Submerging your face in seawater that measures just -1°C is akin to nothing. People often ask the Lindblad Dive Team: “what does it feel like to dive here in Antarctica?” The best and most honest answer I can give is: “You know when you go swimming in the sea and it’s cold, but once you’ve been in for a few minutes you get used to it? Well here you never get used to it. You feel it from minute one through to minute 40. You feel it in your lips, your toes, your fingers, your core.”
So why do it? Why come all the way to Antarctica, cross the rolling Drake Passage; make landfall early in the South Shetland Islands as we did today; and then go diving, instead of walking amongst the cheerful looking penguins and enjoying a comforting hot chocolate on deck upon your return?
Quite simply, it is like nothing else on earth and it is worth a bit of discomfort and a swollen, frozen lip. Our gear is heavy, our set-up and dress-up time is long. But we see things only a miniscule number of people on earth ever get to see. As divers in Antarctica we feel lucky. Today at Half Moon Island we rolled into the water not knowing what we would find. In many respects it was a typical Antarctic dive with an abundance of limpets and sea stars. Amphipods buzzed around and seaweed sprawled across the seafloor. When we moved onto Deception Island later in the evening it was a similar scene. However, it wasn’t what we saw but what we heard that made today so special.
Leopard seals and Weddell seals make one of the most ethereal sounds you will ever hear. No music could begin to emulate these sounds. It sounds magical, mystical, lyrical and altogether impossible for a living animal to produce. And yet seals do make these incredible sounds. To dive and hear such sounds underwater is tantalising and teasing at the same time. We can hear them but we cannot see them. It puts you in your place – this is their environment, not yours. They almost definitely know we are there and they most likely know exactly where. Yet we have no idea where they are. We can just hear them and wonder.
Diving in Antarctica is a chance to have astonishing and rare experiences. Being able to share these experiences with everyone on board the National Geographic Orion is an absolute pleasure. It might just be two of us diving, but we hope that everyone gets to experience at least a part of what we feel, see and hear.
