Antarctic ice diving is a unique way of making a living.

During my time as Base Commander of Rothera Research Station in the Antarctic I was also the Institute Diving Officer. This required me to make thousands of scuba dives in the ice laden waters of the Antarctic in support of our marine science programme.

My job this day was to search a dive site south of the station for a science experiment anchor that had been carried away by sea ice. I was keen to find the anchor as it meant we could speed up re-deploying the experiment.

I loved these boat trips to the dive sites. It was always good to get out and experience another powerful scene – the sea ice had recently broken up so there was a lot of brash ice and bergy bits making it a slow trip.

In the open water patches we were accompanied by minke whales. Weddell seals on the ice gave us a lazy look as we passed, in contrast, the leopard seals displayed aggression and showed us their teeth. On the small tabular bergs there were hundreds of adelie penguins.

Luckily our site was in open water. To the south we could see large bergs, to the north we could see the tightly packed brash we had so laboriously come through.

My dive buddy was Lucy, a marine scientist and a very good diver – which prove to be fortunate.

As we descended through the –1.5 C water we soon lost the good visibility close to the surface & on the bottom at 24 meters we could only see a few metres. It took concentration and experience to complete the search and I was happy that Lucy was my dive buddy.

On the days that we dived in perfectly clear water accompanied by whales, seals, penguins, we could appreciate the unbelievable colours of the rich marine life. The dives would be over far too soon. You had to constantly check you didn’t overstay your bottom time.

On this gloomy dive our bottom time of 30 minutes couldn’t come soon enough. We found our line to the surface & began our ascent. Even though it was a low visibility dive I did think that it had got darker & was also surprised when it felt as if our line to the surface was not vertical.

After ascending a few meters of ascent the unthinkable happened – we hit ice! It was difficult to see what was going on, but we could see blue features, caves and overhangs carved into this iceberg weighing thousands of tons. It was disorienting, frightening and beautiful.

We had to try to continue our ascent. We decided to keep following our line which at times seemed to go every way except up. We could not panic. Nor could we return directly to the surface as we had to complete a safety decompression stop at 6 meters.

Swimming up in these amazing ice features continued to disorient us. Not only were the features very convoluted but it wasn’t getting any lighter and visibility was down to a couple of metres.

I checked depth regularly and when we were at 6 meters we made our 3 minute safety stop. Although this was a difficult position it was great to stop to appreciate the magnificence and beauty of the iceberg. I remember once again enjoying the uniqueness of our position.

It was a relief to ascend into the shallow clearer water and at last we could see the surface. As we made the surface we were in brash ice and could see that we had been “berged” by an iceberg that had moved from the south.

The boat crew had had a worse time than us. Constantly manouvering through to keep on site was hard enough, but when the iceberg arrived it became almost impossible. Plus they had the added stresses of worrying about us!

The mugs of hot tea back at the station tasted wonderful. And I remember returning to my Base Commander office with more tea and a big grin. That dive was probably just what I needed to fire me up for the admin duties awaiting.

Truly the worst and best of times.