SCHOLARSHIP DIARY

PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY OF KIM HILDEBRANDT

EXPLORING THE DARK AND THE ICY

In February and March 2020, two of my wildest dreams became true - first, I got to dive my first-ever caves, and successfully passed my GUE Cave Diver 1 certification under the brilliant instruction of Kelvin Davidson of Third Dimension Diving in Tulum – thank you so much, Kelvin!

I had been very curious about cave diving for a long time, and enjoyed this unique underwater environment with its impressive stalagtites and stalagmites just as much as I expected – even having to deal with a variety of challenging simulated situations, such as simulated failures on the dive equipment, searching for a lost line or a lost dive buddy, turned out to be very fun and rewarding as a team effort.

And secondly, I got the true once-in-a-lifetime chance to join a diving expedition to the Falkland Islands, South Georgia, and Antarctica with Oceanwide Expeditions, whom I will forever be grateful to!

I crossed the Antarctic Circle, dived below the 68th Latitude South, did my first ever dive in 0 degree Celsius water temperature, and became one of the first divers to have ever dived the famous Point Wild on Elephant Island, wherein 1914 a big part of Shackleton´s Endurance expedition team had stranded and survived for four months, awaiting their rescue. In this particular place, we witnessed an incredible moment - a leopard seal, one of the Antarctic´s top predators, slashed his meal of a chinstrap penguin tender on the water´s surface, after we had already seen the remains of such a penguin´s body on the ocean floor during our dive.

While on our 12 dives on this three-week long trip, we encountered many fascinating species of marine life perfectly adapted for these cold waters, predominantly macro life such as isopods, amphipods, sea spiders, nudibranchs, sea stars, brittle stars, urchins, to name but a few. My very favourite part, though, was to dive with the playful Antarctic fur seal pups who, as much as they loved chasing us humans above the water on our landing sites for fun, were very friendly underwater. n

Next month: Kim encounters no less then seven different penguin species, and sees firsthand the effects of climate change.