC Healy from the Aleutian Islands through the Bering Strait and into the Beaufort Sea, where shipmates encounter the singular beauty of the frozen Arctic Ocean. Through rare access to film onboard the sole US icebreaker operating in the Arctic, we bear witness to this uniquely stunning environment through the eyes of those observing it firsthand.

Researchers descend onto the ice pack to deploy equipment for year-round monitoring, offering a glimpse into the science that is so critical to improving our understanding of climate change. Through a clear explanation of how the melting of the ice cap is linked to increasingly extreme weather events across the globe, HEALY provides timely insight into how changes in the Arctic impact people everywhere, leaving viewers with a heightened sense of the existential importance of limiting Earth’s warming.

Director Statement

I’ve spent a number of years considering how to tell the story of the seminal milestone of an ice-free Arctic Ocean, through a relatable character-driven film. USCGC Healy’s research deployment provided a means through which to bring an audience along on a journey to the sea ice to bring awareness to its global importance. On account of the pandemic, producing this short stretched into a four-year labor of love, but the story only becomes more critical with time.

About the Director

Maya Craig is a documentary filmmaker and cinematographer based in San Francisco and working internationally. She has been a National Geographic Explorer since 2019 looking at the global climate and geopolitical impacts of a warming Arctic, a journey that has brought her to Alaska, Svalbard, Iceland, and across Europe to film with scientists, policymakers, and indigenous communities.