Polar Ice Diving — White Sea Russia

Each March in the White Sea near the island of Solovetsky and the Karelian coast, the fast-ice that forms in this sheltered arm of the Arctic Ocean creates conditions for one of the world's most extraordinary diving experiences — dropping through a hole cut in the sea ice into perfectly clear water of three to five metres visibility where harp seals and ringed seals swim in green-filtered light beneath a ceiling of white ice, their curiosity about divers creating encounters of remarkable intimacy in a marine environment of alien otherworldly beauty. The underside of the sea ice — visible from below as a green-white translucent ceiling patterned with air bubbles and ice crystal formations — creates a landscape of extraordinary visual strangeness that exists nowhere accessible in warmer marine environments, and the experience of hanging weightless beneath metres of Arctic ice in water just above freezing while seals circle overhead against the luminous white ceiling is one of diving's most profound encounters with a genuinely alien environment. The White Sea harp seal pups — pure white at birth and visible on the ice surface above the dive holes — add a second extraordinary polar wildlife encounter to the surface portion of each ice diving expedition. The Solovetsky Islands' ancient monastery, its massive stone walls emerging from the White Sea snow landscape, adds a Russian historical and cultural depth of considerable weight to this extreme marine wildlife experience.