Your Dive
Prior to diving you will be briefed on dive procedures and an invited on an orientation visit to the inside of a Mir while it is on the ship's deck. These two events will help prepare you for your dive and address any specific questions you may have.

On the day of your dive, following a pre-dive briefing and photographs of you and your pilot in front of your Mir, you will enter the submersible with your pilot and fellow observer. The support ship's onboard crane will lift the MIR into the cold waters of the North Pole. After pre-dive testing, ballast water will be pumped into the tanks and you will begin to descend at a rate of about 100 feet (31m) per minute.

Three acrylic portholes, each 7 inches thick, will be your window to the undersea world. By about 800 feet (250m), all traces of sunlight will be gone and you will be immersed in total darkness. To conserve power, the MIR submersibles run without external lights. However, the pilot will occasionally switch them on to observe passing marine life. Even in the darkness, the ocean is alive. Be sure to look for tiny bioluminescent creatures, whose glowing characteristics require no lights to be seen.

By 4,000 feet (1,240m), the interior of the MIR will start to cool and you may want to don the extra clothing you brought along. Topside, your support ship (with our underwater acoustic telephone we are never out of voice contact) will help navigate the MIR to the ocean floor at the North Pole, at a depth of approximately 14,500 feet (4,400m).

After landing on the seafloor it will be lit by the submersible's powerful lights. Soon the other Mir will join you and its lights will help increase the area visible outside. Outside video and still cameras will record the area, while samples of marine life and other data are collected.

As this is a true exploratory expedition, we cannot say what we will find at the North Pole dive site until we go there. Very little is known about the geology and ecology of the polar deeps, and nobody has ever visited the seafloor in the North Pole region.

Towards the end of your dive, your pilot will use the previously installed external acoustic transponders to navigate back to the ocean surface. On surfacing, the Mirs are quickly lifted back onboard and your accomplishment is greeted with suitable celebrations.

Important note : All participants in submersible dives at the Pole will have to pay an extra premium of $60,000 as indicated in the price section of this website.

The number of participants will be limited, and the order of dive participants will be determined in advance based on the time of booking. That sequential list of divers will be strictly adhered to but we cannot, in any way, guarantee in advance the number of ultimately successful dives to the polar depths.

Those who are non-divers should understand that we will spend a least five days at the pole. DOE will endeavor to provide a variety of activities each day but it should be kept in mind that the primary goal of this expedition is the diving program. This will not be the 'typical' North Pole expedition cruise.

While we have superb equipment and professional pilots and support personnel, the task is complex and weather, ice and technical factors may intervene. Your safety will always be paramount.

Therefore all diving participants in the North Pole expedition must accept in writing as part of their booking that they are aware of, and accept, that while all reasonable efforts will be made to complete the dive program the project organizers reserve the right to terminate the dive program at any time based solely on their judgment, which is not open to challenge.

Northpole.pdf (436Kb)
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