video transcript

Preparations are underway for an Antarctic mission in a lifeboat. Australian environmental scientist Tim Jarvis is attempting to retrace the daring voyage of explorer Ernest Shackleton in nothing but this 22-and-a-half-foot boat. After Shackleton's ship got trapped in ice on a 1914 mission to the South Pole, he and several crew members rowed a similar boat 800 miles to get help from a whaling station. Nearly a century later, a British and Australian team will make the same trip from Elephant Island to South Georgia, but this time for an environmental cause. (SOUNDBITE)(English) EXPLORER, TIM JARVIS SAYING: "Well, Shackleton was trying to save his men from the Antarctic and we're now trying to save Antarctica from man and that's got to be the ultimate irony unfortunately." They will only use the gear available to Shackleton 100 years ago, except for the camera equipment to film their journey. (SOUNDBITE)(English) EXPLORER, TIM JARVIS SAYING: "And so it's amazing to think that a hundred years, with all of our modern thinking we've ended up with exactly what Shackleton had but yes it's still a very tippy, very unsafe boat." The team plans to set sail from South America in January.