Divers want to see something special. Be it big fish, colorful corals, crystal-clear water or lost shipwrecks. If you think of diving in Iceland, icebergs probably come to mind — and if you do a bit of research, you’ll inevitably stumble upon Silfra, a dive site that keeps showing up at the very top of the lists of the world’s best dive spots.
If you escape the tourist trail, though, you can find a place in the north of Iceland that is unique in the world. A dive site that lets you see what you can’t see anywhere else on this planet. An experience that makes you hold your breath, no matter how many times your dive instructor has told you never to do that…
Here, hydrothermal chimneys rise up from the seabed, venting geothermally heated water. The dive spot consists of two chimneys, a small one and a big one. The small chimney – Arnarnesstrýtur – lies a little further north and is reached after a 4-5 minute boat ride. The big chimney – Strýtan – is located slightly south of the dive base and takes about 5-10 minutes by boat.
Diving with Stefania the wolffish lady
Arnarnesstrýtur is our first stop of the day and takes us a little north of the dive base to two small chimneys. This spot is home to a rich variety of underwater life such as anemones, crabs, jellyfish and of course plenty of fish. Besides curious cod, this is above all the home of Stefania, a wolffish lady, and her housemates. The three of them have set up a shared flat for the ugly on the seabed — wolffish have a face only a mother could love! In return they are all very tame and get excited every time Erlendur sinks down along the buoy line towards the seabed. That’s because he usually has a bag full of clams with him, and Stefania and her buddies love eating clams. Today we don’t have any, so instead they get a few strokes under the chin and on the belly. The three behave like dogs and follow us every step of the way around the little mound. Several times during the almost hour-long dive, Stefania & co. will pop up out of nowhere and smile at us — and every time it’s a little shock 😉
A whole host of marine creatures has settled around the small chimneys of Arnarnesstrýtur, and life in the neighborhood around the hydrothermal mounds is obviously very agreeable. Erlendur swims around slowly, trying to collect video footage with his new camera, while I explore the area on my own. At first that’s fairly boring, because there isn’t really much to see if you don’t know where to look. Every now and then Erlendur notices me wandering about, tugs at my fin and shows me another fascinating spot on the chimneys. In some places hot water streams straight out into the surroundings and you can clearly see the thermocline and halocline. The water looks as oily as you would imagine a dive in an oversized tub of silicone oil. Behind the curtain of ice-cold salt water and boiling-hot fresh water I can only make out Erlendur’s silhouette, and even when he points his torch straight at me – normally comparable to a floodlight at night – all I see is the outline of a small circle of light.
After about 45 minutes we slowly begin the journey home. Always along the anchor line towards the boat, up to the stop at 5m. By now I’ve gotten properly cold — at some point my dive computer had settled at 1°C and refused to let go of that number for the rest of the dive. Even here at the surface the device shows just 2 or 3 degrees, and my anticipation of the surface interval keeps growing. Erlendur has a hot pool at the dive center, and there are sandwiches with cheese and ham and a bar of Ritter Sport chocolate.
During our roughly one-hour break at the dive center, Erlendur shows me the small museum on the upper floor. We have to climb over makeshift rows of mattresses, as a delegation of French art students is staying here these days. Up here you can see everything Erlendur has learned, found and created over the past years of diving the chimneys. An impressive collection of knowledge, artifacts and oddities gives you a rough idea of the passion with which the son of Bogi explores and protects this place. There are old plates from the wider area and other crockery. Old knives and boat utensils. There are broken-off corners of the chimneys as well as fish skeletons and shells. He has something to say about everything, behind every artifact lies a little story, and all of them together make up the great adventure of Erlendur Bogason and the discovery and exploration of Strýtan.
Diving the hot chimneys of Strýtan
That is also our next stop: Strýtan. Here, at the larger of the two chimneys, the true scale of these natural wonders finally sinks in. The chimney rises 55m up from the seabed, which lies 70m below the surface. We start halfway up the small mountain and slowly swim upwards while exploring the chimney meter by meter. As we set off, my dive computer shows a depth of 35m and a temperature of 1°C. This is not a dive for wimps, and it’s not a dive for daredevils either. Settings like this don’t create heroes, they expose idiots. I breathe carefully and check my dive computer regularly. Whenever a breath drags on a little longer and I then suddenly pull hard on the regulator, tiny ice crystals fly into my mouth and instantly remind me how thin the line is here between a good dive and a dramatic ascent. Freeflow is the name of the enemy that will force you to surface immediately if in doubt, and at this moment I can’t imagine anything worse than having to end this dive even one second earlier than absolutely necessary.
We ascend fairly quickly to a depth of about 30-25m and slowly begin to circle the giant rock. Up here a diver can just about hide behind the rock; only a few meters further down you could park a minibus behind it unnoticed. Strýtan is huge and massive and mean. It bubbles on every corner and spits boiling-hot water at you. Hot springs like these may have been the origin of all life on this planet. Scientists at the University of Berkeley have found that the biochemical processes here enable life without the presence of sunlight, in other words without photosynthesis.
Scientists from the University of Akureyri are helping to explore the vents of Strýtan and have found, among other things, that the water streaming out here at a temperature of more than 72°C is well over 1,000 years old. The smectite towers formed more than 10,000 years ago during the last ice age from magnesium silicates and have been growing bit by bit towards the surface ever since. Today, hundreds of life forms live along their edges, from anemones to crabs and fish to algae and microbacteria. This place is a little like the Galapagos archipelago of the underwater world, a submarine rainforest.
When we arrive at the top of the mighty cone we stop briefly and check our instruments. The air is just enough for the planned dive, and we slowly sink back down. We circle around the tip, and on every corner hot water streams towards us out of small and larger openings. While the rest of my body is well protected and cozy warm in the drysuit, the hot water springs are more than welcome for my freezing hands in their neoprene gloves. You have to give the water a little time to seep into the gloves and be very careful doing so, but then the heat source is more than pleasant.
Having reached the middle feeder line, we start our ascent and stop twice. Each time I look around to see whether whales might have joined us, but today Stefania was the big star of our dives, and a diva simply doesn’t share her fame. As we surface, lift our gear aboard the small boat and remove the line from the buoy, the clouds break open far and wide and we ride through a fjord flooded with sunlight towards the little harbour of Hjalteyri. I’m grateful for the windless day, for the good visibility down there and the sun up here. For the chance to have seen this special place, and for the prospect of getting to see more places like it.
Erlendur Bogason is the discoverer of the chimneys, the caretaker of the fjord… the guardian of the towers. His cool Icelandic demeanor keeps you guessing for a long time about how he actually feels. The greeting is friendly and reserved. The conversation starts slowly and stays that way for quite a while. All through the time before the first dive I think I have a typical hermit in front of me and quietly give up on any lively conversation. Only when we are back in the boat after the first dive and I excitedly ask what it felt like for him to see these vents for the very first time, and what it was like when he realized what he had actually discovered, do the floodgates open. He starts talking like a waterfall, and his English crumbles so much that I stop listening altogether and just interpret the sparkle in his eyes. This man is an explorer, and he lives for moments like these.
Strýtan facts
- The cones formed a good 10,000 years ago during the last great ice age
- The big cone is about 55m tall and stands on the seabed at a depth of around 70m
- The water emerging from the openings is about 72°C and more than 1,100 years old
- Strýtan is the only hydrothermal vent of this kind that can be dived by humans without machines; other vents have only been found at depths of 2,000 to 6,000m
- Hydrothermal vents like the ones at Strýtan could be the source of all life on Earth, as life can develop at them in the absence of sunlight
- The existence of the chimneys had been suspected for many years, but an expedition in the fjord produced no results, so they were removed from the official charts. Erlendur found the chimneys a few years later after a tip from a local fisherman
- Sometimes Erlendur takes a thermos flask down with him to fill it with hot water from the chimneys and conjure up hot chocolate back in the boat
No Comments Yet