Icebergs Make Their Own Weather

Icebergs are temperamental. They make their own weather and effuse a moodiness underwater that is visceral. The approach to a small berg is done cautiously. In the waning days of their lives, they are petulant. They calve and roll with unexpectedness. The create unique down-currents as the fresh water pours off the melting mass. They emit a dense fog along their girdle and fizz as they dissolve in the warmer air temperatures. Underwater, they can be a cacophony of noise. Cracks and bumps are punctuated with thuds so loud that they shake the core of your soul. As the first person to ever dive inside an iceberg cave in Antarctica, I have witnessed calving that sealed my entrance, currents that pinned me down and the complete destruction of a 4 square mile iceberg I had just emerged from. I am paranoid around icebergs. My partner Cas Dobbin and I approached slowly with Debbie Stanley and Luc Michel. Rick ran the Zodiac, offering strict instructions not to surface by the berg but to swim back away on the safe side before coming up. We planned a short 30 minute peek to check it out. Halfway in to our dive, a deafening thud reverberated through my body as the berg slammed the sea floor pounding everything on it into a pulp. Debbie, a wise veteran of icebergs headed for the boat. She had seen it all in the past and wasn’t going to push fate. We skirted along the edge of deco to reserve enough conservatism to emerge at any time. Safely aboard the boat, we were jubilant. Cas had completed his first iceberg dive for his 32nd birthday!