Diving In The Garden of Eden

Over the last two decades, I have been on an incredible Arctic adventure. I entered the wildlife industry trained as an underwater cinematographer in the latter part of the 1980’s. At the time, I was looking for a place to make a mark, to be able to document animals that were little known. Under the ice was the last place I thought I would find myself. I was a skinny kid from Southern California and the tropics seemed like a much more likely place for me to find a niche.

It was 1988 and John Stoneman, the Director of the Canadian television series, The Last Frontier, asked if I would like to film baby white seal pups under the pack ice, surrounding the Magdalene Islands. Of course, I was up for the challenge, and didn’t give it much more thought than that.

Those first ice dives changed my life, and me, forever. As I dove under the ice, through extraordinary ice corridors, accompanied by cathedral-like lighting, I found myself mesmerized in this alien world. I had never experienced anything like it. It was painfully cold, yet exhilarating at the same time and underneath the frozen canopy of ice, I discovered my niche.

Not a lot of people dive under the ice, and only a handful of cinematographers filmed in this environment regularly. There were plenty of unknown animals and secrets to reveal, and I thought, maybe if I gave it time, I could make a photographic contribution in the Arctic.

I had a lot to learn though. How to dive through seal breathing holes that were 4 feet thick, only 30 inches in diameter, and find them again to get out. How to endure surface temperatures that could drop to 40 degrees below zero, and water temperatures that were 29 degree F. That coupled with logistically tough obstacles such as impenetrable ice, animals that lived most of their lives under it, polar bears that stalked you, winter camping, a new culture to understand and collaborate with, and the high costs of working in the north was a challenge beyond belief. Yet, this was a challenge that I was looking for, and one that I welcomed. And so north I went. Like most people, I had a vague knowledge of animals like the polar bear, belugas whales and walrus, but really knew very little about the details of their lives.

My first experiences were at the base of the food chain. As I descended on my first ice dive in the high Arctic, I was blown away. I had no idea that there was such color, and richness of life under the ice. The pack ice that I had dove to-date was completely different. It was ice that was free-floating in deep water and I never saw the bottom. But in the high arctic, I was diving under ice that was anchored into the shore. Descending through a tiny seal hole, to my surprise, I found myself swimming through a colorful Garden of Eden -- a reef full of soft corals, anemones, sculpin, polar cod and the occasional patrolling Greenland shark. Above me, I was blanketed by an ice ceiling covered with green algae that provided a substrate for the basis of the arctic food chain to graze on and grow. This was the reason for all the big animals existence. Without the small there could be no seal, no whale, no bear. It made me wonder, how could it be that such life exited beneath the ice in such cold water. Twenty years later, this past spring, I returned to the scene of my first ice dive armed with IMAX cameras. Descending through the ice, I once again found myself in awe, swimming through a rich Garden of Eden.

Ambassador Adam Ravetch descends beneath the Arctic ice (Adam Ravetch)