Nearly 20 years ago, I led a National Geographic diving team that made the first cave dives inside the largest floating piece of ice ever seen on our planet. The B-15 iceberg had calved from an ice shelf in Antarctica, and we were moved to explore the inside of what was regarded as a potential harbinger of global climate change. While I wrote the script for the accompanying documentary film, Ice Island, people cautioned me not to use politically charged terms such as climate change and sea level rise.
Scientists recently announced that the polar ice is collapsing faster than predicted. And every week, the headlines are filled with new warnings of accelerating ocean level rise. Climate change is happening. I have dived and documented it firsthand for decades. How we plan for it and adapt to it in the next few years will determine the future of our civilization. Thats what draws me to scuba dive under the ice in the northern reaches of my homeland, Canada.
According to the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center, the Arctic is transforming more rapidly than anywhere else on Earth, with temperatures rising at twice the rate seen elsewhere. I am caught up by the urgency to document Earths fragile ice-covered geography the cryosphere hoping that my work will bring attention to the vulnerable, fleeting ice. The loss of nearly all Arctic sea ice in late summer seems inevitable, and an ice-free Arctic Ocean will probably arrive in decades, if not sooner.
For the last two years, my Arctic expeditions have been undertaken earlier each season. The frozen surface of the Northwest Passage that provides the base for our summer camps melts sooner each succeeding year. The Inuit call the sea ice the land because it offers freedom to travel, visit family, hunt and pass along cultural practices to the next generation. Time on the land is shorter and more dangerous every year. Will the Inuit have to abandon their traditional wooden sleds, called qamutiks, and snowmobiles for small boats?
The complex Arctic food web is declining with the shrinking sea ice, disrupting the tenuous balance of food security for marine life and people alike. For a society that has always lived in balance with nature, permafrost melting, sea level rise, erosion and an increase in stormy weather pose risks. With the Arctic becoming more navigable and accessible, resource speculation is on the rise. Oil, gas and shipping industries are jockeying to snag new routes and drilling rights in the open water. These activities will indelibly alter the complexion of the Arctic and bring new threats to an otherwise pristine sanctuary.
On a recent Arctic expedition, I got a firsthand look at the transient nature of the melting pack by diving beneath an iceberg that had broken free from the glaciers of Greenland and traveled across the Davis Strait to become locked in the sea ice. A small strip of open water near the berg showed that this frozen monument was struggling to be released from the grips of the ice floe. Freshwater cascaded down the face of the ice in streaming rivulets that furrowed the surface in vertical channels. We needed to dive immediately. The berg was an ideal spot for an exploration dive, but it wouldnt last long before breaking away and melting into the ocean.
I settled in the water and pushed away the slush that obscured my view, dropping through a blurry zone of mixing fresh and saltwater. Long runners of algae flapped horizontally in the current, held fast to the undersurface of the ice. This algae and other nutrients contained in the ice will feed the phytoplankton and zooplankton that serves as the base of the Arctic food chain. Bottom dwellers such as anemones, sponges and halibut will, in turn, feed other fish and marine mammals such as belugas, narwhal and bowhead whales.
Descending along the bluish frozen facade, I observed virtual layers of time that could date this ice back 10,000 or more years. Each stripe represents a season of snowfall on Greenland. Some strips were transparent, others filled with gray dust, perhaps evidence of some ancient volcanic eruption. Small air bubbles within the ice fizzed and drifted upward.
Deeper, a colorful carpet of orange kelp draped itself over a miniature garden of crustaceans and sponges.
I am grateful for the opportunity to preserve images of this endangered kingdom, but what will happen to the people and animals of the North?
Within 24 hours of our dive, the giant monument of ice we explored broke away from the floe edge and started its journey south. Within weeks it would tumble, turn and dissolve, leaving a wake of nutrients and fresh water and adding to the slow rise of the worlds oceans.
And then it would be gone forever.
About the writer: Jill Heinerth is the author of Into the Planet: My Life as a Cave Diver.
