Deapsee Under the Pole : Ghislain Bardout and his team (part 1)

This year there are some striking and unusual similarities between what the various teams are experiencing out on the ice.

This year there are some striking and unusual similarities between what the various teams are experiencing out on the ice.

© Benoît Poyelle / Deepsea Under The Pole by Rolex

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  • The team from the Deepsea UnderThePole by Rolex expedition has been dropped off at the North Pole by Kenn Borek's logistics people on Friday 26th March and have already set out on their trek
  • They needed to use two aircraft, a Twin Otter and a DC3, to ensure that everything went off as safely as possible.
  • Between 85 and 86 degrees North, the ice was terribly broken up, criss-crossed with numerous leads and dotted with huge expanses of open water.
  • Already two dives had taken place in the five days since Ghislain Bardout's team was deposited in the vicinity of the North Pole. And 18.5 kilometres covered.
  • The aim of the expedition was to produce an unprecedented audiovisual account of this hidden world in order to create a memoir and present the pack-ice as it has never been seen before.
  • A scientific programme has been conducted in parallel linked to monitoring the melting of the sea-ice by taking readings of the thickness of the snow and ice throughout the journey
  • Everu time the stopped for a diving session, they had to search for an ice which was not too thick to bore.
  • Ghislain Bardout's team is gradually getting used to the cold, wind and jumbled, chaotic sea-ice that takes on a different appearance every day -oh, and the drift!.
  • For the first few days, all eight expedition members were travelling together in a group, with each one waiting for the other where necessary. But that was slowing down their progress too much.
  • So Ghislain and his companions decided that they had to split up into two groups, with the faster and the not-so-fast travellers– which enables whichever party arrives at camp first.
  • A dog was part of the team : it was a siberian Husky born in Quimper on 8 february 2009 with the name of Amarok Ermak Kayak.
  • This year there are some striking and unusual similarities between what the various teams are experiencing out on the ice.
  • The team is constituted of 6 crew members with various experiences, bringing all the essential expertises necessary to make such a project successful: Most of them have worked on different expeditions of the famous Jean-Louis Etienne.
  • Drinking something hot and being cheered up right after the dive was quite necessary because of the cold and the stress of having been under the ice far from the others.
  • In such conditions, of course, you never go on the dive alone. Most of the time it was Poyelle and Bardout who where the first divers to go for it.
  • It is on the subject of those dives that Bardout and his friends are the most expressive. For them, making headway on the surface is certainly important, but obviously less so than what they're discovering under the water.
  • Almost every night, the material (terrestrial as well as submarine) had to be checked up twice.
  • After having received their first resupply, they set off towards Ward Hunt while all the time looking for good places for diving and stopping there as and when necessary. The tent at night : the place to discuss matters of the day.
  • So that you can form a better idea of the milieu that where discovering, for the next six shots, here are some of their comments : ...
  • April 15th :
  • On April 15 th :
  • On April 15 th :
  • On April 17th, from the pen of Bardout :
  • On April 17th, from the pen of Bardout :

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