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Houston, TX 77401

Antarctic

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I Think My Drysuit is Leaking

Draining the Water From Her Suit in Antarctica (Photo courtesy of Marc Nahmias)

So you think you are having a difficult day? Jesse Cancelmo was recently in photographing and diving in Antarctica and he relayed a story to us…

“One of the divers in our zodiac failed to snug up her drysuit zipper completely and after going in and establishing her buoyancy also confirmed a leak. But instead of aborting the dive, she joined her buddy for a 30 minute tour in 29 degree Fahrenheit water.

Upon surfacing, she had a water level in her suit up to her waist. The trooper she was, she simply asked for help draining her suit. After draining her suit I looked at her face and it was a combination of crimson red and blotches of black & blue. She was also shivering and looked terrible. The zodiac driver wanted to take us on a tour before going back to the boat and I was really concerned for her and suggested we go back right away. She spoke up and said, “no, I’m fine.” as she shivered like crazy. When I pointed out her shivering and face-coloring, others who had been to Antarctica before said, “Don’t worry, if she doesn’t shiver is when there’s a problem.”

So we toured for another 15 mins and then went back to the boat. This was the first dive in the morning. I figured for sure after this experience she would never show up for the afternoon dive but I was wrong. She was able to get another drysuit and a complete dry set of undergarments and she made the afternoon dive. I’ll say again, she was a real trooper!

Dive Mom and Madison can both attest that the water is cold in Antarctica and the goal is to manage the water and keep as much of it outside of your suit. But this experience demonstrates that the proper undergarments can help you manage the cold, even if you have a leak. It also demonstrates that you can withstand the cold for a period of time. In this case thirty minutes underwater and fifteen minutes on a surface boat tour. You just have to keep thinking positively!”

The other thing you can learn is that it is important to check all of your seals and the zipper before entering the water. In the case of a tizip plastic zipper, they are different from metal-neoprene zippers also used in drysuits. In zipping a metal-neoprene zipper you pull the slide all of the way to the stop at the end of the zipper. This is the fully closed position. In contrast, the TiZip plastic zippers pull all the way to the stop and then onto the solid piece at the end where it is in its fully closed position. What happens many times is that your buddy is familiar with one type of zipper and not with the one you have and he/she believe it is closed but in reality, it needs to be pulled just a bit more.

A buddy check is important but equally important is helping one another become familiar with the equipment so that the check is more complete. This will help you have a safer and more enjoyable dive.

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Shackleton’s Ship Endurance Found after 107 Years!

According to the Smithsonian Magazine…

During Ernest Shackleton’s 1915 Antarctic expedition, his ship Endurance was crushed by ice. After 106 years, scientists announced last week that the vessel had finally been found.

A team of undersea explorers located the wreck roughly 10,000 feet deep at the bottom of the icy Weddell Sea, just east of the Antarctic Peninsula. As soon as the ships’ rediscovery was announced, scientists jumped at the opportunity to see what life forms have made their home on Endurance.

“The ship is cool, but look at those things living on it,” says Huw Griffiths, a marine biogeographer at the British Antarctic Survey, who was not part of the discovery expedition, to Vox’s Benji Jones.

Undersea cameras revealed the ship’s diverse collection of sea life, including sea stars, sponges, anemones, and sea squirts. Scientists also spotted a deep-sea squat lobster, which has never before been recorded in the area, per Jonathan Amos for BBC.

…Read More

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Deepest Dive in Antarctica

“No one really knows what’s in the deep ocean in Antarctica. Now we have the technology to reach into the ocean depths, we accompanied scientist and deep-sea explorer Jon Copley and became the first to descend to 1000 meters underwater in Antarctica for Blue Planet II. The exotic creatures we found there will astonish you.”

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Life Found in Extreme Antarctic Lake

Antarctica Mountain
Daytime in Antarctica
Copyright Eric Keibler

Most of us are familiar with Blue Lagoon in Texas, and subsequently with the excitement of seeing a fish in its vastly uninhabited waters. So imagine looking for life in a lake in Antarctica, lying 70 feet below the ice sheet, is six times saltier than sea water, has nitrous oxide levels higher than any body of water on Earth, and with an average temperature of 8 degrees Fahrenheit.  

This is the task that a team of researchers recently undertook in search of life in conditions that we did not believe could sustain life, as we know it. But when they looked in the microscope for bacteria, expecting to find none or possibly one species, they found many, an entire community living in these waters. This is an exciting discovery because it demonstrates that life can be sustained in other ways than we previously knew.  

Sunlight does not penetrate the ice to reach this lake, Lake Vida, and the bacteria do not get energy from oxygen or carbon either, as other life forms do. Although not certain, researchers believe that the organisms can harvest energy from chemical reactions between the saltwater and the rock below the lake, which is rich with iron. It is thought that the lake has been cut off from the Earth’s atmosphere for 3,000 years, which gives great clues to how life can develop especially under very extreme circumstances.