Cave diver Jill Heinerth has explored some of the most isolated parts of the world, even when she's feeling fearful (original) (raw)
As a child, Jill Heinerth used to be afraid of being alone in the dark.
"I used to have to swallow a lump in my throat to go down the basement stairs because the light switch was at the bottom of the stairs," Heinerth recalls.
"Mum would send me down to go get something from the freezer, and I was terrified."
But this fear didn't deter her from pursuing a career that involved exploring dark, confined spaces — and at great depths.
The pioneering Canadian cave diver has dived to depths as great as 140 metres in Bermuda.
And in 2001, she became the first person to explore caves inside an iceberg in Antarctica.
"They're these beautiful, endangered environments that are carved by the hand of the sea," she tells ABC Radio National's Saturday Extra.
Jill Heinerth says when she's diving inside icebergs, she witnesses life within the ice. (Supplied: Jill Heinerth)
Cave diving is one of the most dangerous sports in the world.
And Heinerth says diving inside that iceberg in Antarctica was her most dangerous dive to date.
"I was the first to cave dive inside an iceberg, so we had no idea what we might encounter. We experienced calving [chunks of ice breaking away]that blocked the doorway we had entered. We experienced a ferocious current that swept us through the iceberg, depositing us on the other side of a massive piece of ice and away from the view of the boat," she says.
"The final dive inside the iceberg became a fight for our lives when unexpected currents suddenly switched and made it nearly impossible to escape."
Then, mere hours after they left the cave, the entire iceberg exploded and turned to slush.
When Heinerth surfaced from the dive inside the iceberg, she remembers saying "the cave tried to keep us". (Supplied: Jill Heinerth)
Capturing the life of a cave diver
Heinerth has logged more than 8,000 dives, and carried out scientific research along the way by photographing her surroundings.
Her adventures have been captured in a new documentary Diving into the Darkness, created by independent filmmaker Nays Baghai, which premiered in Sydney in October and will be released more widely in 2025.
Based in Sydney, Nays Baghai is the director of the award-winning documentary Diving Into the Darkness. (Supplied: Aravind Shanavaz)
He first crossed paths with herat an international diving conference in 2017, when he was an AFTRS second-year film student and interested in underwater cinematography.
They struck up a friendship, and then embarked on a three-year journey to create the documentary about Heinerth's life. This included filming in caves around the world, including Mexico. And where possible, Baghai dived with Heinerth during the making of the documentary.
Despite taking great risks when she dives, Heinerth says she is not fearless.
"I'm scared every time I go diving, and I want to dive with people who are similarly afraid," she explains.
"If we're afraid, it means we understand we're taking a risk. We try to mitigate the risks. We build technologies to improve our safety and follow the protocols, and we all want to come home safely to our family at the end of the day."
Sadly, not everyone who cave dives has been as fortunate as Heinerth.
"I swim through the graves of my friends all the time," she says in the documentary.
In the veins of planet Earth
Heinerth captured images of the Twin Peaks inside the Crystal Cave in Bermuda. (Supplied: Jill Heinerth)
Diving into unknown caves is not about adrenaline, Heinerth says. It's about expanding our knowledge of the planet.
"These caves are like a museum of natural history. We can learn about Earth's past climate. We can learn about animals. We can learn about ancient cultures … and I believe that every risk has to be for a reason. And for me, that's about water literacy and about communicating about climate change."
Some of the animals she's discovered while cave diving, such as crayfish, can live up to 200 years.
"It's just incredible to see these animals. They're small, but they may be the next source for new pharmaceuticals or chemical compounds, or at least teach us about survival in the darkness," she explains.
In order to reach great depths in Bermuda, Heinerth was carrying up to 300 kilograms of equipment underwater at times. (Supplied: Jill Heinerth)
However, much more research is needed about the world beneath the waves.
"We know more about space than we do about the underwater places on this planet," she says.
"And the life support that we use for these advanced technical dives is much closer to what an astronaut would wear to the International Space Station for a spacewalk, as opposed to what someone would think of as traditional scuba diving gear."
A behind-the-scenes look at camera operators filming the documentary with Jill Heinerth in caves around the globe. (Supplied: Nays Baghai)
Filmmaker Baghai experienced this firsthand while diving with Heinerth. "It's the closest that I've ever felt to being an earthbound astronaut in a science fiction movie," he says.
"And every time I go cave diving, there is always the little kid in me that wants to explore space and feels satiated to a certain degree."
Baghai wants those watching the documentary to be inspired by Heinerth's healthy respect for fear.
"I want people to walk away feeling more empowered to explore underwater and, if not literally the environment, then metaphorically themselves," he says.
"Even though what Jill does is objectively astonishing, and there aren't many people that can do what [she does] — I hope that people walk away identifying aspects of Jill's character that make them look in the mirror and think, 'You know what? There actually is a relatable side to the woman on screen that I'm watching'."
Heinerth has her own simple message that demonstrates just how far she's come since her childhood. "I want to be the woman I wish I had met when I was ten years old."
RN in your inbox
Get more stories that go beyond the news cycle with our weekly newsletter.