It was supposed to be just another uneventful Saturday. Cloudy, with nothing special on the horizon. A Saturday like so many other ordinary Saturdays that have unravelled over the last few months. No special light or winds.
No unusual ice or cloud movements to catch the fancy of our filmmakers. When the surface no longer discloses its secrets, it’s better to focus on underwater sequences. You never know what could be skulking about in the dark ocean depths...
Mario and Serge drilled a hole in the ice, just a few meters away from the boat. A gateway into the cold and dark world of a thousand secrets. A long cable links the divers to the surface. It’s not always easy to find your way back to the surface hole when exploring the seafloor.
Mario focuses his camera on a clione, a strange and tiny winged creature whose graceful dance across the water column resembles the flight of an angel. The transparent and miniscule body of this pteropod makes it hard for the cameraman to focus.
Then, a stealthy shadow, an undulation you feel like an indefinable shudder running down your spine. Fleetingly, the eye searches, but in vain. The divers however know. They know they have seen a silhouette, invisible but real, shrouded by the shadowy depths of this closed universe, locked in by the icy canopy that imprisons them. Claustrophobics beware! There is only one way out, far off in the distance, lost somewhere at the end of the cable, beyond sight, one small opening towards freedom: your little hole in the ice.
On the surface, Mariano patiently waits near the opening that links these two worlds. His job is to maintain tension on the cable that links the divers to the surface. He must also make sure that everything goes according to the predetermined dive plan. In case of a problem, he’ll be the first to respond, to go for help, to rescue the divers. But nothing ever happens. Diving near the boat give us a chance to document the slow and virtually unmoving life of the underworld. Especially on a Saturday. Especially when the rest of the crew is actively searching for something to do on this uneventful day.
Every dive, Mariano spends well over an hour watching his open water hole that the cold tends to close up on the surface. Nothing. Nothing ever breaks his watchful state—lost in his dreams and thoughts. Less than a meter away from the ice hole, he glances down into this other world. Dark, cold, and mysterious. Leaning forward, only centimetres from the ice hole, he scans the underneath. The swell of a wave reveals movement towards the surface. No doubt Mario or Serge. But he hasn’t received the pull up signal on the cable, the three short jerks on the cord that announce the ascent of the divers. He leans over again, peering into the void to try and see if he can make out the divers’ silhouettes. He looks for telltale bubbles in the looming black. Nothing. But the surface wave means something is stirring close by. Without warning, a huge head breaks the surface! The Argentinean’s heart has just stopped beating. Less than a meter from his face, the threatening fangs of the leopard seal, Antarctica’s most fearsome predator...
The crew is called in for back up as the leopard seal happily darts back and forth between the dive hole and the small gash of open water that has formed between the pack ice and the shore, where one of the boat’s mooring lines keeps the icy wound from closing up again.
We create a diversion by teasing the leopard seal at this other hole, just the time needed to call the divers back to the surface. Everything’s fine. They’re now out of harm’s way. But the predator’s curiosity is not quite satisfied. He continues to dart back and forth between the two holes, as if on a mission to impress us. The divers decide to drop back under the ice. There’s no way they’re going to miss this incredible opportunity to film the beast under the ice. On the surface, cameras immortalise each new emergence of the predator and Martin captures it all on his high definition camera. A rare sequence!
The divers film the intrigued leopard seal who persistently moves closer and closer to the camera. On the surface, near the shore, he takes a stab at throwing himself out onto the ice, probably attracted by all the shadows moving about on the ice. Perhaps he has us confused with the crabeater seals, a species he regularly attacks as evidenced by the numerous scars that mark the majority of harbour residents. He bares his teeth and tries to charge the photographers. He wants to escape out onto the ice, but the small size of the hole foils this plan. He quickly gives up. But now, frustration is feeding his aggressiveness.
He dashes back to the other hole, the divers’ hole, and swoops in on Mario and Serge. His passes are gaining in speed generating a surface swell we can all feel, crowded around the hole. He doesn’t seem to want to play anymore. He rushes the divers again, this time jaws wide open. It’s time to call the divers back. Timing their moment carefully, they manage to quickly extract themselves from the water. There’s no lingering. No legs left dangling under the ice.
Serge and Mario tell us all about their unforgettable encounter. Serge is lying just a few centimetres from the hole, body and legs stretched out. While he recovers, he describes the repeated attacks of the animal, who was getting bolder by the minute. Suddenly, the seal thrusts its enormous head out of the ice hole. Serge rolls onto his side to protect his outstretched legs, which are only centimetres away from the seal’s jaws. What nerve indeed! No fear. Not the least bit intimidated by the presence of all of these humans who, mesmerised, continue to immortalise this memorable moment.
We continued filming and photographing the animal. We had to put aside the long focal lengths and work in wide angle. From above, well-protected on our platform of ice, we simply lowered the underwater camera lens down into the hole. The leopard seal took care of the rest, mauling the objective and even chewing on the contour of the lens...
It was supposed to be just another uneventful Saturday. Cloudy, with nothing special on the horizon. A Saturday like so many other ordinary Saturdays that have unravelled over the last few months. No special light or winds. No unusual ice or cloud movements to catch the fancy of our filmmakers. When the surface no longer discloses its secrets, it’s better to focus on underwater sequences. You never know what could be skulking about in the dark ocean depths...
Jean
