International Diving Team Explores Arctic Waters to Study Climate Change

Marta Lukasik returns 45 minutes later, tapping the top of her helmet, a diver’s sign for “I’m okay.”

In the frozen Lake Kilpisjärvi, surrounded by snowy hills near the meeting point of the borders of Finland, Sweden, and Norway, 12 divers took part in a scientific polar diving course in March.

“It’s just amazing, every little detail we see in the water,” exclaimed fascinated Marta Lukasik, a 41-year-old doctoral student and diving inspector in fish farms in Norway.

Over ten days, an international group of divers with varied backgrounds trained in polar region diving, under an 80-centimeter layer of ice covering the lake.

“The climate change is transforming the Arctic and Antarctic environments at a faster rate than the rest of the planet,” said Erik Wurz, a diver-researcher, instructor, and coordinator of the program organized by the University of Helsinki.

“There are still many unanswered questions in the polar regions, and access is very limited,” Mr. Wurz remarked.

“The number of scientific divers capable of diving under the ice is even more restricted,” he added, estimating it to be between 100 and 200 people globally.

Wearing dry suits to protect themselves from the cold 2°C water, the divers arrived on snowmobiles at the site, just a few minutes from the University of Helsinki’s biological station.

Ruari Buijs, 21, checked that his fellow classmates, gathered at the hole in the ice of “Base Alpha,” were all ready to dive before helping them slide into the water, equipped with oxygen tanks and a light attached to their arm.

“The most important thing is probably teamwork,” emphasized Ruari Buijs, who studied biology and oceanography at the University of Plymouth in the UK.

“For example (…), if visibility is poor, there is always a return line,” he explained, pointing to the 50-meter yellow safety rope he held in his hand and attached to the diver.

A light attached to a steel bottle blinks a few meters deep in the clear water as a guide for disoriented divers.

With only two holes to enter and exit the water, the biggest challenge for these divers is “the environment above their heads into which they are entering,” Mr. Wurz highlighted. “They are entering an ice cave,” he added.

The exercise involves extracting an ice cap sample, or an “ice coring,” explained 23-year-old Canadian Caroline Chen, a scientific diver working as a research assistant at the University of Hamburg.

“Sometimes we hit our heads; I still have to get used to it,” she added.

“In this ‘secure setting,’ the divers are trained to be ‘confident when deployed in Antarctica,’ or during an expedition without heated buildings or showers,” Mr. Wurz pointed out.

Having attended the training launched in 2024, he later joined an expedition to the Scott Antarctic research station, located 1,350 kilometers from the South Pole.

“We are at a critical moment because the polar regions are changing very rapidly,” the specialist emphasized. “Huge ice areas are breaking off… at a rate that has never happened before so quickly.”

An analysis of American data in March shows that the Arctic ice cap could have experienced one of its lowest winter peaks ever recorded due to human-induced climate change.

“We need to take samples and collect reliable data in these regions because they are the ones evolving fastest on the planet in a warming ocean,” Mr. Wurz stated.

Emerging from her dive, Marta Lukasik described how the sun, piercing through layers of snow and ice, cast rays into the water.

“One must be a little crazy to venture into this environment. I think it is the second most hostile environment known to man, after outer space,” Ruari Buijs said.