Iceberg diving in Greenland

Words and photographs by Mads St Clair

*Watch Mads’ video diary about her first dives with icebergs on the bottom of this page

It’s half past nine in the evening and I’m sat in bed sipping hot cocoa. It’s my 16th cup today. I wish I was exaggerating, but the cocoa is keeping me warm and the sugar awake. I’m trying to write but my thoughts are scrambled and racing at a hundred miles a minute. At the moment, all I can really think is how thankful I am that I actually read – and even more impressively, abided to – the packing list, which listed slippers and a flask. With strict weight limits on Greenland flights, both of these things I had considered a luxury item and they really had to fight for their place in my bag.

The evening is windy and cool and I’m once again tucked up in bed in my Weezle undersuit – which has become my nighttime sleeping bag – trying to decompress from the day. Diving with icebergs, the worry, my lips, the golfball. I make a quick brain-dump of the key moments, my brain feeling clunky. It’s tricky tonight, trying to decide what to write or how to organise so many moments on a page, before my brain clocks off for the night and I zonk out.

I decide to start with the big moment: diving with icebergs for the first time. Simultaneously overwhelming – and so, so terrifying. Every so often a moment comes up in my career that absolutely startles me back into a state of conscious respect for of the sheer power of mother nature. Icebergs are one of these things. From the physical to the intangible. Speaking physically, they’re overwhelmingly huge, very hard, moving pieces of ice. And in the context of intangible, we’re talking about water and trapped air locked into in a single state, which suddenly, after 10,000 years becomes once again impermanent. And now, are they dissolving? It’s a powerful thought on permanence and time.

Sermilik Fjord is an iceberg graveyard. Many move through here, some find their way to sea, some run aground. Throughout the day and night we hear the echoing booms of icebergs splitting in two, crumbling and fragmenting.

The first dive was nothing short of incredible. Sven chooses an iceberg for two reasons – aesthetics and safety. As I back-roll into the water, I find myself excited to shoot. I know that after the first dive yesterday, that being behind a camera would change the game for me, cold-wise at least. Distraction is the best form of warmth, and thanks to Mike, I’ve now got little tubes transferring air between by drysuit and glove, so with any luck, my hands should be warmer on this dive. I drop down with the USA boys, their third buddy – and they don’t seem to mind me third-wheeling (and truthfully, they’ve rather grown on me too). Chris, a professional underwater photographer who is currently shooting for a photo-story book on ice, immediately looks in his element, swimming right up to the iceberg, snapping this way and that.

I, on the other hand, am decidedly overwhelmed, because quite frankly, I don’t know where to start. The berg is huge and structurally interesting at every turn. I sink with Chris and Mike to the bottom, where the water is dark and green, and then, rather timidly, I follow them as we swim through icebergs. The water suddenly becomes rather clear. It seems the meltwater and subsequent halocline is on the other side of the iceberg, and I get lost here in the majesty of the whites and blues. The light changes from second to second, the shapes, colours and textures are varied and diverse.

And just like that, the apprehension, the worry, the fear, the cold, turns to wonder, and I find that I am back in my element – behind the lens, enjoying it. I play with my camera, inhibited slightly by the bulk of my gloves and under-gloves but thankfully with warm fingers, testing out new settings, following other members from the group and snapping them next to the ice. It’s so impressive, shooting a subject against this backdrop, and I find myself wishing for a penguin or a leopard seal. Antarctica will be next, I promise myself.

More Despatches: From the Field

Exploration

The first dive

Exploration

Departure to Sermilik Fjord

Exploration

Update from Greenland

Exploration

Storyteller in Residence 2024: Meet Mads St Clair

Throughout the day and night we hear the echoing booms of icebergs splitting in two, crumbling and fragmenting.

I finish the dive largely on my own, this time surfacing at 30 minutes, not because I am cold, but because I desperately want to shoot where I can see the sunlight hitting the top of the iceberg. And I am not disappointed, because I surface next to a laughing Sven in a red dingy and the split shots are magical. My lips are so swollen, perhaps from the cold or the reg or the compression of the hood, but Sven pulls me into the boat like a seal and we are both grinning from ear to ear. He knows I get it. The ice is simply magic.

We spend the middle of the day warming up, and I feel like I am walking on air. I did it, I really did it. And the shots are good too – better than I expected for a subject that I haven’t really shot before and with hands that felt like bananas operating a camera underwater.

On the second dive, Sven drops us on an iceberg that looks rather like a golf ball. Its surface is pocketed and a circular dome looms out of the water – though most of its mass is below. Myself, alongside team USA, Chris and Mike, are on the boat with Sven again. The boys have taken a liking to him, in the way that Americans unabashedly do when they decide they like someone. I’m inclined to agree on this – he’s an excellent captain and unquestionably knowledgeable about the ice.

I’ve learnt a lot from Mike and Chris in the last couple of days. They first spotted me at the hotel, and after watching me haul kit into the boat, decided to take me under their wing. They have been generous in sharing their knowledge of polar diving, lending me a thicker hood, little tubes that increase the airflow between dry gloves and the suit (which has been a game changer) and also shared small hacks for getting my glove system off (who knew it was a simple as twisting a weight belt buckle under the lip of the glove and it pops right off?!).

The golf ball dive starts a little worse than the morning dive. I had a monitor flood earlier in the day – despite no warning or any indication of depressurisation – and despite a fairly sizeable amount of water being in there, strangely enough both the monitor and battery survived. But without the monitor, I’d forgotten that my housing had gone from slightly negative to a smidge positive. And by a smidge I mean a full of workout to stay under with a drysuit and several very buoyant under-layers.

The thing that’s a challenge for me in cold water is that it’s a) cold, b) everything feels a lot slower in a drysuit and c) it’s just still a new environment for me, it feels a lot easier to stress underwater. Not that I do, of course, but I can feel that sensation creep in at the sides when things go a little bit wrong – and that’s such a strange feeling for me, because underwater is a place where I usually feel so strong and calm, even in the most gnarly of situations I’ve faced in recent years.

So when down at 6 metres on the golf ball, I hit a slight up-current, the situation is a little challenging. The current first pushes up my housing, which upon ascending pulls me up slightly and, finding I can’t vent my suit quick enough, and I have to swim down slightly, whilst also holding what feels like a very buoyant camera, trying not to get my feet upwards (as this is drysuit no-no 101) and also still trying to vent by squeezing myself in a little ball. The result? Lots of heavy breathing, some underwater acrobatics and a bit of a stressed Mad. Not my finest moment. I signal to Chris, because for some reason Mike doesn’t seem to have made it down in the first place either: problem with my camera, I’m going up.

After making some minor adjustments on the surface – namely removing the floaty arms – my camera now looks very odd, with two lights mounted directly on the handles, but it does the job and this time, we once again sink with ease. Mike’s having undisclosed kit issues, so he’s content to stay on the surface, bobbing around with the bergs. Back at depth with Chris, I begin to realise just how huge the golfball is. It disappears first into a halocline – where salt and freshwater mix together to form a blurry layer of ocean water – and then there is a good 5ish meters down of good vis, before disappearing into murky greenish depths below. The sun hits the pock-marked surface, reflecting in such a way that it looks like it is melting underwater. I reach out and stroke the surface. When you look up close, it looks like a thousand tiny snowflakes frozen in the surface. We circle around the golf ball to the right, where the iceberg has met another. It touches gently, looking like the two are almost kissing. The second by comparison is a ‘baby berg’, a mini golfball so to speak. And on the other side of that, a third, much more ominous berg looms from the deep.

My lips are so swollen, perhaps from the cold or the reg or the compression of the hood, but Sven pulls me into the boat like a seal and we are both grinning from ear to ear.

Being unable to see more than ice disappearing into a watery depth below, I am not fond of being caught in one here.

This one is striking – and terrifying. There’s something about it that chills me and I don’t want to get too close. I name it ‘the cathedral’. Its bottom juts out in harsh ridges that look individually like the hulls of boats or like the roofing of the inside of a cathedral. It has presence. It demands attention. Chris swims up to it confidently. I trail behind, a little more timid. She, because it feels like a she, looks powerful. And this one, I quite confidently, do not want to touch.

As I’m snapping pictures of Chris on this iceberg, I suddenly realise that my buoyancy feels a little out of sorts, and in the same way that I can usually feel by my ears if I’ve gone up or down a few feet, with a drysuit, you get a more obvious full-body squeeze (and subsequent cold sensation) that let’s you know you’ve descended and need to add a bit of air to your suit.

A couple of seconds later, and I realise that no, I have not descended of my own accord, but we are in fact, caught in a down current. Living in Raja Ampat, I’ve had my fair share of experiences with down currents, and in this case, being unable to see more than ice disappearing into a watery depth below, I am not fond of being caught in one here. Especially not when I can feel it sucking us down and between the icebergs.

Thankfully it is not too strong, so I signal to Chris, who’s felt it too and we make our way back to the golfball. The dive is fairly uneventful from this moment onward, aside from the jellyfish, which pop against the whites and blues of the ice, shimmering in striking shades of purple and maroon. We find Mike back at the surface, who like a real sausage, failed to check his tank when we loaded them onto the boat, set up the gear or back-rolled into the water.

Ok, I’ve spend a good hour writing and my brain is now well and truly on the way to sleep.