Swimming and Diving in Antarctica

Ginge Fullen

Work period two we spent down in Antarctica around the peninsular itself. Waking up and opening your curtains to see ice burgs floating by and whales and penguins swimming just off the ship should give us all memories that we should not easily forget. Although we were at sea for the whole work period in January we did manage to get ashore on different islands and on the peninsular. We visited such places as Deception Island, Desolation Island and Danger Islands, Cape Disappointment and Exasperation Bay. All the places named long ago by the hard men who first ventured down here without the safety, let alone luxuries that we have today.

Deception Island alone is boys own stuff, like something out of the Lost World. A massive volcanic crater now flooded with sea water with only one narrow entrance in which to enter, with several old whaling stations and a manned Argentinean Base on the shores inside the crater rim; it's truly a magnificent sight. We dived in the heated waters near the shore with steam coming behind us and leopard seals just out to sea in front of us.

Whilst doing some work off Haley, one of the British Antarctica Bases, the ship was at a standstill just off the shore with a couple of our boats in the water ferrying people here and there doing different work projects or just for a walk ashore at the base to see the penguin colony. We were amongst many icebergs when the Captain called over the ship's loud speaker and said that there is an extremely nice iceberg just floating by the ship with its very own little swimming pool inside it. I rushed up to the bridge with the little inkling of an idea in my head.

Caption

Sure enough there was a very unusual ice burg with a shallow pool about 15 feet wide and 5 feet deep with crystal clear melt water inside of it totally enclosed on top of the ice burg. I took another look at the ice burg then a look at the Captain. He took another look at the ice burg and then looked at me. "No," he said in a long drawn out way as if he was speaking to a 5 year old child. "Yes," I said nodding my head enthusiastically. "No, Leading Diver, definitely not." "But Sir," I carried on, "it's a terrific photo opportunity, one not to be missed."

I spent the next 10 minutes on the bridge gently trying to persuade the Captain of HMS Endurance to let me go for a skinny dip in the iceberg pool. "There's too much scope for things to go wrong," he argued, "you might have another bloody heart attack for God's sake. No way, absolutely not." Now you don't argue too often, or even at all, with a 4 ring Captain in Her Majesty's Royal Navy, not if you want your future job prospects to be any good, but through gentle persuasion I carried on. "But, Sir, I've got a reputation to keep up, I have to do something mad every now and again". He carried on. "We're just off the Antarctic circle for Christ's sake. You wouldn't last more than a minute." "I only need a minute," I said, "the boat can drop me off and get me back on board within 30 seconds into a hot shower."

He thought about it, he knew my background and he knows the mentality of your average Clearance Diver. "You really want to do this, don't you?" I wasn't sure if it was a question or a statement. I kept quiet. "Go on then, if you must, you best put some shorts on though you don't want to upset the ladies, do you? It's rather cold, you know." Yes, I was off to get changed. Five minutes later I was jumping into the ice-cold pool thinking a radical change of image would not come amiss and might just stop me doing these stupid things. Cold was not the word, fucking cold was more like it.

Every thing went to plan and I was soon back on board and thawed out, much to Captain Tim Barton's relief. That's the sign of a good Captain I think, not over estimating the men that he has under his command and not under estimating what different individuals on board are capable of doing, basically using each man or woman to the best of their ability.

Just a few days later we were anchored off King George Island in a very large bay called Edgell Bay, amongst all the penguins and the few and quite rare leopard seals that we were seeing, suddenly two very large hump back whales came into the bay looking like they were going to stay for a while. Another idea sprang to mind, down to see the Captain who was busy doing fitness training down on the quarterdeck. "Excuse me, Sir". "Whatever it is no, definitely not." "Any chance a couple of us can take a boat away and swim with the whales?" He shook his head side to side but said yes at the same time. We were off, myself and two of the ships divers onboard. Dressed in diving suits we were soon out in the bay in a small inflatable boat on the lookout for the two whales.

We followed them for about an hour, and on a couple of occasions when they came to the surface we jumped in with masks and snorkels and managed to get within a couple of feet of them. Big old units they were, as big if not bigger than one of those lorry cement mixers you get. It was a unique experience and the opportunity of a lifetime, how many people can say they have swum with humpback whales, let alone with them in Antarctica? We had a scream, chasing whales and coming along side them and jumping onto small icebergs for photos, we came back with cuts and bruises everywhere, me more so then anyone. I had a bit of a gash on my forehead, it would have been a good dit to say I had gotten it from clashing with the whales, that's what I told the Captain when I came back. "Ah", he said, "so it wasn't when you were jumping around on the ice burgs then", which we were not really supposed to do as they could easily topple over and so could be dangerous, ie all the cuts and bruises. "Don't know what you mean, Sir". Didn't miss much our Captain.

We all came back buzzing from the experience. Once back on board we all went to thank the Captain for giving us the opportunity, he said not a problem he was glad that we enjoyed it so much. He was probably wondering what on earth I was going to ask permission to do next.

There was plenty of opportunity to dive during the deployment. Diving jobs varying from engineering work on the ship to working jobs laying moorings and erecting tide poles in support of the survey department. We also got in over 12 diving hours alone mending a sluice gate in a very cold fresh water dam at King Edward in South Georgia for the Army.

Antarctica is a spectacular place with some great diving opportunities which very few people have had the chance to visit, let alone dive. Diving below the Antarctic Circle in itself is something that probably no more then 100 people have done. The highlight of the deployment though, and one of the most amazing and potentially dangerous dives that I have ever done was during work period three operating around Dundee Island just off the Antarctic Peninsular when a number of dives were done with Leopard seals.

Little is known about Leopard seals except as David Attenborough says during one of his documentaries "many people reckon that the leopard seal is the most dangerous killer in Antarctic waters, and it would be suicidal to get into the water with one". Not many people have, perhaps only on one or two occasions before. We carried out several dives with leopard seals. Since the leopard seal is the only seal reported to stalk and attack humans without provocation getting in the water with this very sinister looking four metre long, half tonne animal takes a bit of bottle.

I have done some risky dives before, some including other big animals. When in Hong Kong the one and only Chief Petty Officer Darby Allen thought it was a great idea and highly amusing to dive in the same bay in which three people, one diver and two swimmers, only days before had been attacked and killed by a massive Tiger shark. I certainly never found it amusing but once lived through it was a great experience. Likewise with the leopard seal, when one opens its mouth inches away from the camera that you are holding to your eye and you can see its many teeth and its mouth is big enough to fit your head in it, you begin to wonder was this really a good idea? It was a dive worth surviving in order to tell the tale.

When we first came across the leopard seal to dive with it, we had come alongside the iceberg it was on in our inflatable boat. Some of us had jumped on to the iceberg to get some photographs with it, not too close of course. Two or three metres was as close as it would allow you to get without snapping at you. We effectively kicked it off the iceberg it was snoozing on because it soon got pissed off with us and slid into the water. We thought that was the end of that and jumped in the boat and went to another ice burg to dive on. The Leopard seal followed us though, we thought that we must have seriously annoyed it.

All the years Endurance had been coming down here no dives had been carried out close to leopard seals, perhaps because people fear the unknown, not surprisingly. The only people to have been in with them to our knowledge were the two cameramen for the Attenborough documentary. Unfortunately for me that day I was the only supervisor out with the dive team meaning I couldn't get into the water, much to my dismay. I spent the next 30 minutes persuading the divers that this was a amazing opportunity not to be missed, they would be one of only a few people in the World to see this creature underwater and if they were bitten they would be in a minority all of their own. I said to them that I was confident that it was only inquisitive, this seemed to fall on deaf ears especially after we saw it catch, strip off all meat and eat a penguin right in front of us. To be honest I didn't really have a clue what it would do but I was fully confident that I could deal with any emergency that may happen.

OM(MW) Pinta Beer became, volunteered I should say, to get into the water first, the others saying they would only get in if I went in with them, as to what good they thought I could do in there if it did turn aggressive I don't know. Never have I seen a man more scared in my life then Pinta was then. We had tied a thick line onto him to drag his bones out if necessary. Each time he put his feet in the water the leopard seal would be right there seeing, I suppose, what likelihood there was of a meal, Pinta of course would pull them straight out. This carried on for a while with me saying it cannot be counted as a dive until he has put his head under the water, he looked up at me and I could almost hear him think "should I not dive and receive the wrath of the Killick Diver or should I dive with this monster that looked of a prehistoric age, and the way its teeth showed through, looked liked a smiling assassin".

Eventually I managed to make Pinta believe that this was a unique chance of a lifetime and with a gentle shove he went kicking and screaming into the water. Once the barriers of the unknown have been broken down everybody wants a part of it. Pretty much all the divers got in the water with the leopard seal that day and over the next few days, but all the credit goes to Pinta for daring, like it or not, to be the first.