1
00:02:20,821 --> 00:02:25,586
Cave diving is often referred
to as the world's most dangerous sport.

2
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But is it a sport?

3
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It's the closest thing I can think of
to going to another planet.

4
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It's this interesting yin-yang
of light and dark, of beauty and danger.

5
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Cave diving is like swimming
in the veins of Mother Earth.

6
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I'm literally swimming
through water-filled passages

7
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beneath your feet.

8
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And these caves
are like museums of natural history.

9
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We can learn about
where our drinking water is

10
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and how we can protect it
for the next generation.

11
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We can learn about Earth's past climate.

12
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We can learn about ancient civilizations
that have left artifacts.

13
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We can learn about the unique animals

14
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that live in the darkness
of an underwater cave.

15
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When you're exploring a cave,

16
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you must solve
all of your problems underground,

17
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underwater, with no mission control
to call for help.

18
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There are a lot of physical risks.

19
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The silt can rain down from the ceiling.

20
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It's also easy to get lost.

21
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You can also get trapped.

22
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Anything can go wrong
at any time with your gear.

23
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It's critical to know when to turn around.

24
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I know a lot of people
that didn't do that.

25
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I swim through the graves of my friends
all the time.

26
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I've lost over a hundred friends
to technical and cave diving accidents.

27
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You really ask yourself,
is this something I should be doing?

28
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Is this fair to my family?

29
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Do I wanna take these risks?

30
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But in those dark, confined spaces,

31
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I'm happy, I'm comfortable,
I'm in my element.

32
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But I am scared.

33
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I'm not fearless.

34
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The day that I'm not afraid
about what I'm doing

35
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is the day that I should hang up my fins.

36
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I'm not in this for adrenaline.

37
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I've learned so much
about the plumbing of the planet,

38
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but also about myself through cave diving.

39
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I think cave diving
is a metaphor for life.

40
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We all have to face change
and uncertainty.

41
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Humanity needs people that push
on the edges and step into the darkness.

42
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That's how we evolve.

43
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Jill's been diving at the cutting edge
of cave exploration for so long.

44
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You know, she's had this stellar career
of filmmaking, exploration, and adventures

45
00:07:20,080 --> 00:07:22,362
with all the big names around this planet.

46
00:07:22,442 --> 00:07:25,606
Jill literally wrote
the book on cave diving.

47
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She makes documentaries,
she's an excellent photographer.

48
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She's an author, she's a public speaker.

49
00:07:32,893 --> 00:07:36,456
I think by 2001, she was probably...

50
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the world's best female diver, period.

51
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Forget "cave diver." I'm just talking
about "underwater explorer."

52
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She's there because of
the excitement of exploration,

53
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the satisfaction of curiosity.

54
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Jill always...

55
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I guess she needed to see
what was around the next corner.

56
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She was always very curious.

57
00:07:56,196 --> 00:08:00,601
I could easily say that she was
an explorer from the beginning,

58
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and same as she is now.

59
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Our parents
always took us out on hikes.

60
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The Bruce Trail
was a big thing that we enjoyed.

61
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I loved hiking
the trails, but even more,

62
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I loved climbing down
into those cracks and crevices

63
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and looking around

64
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in this three-dimensional,
below-ground space.

65
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Those were my first experiences in caving,

66
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and often those were cozy,
comfortable, small places.

67
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We had a set of National Geographics

68
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that were gifted
from my grandmother and grandfather.

69
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From the light of a bare bulb,

70
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I would go through these volumes,
page by page.

71
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Those pages showed me
what was possible for me in the future

72
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and inspired me to study and learn

73
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and create a future
where I could be an explorer, too.

74
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<i>Launch commit. Lift off.</i>

75
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<i>We have lift off with Apollo 14.</i>

76
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You know, back in the day,
astronauts were heroes,

77
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pushing the envelope of human physiology.

78
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Just the scale, the magnitude,
all that technology.

79
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It was like you were looking
through this peephole in history,

80
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seeing something so incredible.

81
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I knew I had a burning desire
to be an explorer.

82
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I was so excited and thrilled.

83
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I ran home and couldn't wait
to tell my mom about the experience,

84
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the thing that I had just seen.

85
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You know, "Mom, I wanna be an astronaut.
I'm gonna be an astronaut."

86
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And then when she told me no,
it was like,

87
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"Oh, like, am I not good enough?
Am I not capable? Like, what is it?"

88
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She's like, "No, there's
no space program for Canadians.

89
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There's no women astronauts.

90
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It's, like, there's no place
for you there."

91
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And it was discouraging.

92
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I thought, "Well, what can I do?
How can I be an explorer?"

93
00:11:43,824 --> 00:11:48,589
Watching and seeing Jacques Cousteau
on TV was that pivot point, really.

94
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Here he was sailing around the world
to fantastic places

95
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and then going underwater
with this wild-looking technology.

96
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Breathing underwater,

97
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and then encountering, like,
sharks and fish and whales.

98
00:12:15,816 --> 00:12:17,858
And that captivated me.

99
00:12:17,938 --> 00:12:20,941
And I thought,
"If I can't explore outer space,

100
00:12:21,021 --> 00:12:23,263
if I can't be an astronaut,

101
00:12:23,343 --> 00:12:25,666
maybe I can explore inner space

102
00:12:25,746 --> 00:12:29,269
and the magical depths
of the ocean instead."

103
00:12:37,958 --> 00:12:45,165
My first real cave diving expedition
was the Huautla expedition in 1995.

104
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Huautla is situated
in the Sierra Mazateca Mountains,

105
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and there's a cave system
inside the mountain.

106
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So if you peel away
the face of that mountain

107
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and you look inside,

108
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you've got, like, this whole network
of tunnels and spaces.

109
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And if you enter a hole
in the top of the mountain,

110
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you might be descending down on rope

111
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or climbing down a waterfall
deeper and deeper into the earth.

112
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And the year before we got there,

113
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that's how the explorers
were getting into the system.

114
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So when I went in 1995
with that very same team,

115
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we decided to work from the bottom up.

116
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We were seeing the pieces
of this puzzle come together,

117
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and one of the biggest unknowns
was this resurgence.

118
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If we could dive in through that,

119
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come up into air-filled passage,

120
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maybe we could just connect
those two together,

121
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and at that time we would have ended up
with roughly the world's deepest cave.

122
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The expedition got harder
and harder in a series of stages.

123
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I mean, just getting there
was tough in the car,

124
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and we were exhausted
after four days of driving and car repairs

125
00:14:32,793 --> 00:14:34,595
and getting up into the mountains

126
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to an altitude where the car
could barely drive up the incline.

127
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And it was hot, and there were bugs,

128
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and the winds were so strong

129
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that they would blow away your tents
if you weren't in them.

130
00:14:48,729 --> 00:14:51,612
But then we experienced mudslides.

131
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The rainy season came a bit early.

132
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That shallow streamway
between base camp and the cave opening

133
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would periodically be just filled
with this rush,

134
00:15:02,623 --> 00:15:05,345
a tsunami of water down the canyon.

135
00:15:08,388 --> 00:15:13,554
It felt like the physical hardships
were, at times, just too much to bear,

136
00:15:13,634 --> 00:15:18,478
and that was even before we went
into the cave to go diving or surveying.

137
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We didn't have enough burros
and people to carry everything we needed,

138
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so the first and easiest choice was,

139
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"Leave Jill's diving gear
on top of the mountain.

140
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She's not gonna use it.

141
00:15:31,532 --> 00:15:34,735
She's gonna have to do other things
during the project."

142
00:15:34,815 --> 00:15:39,299
So Paul and Noel ended up
doing all of the exploration diving.

143
00:15:39,379 --> 00:15:41,662
I got involved in supporting the base camp

144
00:15:41,742 --> 00:15:44,905
and surveying dry cave,
and doing other things.

145
00:15:45,465 --> 00:15:51,552
But as the dives progressed
and we reached some real physical hurdles,

146
00:15:52,392 --> 00:15:55,315
Noel got to the point where he said,

147
00:15:55,395 --> 00:16:00,641
"I've done everything that I can do,
and I've reached my psychological limit."

148
00:16:02,883 --> 00:16:06,647
Noel was an experienced cave diver,
cave explorer, and a physician.

149
00:16:06,727 --> 00:16:08,689
He was our expedition doctor.

150
00:16:08,769 --> 00:16:13,213
And at that point,
either Paul could dive solo,

151
00:16:13,293 --> 00:16:16,937
or there would be no more diving,
and we'd just dry cave explore,

152
00:16:17,017 --> 00:16:23,423
or, in that split second,
I had a chance to say, "I wanna do it."

153
00:16:23,504 --> 00:16:25,025
And that's what I did.

154
00:16:25,105 --> 00:16:27,748
I said, "Hey, I could fit Noel's gear.

155
00:16:27,828 --> 00:16:31,231
We don't even have to go get my dive gear.
I can wear Noel's diving gear.

156
00:16:31,311 --> 00:16:34,595
I'd like to have an opportunity
to explore this cave."

157
00:16:35,395 --> 00:16:39,760
And I remember Bill's look like, "Really?

158
00:16:39,840 --> 00:16:44,685
What makes you think that you've got
the chops to pull off this dive

159
00:16:44,765 --> 00:16:49,329
when Noel says it's too much
and he feels it's not safe to go on?

160
00:16:49,409 --> 00:16:53,173
Why are you convinced
that you're not gonna die in there,

161
00:16:53,253 --> 00:16:56,376
and I'm gonna have to carry your body
out of this canyon back up

162
00:16:56,456 --> 00:16:59,379
and explain to your family what happened?"

163
00:16:59,459 --> 00:17:02,943
Because just a year earlier
in the very same spot,

164
00:17:03,023 --> 00:17:05,105
one of their teammates had died.

165
00:17:05,185 --> 00:17:09,990
And it was a friend, a dear friend,

166
00:17:10,551 --> 00:17:17,277
and they had to carry his body,
something that took 12 days.

167
00:17:19,880 --> 00:17:27,127
That pall hung over that expedition,
and it informed everything that we did.

168
00:17:28,168 --> 00:17:32,252
And I thought,
"Whoa, that didn't take long."

169
00:17:32,332 --> 00:17:34,975
This is business.

170
00:17:35,055 --> 00:17:36,617
This is really serious.

171
00:17:36,697 --> 00:17:40,460
This is not just some fun lark
on a travel destination.

172
00:17:40,541 --> 00:17:42,182
This is life and death.

173
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What I wasn't sure of
when that conversation happened

174
00:17:46,507 --> 00:17:49,469
was the level of her discipline, you know?

175
00:17:49,950 --> 00:17:54,555
Was she the one that was gonna get
to 68 meters depth and panic,

176
00:17:54,635 --> 00:17:57,117
you know, and take Paul down with her?

177
00:17:57,197 --> 00:18:00,280
This is not some Boy Scout badge

178
00:18:00,360 --> 00:18:04,925
that you put on your arm and use
to be some status symbol, you know?

179
00:18:05,005 --> 00:18:07,407
This is deadly shit.

180
00:18:07,487 --> 00:18:10,250
You go in there,
and there is a finite chance

181
00:18:10,330 --> 00:18:14,615
that you are going to die
if you don't do things just right.

182
00:18:15,576 --> 00:18:20,621
If you have somebody who's just gung ho
without considering the consequences,

183
00:18:20,701 --> 00:18:22,182
that was what I was looking for.

184
00:18:22,262 --> 00:18:24,064
Was this somebody who's just,

185
00:18:24,144 --> 00:18:26,466
"I wanna make a name for myself
by getting in here

186
00:18:26,547 --> 00:18:29,790
and pushing this
to some spectacular limit"?

187
00:18:29,870 --> 00:18:31,552
Or is it
somebody who says,

188
00:18:31,632 --> 00:18:33,433
"You know what,
the goal here is to get data

189
00:18:33,514 --> 00:18:35,075
and not get anybody hurt"?

190
00:18:35,636 --> 00:18:40,120
And by the time the sun came up,
Bill said, "I'll support you.

191
00:18:40,801 --> 00:18:42,162
I'll help carry your gear.

192
00:18:42,242 --> 00:18:45,806
I'll get you there
and do whatever you need to do.

193
00:18:45,886 --> 00:18:48,008
I'm willing to give you a chance."

194
00:18:48,088 --> 00:18:49,650
And that changed my life.

195
00:18:59,660 --> 00:19:03,544
On the biggest dive,
we needed everybody's help.

196
00:19:05,185 --> 00:19:06,587
The river was swollen

197
00:19:06,667 --> 00:19:08,949
between the base camp
and the opening of the cave,

198
00:19:09,029 --> 00:19:10,390
and it was very dangerous,

199
00:19:10,470 --> 00:19:16,076
even to transport all the gear, the tanks
and everything to begin the dive.

200
00:19:17,077 --> 00:19:19,479
And then as Paul and I
got ourselves prepared,

201
00:19:19,560 --> 00:19:21,602
got all our tanks organized,

202
00:19:22,883 --> 00:19:27,928
the moment that it was time to go,
the water started to rise.

203
00:19:28,008 --> 00:19:30,330
Dirty water started
to flood into the cave,

204
00:19:30,410 --> 00:19:33,133
and the current turned to reverse.

205
00:19:33,213 --> 00:19:39,019
We had a split second
to make a decision to go or no go.

206
00:19:39,099 --> 00:19:42,583
And I looked at Paul, and he said,
"Dive, dive, dive,"

207
00:19:42,663 --> 00:19:44,665
and disappeared under the surface.

208
00:19:44,745 --> 00:19:48,348
In that moment,
I remember thinking to myself,

209
00:19:48,428 --> 00:19:50,511
"Are you an explorer or not?"

210
00:19:51,391 --> 00:19:52,593
And I went for it.

211
00:19:54,995 --> 00:19:56,396
And I dove underwater,

212
00:19:56,476 --> 00:20:00,921
racing against
that flowing current of dirty water

213
00:20:01,001 --> 00:20:03,363
that was running into the cave system,

214
00:20:03,443 --> 00:20:06,406
and swam as fast as I could
to keep up to Paul.

215
00:20:06,486 --> 00:20:10,250
It's like the die was cast,
and I was on autopilot.

216
00:20:10,330 --> 00:20:12,212
It was happening.

217
00:20:35,916 --> 00:20:38,078
So we surface in this pool

218
00:20:38,158 --> 00:20:41,562
with a waterfall
cascading down on top of us.

219
00:20:45,445 --> 00:20:48,288
But at this point,
in order to continue on,

220
00:20:48,368 --> 00:20:53,373
we needed to climb up over the waterfall,
get our gear up there, and continue.

221
00:20:58,178 --> 00:21:01,622
I mean, it's as close to,
you know, Jules Verne as you're gonna get.

222
00:21:03,143 --> 00:21:07,027
The rest of the world disappears,
and you are an explorer.

223
00:21:09,910 --> 00:21:14,474
Once we'd gone through that whole
ordeal and gotten into that upper pool

224
00:21:14,555 --> 00:21:16,957
and continued into the water
that was clear...

225
00:21:20,440 --> 00:21:23,764
I thought, "Okay, this is it.

226
00:21:24,605 --> 00:21:30,731
This is the edge of the unknown.
I am touching the void and going forward."

227
00:21:30,811 --> 00:21:32,933
My heart is racing.

228
00:21:34,735 --> 00:21:37,337
There's no map, so you're gonna make it.

229
00:22:05,726 --> 00:22:09,970
When I look back on that dive
into the deep passages,

230
00:22:10,651 --> 00:22:14,294
we ended up too deep
for the traditional breathing gases.

231
00:22:15,015 --> 00:22:20,180
The sounds in my mind were,
"Ooh, turn around, turn around."

232
00:22:20,260 --> 00:22:21,742
It was that distance pressure.

233
00:22:21,822 --> 00:22:23,343
"Whoa, we're a long way from home."

234
00:22:23,904 --> 00:22:28,749
And when those nerves
start to creep in, it's really time to go.

235
00:22:31,311 --> 00:22:32,472
You have to be willing

236
00:22:32,553 --> 00:22:36,156
to get within a hair's breadth
of complete success,

237
00:22:36,236 --> 00:22:39,079
but also know when to turn around.

238
00:23:08,268 --> 00:23:11,952
When I got out of the dive
and I reached the surface,

239
00:23:12,032 --> 00:23:16,997
the first thing that I saw was Bill Stone
crouched by the side of the water,

240
00:23:17,077 --> 00:23:22,082
like a mother hen, and he looked down,
he's like, "Oh, thank God."

241
00:23:22,883 --> 00:23:26,286
We have three rules
on any expedition that I organize.

242
00:23:26,366 --> 00:23:28,368
One is that nobody gets hurt.

243
00:23:28,448 --> 00:23:30,891
Second one is everybody has
a memorable time.

244
00:23:30,971 --> 00:23:33,013
And the third one is
you come home with new data,

245
00:23:33,093 --> 00:23:35,656
as much as you can get safely, right?

246
00:23:35,736 --> 00:23:38,178
And so if you take all three of those,
we hit them all.

247
00:23:38,258 --> 00:23:43,504
What they stopped at,
at 600 meters in and 68 meters deep,

248
00:23:43,584 --> 00:23:48,709
was a gigantic underwater tunnel
carrying this subterranean river.

249
00:23:50,150 --> 00:23:52,112
So that remains an open question,

250
00:23:52,192 --> 00:23:55,756
and nobody has been back
to continue that work.

251
00:23:55,836 --> 00:23:57,437
So it's still out there.

252
00:24:02,883 --> 00:24:07,287
When I first met Jill,
I thought that she had skills.

253
00:24:07,367 --> 00:24:10,250
They were undemonstrated to me.

254
00:24:10,330 --> 00:24:14,735
So it was somewhat of a gamble
taking her on that trip.

255
00:24:14,815 --> 00:24:21,902
And, you know, the end result is
she kicked ass and did a great job,

256
00:24:21,982 --> 00:24:26,627
and was good at focusing
on getting the information that we needed,

257
00:24:26,707 --> 00:24:28,509
the data that had to come out of there

258
00:24:28,589 --> 00:24:31,231
so that we could think about,
"All right, how do we plan a return?"

259
00:24:31,311 --> 00:24:35,355
So to me that showed that she had,
you know, the right stuff, you know,

260
00:24:35,435 --> 00:24:37,998
the astronaut quality that we seek

261
00:24:38,078 --> 00:24:40,641
when we're talking about people
doing this kind of stuff.

262
00:24:48,689 --> 00:24:53,373
Working with Bill Stone in 1995
gave me an opportunity to explore

263
00:24:53,453 --> 00:24:57,778
what we thought could be
the world's deepest vertical cave system.

264
00:24:57,858 --> 00:25:01,502
So in 1996, I turned my attention

265
00:25:01,582 --> 00:25:06,627
to what we thought would be
the longest cave system in the world.

266
00:25:23,363 --> 00:25:25,766
Jill's forte has always been
as a coordinator,

267
00:25:25,846 --> 00:25:28,048
getting the right people
in the right places.

268
00:25:28,128 --> 00:25:29,570
She played a big part in that,

269
00:25:29,650 --> 00:25:32,533
as well as going out there
and making discoveries on her own.

270
00:25:32,613 --> 00:25:35,255
She wanted to be more involved
in cave diving.

271
00:25:35,335 --> 00:25:37,177
She wanted to be
more involved in discovery.

272
00:25:38,058 --> 00:25:39,580
She knew what her future was gonna be.

273
00:25:39,660 --> 00:25:42,182
There wasn't anything gonna stop her
from getting there.

274
00:25:47,788 --> 00:25:49,429
It was very affirming

275
00:25:49,510 --> 00:25:54,314
to finally push the envelope
and be leading instead of following.

276
00:25:58,238 --> 00:26:00,841
I began to recognize

277
00:26:00,921 --> 00:26:05,686
how important my viewpoint
from inside the plumbing of the planet

278
00:26:05,766 --> 00:26:07,728
could be to the rest of humanity.

279
00:26:09,009 --> 00:26:13,253
I can see the influences of what
we're doing on the surface of the Earth.

280
00:26:13,894 --> 00:26:15,536
We're in the middle of Mexico

281
00:26:15,616 --> 00:26:19,499
in an area where people are having trouble
finding clean water to drink,

282
00:26:19,580 --> 00:26:24,024
and yet they're living on top
of a prolific water source

283
00:26:24,104 --> 00:26:26,707
that if they just knew exactly
how to access it,

284
00:26:26,787 --> 00:26:29,029
it could change their lives.

285
00:26:31,191 --> 00:26:35,636
If I can help people
not just understand where their water is,

286
00:26:35,716 --> 00:26:38,999
but how they are affecting it,

287
00:26:39,079 --> 00:26:42,763
then maybe we have a chance
at solving some of these issues

288
00:26:42,843 --> 00:26:45,846
like water scarcity
and global climate change.

289
00:26:52,573 --> 00:26:55,295
By the time we wrapped the expedition,

290
00:26:55,375 --> 00:26:58,258
we pulled together all the maps
and discovered

291
00:26:58,338 --> 00:27:03,263
that we had mapped 56 kilometers
of new passageways

292
00:27:03,343 --> 00:27:07,588
and found the world's longest cave system.

293
00:27:12,032 --> 00:27:16,396
That was incredible to me.
I was on cloud nine.

294
00:27:17,518 --> 00:27:21,602
And it was like the possibilities
were now open to me.

295
00:27:26,166 --> 00:27:30,050
We started to think
about how to make a better map.

296
00:27:31,732 --> 00:27:36,657
And that's when Bill Stone
proposed our next great challenge.

297
00:27:36,737 --> 00:27:40,861
He wanted to bring together
an international expedition

298
00:27:40,941 --> 00:27:45,666
and make the world's first
accurate three-dimensional map

299
00:27:45,746 --> 00:27:49,870
of any subterranean space, dry or wet.

300
00:27:49,950 --> 00:27:53,233
And it seemed like
a bit of a crazy proposal at first,

301
00:27:53,313 --> 00:27:56,396
but I thought, "I am in."

302
00:27:57,077 --> 00:27:58,679
So from that point forward,

303
00:27:58,759 --> 00:28:02,202
we started putting all of our efforts
into planning for this project

304
00:28:02,282 --> 00:28:04,444
called the Wakulla 2 Project.

305
00:28:17,698 --> 00:28:22,022
If you had asked
any respectable exploring cave diver

306
00:28:22,102 --> 00:28:24,304
in the United States in those days

307
00:28:24,384 --> 00:28:28,028
about what would be the greatest spring

308
00:28:28,108 --> 00:28:30,110
and the greatest challenge in cave diving,

309
00:28:30,190 --> 00:28:32,833
they would've instantly said
Wakulla Springs.

310
00:28:34,154 --> 00:28:37,998
Everybody knew it. It was just gigantic,
in those days, air clear.

311
00:28:39,159 --> 00:28:43,403
The sand funnel alone coming in
from this 100-meter diameter basin

312
00:28:43,483 --> 00:28:47,848
was pristine white sand
kept clean by this aquifer.

313
00:28:48,689 --> 00:28:50,531
It was like going to another planet.

314
00:28:53,774 --> 00:28:57,497
Wakulla Springs is very deep,
and it gets deep fast.

315
00:28:58,298 --> 00:29:02,022
So the first thing you do
is you get down to that maximum depth,

316
00:29:02,102 --> 00:29:06,066
and that's about as high
as the Statue of Liberty, 90 meters.

317
00:29:06,146 --> 00:29:08,829
But then we're going
in this overhead environment

318
00:29:08,909 --> 00:29:10,110
where you cannot come up.

319
00:29:10,190 --> 00:29:11,592
There's no way out.

320
00:29:11,672 --> 00:29:14,194
You're going in over three kilometers.

321
00:29:14,274 --> 00:29:16,517
But even when you're
out to the doorway of the cave,

322
00:29:16,597 --> 00:29:19,640
you've still got 17 hours
of decompression ahead of you

323
00:29:19,720 --> 00:29:22,603
before you're back safely on the surface.

324
00:29:24,605 --> 00:29:30,531
It would take thousands of scuba tanks
to do the dives that we did at Wakulla.

325
00:29:31,451 --> 00:29:35,055
We need a completely different technology
called a rebreather.

326
00:29:37,658 --> 00:29:42,262
A rebreather
is a self-contained diving backpack

327
00:29:42,342 --> 00:29:45,546
that recycles your exhaled breath.

328
00:29:45,626 --> 00:29:49,550
It pulls out the carbon dioxide
that you create, it adds oxygen,

329
00:29:49,630 --> 00:29:53,834
and allows you to just keep recycling
quietly for a very long time.

330
00:29:53,914 --> 00:29:59,720
You can end up with between 100
and 200 times the efficiency

331
00:29:59,800 --> 00:30:03,884
in terms of your dive capability
over the old traditional scuba.

332
00:30:05,245 --> 00:30:06,727
Basically,
you're asking a diver

333
00:30:06,807 --> 00:30:09,369
to manipulate
their life support environment.

334
00:30:09,449 --> 00:30:10,330
And that could be

335
00:30:10,410 --> 00:30:13,413
one of the most dangerous things
they've ever done.

336
00:30:13,493 --> 00:30:15,736
Too much oxygen,
and you can have a seizure.

337
00:30:15,816 --> 00:30:18,218
Too little oxygen, and you can pass out.

338
00:30:18,298 --> 00:30:21,381
The wrong gas choices
can cost you your life.

339
00:30:21,461 --> 00:30:23,423
And there's a lot that can go wrong

340
00:30:23,504 --> 00:30:25,986
with a complex piece
of electronic equipment

341
00:30:26,066 --> 00:30:27,908
when you submerge it underwater.

342
00:30:29,389 --> 00:30:32,072
But I was so excited
by this new technology

343
00:30:32,152 --> 00:30:35,756
and what it could enable me
to do as an explorer.

344
00:30:36,436 --> 00:30:40,480
I could go further or deeper
than I'd ever been before.

345
00:30:40,561 --> 00:30:43,363
And that's the beauty of that gear.

346
00:30:45,646 --> 00:30:49,409
The most important part
of the Wakulla project to me

347
00:30:49,489 --> 00:30:52,853
was the fact
that the perception of cave divers

348
00:30:52,933 --> 00:30:55,776
was changing because of this project.

349
00:30:55,856 --> 00:30:57,578
For the first time in history,

350
00:30:57,658 --> 00:31:01,301
we could show people exactly
where water lay beneath their feet,

351
00:31:01,381 --> 00:31:06,226
and how they could be affecting the health
of that water supply beneath their feet.

352
00:31:08,509 --> 00:31:12,993
Cave divers were now respected
as valued citizen scientists.

353
00:31:16,476 --> 00:31:20,601
One of the things that we did
at Wakulla was we were trying to condense

354
00:31:20,681 --> 00:31:24,324
what other teams had done over 10 years
into a three-month period

355
00:31:24,404 --> 00:31:27,247
with an international group
who hadn't dived together before.

356
00:31:27,327 --> 00:31:29,369
So that's a huge undertaking.

357
00:31:29,930 --> 00:31:33,493
And so trying to get people
to jell as a team

358
00:31:33,574 --> 00:31:37,978
who have completely different disciplines
because of the environments they dive in,

359
00:31:38,058 --> 00:31:40,741
that's a really tough, tough thing to do.

360
00:31:40,821 --> 00:31:45,506
People didn't just go into the cave
with all that gear.

361
00:31:46,066 --> 00:31:50,831
This massive support team of 160 people
would line up behind two people,

362
00:31:50,911 --> 00:31:54,114
and those guys, they were astronauts
as far as I'm concerned.

363
00:31:54,194 --> 00:31:56,116
You know,
when you saw the kit-up procedure,

364
00:31:56,196 --> 00:31:58,198
there were two people per person

365
00:31:58,278 --> 00:32:01,121
helping these people get all their gear on
because you can't do it yourself.

366
00:32:01,201 --> 00:32:02,322
It's just too much stuff.

367
00:32:03,924 --> 00:32:06,607
I looked like a giant rebreather
with two little legs sticking out.

368
00:32:06,687 --> 00:32:08,529
You can't even see my head behind it.

369
00:32:08,609 --> 00:32:10,170
Uh, it was not fun to dive.

370
00:32:10,250 --> 00:32:13,974
It's serious back aches,
things like that.

371
00:32:14,054 --> 00:32:16,376
And we didn't have the timeline
to get it dialed in

372
00:32:16,456 --> 00:32:18,018
as well as we could have.

373
00:32:38,679 --> 00:32:41,962
To me,
the entire project felt like a moonshot.

374
00:32:42,883 --> 00:32:45,085
Everything about that project,

375
00:32:45,165 --> 00:32:46,967
from the life support
to the mapping device

376
00:32:47,047 --> 00:32:48,929
to the way that we handled
the decompression,

377
00:32:49,009 --> 00:32:52,372
was all sort of borrowed
from concepts in space.

378
00:32:53,253 --> 00:32:57,457
In fact, at one point,
Bill even reached out to NASA astronauts,

379
00:32:57,538 --> 00:32:59,259
and their remark was,

380
00:32:59,339 --> 00:33:04,585
"What you guys do is way more dangerous
than what we ever did as astronauts

381
00:33:04,665 --> 00:33:06,386
because we had mission control.

382
00:33:06,947 --> 00:33:11,512
You leave that entrance of the cave
and you go inside, and you're on your own.

383
00:33:11,592 --> 00:33:12,833
That's way harder."

384
00:33:22,963 --> 00:33:27,287
When we got past that point
of the previous world record,

385
00:33:28,288 --> 00:33:30,450
we tied on a guideline

386
00:33:30,531 --> 00:33:35,015
and we broke into new exploration,
and we kept on going.

387
00:33:38,298 --> 00:33:40,460
And that was a huge victory for me,

388
00:33:40,541 --> 00:33:42,583
but it was also a world record

389
00:33:42,663 --> 00:33:46,947
for any woman going deeper
and further into a cave in history.

390
00:33:50,591 --> 00:33:54,755
I realized I was on the cutting edge.
I was there. I was doing it.

391
00:33:54,835 --> 00:33:59,800
And I had realized
my goals of being an explorer.

392
00:34:09,810 --> 00:34:13,093
Nobody had ever worked
in that regime underwater,

393
00:34:13,173 --> 00:34:15,856
and so Jill was one of those pioneers.

394
00:34:15,936 --> 00:34:18,258
It was evident that she was the lead.

395
00:34:18,338 --> 00:34:21,141
She was the only female on that dive team,

396
00:34:21,221 --> 00:34:24,024
and she led
the whole exploration of B Tunnel,

397
00:34:24,104 --> 00:34:28,148
which was arguably the most difficult
of all the options that we had looked at.

398
00:34:28,228 --> 00:34:31,351
Um, you know, so she really rose,
in my opinion,

399
00:34:31,431 --> 00:34:34,314
to superstar status on that project.

400
00:34:42,282 --> 00:34:45,085
We produced a 3D map of Wakulla Springs.

401
00:34:45,766 --> 00:34:48,569
We mapped 32 kilometers of tunnels.

402
00:34:48,649 --> 00:34:50,971
Highly accurate, highly detailed.

403
00:34:51,051 --> 00:34:53,413
You could see the features
of the cave going through

404
00:34:53,493 --> 00:34:55,536
in a way that you never could
if you were doing it on a dive

405
00:34:55,616 --> 00:34:57,297
because you simply couldn't see it.

406
00:35:06,507 --> 00:35:10,230
I think when I started
down the road of the Wakulla project,

407
00:35:10,310 --> 00:35:14,314
I wasn't as confident in myself,
in my abilities.

408
00:35:16,316 --> 00:35:20,280
I learned a lot over those years
just preparing for the project.

409
00:35:20,881 --> 00:35:24,885
But by the time I left that project,
I felt like I had leadership

410
00:35:24,965 --> 00:35:29,730
and confidence to move forward
and take on the next challenging task.

411
00:35:39,940 --> 00:35:43,744
Jill has, like,
7500 logged dives.

412
00:35:43,824 --> 00:35:48,509
Well, you know, that 7501
might be the one

413
00:35:48,589 --> 00:35:53,594
where, you know, a 25-cent O-ring fails
and she's too far back,

414
00:35:53,674 --> 00:35:57,077
or a rebreather fails.

415
00:35:57,157 --> 00:36:02,643
I liken it to maybe someone who's married
to a police officer or a firefighter.

416
00:36:02,723 --> 00:36:05,846
You know, they go off to their job,
and it's inherently dangerous.

417
00:36:05,926 --> 00:36:08,088
It's inherently-- It has some risks.

418
00:36:08,168 --> 00:36:09,930
But I also know that Jill

419
00:36:10,010 --> 00:36:13,654
does everything she can
to minimize those risks,

420
00:36:13,734 --> 00:36:17,297
and she's very clear
about communicating that to me.

421
00:36:17,377 --> 00:36:21,822
And that just kind of, you know, takes
a little bit of the edge off for me.

422
00:36:21,902 --> 00:36:24,184
But yeah, I worry. I do worry.

423
00:36:25,385 --> 00:36:27,588
I'm sure that what I do

424
00:36:27,668 --> 00:36:31,792
contributes to anxiety
and difficulty for him,

425
00:36:32,953 --> 00:36:34,234
and that's hard.

426
00:36:34,314 --> 00:36:37,958
But I also know
that if I quit doing what I love,

427
00:36:38,038 --> 00:36:40,881
then I'm not gonna be
the woman that he fell in love with.

428
00:36:40,961 --> 00:36:45,606
So there's this weird, delicate dance
that we play,

429
00:36:45,686 --> 00:36:48,208
and there are times when it gets acute.

430
00:36:48,288 --> 00:36:56,977
I would say that cave diving
is probably more dangerous

431
00:36:57,057 --> 00:36:59,379
than what I was doing in the military.

432
00:36:59,459 --> 00:37:00,741
I mean, I was deployed overseas.

433
00:37:00,821 --> 00:37:03,023
I was involved in skirmishes
and things like that.

434
00:37:03,103 --> 00:37:06,386
I know which end of the rifle
the round comes out of.

435
00:37:06,466 --> 00:37:14,274
But I did not go to as many memorials
or funerals in 15 years in the military

436
00:37:14,354 --> 00:37:17,838
as I did in my first few years
of being married to Jill.

437
00:37:27,968 --> 00:37:31,772
There are very few divers in the world
that are as experienced as Jill.

438
00:37:32,773 --> 00:37:36,416
But sometimes she dives with scientists
and other people who--

439
00:37:36,496 --> 00:37:40,500
Diving is just sort of a side thing
that they have to do.

440
00:37:40,581 --> 00:37:44,144
And, you know, one of the rules in diving
is you have to be able to save yourself,

441
00:37:44,224 --> 00:37:46,547
but you also have to be able
to rescue your buddy.

442
00:37:46,627 --> 00:37:49,109
So I'm often very concerned
about who that buddy is.

443
00:37:49,189 --> 00:37:53,714
Like, is that person gonna be capable
of bringing Jill out of a cave?

444
00:38:07,768 --> 00:38:10,130
I was working with a young scientist

445
00:38:10,210 --> 00:38:13,854
who needed to get
a critical bacterial sample

446
00:38:13,934 --> 00:38:16,897
from inside a kind of gnarly, small cave.

447
00:38:16,977 --> 00:38:20,140
And I had done plenty of dives
in this cave, and she hadn't.

448
00:38:20,220 --> 00:38:23,023
In fact, we hadn't even
dived together before.

449
00:38:27,708 --> 00:38:31,191
More often than not,
I work with different scientists,

450
00:38:31,271 --> 00:38:34,955
extending the eyes and hands
into this remote environment.

451
00:38:59,660 --> 00:39:04,545
These aren't necessarily linear passages
where you go in and you come out.

452
00:39:05,225 --> 00:39:09,109
It's like swimming
into the branches of a braided tree,

453
00:39:09,189 --> 00:39:12,833
and then you have
to find your way back out.

454
00:39:23,524 --> 00:39:26,567
In cave diving,
we always have a guideline,

455
00:39:26,647 --> 00:39:31,692
which is a thin, usually nylon line
that we place in the cave like a pathway.

456
00:39:32,813 --> 00:39:35,095
It is vital to our safety

457
00:39:35,175 --> 00:39:37,778
because it's a visual reference
to the exit.

458
00:40:01,722 --> 00:40:05,365
When I called the dive,
when she had the samples that she needed,

459
00:40:06,406 --> 00:40:08,088
and she turned to leave...

460
00:40:09,970 --> 00:40:11,732
she got stuck.

461
00:40:26,146 --> 00:40:28,869
And I realized that she was panicking.

462
00:40:31,592 --> 00:40:34,354
All of a sudden, her fins were kicking,

463
00:40:34,434 --> 00:40:39,560
and in this narrow space,
what that meant was a complete silt-out.

464
00:40:46,567 --> 00:40:48,529
I grabbed onto her with one hand

465
00:40:48,609 --> 00:40:50,971
and onto the guideline
with the other hand,

466
00:40:51,051 --> 00:40:54,775
and I felt her wriggling
and fighting against being stuck.

467
00:41:20,440 --> 00:41:23,604
And I'm holding onto the guideline
and holding onto her,

468
00:41:23,684 --> 00:41:26,967
and they're separating
and getting farther and farther apart,

469
00:41:27,047 --> 00:41:31,291
and then suddenly, the guideline breaks,

470
00:41:31,371 --> 00:41:36,176
and I'm holding the bitter end
of our safety line in my hand.

471
00:41:37,177 --> 00:41:41,101
The part that leads me
out of the cave is gone, and I can't see.

472
00:41:44,545 --> 00:41:48,949
And for a moment, my heart was racing,
my respirations were going up,

473
00:41:49,029 --> 00:41:51,632
and I'm thinking these crazy thoughts.

474
00:41:54,034 --> 00:41:56,476
And at some point, I lost track of her.

475
00:41:59,079 --> 00:42:04,284
I didn't know whether she'd left the cave,
whether she'd gone further into the cave.

476
00:42:04,364 --> 00:42:06,286
I had no idea.

477
00:42:09,009 --> 00:42:12,813
And I got out my safety spool
and tied in to the bitter end of that line

478
00:42:12,893 --> 00:42:16,817
to begin searching
for the other end that I could tie into.

479
00:42:22,222 --> 00:42:25,225
And I realized
I couldn't just run out of the cave.

480
00:42:25,305 --> 00:42:27,588
I needed to go further in.

481
00:42:27,668 --> 00:42:30,591
When we pass through a cave,
even with perfect technique,

482
00:42:30,671 --> 00:42:33,514
we'll disturb the visibility a little bit.

483
00:42:33,594 --> 00:42:37,277
But when you reach that clear water,
you know nobody's been there.

484
00:42:44,605 --> 00:42:47,047
So once I went further into the cave,

485
00:42:47,127 --> 00:42:50,771
and I confirmed that she hadn't passed me
and kept on going,

486
00:42:52,092 --> 00:42:56,977
then I could work my way slowly out
and, like, clear the cave, basically.

487
00:42:57,057 --> 00:43:02,342
Search every corner and every side passage
to ensure I wasn't leaving her behind.

488
00:43:10,551 --> 00:43:13,674
And then my regulator packed it in.

489
00:43:14,154 --> 00:43:17,317
With all the digging
and moving and patching guideline,

490
00:43:17,397 --> 00:43:21,401
it was so packed with clay
that the valve was basically jammed open,

491
00:43:21,481 --> 00:43:25,445
and the only way I could access
that gas supply is to turn the tank on,

492
00:43:25,526 --> 00:43:27,367
take a breath, and turn it off.

493
00:43:35,495 --> 00:43:37,578
So I searched and found a side passage

494
00:43:37,658 --> 00:43:42,382
where all of her scientific gear
was laying on the floor of the cave.

495
00:43:43,784 --> 00:43:47,788
When cave divers panic
and the end is near,

496
00:43:47,868 --> 00:43:49,830
a lot of people start shedding equipment,

497
00:43:49,910 --> 00:43:52,873
tearing their mask off,
throwing down any extras,

498
00:43:52,953 --> 00:43:55,155
sprinting for the exit.

499
00:43:55,235 --> 00:44:00,040
And I was fairly certain
that I would find her next.

500
00:44:11,051 --> 00:44:13,373
And when I finally reached the exit...

501
00:44:15,455 --> 00:44:18,018
there she was in the doorway.

502
00:44:18,098 --> 00:44:20,180
She had surfaced and done the right thing.

503
00:44:20,260 --> 00:44:21,501
She had called 911.

504
00:44:21,582 --> 00:44:24,224
She had called the cave rescue team
to come out

505
00:44:24,304 --> 00:44:26,867
and gone back in the water to wait for me.

506
00:44:26,947 --> 00:44:31,952
But when I came out of that cave,
it was 73 minutes after her.

507
00:44:40,521 --> 00:44:43,083
After an experience like that,

508
00:44:43,724 --> 00:44:46,687
people tell you all the things
they wish they had said

509
00:44:46,767 --> 00:44:49,289
if they wouldn't have had
the chance to say them.

510
00:44:50,731 --> 00:44:52,933
They write you e-mails and notes,

511
00:44:53,614 --> 00:44:58,018
and I recognized
that I was reading my own eulogy.

512
00:44:59,900 --> 00:45:01,782
That's pretty hard to take,

513
00:45:01,862 --> 00:45:06,547
for me, for her, and for Robert.

514
00:45:07,948 --> 00:45:11,752
I think what really hit me
was when she told me

515
00:45:11,832 --> 00:45:14,154
that sort of the SOS went out,

516
00:45:14,234 --> 00:45:16,557
and all these cave divers
and rescue people

517
00:45:16,637 --> 00:45:19,439
were on their way to rescue her, or--

518
00:45:19,520 --> 00:45:22,122
I know what cave diving's about,
so they weren't gonna rescue her.

519
00:45:22,202 --> 00:45:24,204
They were just gonna bring her body back.

520
00:45:34,254 --> 00:45:35,776
That was the first time
in our relationship

521
00:45:35,856 --> 00:45:37,377
that I really thought to myself,

522
00:45:37,457 --> 00:45:41,542
"What am I gonna do
without Jill in my life?"

523
00:45:41,622 --> 00:45:45,546
I mean, we had just created
this great life for ourselves,

524
00:45:45,626 --> 00:45:49,229
and I don't know what I would do
if that piece was missing.

525
00:45:49,309 --> 00:45:54,675
So I became very resentful
towards the whole idea of cave diving.

526
00:45:54,755 --> 00:45:57,798
I don't think I became resentful
to her personally,

527
00:45:57,878 --> 00:45:59,520
but just the whole idea.

528
00:46:00,080 --> 00:46:04,404
And yeah, there were tears
at our house that night, me and her.

529
00:46:04,484 --> 00:46:06,567
We had a real heart-to-heart,

530
00:46:06,647 --> 00:46:11,251
and she explained to me
how she needed to do this.

531
00:46:11,331 --> 00:46:14,615
You know, it would--
This may be just-- This may seem trivial,

532
00:46:14,695 --> 00:46:18,098
but it would be like asking Tiger Woods
to stop golfing, you know?

533
00:46:18,178 --> 00:46:19,499
That's not gonna happen.

534
00:46:24,905 --> 00:46:27,628
But this was
more than just a sport to her.

535
00:46:27,708 --> 00:46:29,429
This was a calling.

536
00:46:43,283 --> 00:46:51,251
How do you keep engaging in a sport,
an activity where your friends go to die?

537
00:46:58,979 --> 00:47:00,701
I've been to so many funerals

538
00:47:00,781 --> 00:47:06,306
and written quite a number
of eulogies over the years.

539
00:47:09,189 --> 00:47:10,511
And I'm sure some people wonder

540
00:47:10,591 --> 00:47:15,235
how I could ever go back to a place
where a friend of mine died,

541
00:47:15,315 --> 00:47:19,680
or where I even brought a body
out of the cave.

542
00:47:23,003 --> 00:47:26,527
Technical diving means
that a lot of people have rebreathers

543
00:47:26,607 --> 00:47:30,651
and stage bottles and high-speed scooters
that take them kilometers

544
00:47:30,731 --> 00:47:34,575
to faraway places that would have been
world records a decade ago.

545
00:47:38,859 --> 00:47:40,581
It's not the gear that kills people,

546
00:47:40,661 --> 00:47:42,743
it's people that get themselves killed

547
00:47:42,823 --> 00:47:45,706
by the decisions they make
before they go in the water.

548
00:47:47,868 --> 00:47:53,874
I have to look at risk every day
and ask myself, "Is it worth it?"

549
00:47:53,954 --> 00:47:56,156
I could lose my life doing this.

550
00:48:01,762 --> 00:48:06,446
The point in my life that truly shattered
my sense of invincibility

551
00:48:06,527 --> 00:48:08,328
happened in 2000

552
00:48:08,408 --> 00:48:12,492
when I was exploring a place
called The Pit in the Yucatan Peninsula.

553
00:48:28,949 --> 00:48:34,154
A few years earlier, Paul and I had found
these deep tunnels

554
00:48:34,234 --> 00:48:38,118
that were connected to
this giant cenote sinkhole.

555
00:48:43,724 --> 00:48:46,326
The Pit was unique because of the depth.

556
00:48:47,247 --> 00:48:51,932
In fact, it's as deep as
the Great Pyramid is tall.

557
00:48:57,818 --> 00:49:02,302
All the caves in the Yucatan
were far less than 100 meters deep.

558
00:49:02,382 --> 00:49:07,548
So this could be a whole new
level of exploration.

559
00:49:07,628 --> 00:49:11,672
And it might even attach
the two longest caves in the world.

560
00:49:13,954 --> 00:49:17,237
At the time, I had thousands of log dives
under my belt,

561
00:49:17,317 --> 00:49:21,161
and I had just been inducted
into the Women Divers Hall of Fame.

562
00:49:21,241 --> 00:49:24,124
And that was a big deal for me.

563
00:49:24,204 --> 00:49:28,849
So I headed off with a great deal
of confidence on that expedition.

564
00:49:38,458 --> 00:49:42,903
At the time Jill was exploring in The Pit,
it was an entirely different world.

565
00:49:42,983 --> 00:49:44,985
Everything was really remote.

566
00:49:45,065 --> 00:49:49,349
Divers had to hike way back
out into the forest

567
00:49:49,429 --> 00:49:51,431
to even access the dive site.

568
00:49:53,313 --> 00:49:57,357
So there's a lot of risks involved
in doing this type of dive

569
00:49:57,437 --> 00:50:00,040
because if something goes wrong,

570
00:50:00,641 --> 00:50:04,765
you don't have a fast and easy
support network.

571
00:50:06,567 --> 00:50:08,529
This is a dive that at the time

572
00:50:08,609 --> 00:50:12,172
probably not a lot of people
were really qualified to do.

573
00:51:00,861 --> 00:51:04,464
When you first put your face in
and you look down,

574
00:51:06,667 --> 00:51:09,750
it's like you're in
a giant witch's cauldron.

575
00:51:11,752 --> 00:51:18,679
Deep below you is this hazy, foggy layer
with tree branches sticking up out of it.

576
00:51:20,040 --> 00:51:23,924
And that layer is caused
by rotting vegetation,

577
00:51:24,004 --> 00:51:27,487
causing a chemical
called hydrogen sulfide.

578
00:51:30,250 --> 00:51:33,814
When you actually descend
through the hydrogen sulfide,

579
00:51:33,894 --> 00:51:38,098
all of your senses are just assaulted
with this rotten egg smell

580
00:51:38,178 --> 00:51:43,263
that somehow gets past your scuba mask,
and even makes your eyes tear up.

581
00:51:45,586 --> 00:51:48,308
But it was below the hydrogen sulfide,

582
00:51:48,388 --> 00:51:52,553
deep into this witch's cauldron,
where the magic was.

583
00:52:38,158 --> 00:52:41,401
There was nothing like this
in the Yucatan,

584
00:52:42,002 --> 00:52:45,445
and we knew that we had found
something pretty remarkable.

585
00:52:50,731 --> 00:52:53,974
I'll admit, it's a complete rush

586
00:52:54,054 --> 00:52:56,617
when you are breaking into the unknown

587
00:52:56,697 --> 00:53:00,781
and exploring a place
that nobody's ever been before.

588
00:53:00,861 --> 00:53:02,983
It's enticing,

589
00:53:03,063 --> 00:53:07,187
and there's definitely something
that's always drawing you forward.

590
00:53:38,138 --> 00:53:43,423
We'd made it to 120 meters, and we were
at the back of a really large room.

591
00:53:45,185 --> 00:53:48,228
But ahead of us was a small restriction.

592
00:53:53,994 --> 00:53:58,519
Now, continuing on
might have netted a connection

593
00:53:58,599 --> 00:54:02,883
to bring together the two longest
cave systems in the world.

594
00:54:10,210 --> 00:54:13,694
But we were really deep,
and we'd been down for an hour,

595
00:54:13,774 --> 00:54:15,936
so I knew it was time to turn around.

596
00:54:16,016 --> 00:54:19,299
Every minute longer that we stayed there

597
00:54:19,379 --> 00:54:24,705
was gonna start to net a lot more
decompression and a lot more risk.

598
00:54:28,749 --> 00:54:31,952
So the deeper you go
and the longer you stand in water,

599
00:54:32,032 --> 00:54:35,075
the more nitrogen you get
into your system.

600
00:54:35,155 --> 00:54:37,277
You can't go straight up to the surface

601
00:54:37,357 --> 00:54:40,881
without having that nitrogen form bubbles
in your system.

602
00:54:44,645 --> 00:54:49,610
This can be avoided through
a series of stops as we ascend.

603
00:54:49,690 --> 00:54:54,374
That will reduce the chances
of decompression sickness.

604
00:54:54,454 --> 00:54:58,338
However, there is no way to guarantee

605
00:54:58,418 --> 00:55:03,463
that a diver will 100 percent
not get bent on a dive.

606
00:55:31,692 --> 00:55:36,176
Where we had to decompress
was a massive opening,

607
00:55:36,256 --> 00:55:38,699
you know, the size of a football stadium.

608
00:55:41,261 --> 00:55:45,866
When I got to the point
about 20 meters deep,

609
00:55:45,946 --> 00:55:50,951
hours into the dive,
I felt something odd happening.

610
00:55:52,352 --> 00:55:56,677
The first symptom
was this sense of impending doom.

611
00:55:57,277 --> 00:56:00,040
I knew something was very wrong.

612
00:56:00,521 --> 00:56:05,606
I sensed this odd sensation
in my thighs first.

613
00:56:05,686 --> 00:56:11,051
It felt like there were ants crawling
all over my legs inside my suit.

614
00:56:11,732 --> 00:56:14,975
And then it dawned on me.

615
00:56:15,536 --> 00:56:18,659
It's not bugs.
This is decompression sickness.

616
00:56:18,739 --> 00:56:22,743
I'm bent. Those were bubbles.

617
00:56:22,823 --> 00:56:29,670
Absolute bubbles inside my body,
ripping apart tissues, causing pain.

618
00:56:33,914 --> 00:56:37,598
I knew I needed to stay underwater
as long as possible

619
00:56:37,678 --> 00:56:42,282
to let the effects of the pressure
maybe push those back into my body.

620
00:56:43,363 --> 00:56:44,845
But it was already too late.

621
00:56:46,006 --> 00:56:51,091
I started to feel pain from my neck
to my wrists to my ankles.

622
00:56:51,171 --> 00:56:54,254
I was hurting, aching everywhere.

623
00:57:04,424 --> 00:57:08,789
Paul was actually swimming laps
around the sinkhole at this point

624
00:57:08,869 --> 00:57:10,110
because he was cold.

625
00:57:10,190 --> 00:57:13,754
I expected him to sort of step in
and take over,

626
00:57:13,834 --> 00:57:16,677
but I think he felt powerless to help me.

627
00:57:17,838 --> 00:57:20,160
I felt so alone.

628
00:57:21,001 --> 00:57:25,405
This explosion of thoughts
were just competing in my head.

629
00:57:25,485 --> 00:57:28,809
What's happening? Am I going to get worse?
Am I going to be paralyzed?

630
00:57:28,889 --> 00:57:30,170
Am I gonna die?

631
00:57:30,250 --> 00:57:32,933
What about my career?
I don't know what to do.

632
00:57:33,013 --> 00:57:38,258
It was so confusing and the anxiety
was just, like, filling my brain.

633
00:57:39,099 --> 00:57:41,301
<i>You're gonna die.</i>
<i>Your career's over. You fucked up.</i>

634
00:57:41,381 --> 00:57:44,024
<i>You aren't good enough. You should quit.</i>
<i>You'll be left in the dive shop.</i>

635
00:57:44,104 --> 00:57:46,426
<i>What are you going to do now?</i>
<i>People will think you screwed up.</i>

636
00:57:46,507 --> 00:57:49,590
<i>What the fuck were you thinking?</i>
<i>You've wasted your life.</i>

637
00:57:49,670 --> 00:57:51,271
<i>Your career's over. Stay out of it.</i>

638
00:58:30,230 --> 00:58:32,993
By the time I got
to the surface of the water, I thought,

639
00:58:33,073 --> 00:58:38,599
"Oof, I'll just take off my gear,
and I'll climb the ladder,

640
00:58:38,679 --> 00:58:41,241
and everything's gonna be okay."

641
00:58:42,442 --> 00:58:43,644
But it wasn't.

642
00:58:44,525 --> 00:58:47,287
With every rung of that ladder,

643
00:58:47,367 --> 00:58:51,892
my body felt heavier, I felt more pain,

644
00:58:51,972 --> 00:58:56,096
and the whole emotional sensation
of what was going on

645
00:58:56,176 --> 00:58:58,659
was just starting to come to light.

646
00:59:00,260 --> 00:59:01,582
By the time I got to the top,

647
00:59:01,662 --> 00:59:05,666
I literally just rolled off into the dirt
and crawled over into the jungle

648
00:59:05,746 --> 00:59:08,589
just to lay down on my sleeping mat.

649
00:59:08,669 --> 00:59:13,073
But as I looked down at my biceps
and my thighs, they were swollen.

650
00:59:13,153 --> 00:59:16,837
I mean, like, I looked like Popeye
swollen in my biceps,

651
00:59:16,917 --> 00:59:21,201
and there were these, like,
weird, mottled,

652
00:59:21,281 --> 00:59:25,886
like, ribbons of bruising
turning up on all over my body.

653
00:59:25,966 --> 00:59:28,689
It was really, really scary.

654
00:59:31,131 --> 00:59:35,095
What would this mean?
Would I recover from this?

655
00:59:35,175 --> 00:59:37,177
Was this the end of my career?

656
00:59:39,580 --> 00:59:43,984
And eventually,
I laid there and I thought,

657
00:59:44,705 --> 00:59:48,148
I can't walk out of the jungle right now.

658
00:59:48,228 --> 00:59:50,871
I'm gonna have to treat myself here.

659
00:59:53,754 --> 00:59:57,317
So, the next morning,
I spent hours in the water,

660
00:59:57,397 --> 01:00:03,163
breathing pure oxygen,
down to about 15 meters,

661
01:00:03,243 --> 01:00:08,008
which, in a normal situation,
could throw someone into a seizure.

662
01:00:08,088 --> 01:00:12,132
But I knew that was the best medicine
for what had happened to me.

663
01:00:19,620 --> 01:00:21,822
By the time I got to the surface
of the water,

664
01:00:21,902 --> 01:00:25,946
I called out to the highway
to the dive shop that was helping us out.

665
01:00:26,747 --> 01:00:29,469
People hiked in and walked me out.

666
01:00:31,632 --> 01:00:35,235
I was in agony and exhausted.

667
01:00:37,077 --> 01:00:42,202
I could barely walk 10 steps
to just collapse and lie down.

668
01:00:46,607 --> 01:00:50,891
When I finally got to Playa del Carmen
to get treatment,

669
01:00:50,971 --> 01:00:54,855
what I needed was time
in a recompression chamber.

670
01:00:54,935 --> 01:00:58,498
So a recompression chamber
is usually at a hospital facility.

671
01:00:58,579 --> 01:01:00,861
Basically, it's a room
that can be pressurized.

672
01:01:00,941 --> 01:01:03,544
The patient gets put inside the chamber,

673
01:01:03,624 --> 01:01:05,065
the doors close behind them,

674
01:01:05,145 --> 01:01:09,029
and then the environment inside there
is pressurized with air.

675
01:01:09,109 --> 01:01:10,671
And once they're at that pressure,

676
01:01:10,751 --> 01:01:13,393
then we give them 100 percent oxygen
to breathe.

677
01:01:13,473 --> 01:01:15,716
And oxygen under pressure at those depths

678
01:01:15,796 --> 01:01:18,478
has a couple
of really important mechanisms.

679
01:01:18,559 --> 01:01:22,402
The first is just to provide oxygen
into the patient's body

680
01:01:22,482 --> 01:01:25,566
to help flush out the inert gas,
the nitrogen.

681
01:01:25,646 --> 01:01:28,689
There's a second
and equally important effect is that

682
01:01:28,769 --> 01:01:32,492
oxygen under high pressure like that
is actually an anti-inflammatory.

683
01:01:32,573 --> 01:01:34,775
It has an effect almost like steroids

684
01:01:34,855 --> 01:01:40,340
to quell the body's inflammatory response
to this attack by the bubbles.

685
01:01:54,114 --> 01:01:59,600
There was a whole week of treatments
and consulting with the doctor.

686
01:01:59,680 --> 01:02:04,404
And at the end of that week,
he only had three words for me.

687
01:02:04,484 --> 01:02:07,247
And they're the worst three words
I've ever heard.

688
01:02:07,327 --> 01:02:10,130
"Never dive again."

689
01:02:18,018 --> 01:02:21,301
When I was told "never dive again,"

690
01:02:22,943 --> 01:02:24,505
my heart sank.

691
01:02:28,228 --> 01:02:32,232
I don't even know what my identity was,

692
01:02:32,312 --> 01:02:37,598
how I would move forward in my
friendships, relationships, career.

693
01:02:37,678 --> 01:02:40,641
So much was tied to that.

694
01:02:43,964 --> 01:02:47,447
The impact of being told by a doctor
in Mexico that you'll never dive again.

695
01:02:47,528 --> 01:02:49,610
I mean, that is massive
for someone like Jill.

696
01:02:49,690 --> 01:02:52,212
It would be massive
if that happened to me.

697
01:02:52,292 --> 01:02:55,856
You know, you're suddenly facing
an existential crisis, really.

698
01:02:55,936 --> 01:02:59,620
You know, your whole life
has been torn in half

699
01:02:59,700 --> 01:03:02,943
by telling you that you can't do
the one thing that defines you

700
01:03:03,023 --> 01:03:06,266
and makes you happy
and gives you an income as well.

701
01:03:06,346 --> 01:03:09,590
So, you know, that's a really,
that's a big moment for her.

702
01:03:15,596 --> 01:03:20,681
After getting bent,
that caused me to reflect on

703
01:03:20,761 --> 01:03:23,884
whether I really wanted
to do this anymore.

704
01:03:28,929 --> 01:03:32,613
I realized that there wasn't
a single scenario

705
01:03:32,693 --> 01:03:36,617
that I could look at for a
quote-unquote "normal life"

706
01:03:36,697 --> 01:03:38,899
that was gonna satisfy me.

707
01:03:38,979 --> 01:03:43,063
I couldn't envision a life without diving.

708
01:03:44,304 --> 01:03:48,629
And it made me reflect on what were
my motivations in the beginning.

709
01:04:01,201 --> 01:04:06,887
When I graduated from university, I went
right into working in graphic design.

710
01:04:07,568 --> 01:04:13,053
That meant at times that I'm sitting at my
drafting table trying to meet a deadline,

711
01:04:13,133 --> 01:04:16,456
and I don't leave the office
for three days

712
01:04:16,537 --> 01:04:18,539
over the Christmas holidays.

713
01:04:19,059 --> 01:04:23,503
I'm there all night working,
and I'm never leaving work.

714
01:04:24,665 --> 01:04:28,468
And in my mind, I'm going like, "You're
gonna kill yourself by the time you're 30

715
01:04:28,549 --> 01:04:30,270
if you keep up this pace."

716
01:04:31,632 --> 01:04:34,715
I was teaching scuba, but it was a hobby.

717
01:04:34,795 --> 01:04:37,918
It was what I did on nights and weekends.

718
01:04:38,519 --> 01:04:41,722
I was constantly daydreaming about diving

719
01:04:41,802 --> 01:04:45,325
and envisioning that turquoise beauty.

720
01:04:46,607 --> 01:04:51,972
And in the long Canadian winter,
that's what my mind and my soul needed.

721
01:05:08,388 --> 01:05:12,232
With every day that passed,
that office felt smaller,

722
01:05:12,873 --> 01:05:16,597
and the walls were closing in
and the ceiling's descending on me,

723
01:05:16,677 --> 01:05:20,120
until the point where I felt trapped.

724
01:05:20,200 --> 01:05:22,803
That's claustrophobia for me.

725
01:05:23,684 --> 01:05:27,367
But I have to say, it's those societal
pressures and familial pressures

726
01:05:27,447 --> 01:05:30,170
were the hardest to navigate
as a young woman.

727
01:05:31,171 --> 01:05:34,334
"What are you doing?
You're gonna be a scuba diver?

728
01:05:34,414 --> 01:05:38,138
You're doing what?
You're throwing it all away?

729
01:05:38,779 --> 01:05:42,863
How do you make money?
Your biological clock is ticking.

730
01:05:42,943 --> 01:05:46,026
You gotta move on. You gotta get married.
You gotta settle down.

731
01:05:46,106 --> 01:05:49,349
It's time to stop this childish,
playful stuff."

732
01:06:00,881 --> 01:06:03,003
I got to the point
where it was clear to me

733
01:06:03,083 --> 01:06:06,406
I could not go on living the way
I was doing,

734
01:06:06,486 --> 01:06:08,689
working the way I was working.

735
01:06:10,050 --> 01:06:14,414
I needed to be my own full authentic self.

736
01:06:30,470 --> 01:06:32,312
When I moved to the Cayman Islands,

737
01:06:32,392 --> 01:06:37,638
I did some of my first real cave dives
and my first real cave exploration.

738
01:06:46,486 --> 01:06:51,331
Every day was just an opportunity
to go around the next corner.

739
01:06:54,294 --> 01:06:57,497
To get a little bit further away
from the entrance.

740
01:06:59,259 --> 01:07:01,662
To see that next thing.

741
01:07:03,984 --> 01:07:09,109
And that newness, the freshness
was just so invigorating to me.

742
01:07:17,598 --> 01:07:22,242
I learned a lot about the psychological
development of a cave diver

743
01:07:22,322 --> 01:07:26,086
and how fear
is an important part of what I do.

744
01:07:29,369 --> 01:07:33,614
But I realized that fear and facing it

745
01:07:33,694 --> 01:07:39,379
is something I learned about
before I even started cave diving.

746
01:07:52,793 --> 01:07:55,395
In my third year of university,

747
01:07:55,475 --> 01:07:58,078
four other women and I found a house

748
01:07:58,158 --> 01:08:01,722
in the Lawrence West neighborhood
in Toronto

749
01:08:01,802 --> 01:08:05,205
that we could rent for the school year,
and we'd each take a bedroom.

750
01:08:07,367 --> 01:08:10,891
And the first night I slept in that house,
I slept there alone.

751
01:08:15,936 --> 01:08:21,341
And in the middle of the night,
I heard something.

752
01:08:32,312 --> 01:08:37,197
And then I realized, "Oh, my God,
there's a burglar in my house.

753
01:08:37,758 --> 01:08:42,603
If I just hide here, he won't notice me."

754
01:08:45,405 --> 01:08:48,609
Downstairs, I could hear footsteps.

755
01:08:48,689 --> 01:08:51,131
I could hear drawers opening.

756
01:08:52,212 --> 01:08:56,496
I heard his feet start up the stairs.

757
01:08:58,218 --> 01:09:00,941
And I thought, "How can I get help?"

758
01:09:01,021 --> 01:09:02,543
I don't have a phone.

759
01:09:02,623 --> 01:09:05,666
And that's when I knew
that I needed to find a weapon.

760
01:09:05,746 --> 01:09:08,468
I was gonna have to defend myself.

761
01:09:23,564 --> 01:09:25,566
And click, I would see a minute pass,

762
01:09:25,646 --> 01:09:28,208
and then I would hear him
coming up the stairs again.

763
01:09:31,051 --> 01:09:32,613
And he came closer.

764
01:09:34,615 --> 01:09:36,456
And he came closer.

765
01:09:47,588 --> 01:09:53,433
And it felt like an eternity
waiting for that door to open.

766
01:10:13,013 --> 01:10:16,016
And then suddenly, it's like an eruption.

767
01:10:16,096 --> 01:10:19,419
Vroom! The door flew open.
He almost ripped it out.

768
01:10:19,499 --> 01:10:21,101
And then he came after me.

769
01:10:21,902 --> 01:10:23,343
And in that moment,

770
01:10:24,625 --> 01:10:28,348
it's kill or be killed.

771
01:10:28,428 --> 01:10:32,713
I thought he was going to rape me
or kill me or--

772
01:10:32,793 --> 01:10:35,876
I didn't know what was gonna happen
but I just knew

773
01:10:37,397 --> 01:10:39,520
that something awful was gonna happen

774
01:10:39,600 --> 01:10:43,323
and I needed to find
every bit of strength that I had.

775
01:10:43,403 --> 01:10:46,647
And as terrified as I was,

776
01:10:46,727 --> 01:10:49,730
and shaking and barely able
to contain myself,

777
01:10:49,810 --> 01:10:54,855
I reached out, and I slashed
with the knife across his chest

778
01:10:54,935 --> 01:10:58,859
and ripped his shirt open
and tore into his flesh.

779
01:10:59,540 --> 01:11:04,344
And I watched the blood
soak through his shirt.

780
01:11:05,305 --> 01:11:09,189
I was staring into the face of impossible.

781
01:11:09,269 --> 01:11:12,032
I don't know how I'm going
to get through this.

782
01:11:47,347 --> 01:11:53,994
It took me so long to process
what had happened.

783
01:11:54,074 --> 01:11:57,357
And at first, it was just
all the victimization

784
01:11:57,437 --> 01:12:02,723
and the terror and just the violation

785
01:12:02,803 --> 01:12:07,648
of somebody in my space
and coming after me like that.

786
01:12:07,728 --> 01:12:10,210
I would wake up in the middle of night
in a cold sweat,

787
01:12:10,290 --> 01:12:13,213
and I was already fighting
that burglar in my dreams.

788
01:12:14,374 --> 01:12:16,937
I remember sitting with Kim, my roommate,

789
01:12:17,017 --> 01:12:19,740
and I was probably complaining

790
01:12:19,820 --> 01:12:21,221
and telling her the same story

791
01:12:21,301 --> 01:12:25,666
that she'd heard over and over
and over again.

792
01:12:26,266 --> 01:12:28,989
I was processing these feelings
with someone

793
01:12:29,069 --> 01:12:32,032
who I really respected
and cared deeply about,

794
01:12:32,112 --> 01:12:36,236
and then she turned to me and said,
"When are you gonna get over this?

795
01:12:36,316 --> 01:12:38,599
What are you gonna do about it?"

796
01:12:38,679 --> 01:12:40,641
And I thought, "What?"

797
01:12:40,721 --> 01:12:43,243
Like, where are the hugs and love?

798
01:12:44,444 --> 01:12:47,928
And I guess for her, you know,
it was time for tough love.

799
01:12:48,008 --> 01:12:50,010
It was time to shake me out of it.

800
01:12:50,090 --> 01:12:54,134
If I couldn't get past
that moment in my life,

801
01:12:54,214 --> 01:12:57,578
it was gonna define everything
moving forward.

802
01:12:57,658 --> 01:13:00,340
And I needed to find something
in that experience

803
01:13:00,420 --> 01:13:03,584
that I could use
that would help me to grow.

804
01:13:03,664 --> 01:13:06,627
Without that near-death experience,

805
01:13:06,707 --> 01:13:11,632
I may well have not dealt with
some of my other near-death experiences

806
01:13:11,712 --> 01:13:13,433
in cave diving as well.

807
01:13:19,359 --> 01:13:22,683
It definitely defined
the direction of my life.

808
01:13:27,287 --> 01:13:29,930
It definitely gave me the courage

809
01:13:30,571 --> 01:13:34,134
to move forward and do things
that I thought were impossible.

810
01:13:44,104 --> 01:13:47,508
After getting bent, my doctor told me

811
01:13:48,268 --> 01:13:52,913
he knew I was gonna start to tread back
into that water one step at a time

812
01:13:53,874 --> 01:13:57,678
to decide whether I was
gonna be diving again.

813
01:14:03,524 --> 01:14:06,607
Ultimately, as the symptoms faded

814
01:14:06,687 --> 01:14:09,209
and my confidence started to return,

815
01:14:09,289 --> 01:14:13,053
I knew that I was going back to diving.

816
01:14:13,133 --> 01:14:15,055
But it was gonna be a slow progression.

817
01:14:15,135 --> 01:14:17,538
It was like dipping the toe in the water.

818
01:14:17,618 --> 01:14:20,701
My first swim gave me anxiety.

819
01:14:21,501 --> 01:14:24,785
My first dive I did on 100 percent oxygen

820
01:14:24,865 --> 01:14:30,791
because there's no way you can get bent
on 100 percent oxygen in shallow water.

821
01:14:31,872 --> 01:14:36,837
It was a slow progression,
a transition back to doing what I loved.

822
01:14:38,238 --> 01:14:41,481
And I suppose as I started
to feel a little bit better

823
01:14:41,562 --> 01:14:43,804
and my energy was restored,

824
01:14:43,884 --> 01:14:47,327
so was my defiance and my stubbornness.

825
01:14:48,128 --> 01:14:53,934
And there was this little voice growing
in the back of my head, "Just watch me."

826
01:15:08,709 --> 01:15:12,272
I was working on television projects
with Wes Skiles

827
01:15:12,352 --> 01:15:17,678
when we both decided
we wanted to do a full-length feature,

828
01:15:17,758 --> 01:15:19,159
a documentary film.

829
01:15:21,121 --> 01:15:24,525
The work that I do
in communicating about how

830
01:15:24,605 --> 01:15:26,887
cave divers can be citizen scientists

831
01:15:26,967 --> 01:15:30,410
and contribute to a better understanding
of the world,

832
01:15:31,892 --> 01:15:33,614
I got that from Wes.

833
01:15:36,496 --> 01:15:41,782
When he started cave diving, it was with
the intention to take pictures underwater.

834
01:15:41,862 --> 01:15:48,148
He really set the whole genre
into motion and inspired a lot of people.

835
01:16:00,040 --> 01:16:03,483
Both Wes and I
really wanted to go to Antarctica.

836
01:16:14,535 --> 01:16:18,058
I just wanted the experience
of going to this part of the planet

837
01:16:18,138 --> 01:16:19,459
that I'd never seen before.

838
01:16:19,540 --> 01:16:24,785
And when you grow up in Canada,
you're interested in the polar regions.

839
01:16:25,906 --> 01:16:27,107
And at first, we thought,

840
01:16:27,187 --> 01:16:31,512
"Well, maybe we'll follow in the historic
path of Ernest Shackleton."

841
01:16:32,913 --> 01:16:35,596
But we were also watching
these satellite images

842
01:16:35,676 --> 01:16:40,280
because these cracks were developing
in the Ross Ice Shelf down in Antarctica,

843
01:16:40,360 --> 01:16:43,924
and scientists were kind of interested
in what was happening.

844
01:16:45,806 --> 01:16:49,289
When the B-15 iceberg
calved away from Antarctica

845
01:16:49,369 --> 01:16:53,133
and I realized there was actually
more of a story,

846
01:16:54,174 --> 01:16:56,617
that was a big draw for me.

847
01:16:57,858 --> 01:17:02,222
And we pitched to National Geographic
that we were gonna go to Antarctica

848
01:17:02,302 --> 01:17:08,589
and be the first people to ever go
cave diving inside an iceberg.

849
01:17:08,669 --> 01:17:10,951
But not just any iceberg.

850
01:17:11,031 --> 01:17:13,714
The largest moving object on our planet.

851
01:17:13,794 --> 01:17:19,159
The biggest iceberg to ever calve away
from the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica.

852
01:17:19,880 --> 01:17:24,044
To get up there in front of this moving
iceberg the size of Connecticut

853
01:17:24,124 --> 01:17:27,047
and say, "We're gonna go under there
and see what there is."

854
01:17:27,127 --> 01:17:29,289
I mean, that even in and of itself,

855
01:17:29,369 --> 01:17:31,932
you're talking about water
that's minus 3C,

856
01:17:32,012 --> 01:17:34,695
you know, probably around
27 degrees Fahrenheit.

857
01:17:34,775 --> 01:17:37,057
And you go down there,

858
01:17:37,137 --> 01:17:41,421
and even with the best dry suit,
within 40 minutes,

859
01:17:41,501 --> 01:17:43,904
your hands are becoming dysfunctional.

860
01:17:43,984 --> 01:17:47,387
You know, and these guys were going
for way longer than that.

861
01:18:10,891 --> 01:18:13,854
Most tourists that go to Antarctica today,

862
01:18:13,934 --> 01:18:18,138
they have about 24 hours
of uncomfortable seas

863
01:18:18,218 --> 01:18:21,301
going from South America
to the Antarctic Peninsula.

864
01:18:22,462 --> 01:18:23,904
But where we were going,

865
01:18:23,984 --> 01:18:27,267
we left from New Zealand
and made a 12-day crossing

866
01:18:27,347 --> 01:18:31,271
of the most violent seas on the planet.

867
01:18:36,677 --> 01:18:39,079
We had 20-meter waves.

868
01:18:39,159 --> 01:18:43,283
We had the boat icing so heavily
that it was starting to list.

869
01:18:43,363 --> 01:18:45,205
We had to get out on deck

870
01:18:45,285 --> 01:18:49,409
and smash the ice off the boat
with baseball bats and hammers.

871
01:18:50,130 --> 01:18:51,852
And I was seasick.

872
01:18:51,932 --> 01:18:54,615
I was seasick for 12 days.

873
01:18:56,336 --> 01:18:59,499
Even going to the bathroom was dangerous.

874
01:18:59,580 --> 01:19:03,824
The wave hit the boat and I was literally
launched out of that tub,

875
01:19:03,904 --> 01:19:05,385
against the wall,

876
01:19:05,465 --> 01:19:08,549
and cut and bruised and damaged.

877
01:19:09,389 --> 01:19:12,993
So, I didn't even know
if we were gonna get there.

878
01:19:29,449 --> 01:19:34,174
After 12 days of torture,
we finally made it to Antarctica.

879
01:19:35,696 --> 01:19:38,258
It was like I'd landed on another planet.

880
01:19:51,752 --> 01:19:55,596
Diving in Antarctica
and going inside an iceberg,

881
01:19:55,676 --> 01:20:00,040
I would say that that's definitely
the most challenging dive of my life.

882
01:20:02,042 --> 01:20:04,084
There's so many risks that we faced.

883
01:20:04,164 --> 01:20:08,649
I mean, the wildlife itself,
leopard seals or orcas,

884
01:20:08,729 --> 01:20:11,251
there are so many uncertainties there.

885
01:20:13,253 --> 01:20:17,177
The cold water,
it's as cold as it can possibly be.

886
01:20:22,062 --> 01:20:24,705
There's nobody to call
for help down there.

887
01:20:24,785 --> 01:20:26,507
We don't have a recompression chamber,

888
01:20:26,587 --> 01:20:29,710
so if somebody gets bent,
there's no way to treat them.

889
01:20:29,790 --> 01:20:34,434
The US Coast Guard actually told us
we were on our own.

890
01:20:45,926 --> 01:20:51,251
About a month into our time in Antarctica,
Paul and I finally found

891
01:20:51,331 --> 01:20:53,413
what we thought was the cave

892
01:20:53,493 --> 01:20:57,177
that would let us deliver what we had
promised to National Geographic.

893
01:21:12,312 --> 01:21:17,397
We got to a place where we could swim
underneath the iceberg.

894
01:21:18,198 --> 01:21:23,924
And the seafloor's on the bottom,
and there's this arch of ice over my head.

895
01:21:24,004 --> 01:21:25,165
And it was beautiful.

896
01:21:25,245 --> 01:21:28,128
There was a carpet of life
all over the seafloor,

897
01:21:28,208 --> 01:21:31,371
just voraciously feeding in the current.

898
01:21:48,348 --> 01:21:53,954
Meanwhile, I'm hearing creaks and cracks
and thuds and retorts

899
01:21:54,034 --> 01:21:55,275
and all kinds of sounds

900
01:21:55,355 --> 01:21:57,558
that I could not only hear,

901
01:21:57,638 --> 01:22:01,401
but I could feel them in the sternum,
in my chest.

902
01:22:03,203 --> 01:22:08,849
Paul and I, at one point, had returned
to where we'd gone into the iceberg,

903
01:22:08,929 --> 01:22:12,292
and the doorway was blocked
with broken ice.

904
01:22:12,933 --> 01:22:16,456
So, Paul and I just start swimming
around and under all these blocks,

905
01:22:16,537 --> 01:22:19,419
and some of them
are sort of moving and shifting.

906
01:22:20,981 --> 01:22:24,985
And when I finally swam through
these chunks and I got to the surface,

907
01:22:25,065 --> 01:22:29,790
Wes is hanging over the boat
and his face was so animated.

908
01:22:29,870 --> 01:22:33,113
And he's like, "What happened?
We thought you were dead.

909
01:22:33,193 --> 01:22:37,477
When the ice wall just sort of broke away,
it created this huge wave

910
01:22:37,558 --> 01:22:39,720
and it almost threw us out of the boat.

911
01:22:39,800 --> 01:22:44,164
And then we realized where you
had gone in, it was blocked."

912
01:22:44,244 --> 01:22:48,529
We had no idea the stress
that everybody topside had experienced.

913
01:22:53,774 --> 01:22:55,495
I often look at expeditions,

914
01:22:55,576 --> 01:23:00,781
and I realize there's a mounting pressure
that happens as the project moves on.

915
01:23:01,542 --> 01:23:03,664
You start taking risks,

916
01:23:03,744 --> 01:23:06,306
and it's to get the goods,
it's to get the job done.

917
01:23:06,386 --> 01:23:09,670
It's because of the pressures
from everybody around you.

918
01:23:15,395 --> 01:23:19,039
Wes hadn't even been inside the cave yet.

919
01:23:19,720 --> 01:23:21,522
And we needed to show it to him,

920
01:23:21,602 --> 01:23:24,605
to photograph what we needed
for our movie.

921
01:23:56,677 --> 01:24:00,881
We descended down that crack
and went underneath the iceberg.

922
01:24:01,802 --> 01:24:05,485
We were filming all these beautiful
filter-feeding organisms,

923
01:24:05,566 --> 01:24:08,729
and the dive was going perfectly well.

924
01:24:14,054 --> 01:24:17,217
And then I felt the current picking up,

925
01:24:18,779 --> 01:24:24,064
and getting faster and faster,
and it had literally turned now,

926
01:24:24,144 --> 01:24:26,707
and it was sweeping us into the iceberg.

927
01:24:27,788 --> 01:24:30,911
And I thought, "Ooh, this is bad."

928
01:24:30,991 --> 01:24:35,155
But simultaneously,
I also had a leak in my glove,

929
01:24:35,235 --> 01:24:38,318
and my hand was soaking wet.

930
01:24:38,398 --> 01:24:41,562
And I had put up with that
as long as I possibly could.

931
01:24:41,642 --> 01:24:44,204
Between the current
and the pain in my hand,

932
01:24:44,284 --> 01:24:46,607
I turned to the guys
and I called the dive.

933
01:24:46,687 --> 01:24:48,088
It's time to go.

934
01:24:52,773 --> 01:24:55,976
We turned around to try and escape
through this tunnel.

935
01:24:58,939 --> 01:25:01,461
The current was getting too strong.

936
01:25:01,542 --> 01:25:04,745
We dug our hands
into this doughy seafloor,

937
01:25:04,825 --> 01:25:08,549
like throwing up these wispy silk piles

938
01:25:08,629 --> 01:25:12,793
and displacing these animals
as we tried to pull ourselves along.

939
01:25:16,797 --> 01:25:20,120
I'm fighting for my life,
and I hear Wes yell,

940
01:25:20,200 --> 01:25:21,962
"Help me with the camera!"

941
01:25:22,042 --> 01:25:24,404
I'm like, "Are you kidding me?

942
01:25:24,484 --> 01:25:27,768
Fuck the camera.
We've got to get out of here."

943
01:25:29,690 --> 01:25:32,973
I was doing everything I could to survive
at that point,

944
01:25:33,053 --> 01:25:36,496
and I was leading the other two
out of the cave.

945
01:25:36,577 --> 01:25:42,663
Well, Paul drifted back to help Wes,
and I'm thinking, "I'm pissed.

946
01:25:43,544 --> 01:25:46,947
Equipment is not worth it.
Let's get out of here."

947
01:26:01,882 --> 01:26:06,086
Finally we get to the point
where we're at the bottom of this crevice,

948
01:26:06,166 --> 01:26:07,487
and we need to go up.

949
01:26:07,568 --> 01:26:12,092
But the current is pressing me down
and back into the cave.

950
01:26:15,215 --> 01:26:21,301
And I suddenly realized that these
little ice fish I'd been observing

951
01:26:21,381 --> 01:26:23,343
had created burrows in the ice,

952
01:26:23,423 --> 01:26:26,947
and I might be able to use those burrows
to stick my fingers in

953
01:26:27,027 --> 01:26:29,189
and climb the ice wall.

954
01:26:29,269 --> 01:26:33,754
And I thought,
"Uh-huh, you guys are pretty cool,

955
01:26:33,834 --> 01:26:35,275
but I need those holes."

956
01:26:36,036 --> 01:26:37,758
And I started using my finger

957
01:26:37,838 --> 01:26:41,481
and pressing them into the holes
of the ice-fish burrows,

958
01:26:41,562 --> 01:26:45,846
and using those like a climber
would to climb the ice wall.

959
01:26:45,926 --> 01:26:48,689
And Wes and Paul copied and followed,

960
01:26:48,769 --> 01:26:50,531
and we finally got up to the point

961
01:26:50,611 --> 01:26:53,774
where we now had a decompression
obligation over our heads,

962
01:26:53,854 --> 01:26:57,417
and we had to stay
in this freezing cold water,

963
01:26:57,497 --> 01:27:02,062
turning a one-hour dive
into a three-hour ordeal.

964
01:27:11,552 --> 01:27:13,794
When I finally swam back to that boat,

965
01:27:16,116 --> 01:27:19,399
I remember the chief scientist
looking down on me.

966
01:27:20,080 --> 01:27:25,245
And I'm holding on to the ladder and I'm
looking up at Greg on the boat and I said,

967
01:27:25,325 --> 01:27:28,168
"The cave tried to keep us today."

968
01:27:31,171 --> 01:27:32,412
And it was true.

969
01:27:32,492 --> 01:27:36,456
I think that's as close
as I've ever felt to death.

970
01:27:43,984 --> 01:27:47,467
We put our gear aside
and went to have dinner.

971
01:27:50,270 --> 01:27:53,914
And then I heard screams on the deck.

972
01:27:53,994 --> 01:27:55,876
I thought, "What's going on?"

973
01:27:56,557 --> 01:27:59,680
And we ran up on deck
and Wes grabbed the camera,

974
01:27:59,760 --> 01:28:02,723
and I couldn't believe what I was seeing.

975
01:28:16,657 --> 01:28:22,623
That cave I'd just been inside of
and just narrowly escaped was no more.

976
01:28:37,397 --> 01:28:40,240
After seeing that whole iceberg collapse,

977
01:28:40,320 --> 01:28:43,604
and really even after just
going to Antarctica,

978
01:28:44,605 --> 01:28:47,007
I felt so small,

979
01:28:47,087 --> 01:28:51,812
but I also felt the majesty and wonder
of Mother Nature

980
01:28:51,892 --> 01:28:53,413
and the fragility.

981
01:28:54,134 --> 01:28:57,257
And I wanted to communicate to people
about climate change

982
01:28:57,337 --> 01:28:59,860
and water issues and beauty and wonder.

983
01:28:59,940 --> 01:29:01,702
And when I shared my adventures,

984
01:29:01,782 --> 01:29:04,264
I was gonna shove a little truth
in there too.

985
01:29:04,344 --> 01:29:06,627
And hopefully teach people about

986
01:29:07,427 --> 01:29:09,910
how magical this planet is,

987
01:29:09,990 --> 01:29:12,272
and how we can protect it

988
01:29:12,352 --> 01:29:15,235
if we all take care of our square foot

989
01:29:15,315 --> 01:29:18,959
and make good choices
about the next step forward.

990
01:29:28,969 --> 01:29:34,735
I still ask myself this whole question
about what is my legacy.

991
01:29:34,815 --> 01:29:36,216
What am I doing?

992
01:29:36,857 --> 01:29:38,979
Why am I doing this?

993
01:29:40,781 --> 01:29:46,547
And today, I think my ultimate goal is
to be the woman that I wish I had met

994
01:29:46,627 --> 01:29:48,308
when I was 10 years old.

995
01:29:55,556 --> 01:29:57,758
It's been my greatest honor

996
01:29:58,398 --> 01:30:03,764
to come home and resettle myself
back in Canada,

997
01:30:03,844 --> 01:30:09,089
and go into the school system and talk
to kids about exploration and discovery.

998
01:30:09,730 --> 01:30:13,654
Education and outreach
are critical to what I do

999
01:30:13,734 --> 01:30:15,536
and it gives me a sense of purpose.

1000
01:30:17,457 --> 01:30:21,301
I really hope that my work will inspire
young girls to know

1001
01:30:21,381 --> 01:30:23,343
that anything is possible,

1002
01:30:23,423 --> 01:30:25,065
anything they want to do,

1003
01:30:25,145 --> 01:30:28,629
despite the social, cultural,
or familial barriers

1004
01:30:28,709 --> 01:30:30,511
that they might be facing.

1005
01:30:30,591 --> 01:30:34,114
Anything is possible
when we put our minds to it.

1006
01:30:34,194 --> 01:30:38,158
If I can give people hope and optimism,
I will have done my job.

1007
01:32:01,321 --> 01:32:04,324
I've never lost sight
of wanting to be an astronaut.

1008
01:32:04,404 --> 01:32:08,288
It's been really exciting for me
to work with technologies underwater

1009
01:32:08,368 --> 01:32:10,490
that are now destined for space.

1010
01:32:45,726 --> 01:32:49,249
I'll be diving in one way or another
for the rest of my life.

1011
01:32:51,011 --> 01:32:53,774
I feel like an earthbound astronaut.

1012
01:33:00,821 --> 01:33:05,425
I want people
to really think about fear

1013
01:33:05,505 --> 01:33:08,669
and how that directs our lives,

1014
01:33:08,749 --> 01:33:11,592
how it can stifle us,

1015
01:33:11,672 --> 01:33:13,514
and how we can miss out.

1016
01:33:21,642 --> 01:33:23,443
If we don't face it and embrace it,

1017
01:33:23,524 --> 01:33:26,086
we're gonna run from it
for our whole lives.

1018
01:33:29,930 --> 01:33:34,334
Without exploration and discovery,
we are dead.

1019
01:33:34,414 --> 01:33:37,097
We will not progress as a society.

1020
01:33:40,861 --> 01:33:43,503
So the only answer is to face it...

1021
01:33:45,706 --> 01:33:47,267
and step into it.

1022
01:33:51,872 --> 01:33:53,393
Face the fear.

1023
01:33:55,836 --> 01:33:57,678
Step into the darkness.

1024
01:33:58,919 --> 01:34:00,200
Let your eyes adjust,

1025
01:34:00,280 --> 01:34:05,205
and then do something new
for yourself and for humanity.