Deepest Dive Underneath Antarctica Reveals a Shockingly Vibrant World
Within the morning, after we arrive on foot from Dumont d’Urville, the French scientific base on the Adélie Coast of East Antarctica, we have now to interrupt up a skinny layer of ice that has fashioned over the opening we drilled the day earlier than. The opening goes proper by the 10-foot-thick ice floe. It’s simply broad sufficient for a person, and beneath it lies the ocean. We’ve by no means tried to dive by such a small opening. I’m going first.
Pushing and pulling with palms, knees, heels, and the ideas of my swim fins, I shimmy by the opening. As I plunge ultimately into the icy water, I look again—to a sickening sight. The opening has already begun to shut behind me.
The underside floor of the ocean ice is a thick slurry of floating ice crystals, and my descent has set them in movement. They’re converging on the opening as if it had been an upside-down drain. By the point I thrust one arm into the icy mush, it’s three toes thick. Grabbing the protection rope, I pull myself up inch by inch, however my shoulders get caught. Abruptly I’m surprised by a pointy blow to the top: Cédric Gentil, one in all my dive buddies, is making an attempt to dig me out, and his shovel has struck my cranium. Lastly a hand grabs mine and hauls me into the air. As we speak’s dive is over—nevertheless it’s solely one in all 32.
I’ve come right here with one other photographer, Vincent Munier, on the invitation of filmmaker Luc Jacquet, who’s engaged on a sequel to his 2005 triumph, March of the Penguins. Whereas Jacquet movies emperor penguins and Munier images them, my crew will doc life below the ocean ice. Within the winter the ice reaches 60 miles out to sea right here, however we’ve are available October 2015, initially of spring. For 36 days, because the ice breaks up and retreats to inside just a few miles of the coast, we’ll dive by it, down as deep as 230 toes.
(Learn extra: Get an Amazing Whale’s-Eye View Underneath Antarctica)
I’ve labored for many years as a deep-diving photographer, at first within the Mediterranean Sea, the place I realized to dive 30 years in the past. Later, a craving for brand new mysteries took me elsewhere. I’ve dived to 400 toes off South Africa to {photograph} uncommon coelacanths, and for twenty-four straight hours off Fakarava, in French Polynesia, to witness the mating of 17,000 groupers. However this expedition to Antarctica is not like some other. Right here we’ll be diving deeper than anybody has dived earlier than below Antarctic ice—and the circumstances can be past harsh.
At dwelling in France we spent two years getting ready. On a map of the Adélie Coast pinned to my wall, I selected dive websites that had a variety of backside depths and had been inside six miles or so of Dumont d’Urville. We labored with producers to determine the weak factors of basic diving fits. The water was going to be colder than 29 levels Fahrenheit. (Salt water stays liquid beneath freshwater’s freezing level of 32 levels.) With out dry fits we’d die in as little as 10 minutes. With our improved gear we might last as long as 5 hours.
The preparations for every day’s dive take about as lengthy. The place we will’t slide into holes left by Weddell seals and their busy tooth, we dig our personal with an ice-drilling machine. Seals, once they want air, in some way discover their approach again to their gap; our biggest dread is getting misplaced and trapped below the ice. So we drop a luminescent yellow rope into the opening and pull it together with us throughout the dive. On the finish we comply with it again up.
Our fits have 4 layers: thermal underwear on the within, adopted by an electrically heated bodysuit, a thick fleece, and a half-inch-thick layer of waterproof neoprene. There’s a hood in addition to an underhood, waterproof gloves and heated liners, fins, and 35 kilos of weights. There are two batteries for the heated bodysuit, a rebreather to take away carbon dioxide from our exhalations (permitting us to dive longer), backup gasoline cylinders, and eventually, my pictures gear. We appear like astronauts minus the bubble helmets. Simply moving into our fits takes an hour and the assistance of Emmanuel Blanche, our emergency physician.
When ultimately we’re able to topple into the freezing water, we’re carrying and carrying 200 kilos every. It appears like we’re studying to dive over again. Transferring is a wrestle, swimming virtually not possible. The chilly rapidly anesthetizes the few sq. inches of uncovered pores and skin on our cheeks, and because the dive wears on, it intrudes into our fits and gloves, biting more durable and more durable. It’s insufferable, however we should bear it. Towards the tip, as we’re pausing on our ascent to decompress, we seek for something to distract us from the ache.
Once we lastly crawl or haul ourselves out of the freezing ocean, I lie prostrate on the ice, my mind too dulled to consider eradicating my gear, my pores and skin exhausting and wrinkled, my lips, palms, and toes swollen and numb—then, as my physique warms and the blood begins to circulate once more, the ache is at its worst. It’s so intense I discover myself wishing my extremities had been nonetheless frozen. After 4 weeks, I can’t really feel my toes anymore, even within the heat. It should take seven months after our return to Europe for my broken nerves to get well.
(Learn extra: Why Antarctica Is So Hard on the Body—Even for Buzz Aldrin)
What might presumably make this worthwhile? The sunshine, to start with—it’s a sight to elate any photographer. On the very starting of spring, after the lengthy polar night time, microscopic plankton haven’t but begun to bloom and cloud the water. Underneath the floe it’s exceptionally clear, as a result of there are so few particles to scatter the sunshine. What little gentle there may be wells down by the cracks or seal holes as if from streetlamps, casting a delicate glow over the underwater panorama.
And what a panorama! Only some species of seals, penguins, and different birds reside in East Antarctica, and no land mammals in any respect. You would possibly assume the seafloor too can be a desert. In reality, it’s a luxuriant backyard, with roots in deep time.
Antarctic marine life has been largely remoted from the remainder of the planet for tens of hundreds of thousands of years, ever for the reason that continent separated from the opposite continents and froze over. Since then the highly effective Antarctic Circumpolar Present has swirled from west to east round Antarctica, creating a pointy temperature gradient that inhibits the unfold of marine animals. The lengthy isolation has allowed an amazing variety of species, distinctive to the area, to evolve on the seafloor.
At depths of 30 to 50 toes, forests of kelp, with blades greater than 10 toes lengthy, create a sober, imposing scene. Farther down, we meet big sea stars: At 15 inches in diameter, they’re a lot larger than these in hotter seas. Then come the large sea spiders. They’re arthropods, like bugs and spiders on land, and so they’re present in all of the world’s oceans, however in hotter waters they’re uncommon and tiny, practically invisible to the bare eye. Right here, as within the Arctic, the ocean spiders can span a foot or extra. But their our bodies are so small that their inner organs lengthen into their legs.
Under 165 toes, the sunshine dims and we see no kelp or different vegetation. As a substitute, the seafloor is roofed with thick carpets of feather hydroids (colonial animals associated to corals) and with 1000’s of scallops. The scallops are 4 inches throughout however could also be 40 years previous or extra—issues develop slowly within the Antarctic. At these depths we additionally discover feather star crinoids, shut family of sea stars, which snag particles of drifting meals with as much as 20 undulating arms. Crawling and swimming amongst them are big isopods that resemble beetles.
At 230 toes, the restrict of our dives, the range is biggest. We see gorgonian sea followers, shellfish, tender corals, sponges, small fishes—the colours and enthusiasm are harking back to tropical coral reefs. The mounted invertebrates specifically are monumental. Effectively tailored to a secure surroundings, these plantlike animals develop slowly however, it seems, with out restrict—until one thing disturbs them. How, we will’t assist questioning, will they reply as local weather change warms their world?
(Learn extra: Fast-Growing Moss Is Turning Antarctica Green)
As we ascend to the floor, the biodiversity diminishes. The shallower waters are a much less secure surroundings: Drifting icebergs and sea ice scour the seafloor, and the seasonal freezing and melting of the ocean floor, which removes freshwater from the ocean after which returns it, causes dramatic swings in salinity. However there may be nonetheless a lot to occupy the attention. Microalgae cling to the ceiling of ice, turning it right into a flamboyant rainbow of orange, yellow, and inexperienced. The ceiling is de facto extra like a chaotic labyrinth, with layers of ice at totally different ranges, and we cross by them slowly, cautiously. Sooner or later as I’m nearing the opening, I see a mom and child seal plunge by it. I watch them for an extended, envious second as they transfer effortlessly by this fairy panorama.
On one other day, whereas I’m determined for distraction from the chilly, Gentil calls my consideration to a discipline of tiny, translucent anemones hanging from the floe. They’re rooted just a few inches deep within the stonelike ice, and their tentacles, pierced by the solar and waving within the present, are sharp and glossy. In all my analysis I’d by no means heard or learn of such animals. They’re mesmerizing.
The scientists again on the French base, taking a look at our photos, say they’d by no means seen our ice anemones both. At first we’re very excited; we expect we’ve found a brand new species. Later we study that scientists working within the American sector had described the animals two years earlier, based mostly on images and samples taken with a remotely operated automobile. We’re disillusioned however nonetheless proud, as a result of we’ve seen these amazingly delicate creatures reside, with our personal eyes.
The waters below Antarctic ice are like Mount Everest: magical, however so hostile that it’s important to be certain of your want earlier than you go. You can not go half-heartedly; you can not feign your ardour. The calls for are too nice. However that’s what makes the photographs you see right here unprecedented, and the expertise of getting taken them and of getting seen this place so unforgettable.
After 36 days we felt we’d solely begun to plumb it. The journey was so intense—the work so exhausting and exhausting, the sleep every night time so deep—that in reminiscence it appears to fuse right into a single, 36-day-long dive. Our toes and palms froze, however our feelings had been on a perpetual boil.
One dive towards the tip stands out in my coronary heart, not for the animals we noticed however for the placement. At dwelling in France, wanting on the Dumont d’Urville map, I had dreamed about it. The place, on this century on this Earth, are you able to be actually alone? The place are you able to see one thing nobody has seen earlier than? On the map I marked the Norsel reef, a tiny island greater than seven miles offshore from Dumont d’Urville. In winter it’s icebound.
By the point our helicopter flew over it, Norsel was within the open sea, a spire of rock simply piercing the floor of water greater than 600 toes deep. It was topped with just a little ice cap. When the chopper dropped us, we had been surrounded by ocean and big icebergs—and nicely conscious of the privilege of being the place no person had ever dived.
Summer time was coming, and it was a gentle, virtually balmy day, round freezing. However the water was nonetheless beneath 29°F. Blanche, the physician, activated the chronometer: He gave us three hours and 40 minutes. Then we had been off, for an additional soak in one other world.
French biologist and photographer Laurent Ballesta lined coelacanths for the March 2011 problem. His subsequent expedition will take him again to French Polynesia to swim at night time with grey reef sharks on the hunt.