The Polar Scientific Diving class is a program designed by the Finnish Scientific Diving Academy to train scientists and researchers to dive beneath Arctic and Antarctic ice, according to the academy. Scientists need to study what's underneath remaining polar ice to determine how climate change affects plants and animals, and carrying out such research requires specialized scuba diving skills and proper scientific background, qualifications that only a few hundred people in the world currently have, experts say. This training occurs against a backdrop of rapid climate shifts.
The Arctic is warming four times faster than the rest of the planet, with higher temperatures at the North Pole impacting polar bears by making them smaller, weaker, and hungrier because they rely on sea ice to hunt, according to climate research. In Antarctica, global warming is leading to melting ice sheets, sea level rise, and disruption of ocean ecosystems, scientists report. During each 10-day session, the academy's instructors drill a dozen experienced divers on a frozen lake.
Because it is melting so fast, we need to have more people deployed there — more science to be done — to understand better what happens. We have to do more and we need to be fast to save this unique ecosystem in the Arctic, but also the Antarctic.
Erik Wurz is a marine biologist and one of the class's scientific diving instructors, while Simon Morley is a British Antarctic Survey marine biologist who is not part of the course.
A diver can go down and pick up 12 urchins, put them in a bag and not affect the rest of the system.