ambient temperature and chills from expansion as it passes
through the regulator. Air consumption increases as the
diver cools, resulting in additional cooling with increased
ventilation. Significant chilling also occurs during safety stops
when divers movement is reduced. Polar diving requires
significant insulation, which results in decreased mobility and
increased potential for buoyancy problems — two challenges
ice divers must address.
Besides the dehydrating effect of breathing dry air on a
dive, Antarctica and the Arctic are extremely low-humidity
environments (polar deserts) in which dehydration can be
rapid and insidious. Continuous attention to hydration is
required; urine should be clear and copious.
Diving at the Earth’s polar regions does not necessarily
mean diving directly beneath the poles. At the South Pole you
would find that after drilling down through more than a mile
and a half of vertical ice, you would hit bedrock and still be
hundreds of horizontal miles away from open ocean. If you
delayed your North Pole trip for a few years, drilling through
sea ice might not be required at all in the summer, given
the observed reduction of up to 75 percent of Arctic sea-ice
volume over the last 30 years. And it would be a long distance
to travel for an open-water dive with a bottom depth of nearly
14,000
feet.
AD
RESEARCH, EDUCATION & MEDICINE
//
A D V A N C E D D I V I N G
42
|
FALL 2012
Courtesy Michael Lang
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