Photos show what’s inside an iceberg: dangerous caves and crevices

• In 2000, the largest iceberg on record – Iceberg B-15 – broke off the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica.
• Underwater explorer and photographer Jill Heinerth dove inside the B-15 and took photos of this hidden world.
• Today, almost the entire iceberg the size of Jamaica has melted. Heinerth’s photos offer the first and last glimpse of the interior.

In 2000, when an iceberg the size of Jamaica broke off Antarctica’s Ross Ice Sheet, Jill Heinerth saw an opportunity to make history.

Heinerth is a professional underwater explorer, cave diver and photographer. She has been diving in the most remote regions of Earth’s oceans for 35 years. His trip inside the B-15 marked the first time anyone dove under an iceberg.

It is not unusual for Heinerth to be among the first humans to venture into these hidden places. But with the B-15, it was also among the last.

When the B-15 broke free, it was among the largest moving objects on the planet. Today, it has lost 99% of its size and only one piece remains, a piece measuring about 40 square miles, smaller than Disney World.

Fortunately, Heinerth and his dive team took the opportunity to explore and photograph the interior of the B-15 when it was still a behemoth 23 years ago. And they risked their lives to do it.

But for Heinerth, the work is worth it. “For me, diving in these icy environments is almost like documenting an endangered species,” she said.

Through her underwater photography, she brings the history of these disappearing ice caves to the surface, contributing to scientific discovery and raising awareness of the rapid progression of climate change.

Swim in uncharted waters

To reach B15, Heinerth and his dive team sailed for 12 days across the tumultuous Southern Ocean, braving 60-foot swells and knocking ice off the boat with baseball bats. When they finally reached their destination, even more dangers awaited them.

“During the trip we had many problems,” Heinerth said. She tells the full story of her three death-defying dives in a 2019 WBUR article.

During the initial dive, the team encountered danger for the first time. After crossing a long vertical crevasse in the B15 to the sea floor, 130 feet deep, Heinerth spotted the entrance to a cave leading to the iceberg.

Once inside, Heinerth described it as “this vibrant, beautiful environment. You see how the sea has sculpted the ice, like these big scallops sculpted by the hand of the sea,” he said. she told BI.

But suddenly they heard a deep groan.

Huge chunks of ice had fallen into the cave entrance, blocking their exit. Fortunately, they found a way and escaped safely, ready to return the next day.

On their second dive inside B15, they were caught in a powerful current sucking them deeper inside the iceberg. They couldn’t fight it and instead moved through the current until it finally took them to another exit on a completely different side of the iceberg.

But even that wouldn’t stop them from making a third and final visit, as they faced the most dangerous dive of all. That day the powerful current struck again. This time there was no back door through which to escape, and the flow was so intense that even when they fought their way to the cave entrance, they could not climb back through the cave. crevasse.

“On our very last dive in this environment, we were stuck by the currents inside the ice and had difficulty getting out,” she told BI. “Our one-hour dive turned into a three-hour flight for our lives.”

What saved their lives was when Heinerth remembered the burrows the fish make in the crevice walls. Using these holes as climbing holds, she and the team slowly climbed against the flow and eventually reached the surface.

Then, just hours after resurfacing, “the entire chunk of ice we had just been in literally exploded and turned into a sea of ​​melting snow as far as the eye could see,” Heinerth said.

“I was just standing there, stunned on the ship’s rail. I realized that if we had been in the water, we would have died,” she wrote for WBUR.

Documenting a disappearing world

In between times spent fighting for his life, Heinerth managed to take photos of B15’s inner world. As a citizen scientist, she hopes that documenting these rapidly changing environments will help researchers better understand them.

“We live today in a time of very clear existential threats – a time when we need an army of citizen scientists who can provide insights, anecdotal evidence, but also streams of data collection,” he said. she declared.

Over the past two decades, Antarctica has lost an average of 150 billion tons of ice per year, NASA reports. This rapid melting means iconic Arctic species like humpback whales and emperor penguins are losing critical resources and habitats.

This also means that sea levels are rising. “When (B15) broke away — when the ice moved from land to sea — that’s going to change sea levels globally,” Heinerth said. “And that’s the thing we need to worry about.”

Exploring the subsurface geomorphology (the shape and structure) of icebergs like B15 can help climate scientists understand how quickly they are disappearing, she said. As they melt, water flows down through the iceberg’s cracks, carving out new caves and crevices that intrepid people like Heinerth can investigate.

Through her diving photography, she hopes to raise awareness of how quickly these hidden ice environments are changing.

“We are at the point where we need to take action on climate, and that will require political will. And that will require the citizens of the world to be relatively informed about what we will face in the very near future,” Heinerth said. .

Photos courtesy of Jill Heinerth. Learn more about his work at: www.IntoThePlanet.com