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ALERTDIVER.COM
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M
y heart skips a beat as I descend
into the chocolate-brown water
at the entrance to the Bell
Island mines in Conception Bay,
Newfoundland. A freak winter
gale has washed more than 3
feet of brown runoff into the mines during the night.
Our floating dock is stuck to the ceiling, and the diver
prep area is submerged beneath an inflowing river of
melted snow. It’s bone-chillingly cold, the visibility is
low, and I am lugging a large camera, lights and strobes
to capture images in water that I hope will be clear a
few hundred feet into the submerged passages.
The Royal Canadian Geographical Society has honored
our project as its 2016 Expedition of the Year, recognizing
our efforts to reveal the unseen depths of Canadian
geography. The Explorers Club has granted Flag #80 to
our mission, likewise acknowledging the importance of
sharing the secret, submerged assets of Bell Island.
Few people know that Bell Island was attacked during
World War II. In 1942 German U-boats blitzed the
island twice in attempts to disrupt the flow of the high-
grade iron ore being extracted from the mines. Raiding
U-boats sunk the SS
Saganaga
, the SS
Lord Strathcona
,
the SS
Rose Castle
and the Free French vessel
PLM 27
,
and they blew up the loading wharf on Bell Island. In all,
70 men were killed, and the region’s inhabitants were
awakened to their precarious position on the front lines
of the Battle of the Atlantic.
The goals of our project are ambitious. We are
establishing a visual archive of the history that was
submerged when the first mine closed in 1949 and
the last mine closed in 1966. With no inventory of
mine assets, we’ll be the first to reveal the cultural
history that was abandoned when it became too
expensive to continue the extraction of ore. In addition
to documenting the mechanical and engineering
history of the mine, we will be collecting biological
samples from ferrous oxidizing bacterial colonies and
hydrogen sulfide pools for DNA analysis. For me the
greatest revelations of all will come from physiological
examinations conducted by a team of scientists led by
DAN® research director Neal Pollock, Ph.D.
INNER SPACE
After each dive we rush to stow our gear as quickly as
possible and move up the 650-foot slope to the public
museum area of Mine #2. Pollock and Stefanie Martina
have set up a makeshift lab where they are poised to poke,
prod and query our bodies and minds. I peel off a sweaty
heated drysuit undergarment and lay prone on a mattress
while Martina preps a cold ultrasound probe to place
onto my ribcage. She gently rotates the device to find her
landmark, and a miraculous image appears on the screen.
I watch my beating heart, the valves of which look like a
downward-swimming mermaid in a black void. Martina
doesn’t have to tell me that my mermaid is navigating
a field of bubbles on the right side of the heart. My
decompression stress is clearly visible as rogue white dots
that bounce off the walls and move upward on the screen.
The first time I see it I am slightly alarmed. I feel great,
but Martina informs me I am showing grade IIIb on the
scale of bubbles (0, I, II, IIIa, IIIb, IVa, IVb, IVc and V,
with 0 being no visible bubbles and V being a whiteout).
I assure her that I am an open book and am ready to
publicly share every detail of my results. The questions
begin pouring out of me: Have I been bubbling for my
last 7,000 dives? Is this happening after most or all of my
dives, or is it particular to these cold, physical dives? How
closely correlated are these bubbles with decompression
sickness (DCS)? Pollock is generous with his educational
offerings but careful to explain that these investigations are
anecdotal. We’re all guinea pigs in this world of technical
diving, trying to apply mathematical probabilities to an
infinite set of parameters encompassing bodies, plans and
diving history. We can’t conclude which of the myriad
factors were most important in leading to my bubbles
after so few dives — or even know if the bubbles might
cause long-term issues — but we can certainly try to
reduce stress in future dives in many ways.
EXPLORING THE HEART
OF BELL ISLAND
By Jill Heinerth
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EXPLORING THE HEART OF BELL ISLAND
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LIONFISH
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ELEVATING THE STANDARD OF CARE
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DAN MEMBER PROFILE
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PUBLIC SAFETY ANNOUNCEMENT
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TRAVEL SMARTER, EDUCATION SPOTLIGHT