Banker and farmland owner on why they go down to wrecks and icebergs

Mikhail Shchegolevsky

Co-owner of AM Group (mechanical engineering and agricultural business in Ukraine) and the Wild Orchid group of companies, dived in the North and South Poles

The first phrase divers say after rising from the Arctic Ocean is: “Give me some vodka!” Yes, first of all it is needed for warming, because under the ice the water temperature is -1°C. But vodka is also a tradition. This tradition is especially valuable for those divers who emerge as the “outmost” of the group. If the first participants are poured vodka after leaving the water, then the “last” participants will receive a glass with a snack already in the lane itself - a hole in the ice. They drink only strong drinks at the pole. Once on an expedition to a polar camp there was a group of Italians who brought a lot of champagne, but never finished it.

I dived at the North Pole twice. The first time this happened was in 2000. By that time, I considered myself an experienced recreational diver, I already had an Advanced Open Water certificate and experience diving in the Mediterranean Sea. But when, almost by accident, I read a text about diving at the North Pole in the magazine of the Moscow State University Underwater Club, I immediately got excited about this idea. Looking ahead, I admit that the expedition to the North Pole turned out to be a quickly realized dream, the journey to it took only three months, and the most extreme part of it was not the diving under the ice itself, but the road to the Pole and staying in the ice camp.

The necessary conditions for those wishing to dive at the North Pole at that time were the presence of at least 50 dives (I had 35 at that time) and an Ice Diver certificate, which also provides the ability to dive in a dry suit. Under a dry suit, the diver first puts on thermal underwear, then a thick overalls made of special thermal insulation material, and only then a swimming suit. Cold water does not penetrate under it and air is supplied as an additional element to control buoyancy. Of course, such clothing restricts movement, but it is much more important for a diver to learn how to control the air: if you put more air under the suit, you begin to float, if you release the air, you are pulled down.

However, the inconvenience of a dry suit is nothing compared to the claustrophobia that can engulf a diver under the ice. Sometimes an attack occurs to someone who has never complained of claustrophobia on land. It’s in the warm sea that you can surface at almost any time and anywhere. And under the ice, exit is only possible through the lane. In addition, it is always twilight under the ice, making it impossible to move without a flashlight. Safety rules require belaying from land, that is, during each ice dive you are tied with a rope (halyard) to an object on the surface, and the end of the halyard is in the hands of the belayer. The partners have their own language of communication: one pull of the rope from above - “is everything okay?”, two pulls - “check your air supply”, three pulls from below - “pull me out urgently!” I haven't used the last method yet.

Ice diving training in a dry suit took place in winter on Lake Senezhskoe and the White Sea. And in April we already flew to Khatanga.

As a group of 13 people (including 10 divers), we intended to fly directly from Khatanga on a local plane to Sredniy Island (the northernmost border post of Russia), and from there to the ice airfield, where the Russian polar explorers’ base is based and a camp for tourists is set up. Instead of several hours, it took us about a day and a half to get there. When we took off from Sredny, the weather suddenly deteriorated and the pilots were unable to land on the ice airfield; on the way back they were unable to land on Sredny, and as a result they had to fly back to Khatanga on the last drops of fuel.

An ice airfield (essentially a cleared strip on a drifting ice floe where a plane lands and from where it flies back as quickly as possible) is located at a distance of at least 100 km from the North Pole itself. The closer to the pole, the more intense the movement of ice. To get to the pole itself, tourists hire a helicopter. It was planned that the entire expedition would take us three days: a day before the dive in the camp, a dive at the North Pole and a day in the camp before departure. But we spent nine days there. The calendar showed April - the brightest time of the year, it was already warmer, the polar day had begun, and the ice had not yet begun to actively move.

In the polar camp, when once a year it is “stormed” by tourists from different countries, there are a dozen large KAPSH tents (Shaposhnikov’s frame Arctic tent, it was also used by Papanin). Tourists, naturally, bring everything with them - equipment, generators, food and alcohol. For example, for our group of 13 people, the luggage weight was about 3 tons, we even brought a pressure chamber with us. Water was taken from melted ice, and we learned to choose older ice, which had less salt.

On the day of the dive, we first flew by helicopter to the North Pole, had a drink, and then flew to look for a place for a mine. It is better to do it in a place where the ice has recently broken, it is easier to cut there. And for the beauty of the dive, it is better to choose those places where the ice floes are on top of each other; under water it looks very beautiful. Sawn ice floes from the mine (its size is 1.5x1.5 m) were stacked near the mine itself, then it was convenient to put equipment there and sit down to put on fins.

Of course, I was ready for an underwater dive, but I didn’t expect it to be so beautiful. The water under the ice of the Arctic Ocean is absolutely transparent, below you is an ocean abyss more than 4 km deep, it’s as if you are hanging in emptiness, you won’t get this feeling in any sea, and above you there is the most beautiful ice.

In cold water (-1°C) you begin to freeze after half an hour, the diver’s range of action is limited by a 30 m long halyard, that is, it takes 30–40 minutes to “inspect the underwater area.” I decided to dive the deepest - to 30.5 m; to this day this figure remains an accidental record for diving at the North Pole.

And after returning to the camp, in the next six days, we had to play Papanin. First, the weather suddenly deteriorated, and our group did not catch the plane for tourists. All subsequent flights were canceled due to the snowstorm. Then the ice floe on which the camp was based began to crumble and the order came to urgently relocate with the help of helicopters to another ice floe. For comparison: when we first arrived at the camp, the length of the ice floe was several kilometers, and we evacuated from an area less than 300 m long. The ice airfield broke up and ceased to be an airfield.

The events of those days were much more extreme than the dive, and the expedition remained in my memory as endless unloading and loading of things, tents, and equipment. After two days of the camp “moving” we were so tired that we had no strength left for our last “moving” of our own. As a result, the polar explorers flew to another ice floe, and they left us a rocket launcher in case the ice floe continued to break up. This did not happen, but the next day in the new camp the polar explorers expressed deep respect for our help and courage and accepted us as their colleagues.

Two years later I was diving off the coast of Antarctica. The main attraction for a diver there is the icebergs. It is interesting to swim up to an iceberg, because most of it is under water, to explore its caves, to find through passages. Once, other divers and I found a gentle slope underwater and began to ride like on a hill: you deflate the vest and roll down, inflate it and go up the hill again. Antarctica has a very rich and unique underwater world. We saw penguins and seals, giant kelp forests and the remains of whales, as well as wrecks - sunken ships.

I dive on trimix. This is a special mixture for deep diving (my personal best is 153 m) of oxygen, nitrogen and helium, which reduces the risk of nitrogen narcosis and oxygen poisoning. Trimix is a more expensive type of diving, but this is not the main obstacle to its widespread use. In my perception, trimix is a much more extreme type of diving, even compared to ice diving. The main danger is the inability to ascend at any time due to compliance with the decompression regime. Therefore, all problems - equipment failure, loss of a mask, poor health, etc. - must be solved under water.

Dmitry Podolsky

Advisor to the First Deputy Chairman of the Board of Millennium Bank, prefers to dive in warm waters

There was one moment in my diving life that I will never forget. My friend and I were diving into a small cave in the Red Sea, which begins at a depth of about 100 m. We were already finishing our route when my main flashlight went out, and when I tried to turn on the spare one, it literally exploded in my hands. The next trouble was the uncontrolled air supply (free flow) from the spare regulator and the breakage of the mask strap. Similar situations are described in textbooks, but theory is one thing, and reality in a cave at a depth of more than 100 m and three troubles per unit of time is another. Then I solved the problems that had arisen: the air supply to the faulty regulator was cut off, and I had a spare, third flashlight, as well as a spare mask.

Although I already had hundreds of dives behind me, two dives at 200 m, nevertheless, already on the climb, different thoughts began to appear: this is a sign - it’s time to stop, statistics don’t lie, etc.

To get rid of the phobia, I, with my good friend and famous Russian instructor Andrei Chistyakov, conducted a course of “therapy” - a series of dives - step by step increasing the depth, time and complexity of the dives. So, gradually, I returned to my favorite hobby. Now I understand that caves are simply not my thing. But diving on sunken ships is a completely different matter.

In general, in diving, as in life, the more you know, the more often you dive, the more you realize the extreme nature of this sport. It turns out this is “woe from mind.” Until I was engaged in recreational, amateur diving (depths up to 65 m), I simply had no idea what the dangers were. I didn’t encounter it, my friends didn’t encounter it, no one died, no one had anything break or explode. That's why it seemed like everything was fine.

At some point, an understanding came: amateur knowledge is not able to completely protect me. The recreational diving training system is similar to network marketing. You go through the first level, then the second, the third, and in the end you realize that often you just received beautiful certificates. I am not at all against the existing training systems, it’s just that for some people this is enough to travel half the world and dive with pleasure, but it turned out that this was clearly not enough for me. Therefore, I decided to switch to technical diving - diving to greater depths and for longer periods of time. This gives greater knowledge, and most importantly, makes diving safer. Why is the lower the safer? Because every technical dive, unlike an amateur one, requires serious preparation, the presence of an emergency plan and well-worked details.

I admit, I didn’t have any serious breakdowns or troubles. And what happened that was non-standard, we call standard situations. For example, during one dive into a canyon off the coast of Egypt, we found ourselves in a strong oncoming current, and I discovered that one of the cylinders that contained decompression gas (a special mixture of gases used during gradual ascent from depth) was empty. It turns out that I didn’t close it properly and all the gas came out due to the strong oncoming current. That is, such a typical blunder of a novice technical diver happened. It's the same as a novice driver driving into the next car in a parking lot. That time I had to stop diving and go back.

Another incident occurred in 2007, when we tried to set a record in one of the categories that were at that time recorded by the Guinness Book of Records - we dived 202 m to a sunken ship (now the absolute record is already 318 m - Forbes). The difficulty was that the remains of the ship lay far from the shore, there was no connection to the landscape, so it was necessary to move underwater using a rappelling rope. It was in December, the sea was rough, and I was very afraid that the rope would break, I wouldn’t find the place and I’d have to climb onto the island with all my equipment and wait for someone to find me. Due to rough seas, our ship did not stand still, but circled around a marking canister and a signal buoy with a release rope. As a result, the rope wound around the propeller and broke, and the ship could not sail. At that moment we were already returning - there was an hour and a half decompression stop left at a depth of six meters. Then one of the friends who was waiting for us on the ship, risking breaking his head on the propeller, dived under the ship and pulled out a marking canister, while the other one swam above us with a mask so as not to lose sight of us.

The risk of diving is also associated with equipment. We once made a fairly simple dive of 100 m along a rock wall. One of my friends began to spontaneously inflate his wing - part of the diver’s equipment that we use to regulate the depth of the dive and when ascending. As it turned out later, there was a manufacturing defect. A friend tried to lower the inflating wing, because otherwise he would have been thrown up sharply. By that time, we had already been at depth for 15–20 minutes, so health problems would have been guaranteed. His valve was stuck, and the second valve didn’t work either. At this time, his main regulator for supplying the breathing mixture also broke down. With his free hand, he tried to switch to the spare regulator and at the same time grabbed the wall so as not to float up. Here Andrei Chistyakov, the most experienced of us, came to the rescue. Together they managed to cope with both the inflating wing and the regulator. And then, in order to defuse the nervous situation and cheer up my friend, Andrei put on sunglasses, which we had picked up at the bottom during the dive, right over his helmet. Indeed, it immediately became easier...

Any dive is dangerous. Technical immersion is doubly dangerous because its consequences for the body have not yet been studied. It is known, for example, that the presence of the so-called open oval window (an element of the structure of the human heart, in some people it does not close in adulthood - Forbes), which every third person has, increases the risk of developing decompression illness. My oval window is also open, but I dive.

I prefer to dive in the southern seas simply because I love the warmth. People often ask about sharks, which are so graceful and strong that you simply cannot help but admire them. There are many stories of divers dodging predators. When I watched my own video with a large number of sharks, I realized that these creatures move so fast that it is impossible for a clumsy diver to dodge them. I think the sharks simply don’t notice our tricks. And if the shark really decides to attack, then no tricks will help.

One day, during a dive, three whitetip sharks came to us, this is one of the most dangerous breeds. I was already swimming towards the ship, and suddenly one of them began to circle around me. Stories immediately arose in my memory of how sharks cut circles around the victim before attacking. In general, I set a record for the fastest jump onto the deck in diving equipment. The people who were waiting for me on the ship did not even have time to help me and were very surprised why I flew up onto the deck like a bird.

With the transition to technical diving, my approach not only to preparing dives changed. The approach to everyday life has changed. I became much more aware of potential danger. After all, one of the fundamentals of technical diving is the ability to foresee options for the development of events if the dive does not go according to plan. Here's a simple example. My friend once came to my dacha. Walking around the site, he looked into the bathhouse and, grinning, remarked: “It would be strange if you didn’t have fire extinguishers hanging everywhere.” But despite the possible risk, nothing can replace the pleasure of seeing underwater beauty, be it extraordinary “lunar” landscapes, canyons or sunken ships.

As for superstitions, everyone has their own. For example, I never litter in the sea. I can't throw chewing gum or an empty bottle overboard. Don't think I'm not from Greenpeace. We're just going to visit the sea. How can I litter there?

Extreme diving: from the Arctic to diving hundreds of meters