Dive Tending with the BBC

11/19

Yesterday Elisha got to do a cool adventure in which she saw emperor penguins, got to see the seal group work on a pup, and pass by the huge erebus glacier tongue. But I'll let her tell about that.

Today, I managed to get us invited on a dive tending trip to the arrival heights area with Michael, Espen, and Hugh from the BBC diving team. They are working on the next planet earth/blue planet style series, tentatively called '7 Worlds'.  It's super cool, and of course they are the group down here that I'm most interested in. 

So we rode with them in their pisten bully to their dive hut to dive tend. While dive tending we basically help them get all their dry suits and weights on, help them with their tanks, and passing their camera gear. Then we sit in the hut watching the hole (a hole is drilled into the ice so that they can take the plunge below the ice) and serve as a safety line should anything happen to them. One of their cameras costs over $75,000! They're fun guys to talk with bc they have interesting stories, were all scientists before becoming videographers, and have been all over the world filming amazing things. Michael is American but not has Canadian citizenship and lives in Bristol, UK. Hugh is british, and Espen is from Bergen, Norway. Their top-side videographer, John, is also from the UK.

They did 3 dives, and while they were diving, Elisha and I just hung out in the hut listening to podcasts. Then the divers come up, and we help get their equipment out, and then we chat for an hour or so for their surface interval and while they warm up before they head down again. 

To me, it was super exciting to help out the BBC film crew, especially one working on a series as high quality as the blue planet/planet earth series. It'll be cool when the show eventually comes out, and we can say we helped out and that we knew the producer and the filmers. On their dive today, they were filming in this cool cave with ice crystals that they said was like a chandelier. So I'm looking forward to seeing that part when the series is released!


I also added a few photos of Elisha's boondoggle so you could see some penguins

brunch cheese

Sunday brunch

fancy bbc cameras

Mr. Gnome, Obama, and friends at the dive shack

L to R: Michael, Hugh, and Espen of the BBC

$80,000 camera

me handing down the $80,000 camera to Hugh

Elisha knitting while the divers are below ice

Elisha helping Michael get his dry suit on

Elisha with Michael, Hugh, and Espen

Cooking lunch on the heater

water is so cold sometimes the tank valves freeze, which is why they have 2

penguins from Elisha's boondoggle

drilling a dive hole