If everything goes to plan, Alex Bellini could become the first person to live on an iceberg, where temperatures hover between 5 to −4 degrees Fahrenheit and gale-force winds blow.
The 38-year-old Italian public speaker and adventurer, who crossed two oceans alone on a row boat and ran across the U.S. in 70 days, recently spoke about his project, Adrift, a years'-long ambition to live in a survival capsule on a Greenland iceberg.
Once a suitable iceberg is selected, Bellini plans to conduct research on climate change's affect on ice sheets and to test the limits of human endurance and survival.
"I'm not in love with Greenland, and I'm not personally in love with ice, even though I was born in the mountains," Bellini told IFL Science. "[The reason I'm doing this] is exploring, knowing, trying to understand how you can cope with unpredictable situations."
According to the Adrift mission website, sensors and devices will be placed on the iceberg to collect real-time data about ice structure and its evolution as it drifts.
"This data, never collected before, will help scientists to understand important issues about climate change on Planet Earth," the site states.
Bellini plans to stay in a specially-designed aluminum capsule for up to 12 months or until the iceberg flips—a natural phenomenon that occurs from melting ice and an imbalance in frozen water.
The capsule was developed by a Seattle-based company called Survival Capsule, which designed its patented personal safety system to protect against tsunami events, tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes and storm surges.
According to a 2015 Outside article, the capsule will carry 300 to 400 kilograms of food, a wind generator, solar panels, and an EPIRB beacon if rescue is needed. It will also be equipped with Wi-Fi, a work table, electronic panels and a foldable bed so Bellini has room to exercise.
Bellini expressed confidence that the product would be strong enough to survive storms or getting crushed by icebergs.
"I fell in love with the capsule," he told Outside about the three-meter, ten-person version he selected. "I'm in good hands."
Other than living in an inhospitable climate and flipping off an iceberg into open waters, the adventurer said that boredom could be his one of his greatest challenges.
As IFL Science reported, Bellini initially wanted to kick off the mission around winter 2018. However, funding issues have stalled the project, and more than $500,000 still needs to be raised.
Learn more about the project in the video above and this FAQ link here.
At first glance, you wouldn't think avocados and almonds could harm bees; but a closer look at how these popular crops are produced reveals their potentially detrimental effect on pollinators.
Migratory beekeeping involves trucking millions of bees across the U.S. to pollinate different crops, including avocados and almonds. Timothy Paule II / Pexels / CC0
<p>According to <a href="https://www.fromthegrapevine.com/israeli-kitchen/beekeeping-how-to-keep-bees" target="_blank">From the Grapevine</a>, American avocados also fully depend on bees' pollination to produce fruit, so farmers have turned to migratory beekeeping as well to fill the void left by wild populations.</p><p>U.S. farmers have become reliant upon the practice, but migratory beekeeping has been called exploitative and harmful to bees. <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/10/health/avocado-almond-vegan-partner/index.html" target="_blank">CNN</a> reported that commercial beekeeping may injure or kill bees and that transporting them to pollinate crops appears to negatively affect their health and lifespan. Because the honeybees are forced to gather pollen and nectar from a single, monoculture crop — the one they've been brought in to pollinate — they are deprived of their normal diet, which is more diverse and nourishing as it's comprised of a variety of pollens and nectars, Scientific American reported.</p><p>Scientific American added how getting shuttled from crop to crop and field to field across the country boomerangs the bees between feast and famine, especially once the blooms they were brought in to fertilize end.</p><p>Plus, the artificial mass influx of bees guarantees spreading viruses, mites and fungi between the insects as they collide in midair and crawl over each other in their hives, Scientific American reported. According to CNN, some researchers argue that this explains why so many bees die each winter, and even why entire hives suddenly die off in a phenomenon called colony collapse disorder.</p>Avocado and almond crops depend on bees for proper pollination. FRANK MERIÑO / Pexels / CC0
<p>Salazar and other Columbian beekeepers described "scooping up piles of dead bees" year after year since the avocado and citrus booms began, according to Phys.org. Many have opted to salvage what partial colonies survive and move away from agricultural areas.</p><p>The future of pollinators and the crops they help create is uncertain. According to the United Nations, nearly half of insect pollinators, particularly bees and butterflies, risk global extinction, Phys.org reported. Their decline already has cascading consequences for the economy and beyond. Roughly 1.4 billion jobs and three-quarters of all crops around the world depend on bees and other pollinators for free fertilization services worth billions of dollars, Phys.org noted. Losing wild and native bees could <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/wild-bees-crop-shortage-2646849232.html" target="_self">trigger food security issues</a>.</p><p>Salazar, the beekeeper, warned Phys.org, "The bee is a bioindicator. If bees are dying, what other insects beneficial to the environment... are dying?"</p>EcoWatch Daily Newsletter
Australia is one of the most biodiverse countries in the world. It is home to more than 7% of all the world's plant and animal species, many of which are endemic. One such species, the Pharohylaeus lactiferus bee, was recently rediscovered after spending nearly 100 years out of sight from humans.
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