divers underwater with line signals to communicate and make sure that everything is alright. If something goes wrong underwater the divers give an emergency signal to the tender. Te tender will then pull the divers out. When looking at your dive


equipment, it is important to dive with double regulators that are suitable for cold water. During our trip in Russia we had seen that even the special cold water regulators can still freeze there. For this reason, the tender takes a thermos with warm water to the hole. If your regulator freezes you only have to make your way to the hole and pour some warm water through the regulator to allow you to continue diving.


After an extensive briefing it


was time to prepare our gear for the dive. We had previously done many dive trips and normally you bring the gear to the boat, which will take you to the dive sites. But with the sea completely frozen it is of course impossible to reach the dive sites by boat. As an alternative, snowmobiles with trailers waited for us at the dive centre. The trip on the ‘snow trains’ is really an experience. We slid by a splendid white landscape, effortlessly going from the land to the sea. The white, open plain before us was really impressive. After some time on the snowmobile we saw from far off a sort of village – to make diving in these cold circumstances more pleasant they construct a small ice camp at the dive site. Small wooden cabins on skis are dragged onto the ice and four divers get assigned to a cabin. With a wood or petroleum stove, the cabin is made comfortably


warm. We placed our dive gear in the warm ‘houses’ and started exploring the area. Besides each cabin was a prepared hole in the ice, and between all the different cabins there was also a large cabin with a canteen and toilet facilities. For us the first dive was quite


exciting. We had already done a number of cold water dives, but diving under real sea ice was a first. Aſter having changed into our dive gear and been prepared, we discussed the dive once more with our tender. We put the tank on and moved to the edge of the hole. Te security line was atached firmly to our BCD, but we also held this line firmly in our hand. What we saw underwater was more than amazing. It was a very sunny day and the sunlight that shone down from the hole made the environment really astonishing. Te water had a green glow and was much clearer than we had expected. Because of the large amount of snow on the ice, we were scared that it would be very dark underwater, but the light that shines through the different holes in the ice gives more than enough light to allow you to navigate. Te different colours are also really amazing. For this dive we were in the


middle of the sea, which means that the ice here is an even plate. At different spots in the ice we found cracks through which the sunlight could enter the water. On the rocks at the botom of the sea we found large kelp and some beautiful plumose anemones. But honestly speaking, we didn’t have too much of an eye on this, as the beauty of diving under the ice was more than enough for our


53


This really is a moment to


overcome the cold as you need to go outside and admire a special natural phenomenon – ‘the northern lights’


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