A crew of filmmakers, scientists, and seasoned sailors, undertake a five-month, 21,000-kilometre scientific mission to record the impact of global warming on the islands of the Canadian Arctic.

[16] In 2001, Lemire and five others acquired a 51-metre steel-hauled sailboat which had been refurbished from a North Sea fishing boat in 1992, and re-fitted it into an expedition vessel with cabins to sleep twenty crew,[6] two DVC Pro editing suites,[13] three high-density cameras[6][13] and a system of satellite communication which would allow hundreds of thousands to follow the voyage.

[16] Rechristened the Sedna IV after the Inuit goddess of the sea, the three-masted schooner was now an oceanographic vessel and seagoing cinematographic studio,[16] specifically designed for filming documentaries, collecting data for scientific studies, and serving as a "floating media lab" for students around the world.

[14] For a journey projected as lasting up to six months, the Sedna IV had a permanent crew of fifteen, including a doctor, skilled underwater divers and the filmmakers,[13] picking up other researchers and scientists along the way, with a supply of 7.2 tonnes of food and 78,000 litres of fuel.

[10] Observations were made that indicated the region was warming, the ice was melting, and the sea level rising: a whole village of about 700 people was forced to move; polar bears were seen stranded on a sandspit far from shore, and more were seen starving in Hudson Bay; and robins were spotted in Iqaluit.

[14] Lemire was moved by what he saw in the Arctic, recalling his experiences in an emotional text posted to the Domaine bleue website in 2007, describing polar bear carcases along the beaches of Hudson Bay; how he once found himself up to his knees in melting permafrost that smelled of methane; and despair of those who vainly tried to stave off the waves of a swelling sea, calling them the North's forgotten inhabitants, the first "climate refugees".

[20][16][21][22][23] As a collective body of work, the films made on the Sedna IV's expeditions set new standards in the field and have enjoyed remarkable success, having been distributed worldwide and have earned numerous prizes and awards.

[10] Both of his books based on the documentaries published by Éditions La Presse, Mission Antarctique (2007) and Le dernier continent: 430 jours au cœur de l'Antarctique (2009), enjoyed exceptional success in bookstores.

The film inspires admiration for the brave explorers who undertook the same voyage in hostile waters but with far less advanced technology, opening a window on a little-known world and serving as a reminder of the dangers of global warming.

[31] Writing for Le Devoir, Odile Tremblay found the historic and geographic subject engaging, but the film is let down somewhat by the narration, in which Lemire seems to compare the conditions of his crew's mission with those endured by past expeditions, such as Franklin's, for which there is little basis of comparison given the great navigational and technology advances of the preceding 150 years.