Diving Into the Darkness

Cave diving is often referred to as the world's most dangerous sport.

But is it a sport?

It's the closest thing I can think of to going to another planet.

It's this interesting yin-yang of light and dark, of beauty and danger.

Cave diving is like swimming in the veins of Mother Earth.

I'm literally swimming through water-filled passages

beneath your feet.

And these caves are like museums of natural history.

We can learn about where our drinking water is

and how we can protect it for the next generation.

We can learn about Earth's past climate.

We can learn about ancient civilizations that have left artifacts.

We can learn about the unique animals

that live in the darkness of an underwater cave.

When you're exploring a cave,

you must solve all of your problems underground,

underwater, with no mission control to call for help.

There are a lot of physical risks.

The silt can rain down from the ceiling.

It's also easy to get lost.

You can also get trapped.

Anything can go wrong at any time with your gear.

It's critical to know when to turn around.

I know a lot of people that didn't do that.

I swim through the graves of my friends all the time.

I've lost over a hundred friends to technical and cave diving accidents.

You really ask yourself, is this something I should be doing?

Is this fair to my family?

Do I wanna take these risks?

But in those dark, confined spaces,

I'm happy, I'm comfortable, I'm in my element.

But I am scared.

I'm not fearless.

The day that I'm not afraid about what I'm doing

is the day that I should hang up my fins.

I'm not in this for adrenaline.

I've learned so much about the plumbing of the planet,

but also about myself through cave diving.

I think cave diving is a metaphor for life.

We all have to face change and uncertainty.

Humanity needs people that push on the edges and step into the darkness.

That's how we evolve.

Jill's been diving at the cutting edge of cave exploration for so long.

You know, she's had this stellar career of filmmaking, exploration, and adventures

with all the big names around this planet.

Jill literally wrote the book on cave diving.

She makes documentaries, she's an excellent photographer.

She's an author, she's a public speaker.

I think by 2001, she was probably...

the world's best female diver, period.

Forget "cave diver." I'm just talking about "underwater explorer."

She's there because of the excitement of exploration,

the satisfaction of curiosity.

Jill always...

I guess she needed to see what was around the next corner.

She was always very curious.

I could easily say that she was an explorer from the beginning,

and same as she is now.

Our parents always took us out on hikes.

The Bruce Trail was a big thing that we enjoyed.

I loved hiking the trails, but even more,

I loved climbing down into those cracks and crevices

and looking around

in this three-dimensional, below-ground space.

Those were my first experiences in caving,

and often those were cozy, comfortable, small places.

We had a set of National Geographics

that were gifted from my grandmother and grandfather.

From the light of a bare bulb,

I would go through these volumes, page by page.

Those pages showed me what was possible for me in the future

and inspired me to study and learn

and create a future where I could be an explorer, too.

Launch commit. Lift off.

We have lift off with Apollo 14.

You know, back in the day, astronauts were heroes,

pushing the envelope of human physiology.

Just the scale, the magnitude, all that technology.

[astronaut speaking indistinctly over radio]

It was like you were looking through this peephole in history,

seeing something so incredible.

I knew I had a burning desire to be an explorer.

I was so excited and thrilled.

I ran home and couldn't wait to tell my mom about the experience,

the thing that I had just seen.

You know, "Mom, I wanna be an astronaut. I'm gonna be an astronaut."

And then when she told me no, it was like,

"Oh, like, am I not good enough? Am I not capable? Like, what is it?"

She's like, "No, there's no space program for Canadians.

There's no women astronauts.

It's, like, there's no place for you there."

And it was discouraging.

I thought, "Well, what can I do? How can I be an explorer?"

Watching and seeing Jacques Cousteau on TV was that pivot point, really.

Here he was sailing around the world to fantastic places

and then going underwater with this wild-looking technology.

Breathing underwater,

and then encountering, like, sharks and fish and whales.

And that captivated me.

And I thought, "If I can't explore outer space,

if I can't be an astronaut,

maybe I can explore inner space

and the magical depths of the ocean instead."

My first real cave diving expedition was the Huautla expedition in 1995.

Huautla is situated in the Sierra Mazateca Mountains,

and there's a cave system inside the mountain.

So if you peel away the face of that mountain

and you look inside,

you've got, like, this whole network of tunnels and spaces.

And if you enter a hole in the top of the mountain,

you might be descending down on rope

or climbing down a waterfall deeper and deeper into the earth.

And the year before we got there,

that's how the explorers were getting into the system.

So when I went in 1995 with that very same team,

we decided to work from the bottom up.

We were seeing the pieces of this puzzle come together,

and one of the biggest unknowns was this resurgence.

If we could dive in through that,

come up into air-filled passage,

maybe we could just connect those two together,

and at that time we would have ended up with roughly the world's deepest cave.

The expedition got harder and harder in a series of stages.

I mean, just getting there was tough in the car,

and we were exhausted after four days of driving and car repairs

and getting up into the mountains

to an altitude where the car could barely drive up the incline.

And it was hot, and there were bugs,

and the winds were so strong

that they would blow away your tents if you weren't in them.

But then we experienced mudslides.

The rainy season came a bit early.

That shallow streamway between base camp and the cave opening

would periodically be just filled with this rush,

a tsunami of water down the canyon.

It felt like the physical hardships were, at times, just too much to bear,

and that was even before we went into the cave to go diving or surveying.

We didn't have enough burros and people to carry everything we needed,

so the first and easiest choice was,

"Leave Jill's diving gear on top of the mountain.

She's not gonna use it.

She's gonna have to do other things during the project."

So Paul and Noel ended up doing all of the exploration diving.

I got involved in supporting the base camp

and surveying dry cave, and doing other things.

But as the dives progressed and we reached some real physical hurdles,

Noel got to the point where he said,

"I've done everything that I can do, and I've reached my psychological limit."

Noel was an experienced cave diver, cave explorer, and a physician.

He was our expedition doctor.

And at that point, either Paul could dive solo,

or there would be no more diving, and we'd just dry cave explore,

or, in that split second, I had a chance to say, "I wanna do it."

And that's what I did.

I said, "Hey, I could fit Noel's gear.

We don't even have to go get my dive gear. I can wear Noel's diving gear.

I'd like to have an opportunity to explore this cave."

-And I remember Bill's look like, "Really? -

What makes you think that you've got the chops to pull off this dive

when Noel says it's too much and he feels it's not safe to go on?

Why are you convinced that you're not gonna die in there,

and I'm gonna have to carry your body out of this canyon back up

and explain to your family what happened?"

Because just a year earlier in the very same spot,

one of their teammates had died.

And it was a friend, a dear friend,

and they had to carry his body, something that took 12 days.

That pall hung over that expedition, and it informed everything that we did.

And I thought, "Whoa, that didn't take long."

This is business.

This is really serious.

This is not just some fun lark on a travel destination.

This is life and death.

What I wasn't sure of when that conversation happened

was the level of her discipline, you know?

Was she the one that was gonna get to 68 meters depth and panic,

you know, and take Paul down with her?

This is not some Boy Scout badge

that you put on your arm and use to be some status symbol, you know?

This is deadly shit.

You go in there, and there is a finite chance

that you are going to die if you don't do things just right.

If you have somebody who's just gung ho without considering the consequences,

that was what I was looking for.

Was this somebody who's just,

"I wanna make a name for myself by getting in here

and pushing this to some spectacular limit"?

Or is it somebody who says,

"You know what, the goal here is to get data

and not get anybody hurt"?

And by the time the sun came up, Bill said, "I'll support you.

I'll help carry your gear.

I'll get you there and do whatever you need to do.

I'm willing to give you a chance."

And that changed my life.