A PLYMOUTH polar explorer has completed the second phase of his mission to catalogue climate change on a remote Arctic island and its effect on the native Inuit people.

Antony Jinman had previously visited Baffin Island, in the north east of Canada, during the winter months, when it is covered in snow and ice.

He said: “The intention of this summer expedition and return trip was to complete a comparison project to my previous winter expeditions, recording additional interviews and gaining experience on who the Inuit people are, their history and their connection to the land and sea.

“We also wanted to explore how their lives are affected by the seasons and more recently by climate change.

“Witnessing first hand the remote Arctic environment and the animals that live here, as well as experiencing and seeing how climate change is having an impact in the ‘Land that Never Melts’ was another of our top priorities.”

Antony was shocked to see that changes that have taken place in the three years that he has been visiting Baffin.

Antony runs a schools outreach project, speaking about his Arctic experiences in schools around the country and running educational workshops.

On this expedition, he went further and took two university students with him, Louise Biddle, studying earth science at Oxford, and Josephine Beynon, who graduated from Edinburgh and in zoology.

The trip allowed them to have additional fieldwork experience in a remote location.

After spending a week living with the Inuit in a remote cabin on the coast, where he was treated to local delicacies such as raw fish eyes and raw seal meat, Antony and his companions went trekking in the Auyuittuq National Park.

There he observed the rapidly melting glaciers, comparing them to earlier photographs taken by him and by previous explorers.

He said that the amount of water pouring from glaciers was itself changing the landscape, bulldozing frozen moraines that have stood since the last Ice Age.

He said: “The whole landscape was formed by glaciers so climate change is nothing new, but what is truly alarming is the rate of change.

“Glaciers were literally crumbling before our eyes and moraines that had stood for 18,000 years were disappearing in a summer.”

Antony is using the expedition to produce resources for schools on the arctic ecosystem, the people and animals.

He is available talk in schools throughout the south west, as well as in clubs, societies and within companies.

Antony is also inviting more students to get in touch, with the idea of running a bigger expedition to Baffin, with up to a dozen students next year.