ANTARCTICA
Antarctic deepwater ecosystems
- Expedition initiated by Luc Jacquet
- Polar diving record for time and depth
- 75-day expedition
- Adélie Land, Antarctica
For their third Gombessa expedition in 2015, Laurent Ballesta and his team headed to Antarctica for a mission combining exploration, photography and deep diving. The Gombessa 3 expedition HQ was set up at the French scientific base Dumont d’Urville in Terre Adélie. For the first time, a team of professional divers was able to dive beneath the pack ice in this part of the world. Each of these dives was an unprecedented feat from both a human and a technical point of view. The mission provided the very first naturalistic images of Antarctica’s deep-sea ecosystems.
- The expedition focused on 3 major areas
Scientific explorations: the first-ever explorations by divers of Antarctica’s deep ecosystems, to bring back a bestiary of the biotopes visited for the base’s researchers.
Performance: The longest and deepest dives ever made in the polar regions. Up to 5 hours of immersion in water at -1.8 degrees.
Never-before-seen images: Illustrations of dozens of species never before photographed or filmed in their natural habitat. 90′ film for ARTE channel, photographic book “Adélie Terre & Mer” with Vincent Munier, ed. Kobalann, Paulsen.
