[imagesource: Diving Into Darkness / Facebook] 

A group of explorers for the Royal Canadian Geographical Society narrowly escaped death when they were sucked into an iceberg by a current strong enough to propel the iceberg across the Ross Sea.

Jill Heinerth and her crew wanted to explore whether there were caves inside an iceberg as no one had ever been inside one before, but after strapping on her underwater gear, the cave diver encountered unpredictable currents, freezing temperatures and other life-threatening challenges as they navigated the often treacherous territory under the ever-shifting ice.

Heinerth told People that the intention was to go down and intercept the largest iceberg in recorded history.

“At the time, we thought taking the risk really mattered for our understanding of the planet and the changes that we were facing moving forward, but I was nervous.”

The iceberg they were diving inside was made of fresh water, and with the ocean being salt water, the melting iceberg “created these weird currents and turnovers because of the two densities”. At times, they would be swimming close to the ice and then suddenly be sucked downward.

“It really felt like a chaotic environment. It was adapt or die.”

“I was peering down this crevasse made of ice that seemed to descend through every color of blue you could imagine until it was just twilight black. And the walls on either side of me looked like golf balls, all these divots carved by the wave action and melting. It was loud, too. You could hear cracks and pops and fizzes as the ice melted.”

When the current picked up, the divers turned around only to find the doorway they had entered the iceberg through was gone- either calved in or blown away by ice. With their access closed off, the group needed to find a new way out, which was pretty unsettling, to say the least.

Fortunately, the divers made it out, and in what might seem an insane decision, they decided to undertake a second dive in the same location. This time, the current was even stronger and they literally got ripped through the iceberg and deposited on the other side.

“When we got back to this crevasse that would lead us back to the surface, I couldn’t go up because every time I tried, the current would sweep us down and back into the iceberg.”

“The current got so strong I was literally digging my hands into the seafloor to pull myself along.”

“Plus, now I had this leak in my glove that was sort of paralyzing my hand because it was so cold. I couldn’t feel it anymore. And this one-hour dive turned into this three-hour fight for our lives.”

After a terrifying few hours of crawling along the seabed and using little pockets in the ice as handgrips, they managed to make it out and resurfaced.

“My first words, as I got back to the boat, were, “The cave tried to keep us today.” And it was overwhelming. I knew we had been close to dying, but also I remember having a very acute sense of witnessing a changing world.”

To emphasise how lucky the divers were, the entire cave they had just been inside later exploded and broke into chunks of slush as far as the eye could see.

Heinerth’s work is now the centre of a new biopic called Diving Into Darkness.

In contrast to the hair-raising dives in the film are intimate, candid interviews and flashbacks to Heinerth’s younger years that reveal the complex mix of motivations for taking on these challenges.

“Despite over 100 of her friends having perished in the depths, for her, each adventure in this dive odyssey is one step closer to becoming the woman she wished she’d met when she was a child.”

It’s breathtaking to watch their exploits, but terrifying to imagine what it must be like diving into an icy tomb.

[source:people]