Ice diving is a type of penetration diving where the dive takes place under ice. Because diving under ice places the diver in an overhead environment typically with only a single entry/exit point, it is considered an advanced type of diving requiring special training (although whether it constitutes technical diving is part of a wider debate within the diving community). Ice diving should not be attempted by anyone not trained (or in training) by a qualified instructor. This specialised training includes learning about how ice forms, how to recognize unsafe ice conditions, dive site preparation, equipment requirements, and safety drills.
Ice divers are generally tethered for safety. This means that the diver wears a special harness under the scuba unit. A line is secured to this harness, and the other end of the line is secured above the surface by one of a number of methods.
Ice diving is a team diving activity because the divers line requires a line tender. This person is responsible for paying out and taking in line so that the diver does not get tangled. Communication to the diver, or to the surface, is accomplished by pulling on the line. Each series of tugs means a different thing. There is a diver suited up and ready to enter the water at a moment's notice. This diver is a safety diver, and has his own tender. His purpose is to assist the primary diver in the event of a problem.
Polar diving experience has shown that buoyancy control is the critical skill affecting safety.
Read more about Ice Diving: Equipment, Procedures and Precautions, Training, Hazards
Famous quotes containing the words ice and/or diving:
“When the ice is covered with snow, I do not suspect the wealth under my feet; that there is as good as a mine under me wherever I go. How many pickerel are poised on easy fin fathoms below the loaded wain! The revolution of the seasons must be a curious phenomenon to them. At length the sun and wind brush aside their curtain, and they see the heavens again.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A worm is as good a traveler as a grasshopper or a cricket, and a much wiser settler. With all their activity these do not hop away from drought nor forward to summer. We do not avoid evil by fleeing before it, but by rising above or diving below its plane; as the worm escapes drought and frost by boring a few inches deeper.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)