Art Bell

All Episodes

Previous Next

Nov. 16, 2015 - Art Bell

02:25:59

Art Bell MITD - Jill Heinerth Underwater Cave Exploration

Participants

Main voices

49:52

jill heinerth

01:12:51

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Show episode speakers

Speaker	Time	Text
art bell ▲ ● ▼		From the high desert and the great American Southwest, I bid you all good evening, good morning, good afternoon, wherever you may be, in all 25 prolific time zones, covered like a blanket by this program, Midnight in the Desert.
		I'm Mark Bell.
		Rules of the Road, simple, no bad language on this show.
		No really bad language, and one call per show.
		That's the rule.
		All right, so there's a lot to talk about.
		It's going to be a very, very busy night.
		And boy, do I have a guest for you, Jill Heinerth, coming up in a little bit on underwater cave exploration.
		I'm sure Jill's a very nice lady, but I think anybody who goes underwater into a cave system is out of their mind.
		But, you know, that's just me.
		We're going to find out all about it.
		She does amazing things, and I would recommend you to my website for a number of things.
		But let me begin here because, of course, the Paris attacks.
		The CIA director says more attacks are likely in the pipeline.
		There were to be seen today lots of ISIS guys on CNN saying, Europe, we got you and we're going to get you again, and America, you're next.
		American blood, they say they is the best.
		American blood.
		Our intelligence agencies are strained.
unidentified		And when they say that, they really mean it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		If our intel agencies, if the NSA is strained to keep up with everybody who's here or might be here or has bad plans, then we're in big trouble.
		Lots of raids in France associated with, and Belgium, associated with a bunch of arrests.
		They arrested a whole group of even suspected people.
		So we know the Paris area was shocked by a major terrorist attack Friday night as being claimed by the Neo-Caliphate, I like that phrase, terrorist group ISIS.
		But just hours before the attack was carried out, Facebook removed a key anonymous group responsible for identifying and reporting thousands of social media accounts used by ISIS recruiters.
		Now, let's think about that.
		Anonymous on our side in the sense that they're exposing groups planning to attack us, right?
		Now, regardless of what you think about ISIS, their origins, and who is pulling the strings and funding them, one thing is clear.
		They've been spreading their ideology and recruiting using Facebook and Twitter more than on-the-ground traditional methods.
		We talked about this last week.
		The anonymous group Red Cult initiated an operation to counter the ISIS social media presence called hashtag OPISIS.
		Operation ISIS, in other words.
		We at Counter Current News, that's where this story came from, have been the primary contact point for OpISIS from the start, and we continue to be today.
		That's why our source in the Red Cult told us today that a group calling itself Report ISIS Accounts run by Anonymous was removed by Facebook, and the administrators from the group all banned.
		The anonymous group, Red Cult, initiated an operation to counter the ISIS social media presence called, again, OP ISIS.
		And, you know, you've got to ask why.
		Why keep Anonymous from doing the job that American and European law enforcement either are unable to do or overstrained or unwilling to do?
		Exposing accounts used by ISIS to operate and recruit on social media.
		Facebook has refused to respond to inquiries from Red Cult or from Countercurrent News and several other alternative media outlets who have contacted them directly.
		Now, Facebook, as you know, has its own terms of service agreement.
		What I want you to hear is a message that I have on my Facebook.
		If you can take looking at this masked ISIS face.
		And I want to play this for you here on the air.
		The only thing you're missing is video.
		If you go to my website, you're not going to miss that.
		It's up there for you right now.
		But here's what they are saying.
		This is kind of an ISIS sort of introduction right now.
		Which is worth watching, by the way.
		The video you're listening to, available on my website.
		This is, of course, from our friends at Anonymous.
unidentified		Greetings citizen of the world, and Facebook, we are Anonymous Red Cult, as most of you know.
		We're engaged in Operation ISIS from some time now, to fight ISIS online in different ways, like taking down ISIS sites, leaking information, exposing ISIS accounts on social media sites, one of our groups on Facebook called Report ISIS Accounts,
		with the URL, www.facebook.com slash group slash LPSIS, and it's dedicated to posting report ISIS accounts from YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites, where we reported and deactivated thousands of accounts.
		Accounts they used to communicate, recruit, and spread ISIS propaganda.
		Few hours ago, Facebook decided to close this group, and block the events for three days, without giving any explanation for it, except, quote, we removed the post below because it doesn't follow the Facebook community standards, end of quote.
		So we asked, is it because ISIS supporters reported us back, and if so, for what reason, or Facebook is bothered from us reporting terrorists' accounts, that violate Facebook community standards anyway, by using fake names, and posting inappropriate and violent propaganda, that only serve ISIS terrorism, we asked, is this one of the new Facebook policies, to protect terrorists' accounts, instead of fighting it, or simply Facebook doesn't care?
		We leave this for the public opinion, to judge this action by Facebook, action that can only be interpreted that Facebook took a wrong decision.
		Anyway, we will continue our fight on ISIS.
		We are anonymous.
		We are Legion.
		We do not forgive.
		We do not forget.
		Expect us.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So, yeah, there is the audio.
		And if that's not enough, trust me, you need to see the videos.
		As you know, some weeks ago, months ago, was it now?
		I believe, I solicited Anonymous so that I could speak to Anonymous.
		What I got was the doctor.
		Now, the doctor is...
unidentified		This is very difficult.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The doctor is...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What would you prefer to be called?
unidentified		You may as well use my handle.
unidentified		Call me the doctor.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, the doctor.
		All right, good.
		All right, so you heard that, and I'm sure that's not the first time you heard it.
		It would seem, on the face of it, that Facebook is abridging the First Amendment right of Anonymous to do what?
unidentified		To expose ISIS?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And that's bad?
unidentified		I do think it's problematic.
		I also think it's incredibly strange because from what I've observed, Anonymous in general and the Red Cult in particular have had varying success with having the accounts of ISIS recruiters taken offline.
		But they seem to be getting hit.
		But Anonymous seems to periodically get its own presence knocked offline and then brought back with no explanation.
		The Op ISIS page being taken offline just hours before the massacre in Paris began is extremely strange.
		I did a little bit of research earlier today and discovered that after, or not too long after the massacre was over and the Carnage was being cleaned up, the Op ISIS page was mysteriously brought back online without any comment from Facebook management or Facebook content management, I should say.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, fascinating.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So, in other words, you don't know if they reported you for some weird thing, reported them for some weird thing, and that's why it was taken down.
unidentified		It's possible.
		It's possible that some number of people in ISIS had reported that page and asked it to be taken down.
		And because Facebook is somewhat notorious for its real name policy, and by real name policy, I mean if you get out of bed with your right foot on first instead of your left foot, they may freeze your account.
		That's right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I may freeze E. I've been frozen three times.
unidentified		Yeah.
		So it's possible that some ISIS recreators had a page frozen.
		They unfroze it.
		It's possible that Facebook, for whatever reason, got a hair up its nose and froze it and then unfroze it.
		It's possible that someone told them to temporarily suspend the off-ISIS account.
		I don't know.
		It's a mystery.
		It's a mystery.
		It's strange.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Let me ask you this.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is Anonymous getting in a position where it's going to virtually be at war with ISIS?
unidentified		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And that war is going to consist of taking down their sites, I would presume, with various attacks.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And then the war would consist, perhaps, of also seeking out, finding, and making public sites where they are chattering to each other.
unidentified		As well as quite possibly the identities of ISIS operatives.
		There's evidence that hacktivists were involved in stopping an attack in Tunisia some months ago.
		There's evidence that hacktivists were involved in stopping a plot in New York some months ago.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well then, why in heaven's name doesn't our government, through some back door, share, allow information to be shared with them?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is there any of that going on, or can you not comment?
unidentified		I have no idea.
unidentified		My thought is that is not the case simply because governments tend to not like working with fifth columns and anonymous is sort of the ultimate fifth column.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So would you imagine that my Facebook account, which I do enjoy, is now in some jeopardy or do you think it will remain up there?
unidentified		I don't think it's in any jeopardy, at least not immediately, unless someone decides that they're not an Art Bell fan and decides to hit that little report button.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Well, I have been signed, sealed, delivered with a, you know, I believe I had to send a picture ID and I had to send my driver's license.
		So they should know who I am, but I guess they could have temporary amnesia.
unidentified		They could.
		Facebook's content management team is extremely large.
		It's spread across multiple continents, but they all have more or less equal access and authority to do what they're charged with, which is determine who is and is not allowed to use the service.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Here is a question for you.
		Do you know if Facebook or Twitter have made any public comment about the fact that ISIS is known to use the social media as ways to communicate?
		Have they made any comment about it?
unidentified		To the best of my knowledge, no, nobody has.
		Lots of other people have.
		Certainly lawyers have, law enforcement agencies have, government agencies have.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Well, I will depend on you for updates in the war.
		I would love to know how it's going.
		And if you have any future trouble of this kind, I sure hope you'll get hold of me first.
unidentified		Thank you very much, sir.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Thank you, Doctor.
		That is the doctor.
		And he would, I think, wants to be known just as the doctor, but he is sort of a consultant for us when it comes to matters of anonymous.
		Well, all right.
		Let us move on now.
		And Doctor, thank you for calling.
		Please keep me informed.
		So there you have it.
		I mean, that was a statement of war.
		Anonymous is at war with ISIS.
		So that's your headline, if you want one.
		And I wish them well.
		These bugs have to be exterminated.
		They're coming for us, you know.
		I don't know if you saw the videos or not, but they're coming for us, folks.
		So all I can say is we're all in this together, right?
		And so we all have to hope for the best.
		Coming up, Jill Heineth, in a moment.
		Stay right where you are.
		What she does is going to absolutely blow your mind.
		She goes under the water, and then she goes in caves all over the world, even the Antarctic.
		Unbelievable.
		I'm Mark Bellow.
		This is Midnight in the Desert.
unidentified		Down around the corner, half the mile from here.
		Seize the grocery front and watch the movie.
		Without love, where would you be now?
		Get my medicine, cause you're the way of the lonely world.
		Oh, oh, oh, oh.
		Take a walk on the wild side of midnight from the Kingdom of Nigh.
		This is Midnight in the Desert with Art Bell.
		Please call the show at 1-952-225-5278.
		That's 1-952.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Call Art Bell.
		Interrupting myself.
		As I said, the headline you can take away from that last was anonymous, is it war with ISIS?
		And if I were ISIS, that would be the last thing I'd want to hear.
		The very last thing.
		All right, coming up now, Jill Hunterth is an aquanaut who is recognized as one of the planet's great underwater explorers.
		More people have walked on the moon than have been to some of the remote places that Jill has explored here on Earth.
		An expert in one of the world's most dangerous endeavors, cave diving.
		Even the words give me a chill.
		Jill is a photographer, filmmaker, author, and instructor with over 7,000 scuba dives to her credit.
		Jill wrote, produced, and starred in the PBS documentary series, Water's Journey, and has led numerous National Geographic and NOAA expeditions.
		Jill is a monthly columnist for Diver Magazine.
		Her articles and photos have appeared in publications as diverse as the National Geographic and the Wall Street Journal.
		She is a fellow of the National Speleological Society.
		I hope that's close.
		The Speleological Society.
		I'm not sure.
		We'll get it from Jill.
		The Explorers Club, the Royal National Canadian Geographical Society, Jill is, in fact, a well-respected voice now, in the discussion, rather, about water conservation and her We Are Water Project and documentary film, which has won several environmental awards.
		Here she is.
		So is it speleological?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		It is speleological, the science of caves.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, the science of caves.
		It's hard to even know where to start.
		Jill, most of us, I think, myself included, in a million years, I can't imagine suiting up in whatever with whatever tanks, re-breathable or otherwise, and going into a cave under the water.
		What in God's name motivates somebody to do that?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I mean, it's certainly not for everyone.
unidentified		I mean, I think most people would agree.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I mean, the darkness repels most people, just the darkness alone.
		But if you put someone underwater in complete darkness, it would be absolutely terrifying to most.
		But, you know, for me, it's, you know, looking around that dark corner, it's an invitation to go someplace that nobody's ever been before and see something remarkable that's never been recorded.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, sometimes when you look around that dark corner, you see a couple of red eyes.
unidentified		Yeah.
unidentified		Got that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		You know, I wanted to be an astronaut when I was a kid, and that didn't really work out for me growing up in Canada.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		So this was the closest thing, I think, to exploring the unknown.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Actually, pretty close.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		As pointed out, you know, we've been more around the moon than we have in the places where you go.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		It's absolutely true.
		I mean, you know, we simply have so much to learn about our oceans, the depths, as well as underwater caves.
		I like to think of myself as someone who's swimming inside the veins of Mother Earth.
		I mean, I think we could all agree that the Earth is this living body, and I'm like in the circulation system, in the lifeblood, and I kind of feel like my job is to report back on what I see and the changes that I see as well.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		When you dive, I take it you dive at the very least with a partner.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Not always.
unidentified		Really?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		So sometimes it takes a big team to pull off an expedition or a mission.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		I do quite a lot on my own as well because there are times when it's, you know what, we're squeezing through a small space, and you're better off on your own than having someone else become the cork in the bottle that contains your life.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, in many of the movies about this sort of thing, they show people inevitably squeaking through these little places with their tank sort of getting caught on something.
		I mean, that close is the space that you can barely make it through.
		You've gone through places like that.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Sure, absolutely.
		But there's also spaces that are the sizes of aircraft hangars, and you've got literally no walls or floors or ceiling for reference.
		You're literally floating neutrally buoyant in the blackness.
		So there's huge spaces and there's tiny spaces inside the earth.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And unknown spaces.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, as you point out, you just don't know what you're going to really run into, right?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Oh, absolutely.
		I mean, that's the ultimate dream of cave diving explorers is to go someplace where nobody's been before and be the first to run a line and then survey an underwater cave.
		It's an incredible experience.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It almost sounds like a line out of Star Trek.
		Right?
		Go where no man has gone or woman in this case.
		May I ask your age?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		I'm 50.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		50.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		I am.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So the dangers you face when you are exploring underwater caves, as insane as that seems, especially if it's a cave that's never been mapped or explored before, I imagine that's really freaky.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I mean, it's exhilarating because not only are the passages new, but the things that you could potentially discover within those spaces could be something completely new to science.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It could be.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Have you ever discovered a new life form, do you think?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		I've been on numerous expeditions where we have brought back new forms of life that have never been seen before, new species.
		The animals, the biology of underwater caves is incredible.
		There are animals that swim within the caves.
		They have no eyes, no pigment, and they're some of the oldest living fossils on the planet.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Because they don't need eyes in a dark cave, right?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So evolution has taken care of that and taken their eyes, if they ever had them.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I mean, they live in very food-scarce environments in tough conditions.
		Some of them live completely chemosynthetically, have nothing to do with sunlight for survival.
		And some of these animals that swim in caves today have actually remained unchanged.
		Like, they exist in the fossil record since before the extinction of the dinosaurs.
		So they're exactly the same creature alive today that was around before the extinction of the dinosaurs.
unidentified		Wow.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I mean, 65, 70 million-year-old life forms.
		I mean, what can they teach us about evolution and survival?
		Quite a bit, I think.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And how do you determine whether these life forms are a particular danger to human beings or not?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There's no way of knowing that, right?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		No, not really.
		I mean, some of the animals have absolutely remarkable characteristics.
		Like, there's an animal called Remipede.
		He's only about an inch long, but he can attack and kill something 40 times his size.
		He actually has venomous fangs and looks kind of like a crawly centipede with no eyes.
		If that thing was the size of a cat, it would be the most dangerous animal on earth.
		But it's just this little inch-long thing swimming around in the water column.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, they say that they may find the cure for cancer in some rainforest someday.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think they could find it in caves.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So then do you, when you encounter a new life form of some sort or a new who knows what, do you gather some samples of things and bring them back for analysis?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		So usually I'm kind of the hands and the eyes of scientists who make that their specialty.
		So they may tell me what they need or tell me what to photograph or document.
		But yeah, we do bring back these swimming animals as well as other things like sponges and algal samples.
		And some of those have absolutely remarkable potential medicinal qualities, like anti-cancer agents and antibacterial qualities that are hundreds of times more powerful than what we find in similar animals in the ocean.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's exactly what I was talking about.
		So you do find stuff like that.
		Wow.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, absolutely.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You have explored, I understand, a place called Ice Island in 2000.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		First of all, where is Ice Island?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		So Antarctica.
		In the year 2000, my team and I were planning to go to Antarctica to follow in the footsteps of Sir Ernest Shackleton and his early explorations.
		And the night before our pitch to National Geographic, the largest iceberg in recorded history calved off of the Antarctic ice shelf, the Ross ice shelf.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		Hold it right there.
		This is what we call a hook.
		We've got this break I told you about coming up.
		And then we've got lots of clear geography to navigate above ground.
		I guess different people get their adrenaline from different places.
unidentified		For me, definitely doesn't come from a cave deep underwater.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But for my guest, you'll hear it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It does, and it just blows my mind.
unidentified		We'll be back.
		I was captured by a stand, but I could not get to that.
		Midnight in the Desert doesn't screen calls.
		We trust you, but remember the NSA.
		To call the show, please dial 1-952-225-5278.
		That's 1-952-CALLART.
		By the way, it's cold out there, baby.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		When I say cold, I mean it's about 39 degrees right now with 20 to 30 mile an hour wind.
unidentified		So on the way over here.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, it was cold.
		So, so cold.
		Well, all right, back to my guest, and we've got a special one, Jim Heinrith, Jill Heinrith, and she has done incredible stuff.
		She dives, and she was about to tell us about the Antarctica.
		You know, that's one place I've wanted to go that I haven't been.
		I almost booked a $25,000 fee on a Russian icebreaker to get down there, but I never did quite take the final step.
		And Jill, I can imagine diving.
		I really can't imagine diving in caves under the water.
		And I beyond, it's completely beyond my understanding to go up and dive in caves under the water in the Antarctic.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Well, yeah, it was a real interesting project, probably the most interesting and perhaps the most dangerous of my life.
		The largest iceberg in recorded history calved away from the Ross Ice Shelf and started floating into the Ross Sea, and it was the size of Jamaica.
		And literally the night before we were to make a pitch to National Geographic, we completely changed the course of our story concept because we realized the significance that if things the size of Jamaica are breaking off of Antarctica, then what does that mean?
		And back in 2000, the words global climate change were pretty fresh in everybody's vocabulary.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		I remember that breakaway.
		It was big news, no question about that.
		And what I'm curious about is, how did you change your pitch to them?
		Since it broke off, I'm sure you were thinking there'd be an opportunity to do what?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Well, instead of just following the course of Sir Ernest Shackleton from New Zealand south to the Ross Sea, we decided to intercept this iceberg.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		And we told National Geographic that we were going to climb it, we were going to study the ice edge ecology, and that we were going to go cave diving inside of the actual iceberg itself.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I wonder how many things they get you to sign before they send you off to do that.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		You know, for that particular project, I was really in charge of designing the diving technology that we would use, and I wanted to use a device called a rebreather.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		And when we applied for our permit to the National Science Foundation in order to go to Antarctica, they declined to give us a permit.
unidentified		They declared that.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Saying they thought our plan was dangerous.
unidentified		Well, duh.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, of course it was dangerous.
		Again, let's stop here for a second.
		Tell me about a rebreather.
		I'm curious anyway.
		I understand a tank with oxygen.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		So most scuba divers dive with a tank on their back of just breathing air.
		And every time they exhale, they make bubbles and they sort of waste the exhaled breath.
		But a rebreather is just like the same technology you use in a spacesuit.
		So it's a closed circuit device and it captures the exhaled breath, scrubs the carbon dioxide out of it, and then injects a tiny bit of oxygen back into the breathing media so that you're back to the amount that you require for metabolism.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How long does it last, Joe, compared to a similar size tank of breathable air?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's the beauty of the technology, really, because it gives us a range in terms of depth and time that we can't possibly reach with normal scuba.
		Because a normal scuba tank, the deeper you go, the faster you use it up.
		But with a rebreather, you could have even as long as 20 hours underwater with a very small gas supply, as opposed to 10, 20, 50, even 100 tanks required to do the same dive if it's a deep one.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Holy mackerel.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That is a gigantic increase in time you can spend in the water and probably an increase in the danger for spending that much time in the water, I would think, as well.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, I mean, there's obviously the danger of just the exposure in the environment, But also, you're carrying like a life support equipment, a gas mixing station on your back, and you're constantly manipulating the gases that you're breathing.
		So the deeper you go, the more you have to reduce the oxygen.
		The deeper you go, you have to get rid of nitrogen and replace it with helium.
		And so there's a constant revision of the breathing gas that's occurring to optimize it for your dive.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How deep do you go or can you go?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Well, the deepest I've been is just over 450 feet.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Holy smokes.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Some divers have been in the range of 1,000 feet on a single person without support other than their diving apparatus.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		My ears start popping at the bottom of the deep end.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I can't imagine 450 feet.
		My goodness.
		When somebody dives, these are just basic things I'm asking now, but if you go down 400 or 450 feet, what's the deal on coming back up?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Well, you have a really long time that you have to take to carefully come up in stages.
		We call that decompression time.
		And you have to slowly reacclimate your body and slowly ramp up the oxygen again so that you can rid your body of the inert gases like helium and nitrogen.
		And if you don't, then you can suffer from decompression illness.
		It could be a terrible injury or death.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I hear it's a pretty bad way to die.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I think that wouldn't be good.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so then one more thing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What would the temperature of the water in the vicinity of the ice island be?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		So just about 28 degrees Fahrenheit or minus 1.8 Celsius.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good lord.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		So yeah, one-tenth of a degree colder, and it would be frozen solid.
unidentified		So it's as cold as it gets.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How does a diver, no matter how they're layered, survive that?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's cold.
		No matter what technology you have, it's still cold.
		But we do wear dry suits so that we're surrounded by an envelope of dry air.
		And now we have heated undergarments that we can wear.
		But there's still parts of your skin that are exposed, like your face.
unidentified		And it's cold.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I don't know how you come out of that without the equivalent of frostbite or whatever it is that you get underwater.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Well, it really is kind of acclimation.
		I mean, the first time you dive in really cold water is the toughest, but you do kind of get used to it.
		And you have to be really careful when you get out of the water because you're usually in a significantly colder environment as soon as you're out of the water.
		When you're wet, that's when you get frostbite.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So you can actually get frostbite underwater?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		I don't know of anybody that's had it underwater, but you can certainly cause other neuralgias, other issues, damage to your nerves.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So then does the temperature or anything else limit you've got the rebreather, and I understand that, but are you limited in the amount of time you can spend underwater in those conditions?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Oh, absolutely.
		I mean, there's only so much you can tolerate.
		It's bracing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Bracing.
		Brazing.
		Yeah, I bet it is.
		So how long?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Well, I've done just over three hours in Antarctica.
		I've done like five hours in Arctic waters.
		They were a tiny bit warmer.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		One-tenth of the degree you said from being frozen.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And we're talking here about salt seawater.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, yeah.
		I mean, sometimes when we get into the water in Antarctica, we're actually entering in what's like a slushy, you know.
		You're kind of pushing chunks of ice and slush out of the way as you dive down.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Before we continue with Ice Island, and we're going to, I'm really curious, you're 50 now, when did you get started with this and how did you get started?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, I was kind of a late bloomer in a way.
		I've always loved the water.
		And as a kid, I was inspired by Jacques Cousteau and even watching, you know, Apollo, you know, lunar rovers and things like that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		And I always wanted to do it, but I didn't start until I was in university.
		So, you know, a lot of people started earlier.
		You can start as young as 12, but I guess I was a late bloomer.
		I think I was 22 or 23 when I started.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So nevertheless, at this age, you've got a lot of experience behind you.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, yeah.
		This has been my full-time career.
		So it's all I do.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So small dives, I presume, at first in your 20s, and then when did you begin to get interested in going into caves?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Because that seems like, I don't know, a logarithmically greater danger.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, I always liked the environment of dry caves.
		And I would say, you know, even as a kid, I liked being in small, cozy spaces.
		And I don't have an ounce of claustrophobia.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Obviously.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		But pretty, well, I mean, really on my fourth dive, I had a peek into an underwater cavern environment.
		And I went, oh, this is something remarkable.
		And I moved very quickly to increase my skills and background and find a way to make it my full-time career.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I interviewed a very good friend years ago, Bonnie was her name.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And she explored caves but above earth.
unidentified		Yeah, I remember with your interviews with Bonnie Crispin.
unidentified		Really?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You heard Bonnie?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah, absolutely.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so you do what she does only underwater.
		Are caves underwater, this would be a Silly question, I guess.
		Are they markedly different than caves above water?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, a little bit.
		You'll kind of laugh at this, but I'm actually more comfortable underwater in a cave than dry in a cave.
		Because, in a way, when a cave is filled with water, it's likely to be more stable than one that's just air-filled.
		So less likely to collapse.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You know, I was about to ask about stalactites and mites, but I'm looking at a photograph here that you supplied.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is that you, by the way?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		So, yeah, I supplied a couple.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		There's one with some giant formations.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, my God.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What are those?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		So I shot that photo.
		That's in Bermuda.
		Giant stalagmites.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, they're big, all right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Holy moly.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		You know, what's fascinating about those, obviously that was formed when the cave was dry.
		So, you know, water soaks down through the ground and drips from the ceiling and just literally takes one drop of calcite at a time to make those giant mounds.
		And I've worked with paleoclimatologists and physicists who take these giant stellag mites and they cut them and look at them like rings of a tree.
		And do you know they can actually count back those rings and look at the ancient climate on Earth?
		They can go back like 350,000 years in some of these formations and see what climate was like at other times.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That is amazing.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Isn't that cool?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		It's very cool.
		And so climate is something I really want to talk about.
		But before that, tell me the story of Ice Highland and what it was like and what you did.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Well, I suppose that's a bit of a climate story, too, because I guess climate change almost killed me.
		Oh.
		Yeah.
		So we went to Antarctica, made a crazy journey, you know, 12 days from New Zealand to Zoom.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, you didn't have permission to the rebreather, right?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Well, we were rejected by the National Science Foundation, so we had to apply to another country because you need a permit to go to Antarctica.
		So New Zealand took us with open arms, and the U.S. wrote us a letter saying that if we got into trouble, don't expect American assets to come and help.
		So we went, very confident that we had the best and safest plan possible for the environment.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so 12 days across the Southern Ocean.
		This is like the craziest seas on the planet where like storms can go all the way around the Earth unimpeded and brew up the seas like you can't imagine.
		And 60-foot seas for days on end.
		And in fact, one of those Russian icebreakers that you were talking about was in the Ross Sea at the same time.
		And they were a day ahead of us experiencing 100-foot seas.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, my God.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so you might want to rethink making that investment in a trip.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I just wanted to say, you know, and that's why people do that, by the way.
		You know, people who've got money who just want to say they stepped foot in Antarctica.
		And the Russians will take you there for about 25 grand apiece.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, yeah, they sure will.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So going from New Zealand at what time of year?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		So we were there in the Antarctic summer.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		So we were there in like January, February, sort of towards the end of the Antarctic summer.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It would not be possible to go in the winter, right?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Well, by boat, it would have been pretty tough because the sea ice, even at the end of the summer, is like freezing north at like a mile per day.
		And in the year that we went, the sea ice was very difficult.
		So when we finally encountered the pack, we didn't anticipate how difficult it would be to move through the sea ice.
		And my first thought was, wow, you know, I thought we're looking at global climate change here.
		And then it occurred to me that all the sea ice is just even more evidence of everything that was, you know, breaking up and filling the Ross Sea that summer.
		So we got down there, and the next thing that occurred to us was, how do you know when you're actually there?
		When you're trying to encounter something that's the size of Jamaica, I mean, it's literally, you know, fills the horizon.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Sure.
		That's really true.
		In other words, even GPS.
unidentified		Well, we didn't have any satellite access.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		We lost satellite contact about 100 miles south of New Zealand.
		So we were basically black, like off the radar, for two months, with the exception of this incredible woman in New Zealand who had a radio, and she could reach us, and she could reach the Russian icebreakers down there.
		And she would relay and let us know.
		Like every few days we would reach her.
		And she would let us know how people were doing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So in other words, a woman, in quotes, in New Zealand was your...
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, but back in 2000, I guess things were a little different.
		So this woman, her name was Mary Bluff Fisherman's Radio, she called herself.
		And boy, that was like a wonderful voice to hear every few days and know that somebody would know something about us if anything happened.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you know what medium she was using?
		I mean, was it amateur radio?
		Was it some government allocation of radio frequency?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		No, no, no.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		She's an amateur.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		She's an amateur.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, a ham.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		She's a ham.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
unidentified		Wow.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		I have talked to people, of course, at our station, Antarctic.
		I've even had the privilege of talking to the North and South Pole at the same time.
		The only thing they were doing was trading T-shirts.
		Anyway, so here you are looking for this ice island.
		And how would you know when you got there?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, I mean, we had a helicopter.
		So for the journey, we had to take the helicopter apart and then reassemble it when we got back down there and got to some reasonable sea conditions where we could work.
		And even in transit, the helicopter Took such a beating.
		The electrical system was still wired to the battery, and all the wiring literally dissolved in the salt water from the seas we were taking on.
		And so the first thing we had to do was rewire a helicopter, and not a single person on the boat was an aircraft mechanic.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, how was the first ride for somebody?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so we had this incredible guy, Laurie, who was a New Zealand sheepherder and remarkable guy.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		He wouldn't obviously take anyone up with him for that first flight, but he was anxious to put it in the air, and everything worked out okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Amazing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You had to reassemble a helicopter, rewire.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, rewire and put the rotors on and basically reassemble the helicopter.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Holy moly, how many of you were there?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		There were 18 of us on a little boat just over 100 feet long.
		And I kept thinking, boy, this is a small boat.
		It wasn't ice-strengthened.
		But I was told that a 100-foot boat might do better than a 300-foot icebreaker because it could bob in between the waves instead of breaking in half.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, oh, good.
		Great.
		Yeah.
		Actually, getting down to Ice Island, how long did that take from New Zealand?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		12 days.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		12 days.
		12 days of 60-foot or better seas, huh?
		All right, hold tight.
		We're at a short break.
unidentified		Holy mackerel.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What an interview.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Have you ever heard anything like this before?
unidentified		Where are those happy days?
		They've been so hard to find.
		I tried to reach for you, but you have lost your mind.
		Whatever happened to my love.
		I wish I had Take a walk on the wild side of midnight from the Kingdom of Nye.
		This is Midnight in the Desert with Art Bell.
		Please call the show at 1-952-225-5278.
		That's 1-952.
		Call Art Bell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Little stumble there.
		Jill Heiner, there's my guest.
		She is a diver, a underwater cave diver, and she did underwater cave diving in a place called Ice Island.
		Now, this was a giant state-sized piece that calved off the Ross Ice Shelf, and she was in water that was a tenth of a degree from freezing.
		That would be the freezing temperature of salt water.
		Unbelievable.
		So I've been in a cruise ship, Jill, when there were like, I think, 30-foot waves.
		And, you know, the crew was getting sick.
		Nobody, you could walk down the aisles.
		Everybody was in their room tossing their cookies.
		So how in the world, how did your team do, let me ask that, going down with 60-foot to up to 100-foot waves?
		I can't even imagine.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		No, it's terrifying, really.
		I mean, we had some crises where fuel tanks that were lashed to the deck broke free and were sliding around.
		And you're submarining off of every wave.
		It's terrifying.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Did most of the crew manage not to get seasick?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		They'd done it before?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Oh, no.
		Everybody got sick.
		Yeah, there's no way around it.
		Everybody got sick and everybody got injured.
unidentified		Yeah, you can't even go to the bathroom without getting injured.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, let's not even talk about that.
		But yes, I have a clear picture in my mind that won't go away now.
		So, Ice Island, okay, there's a lady on the radio, hem operator.
		How does that help you know when you've arrived where you want to be?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Well, she was able to communicate with some of the other Russian icebreakers down there and was able to give us their position and what they were seeing.
		And with that and the helicopter, we sort of slowly moved our way through the pack.
		We got stuck in the pack for a couple of days, completely sealed around with sea ice.
		Wow.
		That was a little scary because, you know, in Shackleton's footsteps, the last thing you want to do is end up like his ships and get crushed.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely right.
unidentified		Yes.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		But we eventually, as we continued to move south, the B-15 iceberg itself is also dynamic.
		You know, it was breaking, pieces were breaking off as well.
		So it was spreading itself out around the Ross Sea.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We're having a very slight breakup in our audio, Jill.
		It probably has to do we're just having a vicious windstorm here now.
		So it may be that.
		It may be the internet in between.
		Who knows?
		Anyway, I'm getting 99.9% of what you're saying.
		And folks, if you hear a little breakup, that's what's going on.
		We've got a big windstorm going on.
		Anyway, so you finally get on station and by that, what does that mean?
		I mean, you snuggle up to it?
		Here's something I want to know.
		When you reached it, how far had it moved from the Ross ice shelf, per se?
		Do you know?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, quite a bit.
		So as it was breaking up, at times we were even anchoring ourselves to pieces of it and moving with it.
		And you could move even 20 or 30 miles in the course of a day, not feeling like you're moving at all because you're moving with the ice.
		That's right.
		So very dynamic.
		But we finally decided To conduct our biggest cave dives in a piece of it that had ripped up on the seafloor and gotten stuck near a place called Cape Hallett, which is actually the first place where people wintered in Antarctica and spent a whole year.
		And it was at that location that we very tentatively first dove inside these crevices and started to look around.
		And in this first big cave dive, my partner and I went in through a crack, basically, in the ice, and it was probably 20 feet across.
		And the surface of that crack looked like the dimples on a golf ball, like it had been carved by the movement of the water.
		And we moved in through that crack, and all we could see is blackness below us.
		And so we just went down and down and down.
		And at 130 feet, we hit the seafloor.
		And I looked off to my right, and there was this just vast tunnel leading off into the blackness beneath the iceberg.
		So we turned and went inside, and where it was in contact with the seafloor, we saw this incredible garden of life, like filter-feeding animals just, you know, grabbing things out of the current that was rushing by.
		So it was beautiful.
		I mean, it was remarkable.
		Now, on that particular dive, we heard sounds.
		You know, the ice is loud.
		It's cracking.
		It's thudding.
		It's groaning.
		It's kind of alarming.
		But, you know, I didn't quite know the meaning of those sounds at that point.
		And when we turned to come back out the way we'd gone in, the whole environment had changed.
		And what we didn't know is that in our time inside the iceberg, a big piece had calved off the entrance and had basically, to the eyes of the people topside, closed the door that we'd gone in.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I bet they panicked.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, they did, because at that point, they realized that there was nobody left on the expedition who was prepared to rescue us.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		There was nothing they could do.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Was there any communication line between you and those above?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		No, there wasn't.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		And that actually proved to be problematic during the project because it's easy to get away from being in the line of sight of the boat when you're surrounded by ice, even if you're in the open water.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Sure.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		So when we came back, the doorway had basically closed, and we had to find a new route out of the iceberg.
		And when we surfaced, they were shocked.
		They literally had thought that we had been crushed in that cabbing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Holy mackerel.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		But, you know, there's no rules when something hasn't been done before.
		And so you're learning on the fly.
		And what sounds really crazy to someone outside of the situation, it seemed, you know, sensible at the time.
		Every day we learned a little something more and we revised our plan.
		And sure, we were taking risks, but we were doing it on the best information that we had at the time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How long were you down at that point?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		You know, on that dive, it was probably only about two hours in the water, but it was long enough.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		It was pretty cold.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I've certainly heard icebergs kind of in Alaska, and it sounds like a gunshot going off or a loud kaboom.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I can't imagine what it sounds like underwater.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		It reverberates like in your chest.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		You can feel it in your sternum just as something like that breaks.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Really?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		But that ended up not being sort of the worst of our troubles.
		As we continued in the project and began doing more and more dives and filming inside the iceberg, we started to experience crazy currents that would come up out of nowhere.
		We were actually approaching the full moon when the tidal currents can be stronger, but we were finding it impossible to predict when these raging currents would hit us.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, any idea what generated raging currents inside an iceberg?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		I think it's a lot of things.
		I think it's the tide changing.
		It's a lot of the motion of the ice.
		So as an iceberg lifts and drops in the sea, it's actually creating like a suction and a push.
		And so there's so much going on, it was just impossible to predict.
		So we had one dive where we literally couldn't come out the way we went in.
		We got swept through.
		But my partner and I saw light on the distant horizon and just started swimming for that light.
		And we swam and we swam and we swam.
		And by the time we surfaced, we were out of sight of the boat.
		Like all we could see was ice around us.
		And I thought, oh my God, this is how we're going to die, like a flea on the planet.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So at that point, do you have, once you surface, do you have any sort of short-range radio?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		No, no.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		I mean, nowadays, divers do have little lifeline radios that they can use, but at the time we didn't.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		When was this exactly?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		2000?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		So it's 15 years ago.
		15 years ago.
		Yeah.
		So I have a little like inflatable, we call it a safety sausage.
		So it's about a six-foot-tall orange balloon, basically, that you inflate.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		So I inflate this thing, hoping that they can see the bit of orange above the ice.
		And I just kind of laugh because I think, there's no way, you know, unless they put that helicopter in the air, they're not going to see us.
		But fortunately, the very same currents that swept us through the berg also knocked the boat off its anchorage.
		And as the boat was trying to reposition, the stern swung around the edge of the iceberg, and I heard someone yell, is that Jill?
unidentified		And I thought, oh, yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You don't mean that you were, were you alone?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		No, I was with one partner at that point.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, with a diving partner.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Anybody ever tell you you're crazy?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, my mom.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Your mom, yeah, I bet your mom has a lot to say about this.
unidentified		Yeah, I think she's probably Lost a bit of sleep over the years.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So you were down there how long, totally?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		So we were down there for two months, and it was the last dive down there that was really the most terrifying.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Why?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Why?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Well, we needed more footage, we thought, for a movie.
		So three of us this time, with a large camera and big lights, went inside the iceberg caves and worked our way quite a ways in.
		And the current was stiffening.
		It was getting stronger and stronger.
		And also, I had a leak in my glove.
		So now I've got ice-cold water in contact with one hand, and my hand feels like wood.
		It's painful and not working anymore.
		And I call the dive.
		So I turn to the cameraman and my partner, and I thumb the dive.
		So we turn around and try to come out.
		And the current is so strong, we're not making any headway.
		And when you're surrounded by ice, you don't have a lot to grab on to.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, quick question.
		Do you have anything that helps you move, like some little Jetsons, jetpackers, something underwater?
		Anything you can use that helps you move?
		Or is it Euler flippers?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, not on that trip.
		So sometimes divers do use propulsion vehicles like underwater scooters.
		We use those to go a long way back in caves, but we didn't use those in Antarctica.
		So we were just having to swim and where we could grab something on the bottom, pull ourselves along against the current.
		So my hands like dying, you know, we're not seeming to get much closer to the entrance, and we're all starting to get worried.
		And we finally, with unbelievable effort, reached the point where we're at 130 feet of depth.
		We've now like added a bunch of decompression time to our dive, but we're looking up at a sheer wall of ice and it's the only way out.
		And I couldn't climb it.
		I'd grab my hand on the wall and it would just slide down the surface.
		I had nothing to grip into that ice wall.
		And I really thought we weren't going to get out.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, let me be clear.
		You have to climb a hundred-foot wall before you get to the surface.
		To the surface, okay.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And that wall was part of Ice Island?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, all solid ice around us.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
unidentified		Oh, God.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		So we're coming up this crevasse of ice, basically.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I've got it.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I hated that picture in my head, and it's not a good one.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So if you can't grab on and you can't pull yourself up.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Right, right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is there a way to add buoyancy?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		When you can't come up quickly?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Right.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		And even when we tried to add buoyancy, the current was pressing down on us, trying to keep us down.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Now, I had been observing these really cool little fish about the size of your thumb.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		They're called ice fish.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		And they're clear.
		You can actually see the insides of their gut.
		And they have some sort of an antifreeze component to their bloodstream.
		And they occupy these holes in the ice when they're trying to hide from the current.
		And I had noticed this on other dives.
		So my solution for getting up that ice wall was to evict the ice fish and jam my fingers into their burrows and use those like handholds so that we could pull ourselves up.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, my God.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So the way they dig these holes is with this, what you call antifreeze in their system?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, yeah.
		So, I mean, that's what keeps them from freezing solid.
		And I think they basically chew their own little burrow into the ice so that they can hide.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's unbelievable.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So you finally made it to the surface.
unidentified		Yeah, but we, but, yeah.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		I mean, I got out of the water, and the first words to the chief science officer were, the cave tried to keep us today.
		And we sat down and took our equipment off, but we decided we needed one last bit of footage.
		And we decided that we would prepare our gear, have a meal, and we would post a watch on the deck, a watch that could tell us when the current finally lessened.
		So we sat down to a meal, and I heard screams on the deck.
		There was no doubt that something terrifying was happening.
		So we dropped our meals, we ran up on deck, and the entire face of the ice that we were just inside was exploding and crumbling and calving and throwing up this huge wave towards us.
		And within the course of minutes, it became just like brash sea ice as far as we could see.
		So the iceberg that we were just inside exploded.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Exploded.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How does that happen?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Well, I mean, if you think about like an ice cube that you drop into a drink on a hot summer day, you know how it cracks and falls apart sometimes.
		Probably what happened in this Antarctic summer is that during the day as things warmed up and the cracks had melt water dripping through them, in the evenings they would freeze again and stress that giant ice cube we were inside.
		And eventually the current and the cracks and the stress and all of it was just more than this piece we were inside could bear and it fell apart.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What would happen if you had been down near it when it went?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		I have no doubt that we would have been killed, crushed.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		We wouldn't have made it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So you were taking film for what kind of film?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I presume high-definition, really cool stuff.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, we had actually one of the first real HD cameras from Sony on that trip.
		It was like camera number six.
		And so, yeah, we were shooting still photos as well as HD for documentary film and a National Geographic article.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		That's a long time ago.
		What became of Ice Island, the piece that broke off?
		Where is it?
		Does it still exist?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so pieces of Ice Island, of the B-15 iceberg, survived for a long time.
		The average age of these big, huge mega bergs is usually about seven years before they all completely break up.
		But through satellite imagery, they're able to track them for years and years and years.
		And I think, you know, there's probably still little chunks of it floating around, but the bulk of it is gone now, part of the ocean.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So what an unusual once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I bet you had to sell hard for that one.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		It was amazing.
		I mean, we all came home, and it was just surreal coming back from that whole experience.
		We didn't even really understand the magnitude of what had just happened and what we'd witnessed.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		When you got down inside this ice island, what was in there?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, was there an in there, as it were?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so imagine that this used to be part of the Ross Ice Shelf, so part of the whole continent of Antarctica.
		So, you know, really, as you're diving down, you're diving back through history through, you know, layers and layers and layers of snow that's been compacted into ice.
		So sometimes the layers are, you know, thinner or whiter, less compact.
		And at other times, it's like as clear as glass.
		And you can see things in the ice, you know, like dirt and even, you know, organisms and things that are frozen in that matrix.
		So it's the same stuff that people core, and yet we were able to swim down through it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Did you ever see any bizarre...
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		So in the spots where the iceberg had tripped up on the ocean floor and we had contact with the ocean floor, it was full of life.
		Like we had these amphipods, kind of like giant cockroaches about the size of your hand.
		Literally thousands of mating pairs of them swimming around us, like raining off the ceiling and bouncing off of us.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wonderful.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, horror show kind of material.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, what you're describing is an absolute horror show, and I wouldn't even need those creatures for it to be one.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		But because the current's ripping through all of these cracks and crevices, then that's bringing food to organisms that can live in these strange places.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What's it like going someplace like that that I presume man has never been before?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I mean, unbelievably exhilarating.
		You know, I'm not a scientist.
		I'm actually an artist.
		But I get to do this sort of, you know, citizen science, you know, advanced degree in curiosity.
unidentified		Yes.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		And so it's wonderful to come back from these sorts of experiences and sit down with the scientists and tell them what we've seen.
		And we can throw out all kinds of wild, you know, imaginative suppositions.
		And they're kind of like, wow, you know, you can't say that.
unidentified		But 10 years later, you'll see papers written on it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		Are most of the scientists easy to work with?
		Because I've noticed that some science people are not tolerant of other folks.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, you know, it's interesting because, you know, my university schooling is in fine arts.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		And so, yeah, some people may sort of thumb their nose at that.
		But really, the kinds of scientists that work on these extreme expeditions realize that because they've dedicated their life to some very specialized aspect of science, they can't possibly be prepared to do the kind of dives that we are because we've dedicated our lives to exploration technology.
		So it's a partnership.
		It's a collaboration.
		And it's really exciting when you get to work with people that enjoy that collaboration.
		And I've been fortunate.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What would you, I guess you would describe that as the single most dangerous situation you've been in?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it ranks right up there, I think.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I can't imagine.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You wouldn't go back and do that again, would you?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, I've done a couple of other projects in the Arctic, and I dived in and around icebergs in Newfoundland as well.
		And there's something about, I love the ice.
		So I don't know if I'd say no.
		So going back, I know a lot more, and I might plan things a little differently.
		But what an opportunity that was.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You know, absolutely.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Once in a lifetime.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So nobody died.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Right.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now that actually was a question.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Nobody died, right?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Nobody died.
		Unfortunately, you know, cave diving is known as one of the most dangerous endeavors.
		And I certainly have lost a lot of friends over the years.
		Fortunately, never with me in the water on a project with me.
		But I've written a lot of eulogies for friends.
		It's very unforgiving.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What is the most likely thing to kill you?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Well, it turns out that it's actually probably decisions people make before they get in the water.
		But the most common thing is like the failure to keep a continuous guideline, a tactile reference all the way home to the opening.
		Yeah.
		So that it's, you know, lapses in judgment more than Anything else that kills a cave diver.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And if you, of course, if you're down deep and your mixture has changed in some unsavory manner, you start making bad decisions.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that is possible.
		That is possible.
		And then there's also, you know, the variabilities of the fact that we're doing something, we're pushing the physiological envelope of humanity.
		I mean, I've had decompression sickness myself, and, you know, we're just pushing the envelope.
		So there's always a crapshoot where that's involved.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		As painful as they say?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		I found it to be incredibly painful.
		Interestingly enough, not at the moment that I got bent, but after my first real treatment, I felt the most pain from it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		If you're down 400 feet, then how slowly do you have to come up, Jill?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, in some cases, hours.
		It depends on how long you stay down.
		The longest mission that I've been involved in was like a 22-hour mission on a project.
		So it was five hours of what we call bottom time at 300 feet.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		And then 16 and a half hours of decompression.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Holy mackerel.
		So as you're coming up, how do you regulate that?
		I take it, add buoyancy, right, somehow, and rise a certain amount, and then how do you stop?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Well, we sort of come up in 10-foot stops, basically.
		And it's all about buoyancy control.
		You know, there's usually some sort of visual or tactile reference for you.
		But yeah, you're very well trained in maintaining your depth of your stops.
		And each stop is a little bit longer and a little bit longer and a little bit longer in the shallow stops.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I would have thought shorter and shorter and shorter, but the other way around.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		No, the decompression for like a 300-foot dive that I was just describing started at 260.
		And then you had to work your way up slowly.
		But the shortest stops are the longest.
		You're the shallowest stops.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		If you had something really going wrong and you had to get to the surface really quickly.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		You can't.
		You can't.
		You have to solve your problem underwater or you'll die.
		Yeah.
		You can't skip the decompression on a dive like that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So isn't there some way that the ship above can have a decompression chamber?
		And you could...
		They come up quickly and slam them into a chamber and open the floor.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		So in some cases, but you're talking about the kind of infrastructure that's only available for a really high-end kind of project with a lot of funding.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Most of the time, we're kind of scrappy and we don't have that kind of support available to us.
unidentified		Wow.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		But even a brief delay in getting someone to a chamber, I mean, it still could cost them their life.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		So just that very act of surfacing still could kill them, even if they're immediately put into a recompression chamber.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You have done dives in other parts of the world, right?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Everywhere from underneath the Egyptian desert to Siberia, Mexico, Bahamas, Australia, all over the place.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Nice caves?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Unbelievable.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		I mean, quite beautifully decorated caves along the coast and then fascinating, you know, deeper caves inland, you know, filled with the remains of Mayan civilization.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
		Is it mostly for the fun of it?
		Or do you do it generally for money?
		I mean, you know, a project of some sort?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Well, so I have this weird kind of hybrid career.
		So anything that keeps me underwater.
		So sometimes I'm teaching people cave diving and rebreather diving.
		Sometimes I'm shooting photography or films.
		You know, sometimes I'm consulting to an equipment manufacturer or, you know, writing articles for magazines.
		So I do whatever I have to allow me to continue this.
		But I do it for the love of the sport.
		You know, I love being underwater.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I completely understand that.
		Thank you.
		I love radio.
		And in a way, after doing a show, you have to decompress, but good lord, nothing like that.
		So, Jill Heinert is my guest, and I hope you're listening.
unidentified		Thank you.
		Thank you.
		The clock strikes 12, and Midnight in the Desert is pounding packets your way on the Dark Matter Digital Network.
		To call the show, please direct your finger digits to dial 1-952-225-5278.
		That's 1-952-Call ARC.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Keep interrupting my own guy, silly, huh?
		Anxious to get back on Joe Hireth is my guest.
		We have been describing what it's like to dive underwater into caves in the Antarctic.
		If you can believe that, I didn't even know people were able to do something Like this, much less that I was about to have somebody on the air who did it.
		It's just unbelievable to me.
		It seems like it would be so inhospitable to human beings that you just couldn't do it.
		But obviously you can, sort of.
		Don't you have sort of a worry, Jill, about stuff like being buried alive?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Well, I mean, you have to take a certain amount of fear with you or you don't have any self-preservation at all.
		But I do think of myself as kind of risk-averse, like I'm a planner, a problem solver.
		So I try to do things as safely as possible for myself and my team.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So when a wall comes down blocking you, you go, okay, well, let's see.
		We're underwater.
		It's freezing.
		There's a 100-foot wall in front of us.
		What now?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		I mean, the truth of the matter is when anything goes wrong, you have to push all the emotions aside and you just have to be pragmatic and just take one small step at a time, not knowing necessarily how it's all going to work out, but knowing that you're making the best next step towards survival.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so what you're doing is so dangerous that in a way, I would imagine you kind of have to make peace in your own mind about the fact that it could cost you your life.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Well, I mean, that's a discussion I have to have with my family, too.
		I mean, it certainly terrifies, you know, my husband, but he has, you know, come to terms with the fact that he understands that what I do is my passion and that that's what makes me who I am.
		So taking these risks is a part of living fully for me.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And I guess for a lot of people who do very dangerous things, and I sort of get that.
		I don't think that I could do it, but I kind of get it.
		So you did things like following in the footsteps of Alexander the Great?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yes, yeah.
		So my colleagues and I, quite soon after the Arab Spring, took a journey across the western desert of Egypt, following in Alexander's footsteps, because I'd read in historical record that Alexander made this journey with his army to a place called the Temple of Jupiter Amun in Siwa.
		And it was there he was called by an oracle to visit this temple.
		And the oracle told him that he was the first true pharaoh of Egypt.
		And Alexander had an interest in underwater exploration.
		And it turns out that the oracle was a well.
		And Alexander actually thought that the oracle well was attached to other parts of the settlement underground.
		And that was enough for me.
		That was enough for me to want to go.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You ever heard of a place called Mel's Hole?
unidentified		Yes, yeah, I've definitely heard your interviews on Mel's Hole.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so there's this well.
		Then I presume you decided you were going to go down inside this well.
		And so you're in Egypt.
		There's a well.
		And what?
		They lower you into it or what?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Well, it was in a historic site.
		And during the time, just after the Egyptian spring, there was not really any leadership in control in Egypt.
		And so every step of the way, we were kind of negotiating here or there or everywhere else with bribes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I know how it works in Egypt.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I've been there, and I know that it's also so-called spring has now turned into the storm season.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All over there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's very dangerous.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so we knew better than to ask someone if it was going to be okay for us to go in the well.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Like we often say it's better to ask forgiveness than permission.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And or come up with a bribe up front.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		So my friend and I very quickly shimmied down this well shaft.
		Shimmied.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Shimmied?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so climb down.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Meaning like one foot on one side and one foot on the other and slowly going down or what?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, yeah, we did.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Where was the water level?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Well, it turns out that the whole bottom of the well was filled with rubble and water.
		So we couldn't dive in it.
		So I thought, oh, I'm disappointed.
		But as everybody knows, there's oases all over places like this, places where palm trees are growing beside ponds.
		And so that water has to come from somewhere.
		And we decided to go examine all of these oases and see if we could find any of Alexander's fabled connections underground.
unidentified		Right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Well, it turns out that Egypt, Libya, Chad, and Sudan sit on the oldest fossil aquifer on the planet, the largest fossil aquifer on the planet, meaning that it only rains in that part of Egypt once every 25 years or so.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		So the water in the aquifer is not being replenished.
unidentified		But it's still coming out of the world.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's 25 years.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, yeah.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		So it's still coming out of the ground in these oases springs, and it's creating an opportunity for agriculture, you know, date ponds and other things.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right, life.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and civilization always grows up around water resources.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It sure does.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		So we checked these things out, and they were often surrounded by Roman or Greek era walls to contain the water.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, pretty amazing and connected oftentimes through these large irrigation channels and sometimes underground through stone sort of pipeways to move Water from place to place.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Are you telling me this was man-made stuff?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, my God.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How deep?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		So, not very deep, actually.
		The biggest problem we ran into was the temperature of the water.
		So, Russians in the 1980s went to this area hoping to drill for oil and instead struck water.
		And the water came spewing out of the ground in geysers, basically hot water.
		And it would create these enormous lakes in the middle of the desert.
		And then the lakes would evaporate and become like hypersaline and make it impossible eventually for things to grow at all.
		But the water that was coming out of the ground turned out to be hot enough for us to make tea with.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, that's really odd.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		So I don't think we had any dives on that project that were any deeper than about 35 feet deep before it got simply too hot.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		From one to the other.
unidentified		Ice to boiling water.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Was it actually at any point boiling?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, steaming.
unidentified		Absolutely.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Coming out of the ground like a geyser.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So these were connected.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so the Romans and the Greeks that had occupied the area had made very elaborate irrigation structures like above and below ground to move water around.
		And I'd really like to go back because I still think there's so much that we can learn from that area.
		There's so many Roman Greek remains and ruins that are just sticking out of the sand in this very remote part of the desert.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you want to go back?
		Why?
		What do you think might be there that would be really cool?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, I still think that there's an opportunity for us to find some of Alexander's caves.
		I think that nobody's found the ultimate resting place of Alexander the Great.
		And, you know, perhaps it'll be there, or perhaps it'll be associated with some other oracle spring, you know, in Turkey or other parts of the world.
		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There is something called the Tunnel to Atlantis.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Ah, yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Was that?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		So that's in the Canary Islands.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		In Lenzarote.
		It's the longest submerged lava tube cave on Earth that has been so far explored by divers.
		So it's literally part of the Monte Corona volcano on Lenzarote.
		And we went there, again, to look at the unique biology within these cave systems and hoping to find something that hadn't been recorded by science before.
		And indeed did find several new species there.
unidentified		Wow.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And you think most of the new species that you find are particular cave dwellers.
		That is to say, they've got no sight ability.
		Right?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		So they live their entire life cycle in the darkness, never coming out to the light.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		No eyes, no pigment, just white.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So if we eventually find living things on other planets, they probably will have adapted to whatever conditions are present.
		Would it be your view that life is virtually everywhere under all conditions?
		I mean, you've seen most everything.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, absolutely.
		So some of the animals that are in the tunnel to Atlantis, Atlantita Cave, are this little teeny crab called Moonidopsis.
		It's the only place on Earth where we find Moonidopsis other than on the deep smoking ocean vents, those hot steaming chemical vents.
		And there's actually scientists who are astrobiologists who spend their entire life studying those types of animals that we find in caves because it seems to be the closest correlation to the type of life we could find in outer space.
unidentified		Exactly.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, those vents you talked about are thought to perhaps be under the water on some planets and moons that we know of.
unidentified		Yes.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		And actually, I participated in a project here where we created the first ever three-dimensional map of a cave system.
		And the device that we used to map that cave system has now morphed into an artificially intelligent autonomous vehicle that has a mission now with NASA to go to Jupiter's moon, Europa, and do just that.
		So go underneath the frozen ocean.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So you don't plan on volunteering for it.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		No, I mean, I'd have to drive that here on Earth as a part of its development, but there's no cave divers going on that one.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Gotcha.
		How do you all map normally?
		I mean, if you're into a cave that has never been explored, how do you map it?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		So traditionally, it's been really simple.
		We've literally run a guideline and measured everything with a standard compass and knotted guideline or with measuring tapes.
		But I've also, as I said, worked on projects where we use things like this sonar mapper developed by Bill Stone, which could measure the distance from the mapper to the walls of the cave in 32 directions, like four times a second, and bring back all that data.
unidentified		So you get a virtual picture when you're done.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		And nowadays, the technology is amazing.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		We can do 360-degree filming and create basically virtual reality environments and high-resolution three-dimensional models of artifacts that could be printed or shared digitally for scientists to look at too, with unforeseen accuracy, unbelievable accuracy.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So your job, I mean, you're mainly a diver, you're not a scientist, but you do take scientists to these places.
		So, how do they normally approach you?
		I mean, take the ice island dive, for example.
		How were you first approached by that?
		Well, before that, I mean, does somebody come and say, oh, look, we have this idea.
		What do you think of going down to this broken-off hunk of ice and diving in it?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so sometimes it works that way, where I get a call, whether it's from a scientist or whether it's from, you know, Hollywood for movie making.
		And then sometimes it's the other way around where I or my team come up with the idea and then we seek out the scientists to look at what we found.
		So in the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, when we have found, you know, cultural remains and even human remains inside the cave, we knew well enough to call the scientists in to properly document and explore that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so let's see.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're underwater in a cave finding human remains?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, absolutely.
unidentified		Really?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		In Mexico, in the Yucatan Peninsula, the caves, the sinkholes there, they call them cenotes, were the portal to the underworld of Zhibalba to the Mayans.
		And every detritus of their lives was thrown into this cenote, as well as ceremonial and sacrificial acts committed around these locations.
		And so we find all kinds of things inside these caves.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And human remains survive the chest of salt water and whatever currents may or may not be inside a cave?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Well, in many of these caves, the artifacts are actually in the best possible conservation environment they can be in because they're below a layer of water and in water that's anoxic, so there's no oxygen.
		So they're preserved and they don't decompose until we bring them out.
		So we try to leave artifacts always in place, untouched, undisturbed, until the right scientists and conservators can take charge and make a decision whether they want to bring something out.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, even running into it, a jail underwater in a dark cave with, I guess, just your light shining on it and what you find is a skeleton, that's got to be quite a moment.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, there's just one place that just sticks in my mind.
		I called it the well of time.
		And on the surface, imagine you're in this real desert environment with just these hennikin plants that they use to make sisal rope with.
		And there's some cattle roaming around, and there's a Mayan guy pumping a metal rusty pump up and down and up and down.
		And he's pulling water out of this well to fill troughs for his cattle.
		And so we go and we see him and we look in the well and we realize that this is just the doorway to a vast cave below.
		And although that surface of the well is only just a few feet across, we can look down and our voice echoes away into the darkness.
		So we rappelled down to the water level about 70 feet below.
		And it was this vast bell shaped chamber and then water below.
		And looking into the clear water, I could see that literally there was like a mountain below the opening, a mountain of stuff that had come one at a time through this hole in the ceiling.
		And at the top of the mound were rusted buckets that maybe this guy had dropped throughout his lifetime.
		And then a little bit deeper in the water column, we run into these Spanish colonial water-carrying pottery vessels.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Also dropped long ago.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, yeah.
		And then a little bit deeper, it looks like it's cracked, dry earth, like mud, except that it's underwater, but it still cracks, you know, the way it does when something dries up.
		And on that cracked earth were the skulls of like big longhorn cattle and other animals, but they seem to be ritually laid out with other pieces of pottery.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		This is just great.
		You know, I live in the desert and I drink well water.
		And maybe I'm going to switch to bottles.
		Not my idea of a great bottom to a well, but, you know, I guess it cleans up over time, eh?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Well, I mean, a little bit deeper.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		We went further down in the water column, and there were human skulls laid out on this cracked earth, staring up towards the surface.
unidentified		And then we saw, you know, the full bones of entire human skeletons.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Mm, I know what everybody wants at the bottom of their well.
		Okay, stay right there.
		Thankfully, we're at breakpoint.
		Won't be a long one, though.
unidentified		We'll be right back.
		Did you see the lights and play the girl all around you?
		Did you hear the music of Silly from the Stars?
		I've seen it before, it happened all the time.
		You're closing the door, you leave the world behind.
		You're digging for gold, you're throwing away.
		A fortunate feeling, but someday you'll pay.
		Yeah, yeah, yeah.
		This is Midnight in the Desert.
		To call the show.
		If you're East of Midnight, call 1-952.
		Call Art.
		If you're west of midnight, call 1-952-225-5278.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Joe Hunter is my guest.
		A couple of the most incredible hours that I've ever done on radio.
		No question about it.
		Listen, if you want to join the conversation, please do.
		Be my guest.
		Area code 952-225-5278.
		Or if you wish, area code 952.
		Put a one in front of it, of course, 952, call art.
		Then, beyond that, there are other ways.
		For example, Skype, you can call us on Skype by simply putting in, you know, when you hit the little add button on Skype, MITD51.
		That's in North America.
		MITD51 outside of North America, it's MITD55.
		M-I-T-D-5-5.
		And if you don't have questions, after hearing all this.
		Well, then, you haven't been listening.
		I know that this is only one show, but based on what I've heard, we could probably do many, many shows on this kind of thing.
		There's something called urban caving.
		Is that correct?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What does that mean?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Well, my colleagues and I did a series of documentaries for PBS called Water's Journey.
		And our premise was to follow the course of water through the planet no matter where it would lead us.
		And that included basically caving through the stormwater systems beneath major cities.
		Amazing experience.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, here's a question for you.
		I lived out here in the desert, Jill, Perump, Nevada.
		Do you know where that is?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, pretty much.
unidentified		Are you on top of the Oglala aquifer?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I don't know what they call it.
		It's an aquifer, that's for sure.
		You don't have to get down too far, 100 and, I don't know, 80 feet to 100 feet, and you hit water.
		And it's pretty good drinkable water, I'm told.
		Although now I have visions set up by you of what the bottom of it's like.
		I guess what I'm asking, no one here has any idea, really, of what constitutes this aquifer we're in.
		I know that there have been people who have done some diving not far away into this pupfish area.
		Have you heard about that?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, absolutely.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's scary, too.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You haven't done it, have you?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Well, no, I haven't done that particular cave, but some of my colleagues have.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I see.
		So would you ever, for example, try to get into an aquifer like the one that I envision below me and then sort of map it or figure out where the water comes from?
		Because honestly, they take guesses.
		They don't really know where the water goes.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's absolutely what we do.
		You know, 20 years ago, water managers and scientists thought we were all just a bunch of adrenaline junkies that didn't have much to contribute to the understanding of water moving through the planet.
		But now, you know, cape divers really are an important part of helping get that very real data.
		So we swim, you know, through the Earth's sponge, basically.
		And where we can't go, sometimes we'll use things like fluorescent dye and put that into places where we think we've got a conduit going in a particular direction and then search for that dye in people's wells and other water supplies to really understand where everything's flowing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Out here, people say just follow the radiation.
		All right, so here's a question for you.
		Our oceans, Jill, you know, we're hearing that the health of the oceans is not good.
		We're hearing that there are what are called dead areas out in the middle of the ocean.
		There are shockingly cold areas in parts of our ocean.
		All kinds of strange things going on and a change underway, a sort of an earth change underway.
		How do you feel about that?
		What do you know?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I mean, there's absolutely no doubt that we're going through, you know, rapid, rapid exponential changes these days.
		But, you know, even if we look back in history, we can see changes that occurred, like those Mayan skeletons that we found lying on cracked earth submerged beneath the water inside a well are evidence that Mayans were doing anything that they could, sacrificing their own people to beseech the gods to rain at a time of drought.
		But we look back in history and see these other very dramatic climate changes that happen quickly, but now it's happening fast.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is it?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Are you convinced of that?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		I have no doubt in my mind.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you think our ocean levels are rising?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
		No question.
		I think they're rising.
		I think our ocean's acidifying.
		I think that we're polluting our freshwater resources and overusing them to a point of disastrous consequences.
		It's frightening.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How do you notice these changes, Jill?
		I mean, is it storms?
		Is it just tides?
		How do you measure and know that things are changing in the ocean?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Well, where I live now in North Florida, I'm living in some of the most prolific springs caves in the world and right on top of the Florida Aquifer.
		So I'm living at the beginning of the pipeline, basically.
		And I've been here about 20 some odd years now.
		And I've seen the flow of the water that's coming out of these springs lessen.
		I've seen the quality of that water deteriorate.
		The nitrates are increasing.
		I've seen springs completely dry up and disappear and fill in.
		And all of that's the beginning of the pipe that leads down to rivers and streams and lakes and estuaries and out to the ocean.
		I mean, you can go to the Florida Keys and you can see this big bloom of green algae like spilling out towards the Gulf Stream.
		There's no doubt that everything we do on the surface of our earth is affecting not just the groundwater, but lakes and oceans as well.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Jim, I remember seeing something on TV fascinating, too, about some people who were doing cave diving in Florida about where you are trying to go from, I don't know, to, I guess, from an underwater aquifer and then trying to reach the ocean.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Now, I'm not sure whether that was probably the film that I made, Water's Journey, where we were being tracked from topside and we were underneath golf courses and bowling alleys and in the barbershop.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I saw that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I saw that.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, okay, that was me.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, good lord.
		How many, I want to be careful how I ask this.
		How many people like you are there?
		And when I say like you, I mean...
		How many people like you are there?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, it's a cave divers and ones that stay in the sport are a pretty small community.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		There's very few that do this as a full-time career, really.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I would think, yeah.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		But it's a small community.
		It's an international community, interestingly.
		So, you know, my friends are all over the world, really.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I can imagine.
		I mean, you have traveled the world, right?
		And then you have the We Are Water Project.
		And, of course, we are.
		Human beings are a high percentage of water.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		You know, I sat down a few years ago and looked at all the things that I've been involved in.
		And I keep seeing the same lessons over and over again wherever I go.
		I'm, you know, learning about climate change.
		I'm learning about how our water resources are changing.
		And I recognized that I had an opportunity really to be that kind of voice from inside the planet and could use my adventures to teach people about how they're connected with their water resources.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, one more question from me, and then I want to turn you over to the audience.
		And it's this.
		I lived on Okinawa for a lot of years, island of Okinawa.
		And beneath the Ryukyu Islands, there is a virtual civilization to be found.
		Sort of an ancient Japanese civilization, I guess, or something.
		And there have been a number of dives in that area to look for what used to be there.
		Now, how often have you been in a dive and you see that at one time, you know, what you're swimming around or diving around was once obviously above land where people lived?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, you know, that's so interesting because sea levels have been dramatically different on this planet.
		I did a project in Bermuda where our job was to do the deepest manned dives ever conducted in the region to find those signs where the sea used to lap up against the shoreline deeper down.
		And we discovered these sea level notches at 370 feet beneath the surface of the ocean.
		So 370 feet lower than it is today.
		So certainly there are unbelievable archaeological remains all over this planet that are now submerged and maybe only to be found with new technologies and satellite imagery and other cool things.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, let's take a few calls, shall we?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		On the phone, you're on the air with Jill.
unidentified		Hi, Jill.
		How are you doing?
		I was curious, since you're done in that area and you were just talking about Bermuda, have you ever dived on the Crystal Pyramids?
		What do you know about those?
		And what is your most treasured project?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Oh, wow.
		No, I haven't done anything on the Crystal Pyramids.
		But I think some of the projects where we've found remains of early inhabitants of a region are really interesting to me.
		So in the Yucatan and in Cuba and in the Bahamas, we found some of the early human remains and artifacts with those finds that were really interesting.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		He asked you your most cherished project.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, my most cherished project.
		Boy, they're all so good.
		Maybe the most cherished one will be the next one.
		But I would say the most beautiful caves in the world are on the island of Abaco in the Bahamas.
		So that'd probably be my favorite cave.
unidentified		Okay, have you ever come across a big fish?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Oh, lots of big fish.
		Yeah.
		I've come face to face with a shark in an entrance to a cave.
		I've come close to, well, leaned on alligators underwater during decompression.
unidentified		So, yeah, there's lots of life as well.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How do you lean on an outcaller?
		Thank you.
		How do you lean on an alligator during decompression?
		Because you're coming up, right?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, you know, sometimes you're just sitting still for long periods of time in dark, murky, muddy water and you're not seeing anything.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		And just sitting there on decompression, suddenly, you know, the log beside me swam away.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The log beside you.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		But I've also done quite a bit of work in the Florida Everglades.
		Pretty up close and personal with big gators as well.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, let's go to Skype, shall we?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		William, hello.
unidentified		Hey, Art.
unidentified		This is one of the more interesting guests you've had in quite a while.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yes.
unidentified		Pretty good.
		Something I think a lot of the other listeners out there might be wondering, but maybe just kind of afraid to ask, so I will.
		Do you think there is any chance that they could be the underwater bases that we hear about from time to time with the conspiracy, I guess?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, we can certainly ask Jill if she's run into any underwater bases.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		I haven't run into any underwater bases, I'm afraid.
		So I kind of doubt it.
		But I'm sure there's still a lot of things for us to find in our underwater resources on this planet.
unidentified		It was just kind of a curiosity thing, and a job like that must make it real tough to get life insurance, that's for sure.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah, there's no life insurance.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No life insurance.
		Okay, well, I've got another one for you.
		On Earth, that is for us Earth dwellers, every now and then we look up in the sky, Jill, and we see what we call a UFO, simply an unidentified flying object.
		And I wonder if you have seen ever anything underwater moving quickly that was just not identifiable.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, I had one dive in this quite remarkable sinkhole, and it's about 400 feet deep, and there was this tunnel coming in at about 110 feet deep, and it was perhaps the size, a little larger than a basketball.
		And coming out of this tunnel was this sort of translucent gelatinous orb, basically.
		And then smaller little, like golf ball to baseball size gelatinous colonies just drifting out of this tunnel.
		And I've talked with my microbiology friends, and they're like, oh, yeah, that's definitely a bacterial colony of some sort.
		And there's some pretty weird life on the microbial scale that you really have to wonder about.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You know, just going.
		I just, I don't know how you do it.
		Hello there, Frank, I believe.
unidentified		Frank, yes.
unidentified		Am I on the air?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You are.
unidentified		Oh, Art, you are, I'm so glad that you are back on the air.
		I'm one of those listeners that heard you 30 years ago or whatever.
		And I met you even one time when you were, I think you had a radio station at the Union Plaza way back.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I was at KDWN in Las Vegas, yes.
unidentified		And you had a little break, and I just got a brief minute to talk to you.
		But then every night I would just listen to you.
		I'm sure there's 100, if not thousand, just like me listening right now, trying to say, hey, welcome back again, even though you've been welcome back.
		Oh, it's very interesting about the cave and the underwater caves.
		Perup, are you back in the Nye County, sir?
		Yes, yes.
		My wife and I are thinking of moving out there.
		But one thing I did check about with the water and the aquifers, I don't know if I should say this, but it doesn't matter.
		I mean, they had, was it, 910 nuclear explosions, I think.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I know.
unidentified		Yeah.
		That's the only thing, but it hasn't caught up with anybody or nothing yet.
		And they say it's going to take a long time.
		Yes.
		Well, do you have any questions for Jill, my guest?
		Jill, I did hear one time there was a cave or an underwater cave going from California, and it went all the way to Colorado.
		It was, I'm sure, was just a might have been a story.
		But I heard that quite a few times that came over that there was actually a passageway from California all the way to Colorado.
		Have you ever heard anything?
		Is that possible?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		No, well, probably not.
		However, I mean, if we think of the way water can travel through the planet, you know, sometimes it's traveling in between grains of sand, and then sometimes it's traveling through spaces that are large enough for me to swim through.
		So, you know, springsheds and watersheds cover vast regions, you know, like that Nubian aquifer that's beneath Egypt, Libya, Chad, and Sudan, you know, four entire countries, or the Floridan aquifer underneath northern Florida, Georgia, Alabama.
		So these are, you know, vast bodies of water locked up inside the earth.
		But it doesn't necessarily mean that we can swim all the way through that.
		But the water can, materials can, and life forms can.
unidentified		Can any of these, like the ones you were talking about in Egypt, can any of those wells or anything be connected to Antarctica, possibly?
unidentified		Or do they see their way through the earth through certain ways like that?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's kind of an interesting question.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		For example, how far could you conceivably keep going down?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Well, I suppose if you were the tiniest of biological animals that we find inside the caves, they've probably made great journeys from these deep smoking ocean vents all the way into like a limestone cave in Bermuda because we have animals in limestone caves in Bermuda that are like young caves, but somehow these very ancient animals are living in these water-filled caves.
		Like, how did they get there?
		They had to have found their way through the matrix of the earth.
		So maybe I can't swim there, but other things are making that journey.
		And so I think that our entire earth is really a ball of life, but it's life forms that we may not know about or understand yet.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I have a lot of people who constantly badger me about the earth actually being not a ball at all, Jill, but flat.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Flat as a pancake.
unidentified		Yeah, I don't know if I quite buy that one.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, and to go with it, the sun is only 3,000 miles above the earth.
		But, you know, when I say they believe this, Jill, I mean with almost a religious fervor they believe this.
		So there you have it.
		Is there anything that in your dives, in your travels, confirms for you beyond any shadow of a doubt or need for a debate that the earth is indeed basically a ball?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Is there anything I see?
		Well, you know, Mammoth Cave, I've done some exploration in Mammoth Cave.
		We actually have to take into account the curvature of the Earth when we do surveys there because it's so big.
		It covers such a vast area.
		You have to accommodate that curvature in the surveys.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, there you have it, Flat Earth people.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hello, you're on the air with Jill.
unidentified		Hello.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, you are.
unidentified		Hi, I'm Lucian.
unidentified		Jill, whenever you went in the cave with the small hole, did you turn your light off to see if that small hole gave much light in that cave?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, good question.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so oftentimes when we're in what we call the cavern zone, so just in the doorway of a cave, yeah, we can certainly see the light of the entrance.
		But, you know, once you're a little ways in, it's complete blackness.
		Now, some caves have multiple entrances, so we may actually swim for great distances and then come to another entrance.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Actually, Jill, I was going to ask, and Colin, hold on just one sec.
		Do you ever find under the earth, under the ocean, that you swim into a cave and there's some kind of artificial life, not life, light in the cave?
		Does anything give off light?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Bioluminescence?
		Yeah, you mean bioluminescence?
		So, yeah, there is quite a bit of bioluminescence in the ocean, and then I've seen some in cave animals, but also in fossils.
		We can look at ancient shells that are now within caves and look at them under black light, basically, and see patterns on them that glow in the dark.
unidentified		Wow.
		Color?
		Do you, gosh, I went blank.
		Do you, well, you seem to be very whorly.
		The radiation that was given off in that plant in Japan, your colleagues, is there still a lot of radiation that's affecting fishes?
		And have you heard anything about that?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, okay, let's ask.
unidentified		It is actually a good question.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I remember that an awful lot of water was getting dumped into the ocean, Jill, from Fukushima.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I mean, that's still, to me, extremely worrying.
		I mean, traditionally, we've talked about, you know, the solution to pollution is dilution, but, you know, you can only do that so much.
		And we're proving that in our oceans today.
		We just can't keep throwing stuff in the garbage heap of the ocean and not expect to see changes.
		So, yeah, I think places like Fukushima are still a great worry.
		As well as the coal oil spill, you know?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How much of a garbage heap is the ocean?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Can you tell me?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Oh, it's terrifying.
		I mean, we have, like you said, dead zones in parts of the ocean and in port areas.
		We have the plastic garbage patch in the middle of the Pacific.
		We have a terrible problem with microplastics contaminating the ocean and being consumed by the organisms in the ocean.
		So, yeah, it's tough.
		And the oceans are the lungs of the planet, much like the rainforest.
		And if the lungs of the planet are sick, then we will be too.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you ever give talks on this?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I do, actually.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		I just did a TED talk this weekend, in fact.
unidentified		Really?
unidentified		Yeah, yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Let's go to, I think, Jasper, Texas.
		Hello.
		Go ahead, sir.
unidentified		Hey, all right.
		Hi, Jill.
		John, just wanted to ask Jill a couple of questions.
		Hey, Jill, when you're in the Antarctic, were you diving rebreather or open circuit?
		And the other question is, about how many log dives do you have altogether and about how many hours?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		So, yeah, in Antarctica, we used cislunar Mark V rebreathers.
		And that gave us, you know, the long times as well as a bit of an additional warmth for diving in that really cold water because the rebreathers themselves create a little bit of heat in the chemical reaction of the scrubbing process.
		I have about 7,000 dives.
		I honestly haven't tallied the total hours, so I'm not sure I could give you that number.
unidentified		All right.
		Hey, Art, good show.
		Good topic.
		Thanks a lot, bud.
		73.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, take care.
		73 is a ham radio term.
		Are you by chance a licensed ham?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		I'm not, but you know my brother was when I was growing up.
		So VE3ILZ.
		I even remember his number.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The reason I asked is because you said that you were in communication with a ham in New Zealand.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And so somebody in your party must have been a ham, or it doesn't matter.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You talk to whoever you can talk to.
unidentified		Yeah.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		No, somebody on the boat was handling all the communications, but it sure was a warm voice to hear every few days.
unidentified		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
		So do you imagine continuing to do this, Jill, you know, for a long time?
		Or is there a practical limit to when you ought to hang up your flippers?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Well, I certainly hope I'll be doing this for a long time yet.
		I have a dear friend in the UK who is one of the very first cave divers.
		His name's John Buxton.
		And he turned 80 a few years ago.
		And for his 80th birthday, he did a dive in a place called Wookiehole and dived up to Sump 22 in Wookiee Hole.
		Spent a weekend of cave diving.
		So if John Buxton can do it, then that's going to be my role model.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I suppose, in a sense, like being in space.
		Yeah.
		You are, if not weightless, kind of weightless in a way, right?
		And so as you get older, this hurts and that hurts, but not so much in no gravity or little gravity.
		So I guess that might make sense.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's great.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		I mean, it's definitely you escape the noise and the rush of the world and you're underwater, just, you know, surrounded in the arms of the ocean.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Such a good point.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's like another or otherworldly would be a way to put it.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Sure.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Let me quickly re-educate everybody here.
		Bad term, right?
		Here are the numbers, and we've got several, and I didn't give them all out either.
		Our public number is Area Code 952-225-5278.
		952-225-5278.
		If you would like to call our first time caller line, it is Area Code 775-285-5800.
		And I do apologize for not giving that out.
		775-285-5800.
		So, Jill, what have you got coming up next?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Well, I've got some ongoing work in Cuba that I'm pretty excited about.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		I'd like to do as much as I can there before KFC arrives.
unidentified		Right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's coming soon.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		It is coming soon.
		Yeah.
		And working also with a National Geographic Innovation fellow who's a real specialist in 3D imaging as well as 360 camera work.
		So I'm quite excited to be doing some more work with him as well.
		You know, it's amazing.
		Today, we can find an artifact in a cave and shoot pictures that can be all put together with software to create a really accurate 3D model that we can even print.
		So we could print a skull and send it to a scientist to look at.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Incredible.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
unidentified		Hold tight.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We're at a break.
		I've given you the numbers.
		Jill is here.
		Jill's an amazing woman.
		No question about that.
		Want to talk to her?
		Now's your chance.
		We'll be right back.
unidentified		This is Midnight in the Desert.
		To call the show.
		If you're East of Midnight, call 1-952.
		Call Art.
		If you're West of Midnight, call 1-952-225-5278.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Those are the numbers.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Make sure you pick the right one.
unidentified		Are you East or West of Midnight?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm Art Bell, and Jill Heinrich is my guest.
		She is a cave diver, underwater cave diver.
		Not frequently in your life will you meet anybody who has gone diving in caves inside the ice in the Antarctic.
		You just don't run into somebody like that.
		It's the most astounding thing I've ever heard.
		If you'd like to reach us on Skype, we are M-I-T-D51.
		M-I-T-D 51.
		And Jill, are you still there?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		I'm still with you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, good.
		Here we go.
		Bloomington, Illinois, I believe.
		Hello.
unidentified		Hi.
unidentified		Yes, a friend of mine got me hooked on your show.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Thank him for me, please.
unidentified		Yeah, it's a great honor to be on your show.
		I run a route every night, and honestly, it's the same route every night.
		And the only thing that makes it more interesting is the topics you seem to talk about.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
		I do understand if you're a long-haul driver, having a talk show, you can only listen to music so long, and then you start to fall asleep anyway.
		So having something that is actually a story, keeping your brain engaged, it works.
unidentified		It does.
		It does very well, especially with your show.
		I have a question for Jill.
		I heard her talk about a cave in Atlantis Cave, I believe.
		Yes.
		I'd like to kind of get into it and see what kind of findings she found in that cave.
		Because, I mean, Atlantis is something I've heard as a kid being a mythical city underwater.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I don't think she's actually confirming Atlantis, but you never know.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Well, Atlantida Cave, so it's inside the Monte Corona volcano in Lanzarote in the Canary Islands.
		And the entrance, the dry entrance to the cave is actually a big show cave.
		So people go there to walk inside the cave.
		There's a big dining area.
		There's a concert hall within the natural cave.
		And then the funny thing is, is that we actually have to walk through this ballroom area, climb over a little fence, and then we're caving down this boulder slope to get to the water where the lava tube continues and plunges beneath the surface of the ocean, beneath the floor of the ocean.
		And there's this quite remarkable thing inside this cave about a mile inside these Tunnels and they're huge, black, dark, vast tunnels that we swim through.
		But suddenly we arrive at this mountain of snow-white sand, and it's about 80 feet high from floor to ceiling, just like the bottom of an hourglass, basically.
		And this white sand has actually fallen perhaps a single grain at a time from a hole in the ceiling that's beneath the seafloor, basically.
		So one drop of sand at a time is coming through the ceiling and creating this 80-foot-high mountain like an hourglass.
		And we were pushing core samples into this to pull out sand from sand mountain and discovered numerous new species that hadn't been recorded before.
		So pretty interesting.
unidentified		It is very interesting.
		I appreciate you taking my call.
		You bet.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Take care.
		Might I know, Jill, what your husband says about all this?
		I mean, obviously, the two of you have to have a conversation every now and then about what you're about to do.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Oh, you know, often, I mean, I hit the jackpot.
		I got the best guy in the world in my life.
		But, you know, sure, Robert worries.
		It's, you know, it's a bit of a role reversal in our life where he has to be, you know, home maintaining the business while I'm off doing these dangerous, crazy things.
		And I have to promise to him that each decision I make, I think about him, you know, and I think about what's best for both of us.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, come on, let's face it.
		If you've got a wife who's going to say, okay, honey, see you soon.
		I'm off to cave dive in the Antarctic.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You know, that's kind of like, I imagine an astronaut says goodbye to his mate before, you know, getting on top of that rocket and blasting off.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I mean, it's incredibly difficult.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		I mean, he not only has to face the dangers that I have to confront underwater, but sometimes, you know, the dangers in hostile regions that I go to as well.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, sure.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's not an easy life, but that's why I say I've hit the jackpot because he really understands that this is what makes me whole, and you just can't stuff a butterfly into a jar and expect it to live.
		That's right.
		And so it's with love and respect that he tolerates and embraces and supports everything that I do.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Must be a good guy.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		He is.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		T-Neck, New Jersey, you're on the air.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi.
unidentified		Hi.
		Thanks so much, Art.
		I love you.
		Joe, the only question it keeps running in my head is why aren't you, or do you, use drones to do preliminary research into particular cave divings?
		Because you have cameras, you can check temperature, yada, yada, and it may reduce the dangers that you're confronting.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You know, awfully good question, or at least have a first look and make sure something around the corner isn't going to kill you.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, no, that's a great question.
		And we actually have tried.
		So we had a project in the Yucatan where our goal was to use these tethered small sort of robots to send them down to have a first look.
		And then if things looked interesting, then we would follow with a dive team.
		But it turns out that when something is tethered and you're trying to drive it topside with a joystick, you just don't have that same perception that the human brain does of developing that model of what's around you.
		So on that project, I spent more time actually rescuing the little drone because he gets stuck.
		You know?
		No.
unidentified		I love you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There you go.
		I kind of understand that, Color.
		You can imagine.
		You really don't have that perspective.
		So as she said, you end up rescuing the drone.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		But, you know, we're at a really interesting time in technology that artificial intelligence is going to change everything.
		So Dr. Bill Stone's work with creating autonomous, artificially intelligent, you know, swimming robots, basically, we can now send these into a cave environment.
		They can go down, map in three dimensions.
		They can chase the flow.
		They can pick up life forms.
		They can learn all about their environment and then come back as the fuel is running out.
		So the technology's coming fast.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Let me tell you something, Jill.
		And thank you, Coller.
		There are people talking about an artificial intelligence singularity, AI singularity.
		Have you heard that term?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's interesting.
		You know, at this point in time, I think a lot of people think that artificial intelligence is going to exist in your, you know, the Roomba skirting around on the floor or this robot that I just described swimming, you know, underwater.
		But I don't think that's how it's all going to pan out.
		I think that technology and humanity will eventually morph in some way.
		You know, your personal computer or your cell phone will be a part of your body.
		And so well, it's artificial intelligence.
		So, yeah, I think that we're going to co-evolve really with technology.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, that would be nice if we co-evolve.
		A lot of people, including a lot of very smart scientists and business moguls, think that what's going to happen, Jill, is that this singularity is going to result in the takeover.
		That machines, when they become AI, will realize that we are an inefficient, warlike species that is not helping the planet at all.
		And the only logical conclusion, you follow me, right?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, we might be lucky to last that long if we don't make ourselves extinct before that with the rate that we're destroying our planet.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I so hear that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Let's go to Eugene, Oregon.
unidentified		Hello.
unidentified		Hey, how's it going, Art?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's going very well, sir.
unidentified		I'm very thankful to be on your show.
		I really appreciate you being back.
		And just wanted to say thank you so much.
		And I just had a couple questions for Jill.
		One question is: the 7,000 dives.
		Now, we're not talking about like the times you jump in the deep end of the pool.
		That doesn't go on the stats, right?
		That's just...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, that's how I count my dives, sir.
unidentified		But the real question is, so in all these dives, in all these fantastic places all over the world, what's your most profound spiritual experience that you've ever had while you're diving?
		Where you felt like, oh my God, there's underwater angels around me.
		There's underwater God, whatever that means.
		And it's just, wow, what a transformative experience.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What a good question.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Really, it is a good question, Jill.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		You know, very recently, I had a dive that was just like you described.
		So I was in the Azores and on top of the volcanic seamount offshore from the island of Santa Maria.
		And we were jumping in the water with the promise to swim with these giant mobilas, these giant devil rays.
		And I got down there with my camera and this unbelievable train of 40 devil rays lined up and just came in swooping arcs before me closer and closer and closer until one by one they would hover over me until I exhaled and I think my exhaled breath would hit the bottom of this devil ray and it was like I was tickling it.
		It would kind of shiver and move along and the next one would move in.
		And that went on for like 90 minutes.
		I was just blown away with this sort of communion I was having with these animals.
		It was amazing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
unidentified		Wow, that's quite the story.
		That is amazing.
		Thank you so much for sharing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You bet.
		Take care.
		Have you broken any world records in all you've done?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, I've done a lot of firsts for women, for sure.
		You know, my dives in Waculla Springs with the USD caving team sort of took me further into deep caves than any woman had been before and, you know, pretty much in the top 10 of distances that any man had done at the time.
		But cave diving is not really competitive.
		You know, exploration is sort of, I guess, a more pure form of expression.
		And it's really the scientific objectives that are so much more important to me.
		Like, I'm not really interested in being the deepest or anything like that.
		I'd rather have these profound experiences and connect with science and understanding.
unidentified		Sure.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Just as he sort of asked, and sure enough, you had one.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I can imagine you have had many profound experiences.
unidentified		Oh, absolutely, absolutely.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Entire expeditions that were like going to another planet.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, let's go to Silverdale, Washington.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hello.
unidentified		Hello.
silverdale in washington ▲ ● ▼		I wanted to ask if you have known of the Dosh Ojos down in the Yucatan.
		They were exploring that many years ago when we were down there, and we got to cave dive it with one of the divers, and it was spectacular.
		But we didn't go in very far.
		It was my first cave dive, and it was just gorgeous.
		And we'd already been in the Senoca and were fascinated by that.
		So he said, if you're that interested and, you know, we're experienced divers, he said he'd take us through, and he did.
		It was really – And whoever could map out the largest distance and connect the two would prove that they were the longest, I think the longest cave system at that time that had ever been explored.
		But they needed to gather the other one.
		So whoever could do it first to break through would grab the other one's distance.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I was involved in that exploration of Dosohos in the mid to late 90s.
		And at the time, we were sort of the competing team with the cave next door, which was called Nahoch.
		And it was, yeah, the bigger cave always swallows up the smaller cave when they meet.
		And we were trying to connect them.
		Since that time, so much exploration has happened in that part of the Yucatan that many of the largest cave systems have all been connected, you know, literally hundreds of miles of passages.
		Yeah, so it's...
silverdale in washington ▲ ● ▼		The fellow that took us, I think his name was David, and his mother was tending the turtle sanctuary there at Ishkofel, I think.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		That would have been Buddy Quaddlebaum.
		And his mother used to do the turtle sanctuary.
		Buddy ran Hidden Worlds Dive Center down there.
unidentified		Wow.
silverdale in washington ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, yeah.
		Really interesting.
		I wanted to also ask, with the blue hole and belief, do you think that that was ever a spinote before the oceans rose?
		Or that that could have ever been a spinote?
		Or how was that formed?
unidentified		Do you think?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so that's exactly what it is.
		In fact, so a cenote, a sinkhole, a blue hole, those are actually the same geologic formation.
		So you can imagine kind of a big hourglass shape that occurs in the Earth, and that's from a ceiling that's collapsed down inward on a vast underground chamber.
		So, yeah, that's a cenote or a sinkhole as well.
silverdale in washington ▲ ● ▼		Any idea how deep that is, the blue hole?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Oh, boy, I'm trying to remember.
		I think it's like 400 plus.
		Yeah.
		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Really deep.
silverdale in washington ▲ ● ▼		Thank you so much.
		Very interesting.
		And I love hearing you.
		And thank you, Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It is interesting.
		Thank you.
		And quickly, Tacoma, Washington.
		Tacoma.
		Going once.
		Going twice.
		Gone.
		Hello there.
		You're on the air.
unidentified		Me?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You.
unidentified		Yes.
		Hello, Art.
		Hi.
		Hello from another high desert where it's freezing tonight.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Boy, it is cold out there, brother.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, real quick.
unidentified		You know Shelter Valley?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Pardon me?
unidentified		Do you know Shelter Valley in California?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm sorry, I don't.
unidentified		Okay, just Lobrego.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you have a question for my guest?
unidentified		I was going to ask...
		Somebody told me about 20, 30 years ago that there was a lava tube that connected two of the Hawaiian islands.
		It could be walked.
		Hmm.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		I don't know about that.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		There are some pretty significantly long, dry lava tubes in Hawaii, but I don't know about any that connect the islands.
unidentified		But pretty cool idea, though, I think, actually.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, Caller, thank you.
		I'm sorry we're at the end of the program.
		Jill, it has been an incredible pleasure having you on the air.
		We'll have to do another show.
		The things you have done.
		My God, woman, the things you have done.
		And you're going to keep doing them, huh?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Have you written a book yet?
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		No, I'm working on it.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		I hope to have it done by the end of the summer.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, and a photo album.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I've definitely got lots of photos on IntothePlanet.com.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yay.
		All right.
		Well, thank you for sharing with us.
		It has been truly an honor.
		Thank you, Jill.
jill heinerth ▲ ● ▼		Oh, thanks, Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good night.
unidentified		Good night in the desert.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There you go.
		That's Jill.
		What a story.
		Unbelievable stuff.
		Only when you do talk radio do you run into things like this Can you imagine being underneath what Cav from the Ross ice shelf in the Antarctic?
		Can you imagine being under there?
		Can you imagine having that hundred-foot wall of ice in front of you that you can't...
		Those little fish.
unidentified		Maybe you can climb that way.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm Mark Bell.
		Oh, wait a minute.
		Hey, in El Paso, Texas, do you want to tell everybody good night?
unidentified		Back to Texas.
unidentified		Good night to you wherever you are.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Say goodnight, world.
unidentified		Good night, world.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's the way to do it, brother.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good night to you and everybody else.
unidentified		Bye-bye.
		Bye-bye.
		Good night in the desert.
		And there's wisdom in the air.
		I've been looking for the answers.

▲