A female diver has shared the horrors she faced after being sucked into an Antarctic iceberg and trapped underwater by a fierce current.
Jill Heinerth, now 60, Canadian cave diver and underwater explorer, recounted in an article for People how he plunged hundreds of feet to intercept the largest iceberg in history.
She told how she, her ex-husband Paul Heinerth and the late cameraman Wes Skiles encountered unpredictable currents and frigid temperatures during the multi-day dive.
Then, on the final dive, the trio narrowly escaped being trapped when they were sucked into the iceberg by an extremely strong current.
“Literally a few minutes later, we might not have prevailed,” wrote Heinerth, whose dives are chronicled in a new documentary, Diving into the Dark.
Jill Heinerth, now 60, a Canadian cave diver and underwater explorer, told in an article for People how she dove hundreds of feet to intercept the largest iceberg in history.
She recounted how she, her ex-husband Paul Heinerth and the late cameraman Wes Skiles encountered unpredictable currents and sub-zero temperatures during the multi-day dive.
Heinerth said he had dove twice at the site before nearly losing his life.
“I thought taking these risks really mattered for our understanding of the planet and the changes we would face in the future, but I was nervous,” Heinerth said she recounted thinking before the first dive.
He explained that as the iceberg melts, “strange currents and changes” are created due to the difference in density between the water in the iceberg, which is fresh water, and the ocean, which is salt water.
‘So sometimes we would be swimming close to the ice and suddenly we would be sucked under.
“It really seemed like a chaotic environment. It was adapt or submerge.’
The diver said she had dived to the iceberg’s location in Antarctica twice before nearly losing her life.
On the first dive, Heinerth said he ventured about 130 feet down “without even knowing where the seafloor was.”
“And that’s really the limit where we wanted to work in this very close environment because deep dives require more time to slowly return to the surface,” he wrote.
The experienced diver said she should have realized something was wrong when she saw filter-feeding organisms on the seabed.
“I should have paid attention immediately because the current was strong and the current carries food to the motionless animals that were firmly anchored to the seabed,” Heinerth said.
‘And that should have been one of those kind of “A-ha” (moments). “Everything was anchored here because it was necessary.”
Soon the current increased.
‘We were hearing all these creaks and thuds. “I could feel them in my sternum,” he said.
‘We turned to leave and started swimming upwards, but I realized that the door we had entered through was no longer there. That ice had blown away or broken off the iceberg and literally closed off our access.’
Eventually, the group was able to “find a new exit” and then made a second dive at the same location.
Heinerth said he “thought taking these risks was really important for our understanding of the planet and the changes we face in the future.”
On the first dive, Heinerth said he dove about 130 feet deep “without even knowing where the seafloor was.”
“This time, the current was even stronger and we literally went through the iceberg and landed on the other side, where we had to very slowly return to the surface to account for the time we were underwater,” Heinerth shared.
“And then the last time we dove in that particular spot, we realized it was a bad idea to let the current carry us away.”
He said the current was so strong at the time that he was “literally digging my hands into the bottom of the sea to drag myself” while he had a leak in his glove that “was paralyzing my hand because it was so cold.”
That’s when the planned hour-long dive turned into “this three-hour fight for our lives,” Heinerth said, as the group was sucked into the iceberg.
“When they say life flashes before your eyes, it really doesn’t,” Heinerth said.
You have a couple of really stupid thoughts. And then you say, “Wait a minute. I have to focus.”
‘I can’t think of how to get out of the iceberg. I’m just thinking, “What’s the next best step toward survival?”
Yet at the same time, he said, he continued to worry that they would die.
On the final dive, Heinerth and his crew were sucked into the iceberg by strong currents.
Then he decided to take charge, he said, and told Skiles to get rid of the large camera he was carrying.
“Any time you work very hard on the rebreather, a diving device, you’re actually pushing the limits of what it’s capable of,” Heinerth explained. ‘If it is unable to process the amount of carbon dioxide you are expelling, then you may pass out.
“And if I suddenly had to worry not only about myself, but also about rescuing my colleague, it would be game over for both of us.”
The trick, he said, is to stay calm while calling the dive and trying to get his fellow divers back to the surface.
If he hadn’t, Heinerth said, “we might not have been able to get out and there wouldn’t have been any rescue.”
“There was no one there equipped to rescue us,” he explained. “The most qualified people are already in the cave.”
Heinerth recounted how he tried to stay calm as he called the dive and tried to get his fellow divers back to the surface.
At first, he said, he had trouble getting back up because “every time I tried, the current would drag us down and toward the iceberg.”
However, over time he realized that there were small thumb-sized fish burrowing into the ice wall and that he could use the holes they were creating as handholds to pull himself up.
They had to find places to hide against the current during the climb, “but then you’re standing still and it’s colder than the ice cubes that freeze in the refrigerator, because salt water has to be colder to freeze.”
In the end, the crew was able to return to the surface, but that proved dangerous in itself.
“The worst risk is actually as soon as you reach the surface, when you can literally freeze the tissue in place, especially if it’s windy when you try to get on the boat,” Heinerth wrote.
“The longer you’re underwater, the more likely you are to get hypothermia or cold injuries,” she explained, noting that she was “really worried” about her exposed hand.
When the crew finally returned to the ship, Heinerth said their first words were, “The cave tried to hold us back today.”
When the crew finally returned to the ship, Heinerth said their first words were, “The cave tried to hold us back today.”
He said the experience was intensely overwhelming.
“I knew we had almost died, but I also remember having a very acute sense of witnessing a changing world,” Heinerth concluded.
“This is an omen for the planet,” he said. “I’ve seen the mechanics of how (the iceberg) breaks up and that this is happening all over the planet.”
Just hours after Heinerth and his crew surfaced, he said, the iceberg broke into “chunks of slush as far as the eye can see.”