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Under the Ice

March 8th—Up at 4 a.m. today. Grabbed my surface photo gear and headed down to the harbor to get aboard a boat that would take Mauricio, Hiro, and me offshore to the ice floes in search of Steller's sea eagles and white-tailed eagles. During winter these beautiful birds can be found here off Rausu, where they come to feed on herring. Still dark outside. We climbed on to the boat and made our way through the harbor and gradually out to sea, searching the ice for eagles. When we were about a mile or so offshore, we began to see the birds, several sitting atop small peaks on the ice.

By about 5:45 a.m. the sun began to rise, creating a nice orange glow on the eastern horizon. The eagles sitting on the ice in silhouette against this backdrop were beautiful, but there wasn’t really enough light to shoot. We slowly repositioned the boat, inching our way closer to the birds and waiting for the sun to lift a little higher in the sky. The air temperature was about 20 degrees Fahrenheit, but the wind was light, and the sky was clear, so it was a perfect morning to be out here.

I brought three camera bodies and several lenses with me, but given our distance from the eagles, my stand-by today was a 600mm lens. I was a little worried that such a long lens wouldn’t be effective from the deck of a boat, but with my tripod it actually worked surprisingly well. As the sun continued its rise the light got much better, casting a soft warm glow on the eagles and the ice adding beautiful detail to images and illuminating the snow covered mountains on shore.

The Stellar sea eagles are stunning animals, with dark brown bodies and large white patches on the shoulders and tails. The white-tailed eagles are equally beautiful, their bodies covered in feathers shaded in brown from light to dark. Both species have that impressive looking yellow, raptor bill and powerful talons. The birds were often found majestically perched together in groups of five to seven along with various species of gulls and crows.

Photograph by Brian Skerry

Although the prime focus of my story is underwater animals, I think including other wildlife that lives on and around the sea will help broaden the scope of coverage and provide readers with a more complete sense of the places I’ll be working. Photographing sea eagles on ice floes off Hokkaido is exactly the type of “other wildlife” I have in mind, so I was thrilled to be out here with them today. I spent nearly four hours photographing offshore today and could not have been happier with the results.

After getting off the boat we walked back to the hotel for breakfast, then went to the dive shop to meet with Seki-san to see what conditions were like for diving. He said that some of the thick ice that was up against the shore yesterday had moved further offshore due to wind and currents. But he knew a location that would still have ice close to shore allowing us to make a beach dive beneath ocean ice.

This type of diving is especially equipment intensive. We wear drysuits that have boots and gloves attached and two hoods for protection on our heads. Under the drysuit we wear layers of under garments, heavy wool socks and thinsulate booties. The only exposed part of our bodies it small portions of our faces and our lips. To compensate for all this bulk, which is very buoyant, we must wear a lot of weight in order to submerge. I made up a weight belt with about 38 pounds and strapped on 2-pound ankle weights to help trim out my legs. The steel tanks we’re using weigh about 50 pounds. Add in the weight of the other gear and we are wearing about 100 pounds on our bodies in order to work in these environments.

Seki-san was to be our guide, so we waddled into the water together, pulled on our fins and slowly stuck our heads beneath the water. The water temperature was 29 degrees Fahrenheit. Mauricio told me later that it was so cold he felt like a spike has been driven into his forehead for about the first 3 minutes. I felt it most on my lips, which burned until they became numb. The ice closest to the shore was thin, but as we swam a short distance it quickly became very thick ice, up to 20 feet in some spots. The bottom here was mostly rocks and sand and visibility was about 35 feet.

Several years ago I photographed a story for National Geographic magazine about harp seals (March 2004). For this story I spent about eight weeks over two seasons in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in Canada diving beneath the pack ice with seals. During my work with harp seals I had used a diving regulator recommended to me as the very best one for ice diving. Regulators have come a long way over the years, but cold water presents a real problem for many models. These critically important pieces of life-support equipment can freeze when diving under ice, causing a free-flow situation where air rapidly flows from your tank, emptying it quickly. Definitely not something you want happening when you’re in an overhead environment, given that you cannot simply surface, but must find an open exit.

Today I tried a new regulator that was designed and marketed for ice diving. Seventeen minutes into my dive, I felt the steady trickle of air seeping from the second-stage and knew that a free-flow was beginning. I swam towards Seki-san and using hand singles told him what was happening and we slowly ascended and made our way to an opening in the ice. Once I was on the surface I got my bearings and could see we were about 500 yards from shore, but thick ice blocked the path. Mauricio joined us on the surface and I explained the problem. Seki-san picked a direction and the three of us swam on the surface for as far as we could, but when we reached thick ice, we had to submerge. My regulator was still free-flowing air, but it wasn’t terrible. I still had plenty of air in my tank and could easily breath from the regulator, so I repeatedly submerged and surfaced all the way back to shore. I was able to make a few pictures on this dive that were mostly useful as a test for exposure and to see how the ice from below would render as a photograph.

 We went back to the dive shop and I grabbed my old regulator (from the harp seal days), attached all the necessary hoses and gauges and was ready for another try. Since getting into my drysuit was somewhat of an ordeal, I had stayed in the suit between dives. Lunch was a bit of a challenge however. I’m not the greatest with chopsticks to begin with, but trying to use them with heavily gloved hands was like some game show contest! Hunger is a powerful motivator though and I managed to eat every, single bite!

The second dive was much better. We did the same drill, to enter the water, then swam further out to the ice. I spent my dive shooting the ice canopy and both Mauricio and Seki-san exploring the formations. Exposures for this icy ceiling can be tricky, especially on a sunny day, when bright white light streams in through cracks in the ice while thicker portions of ice are perhaps 5 f-stops darker. Seki-san has told us that sometimes the ice formations are elaborate, with corridors and tunnels of beautiful green and white ice. I picture it something like Superman’s Fortress of Solitude. Today’s ice isn’t quite like that, but it was nice and a great first shakedown dive.

—Story and Photos by Brian Skerry

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