Spaniard Marc Casanovas began diving in 1996 and was so inspired by what he saw he immediately began underwater photography. He’s hosting our @suuntodive Instagram account this week. Follow along to see his incredible images from dives in the Mediterranean!© Marc Casanovas Tell us about yourself? My name is Marc Casanovas, I live in Vilassar de Mar, near Barcelona, and I have been an underwater photographer for 20 years. Where do you like to dive?I regard myself as a Mediterranean photographer, because 95% of my work is concentrated a few kilometres from my home. I firmly believe that a photographer’s best photos are taken near where they live.© Marc CasanovasWhat inspires you in the underwater world?The fact that it never ceases to surprise me. What gets me hooked is observing nature. You always encounter different animals in a dive, or capture a new kind of behaviour. The advantage of photography is that it is virtually infinite, even if you hardly move away from where you live. Nevertheless, I am thinking about taking a trip somewhere – we can never stop!© Marc CasanovasHow would you describe your photography style?I would say that I am a nature photographer. What I mean is that I do documentary photography, without ever losing sight of the fact that photography is based on aesthetic concepts. Is there a story you wish to tell with your images?Any photograph that tells a story at a glance, without the need for any explanation, is very likely to be a good photo. And that is what I try to do when I dive with my camera. Where to follow your adventures? People can follow me on my Flickr page, on Facebook or on my website. Follow @suuntodive on Instagram Read more 10 tips to take amazing underwater photos 7 tips to help you make outstanding underwater videos

Denmark: a dream world for diving… if you like icy cold water, underwater currents, and terrible visibility. All the more reason our #DiveWithMe photo contest winners Anna Starup and Theresa Torp are absolutely over the moon about their upcoming trip to the Philippines, where they’ll be staying at the Atmosphere Resorts, and hoping to put over a dozen dives in the logbook. For Anna, it will be her first underwater experience, while for Theresa, it’s the continuation of a passion that’s directed her life over the last few years! We chatted with the girls to find out what’s making them feel giddy about the upcoming trip. Anna (left) and Theresa (right) are already in the Philippines getting ready for their dive adventure. Real quick – give us a bio in a nutshell! Anna Starup: My name is Anna and I spend my days in Copenhagen, Denmark, where I study anthropology. I live in a big house north of the city with some good friends and take advantage of the location right by the ocean. I go winter swimming and kayaking a lot and have recently made a try at windsurfing. It gives me great quality of life, daily, having the ocean basically in my front yard. I am absolutely ecstatic that I now get the opportunity to explore the ocean through diving, which has been a dream of mine for many years! Theresa Torp: I’m a 24-year-old Occupational-therapy student, who lives in western Denmark in an apartment with my boyfriend. When I’m not studying, I work as a Social Media Manager for a travel agency, which I’m really passionate about as I love to travel, love to write and love photograhy! At the same time, it gives me a great opportunity to save money for scuba diving and explore the world whenever the school lets us off the hook. Diving + Denmark? Huh? Why is it interesting for Danish people to scuba dive? Theresa: To be honest, Denmark isn’t really the ideal place for scuba diving. It’s known for green water, bad visibility, underwater currents and icy cold temperatures. Those are some of the many reasons why we like to travel as often as possible! But that being said, there are a lot of awesome shipwrecks, and the rough conditions make a great place for practice between our travels. You get tough diving in Denmark! Theresa, tell us your SCUBA story! When I graduated from High School I decided to take a year off (pretty common in Denmark) to explore the world before continuing on to university. At my first destination, Brazil, I met the most amazing and inspiring people – a marine-biologist and a dive instructor, who was a part of a unique and really cool scuba diving community in Porto De Galinhas. I was extremely fascinated about their way of living, and even though I had already decided to do my PADI Open Water before I went overseas, I’m pretty sure that they’re the reason that scuba diving has become such a big part of who I am today. Since then I’ve lived out numerous irreplaceable adventures underwater, and at the age of 22 I extended my certification to Advanced at Key Largo in southern Florida! Anna – you don’t even dive yet! What’s in this for you? Anna: I’m the sort of type that gets restless if I stay in the same place more than six months at a time. Because of this I tend to travel quite a lot during the year, and I have also lived outside of Denmark several times. But I think this trip is going to stand out – it’s going to be a whole new adventure, both over and under the sea, and I get to share it with one of my very best friends. "Atmosphere Resorts, here we come!" Have either of you ever been to the Philippines before? Anna: No, the closest is probably Indonesia – I lived and worked there for three months a few years back. Theresa: Nope, it will be my first time exploring Asia – and I couldn’t be more excited! Anna, you don’t dive, yet – but you’ve started studying your theory already. Anna: Yep – I took an online course, PADI Open Water Touch e-learning package. It’s definitely a different way to learn! All the theory is about things and gear I have absolutely no experience with and never seen or touched before. On the other hand it has made me really eager to put all the things into practice! Theresa – will it be nice to have a new dive partner back home? Theresa: I’m sure that the cold water in Denmark will seem a bit more appealing when I can share it with Anna – who I’m sure is going to be one of the greatest and most fun dive buddies I’ve ever had! Just curious – Suunto products do you plan to have on the trip? Theresa: We’re definitely going to bring the new Suunto Zoop Novo and Suunto D4i. Can’t wait to get to use them! And to capture the trip both in and out of water we’ll be using Olympus TG Tracker action cameras. How many dives do you expect to do? Theresa: I hope to do at least 15 dives. I’ve read about fifty or so awesome dive sites around Atmosphere Resorts, and it’s going to be really hard to choose – but I trust that the Atmosphere crew is going to show us their absolute favourites! Besides scuba diving the resort is surrounded by beautiful nature, which we’ll love to explore as well. Be sure to follow #SuuntoDive on the Instagram and Facebook to enjoy the girls' adventure. READ MORE Pro diver's essential tips to newby divers How to start diving #DiveWithMe winner announced

If you dream of diving unique and undiscovered places – let’s say, under Arctic icebergs – there are very few people in the world who can tell you what it’s like. One of them is Jill Heinerth, one of the first people in the world to dive underneath an iceberg back in 2002. Here’s a few bits of wisdom about the world’s coldest, loneliest places passed on from one of the sport’s most knowledgeable individuals. It’s one of most unique experiences you can have Diving inside an iceberg in Antarctica was one of the most remarkable things I have ever seen underwater. There were no guidebooks to prepare me for those experiences. Nobody had done it before. It’s nothing like cave diving Iceberg diving is actually very different from cave diving. There are odd vertical currents and surging swells created by mixing waters and bouncing masses of ice heaved up and down on waves. Most iceberg diving is done along a face or wall of ice rather then inside a cave-like area. There are significant risks from going inside a crack or crevasse. Icebergs, especially in the north, are dived at the end of their lifespan. They are fragile. They roll, crack and move in a way than crush a diver in an instant. Wanna dive an iceberg? Head to Iceberg Alley The best place to dive icebergs would be to head to Iceberg Alley in Newfoundland, Canada and dive with operator Ocean Quest Adventures in the early summer months of June and July. They have experience guiding groups to safely dive the icebergs and when you get your fill, you can swim with whales, dive WWII shipwrecks and even dive in a flooded mine. This isn’t for dive rookies You’ll need to have proper exposure protection for the cold water and advanced diver training that includes excellent mastery of buoyancy control, comfort with shooting a DSMB, using a compass and drifting for a safety stop in open ocean. You also need to descend quickly without a reference line since the most dangerous place to be is near a face of ice on the surface of the water. And you’re going to need a helmet In case a loose piece of ice strikes your head. I have been swept through an iceberg on a rocketing current, been inside a cave when the doorway disappeared, was pinned to the sea floor by a raging flow of water and watched an entire iceberg explode into a sea of slush. Speaking of risk, it’s cold – really cold Cold water increases the risk for any dive profile. How long you can tolerate the chilling temperature? Cold water can affect your mobility and comfort if you are not well dressed. You also need to consider drysuit flooding and managing thermal profiles to avoid decompression stress and gear-related risks such as regulator free-flow. You also need to get back quick – a long float on the surface while you await a pickup isn’t an option. We’ve all made plenty of mistakes in diving. If you haven’t made mistakes, you likely aren’t diving. I’m not embarrassed to report that I have made my share. The important thing is that you plan conservatively enough to absorb the issues and come home safely. Icebergs scare me. Always. But my careful forays into the deep chill have been incredible experiences. You’ll literally be swimming through history There is no doubt that icebergs are stunning visual environments. You might be shoulder to shoulder with an ice wall formed by 10,000 years of compacted snowfall or be witnessing the fizz of earth’s atmosphere erupting from some ancient timeframe. Scientists certainly have a lot to learn about sea ice and declining ice shelves around the world and in my lifetime, it is predicted that we may have an ice-free Arctic. Is it worth the risk? I’ll leave that to adventurers and scientists to consider on their own. You can come dive icebergs with me I will be making The Journey of the Iceberg next fall. On Sept. 23, 2017 I will be departing on Adventure Canada’s boat to make a trip from Greenland, across the Davis Strait and down the Labrador Coast to Newfoundland. We have space for ten divers to come along on this amazing opportunity to dive in places never visited with SCUBA! Icebergs calve from the coast of Greenland and make this circular journey across the strait. We’ll follow their course and have incredible diving and exploration opportunities along the way.    READ MORE SIGNAL SEEKER – A SHORT STORY ABOUT BO LENANDER'S LIFELONG JOURNEY EXPLORING THE LITJÅGA CAVE  

In this second part of the Arctic cave diving series, we will explore the Litjåga cave in the Nordland region of Norway. A fierce wind blows over the open plateau. White Mountain tops in the horizon fade into the gray sky. There seem to be so many fells that I wonder if they all even have a name. The road carves a deep track into the snow. The wind is doing everything it can to fill in the track, to erase our narrow path from the landscape. This spectacular landscape belongs to the Scandes, a mountain range that originated some 400 million years ago when Greenland crashed into Scandinavia. This violent collision created a huge mountain range, higher than the current Himalayas. Called the Caledonide Mountains (Caledonide being the Latin name for Scotland), the range reached from Scotland to islands of Svalbard. We actually see the remnants of the insides of these huge mountains. Erosion has worn them down, and many ice ages have carved the valleys. Inside these fells are huge deposits of limestone, formed by the calcite-rich sea floor that was pushed up by moving land masses into the mountains. During the process, the limestone turned into layers of marble, creating favorable circumstances for caves to form. Over the years, water has carved its way through the stone, creating water filled tunnels we shall soon be exploring. As the night falls, we descend from the plateau and enter the thick forest of Arctic spruce. The familiar landscape of the Plura valley greets us. Our car slowly makes its way along the icy road, sliding at every tight turn of the narrow road. We cross the Plura River that originates in close-by Kallvatnet, a vast reservoir 564 meters above sea level. We take the road running along the valley. The last house in line is our target. It is Jordbru, the Traelnes family farm. We are staying next to the spectacular Plura cave, but this time, it’s not what we are here for. Our goal is to explore Litjåga, trying to find out the secrets of the unexplored part of the cave. In this region of Rana, just south of the Arctic Circle, there are about 200 known caves. Altogether about 2 000 caves have been listed in the whole of Norway. Most of them are unsuitable for diving, either because they are dry, too small or too remote. Compared to the tunnels of the Plura cave, Litjåga is lower and narrower, but it can still be dived with back-mounted equipment. Norwegian explorations before us have taken the line to the third sump, a total distance of about 1.4 kilometers from the entrance. That is where our lead divers Sami Paakkarinen and Kai Känkänen intend to continue further on. Day 1 The dawn is gray. Fell tops line the horizon. The wind makes its way up the valley; reminding is what it can be like when the weather gets bad. It is often much colder at this time of the year; luckily the temperature is closer to zero degrees Celsius. Although the water temperature is always the same, surface operations are much more demanding in bitter coldness, freezing the diving equipment and cameras. We assemble our gear and make the last adjustments. We shall be spending over ten hours inside the cave. It means that we need to pack food, clothes, and lights in dry tubes. The tubes need to be carefully balanced to be neutrally buoyant. Dragging tubes along the cave floor or ceiling is not an option. Finally, the cars are packed, and we are on our way. Litjåga is along Route 6, a highway from Mo I Rana to Bodø, south of the spectacular Saltfjellet-Svartisen National Park. The highway is like a downhill skating track, as the snow covering it has melted during the previous day and frozen again overnight. Snowmobiles are the means to transport the gear to the Litjåga spring during the wintertime. The snow plays its usual tricks when Sami and Veli are hauling the heavy sled over the white banks. Torsten Traelnes, the owner of the Plura farm, has kindly loaned us his snowmobile. It has been packed onto the back of his old pickup and hauled on-site, ready for action. With the snowmobile, we can transport the gear over the last half a kilometer of waist-deep snow from the highway to the cave entrance. Although the temperature is quite high considering the time of year, the winds up in the fell make the air biting cold. The Litjåga spring water levels are down, so we are met by a tranquil headpool. There is a constant flow of water supplying a serpentine creek. It takes us a couple of hours to lower scooters, cylinders and rebreathers down from the steep snowy banks of the spring. Sami inspects the tanks, rebreathers, dry tubes, scooters and cameras before the dive. We have brought plenty of cameras to document the event. Thomas Broumand is operating a buzzing quadcopter over our heads as we put on our gear. It sounds like a swarm of mosquitos, reminding us of the summertime. It takes a while to get used to the copter and not stare at it all the time. Janne is carrying the underwater camera, and everybody else is equipped with a video light. The Litjåga spring water levels are down, so we are met by a tranquil headpool. The exploration begins here.Our plan is simple. We have three diving days for the project. The first dive is dedicated to taking tanks and dry tubes through sump one and carrying them over the dry section to sump two. Litjåga is a relatively shallow cave, its depth never exceeding 22 meters. This makes things easy for us, as we don’t have to take deep range gasses into the cave. Also, the volume of bailout gas is quite small. Going deep means an exponential growth in the required open-circuit volume, not just in the number of required gas mixes. Veli Elomaa and Jenni Westerlund descend first into the crystal clear waters, disappearing into the stony well leading down and underneath the fell. Janneand Ifollow, making our way through the narrow passage at the beginning of the cave. We are only just barely able to drag ourselves through the restrictions with our JJ rebreathers. The layered stone forms sharp ledges sticking out of the ceiling and floor. As a result, Janne’s suit springs a leak, making him instantly cold. Fortunately, we are only planning to take the equipment to sump one today. Otherwise, we would have to turn around and fix the leak before continuing. We wait for Kai and Sami to follow, to get some good footage of them pressing through the narrow part. Time to go. It will be another 12 hours before we will see the headpool again. After the restrictions, the cave opens a bit. The video lights reveal a colorful cave, formed of various shapes of limestone. The maximum depth of sump one is 22 meters and the length of the sump is close to 500 meters. The low ceiling requires careful scootering, especially while dragging the meter-long dry tubes behind us. The cave soon plays another trick on us. Sami’s scooter catches on some rubble. One of the propeller blades snaps. Luckily this is the set-up dive with plenty of time and a short distance, so we simply carry on without the scooter and bring it back to the surface later for repairs. The first sump contains a few restrictions and eye-catching marble formations. The layered stone forms sharp ledges sticking out of the ceiling and floor. The maximum depth of sump one is 22 meters and the length of the sump is close to 500 meters. The low ceiling requires careful scootering, especially while dragging the meter-long dry tubes behind us.Surfacing in the dry chamber gives us an immediate idea of the coming challenges. The passage is so low that dragging the rebreather through will mean crawling along the bottom, faces in the silty water. We leave the rebreathers waiting and slip the bailout cylinders through the restriction. After some crawling we enter a 250 meter long dry section has been washed clean by the rushing waters, leaving behind a polished floor of marble and intermittent sand banks. Parts of the dry cave require crawling or kneeling down, which make the 40-kilo dry tube less friendly than in the water. The team surfacing in the first air chamber. From here begins the heavy carrying of gear to sump two, with over 250 meters of crawling and wading. Although we are taking only some dry tubes and stages through the dry section, one of the key challenges of Litjåga is apparent. While working in our dry suits, we soon start to sweat. Our thick undergarments are making things worse. When returning to the cold water, I can immediately feel the problem. Diving in four-degree water while being wet is not the most pleasant of feelings. We use heated vests to keep the upper torso warm, but it does not fully compensate the heat loss caused by the wet clothing. We surface after three hours underground. We have taken the heavy stuff in, helping us move quickly and lightly on the push dive. It is time for some rest at the farm. Day 2 The goal of our project is to extend the line laid inside the cave and to do detailed documentation of the cave. For the purpose, we are using the traditional means of measuring the laid line and directions, but also brand new technology. Sami is carrying an underwater tablet containing software for making precise measurements under water. We also have many GoPros and other cameras not just for stills and video, but also for taking footage for photogrammetry. This new technology allows us to render a computer-aided 3D model of the cave based on video footage and a few measurements. All these gadgets don’t always make things easier. We are delayed because the remote location in the Plura valley obstructs the cellular connection required to update the tablet’s measurement software, something that we had forgotten to do beforehand. Kai and Sami discuss the exploration plan at the Litjåga spring. Kai and Sami are the designated push divers. The plan is to dive quickly through sumps one and two with the whole team and carry the equipment to the beginning of sump three. Kai and Sami go first so that they will have enough recovery time before doing the push dive in sump three. We follow a few minutes later. The dive goes smoothly and everything works fine. We soon surface at the other end of the sump. The first task is to crawl through the restriction, face in the water and rebreather on your back, trying to find a big enough space to squeeze through. Everybody’s panting heavily and cursing as their elbows and knees hit the rocks. I try to shield somehow my dry suit made of Kevlar. Getting a hole in the suit at this point would mean that I had to turn back. It takes about an hour to carry the gear over the dry section and get ready for the second leg. In sump two the passage gets narrower. The buoyancy of the dry tubes seems suboptimal, causing silt to stir up from the bottom. The visibility gets low, and we stick to the line closely. After sump one, we enter a 250 meter long dry section has been washed clean by the rushing waters, leaving behind a polished floor of marble and intermittent sand banks. Parts of the dry cave require crawling or kneeling down, which make the 40-kilo dry tube less friendly than in the water.We surface and meet the lead divers in the dry section between sumps two and three as planned. They are already scouting routes for carrying the equipment to sump three. The dry section after sump one was reasonably easy regarding carrying, with plenty of headroom and a relatively flat bottom. Only in the beginning and the end of the dry cave did the ceiling force us to crawl or kneel. This second dry passage is a totally different story. Its steep walls and narrow passages force us to move slowly and carefully along through the 350 meters of the dry cave. There are two routes to choose from. The lower route means either wet feet or sweating in the drysuit. The upper route leads over treacherous leaps, with 3-4 meters to the stony floor. Carrying a single stage feels heavy, and there are many trips to be made before the gear will be ready for the push dive in sump three. The stones look solid, but they are not. Crossing one of the chasms, a layer of rock suddenly comes loose under my grip. Swaying forcefully to my side I hit the wall, watching the big flat stone hit the floor with a thundering crash. Hanging on to the rock I realize that having a broken leg this far inside would not be a good idea. Getting out through all the restrictions would be a dangerous undertaking while seriously injured. Lunch time. Some warm food to warm up the team. Eventually, we have everything carried over to sump three. It is lunch time. Veli has brought a gas burner that we heartily welcome. Hot soup and meals made from dried ingredients feel incredibly good as the moist, cold and work has started taking its physical and mental toll. Soon Sami and Kai are ready for the push dive. Standing on the narrow strip of sand, we help them kit up and wish them good luck as they disappear into the darkness. We have no idea how long we will have to wait. It all depends on how long the diveable cave continues. We return to the campsite. There is nothing to be done but wait. After some 90 minutes, we are heading back to the sump three from the camp site when we hear noises. Kai and Sami are up. It either means that they have not made it very far from the end-of-line, or they have had some problems. As it soon turns out, they have laid new line but had soon run into an impenetrable passage. In the end-of-line, the cave continues along two different routes, both impossible for rebreather divers to pass. The lower passage ends in a narrow passage, accompanied by a shifting gravel slope. Going through it would mean digging oneself headfirst into a pile of gravel at a depth of 70 meters. Being upside down in a shifting wall of sand is not very tempting option. The upper passage is so narrow that there is no way getting through it in back-mounted gear. Kai and Sami had no option but to turn the dive around. They were only able to lay 40 meters of new line, increasing the sump 3 line to a length of just over 200 meters, and to almost 1.5 kilometers in total. In a sense, the dive was a success as it was carried out as far as possible. It was an obvious disappointment that there wasn’t more cave passage to follow. Sami getting his measurement and mapping tools ready. Could the line be continued one day? Maybe with side-mounted gear and some serious tools to deal with the restriction. But as the cave was already getting so much narrower, the chances are that the diveable passage wouldn’t continue very far. Time will tell whether this really will remain the end of the line. In any case, the challenge of continuing is formidable because of the remote location and depth. There is a certain feeling of achievement. The goal has been reached. But painfully enough, we have only made it halfway and still have to make it out. Hours of hard work still await us. When Sami and Kai have rested enough, we start heading back. Kitting up in the fine sand is challenging. Sand seems to find its way everywhere, causing O-rings to leak and suit zippers to rattle disturbingly. The shallow and sandy entrance to the second dry passage means that the water is all silted out downstream, as we have struggled our way out of the water and back in again. This proves to be exactly the case. I drag the dry tube behind me, soon realizing something has gone wrong when re-packing the tube. It is vertical instead of horizontal, making the going slow in the small tunnel. I feel my way through zero visibility, feeling exhausted already. Finally, I reach the shore and climb out of the water. The balance of the dry tube needs to be fixed. As if this wasn’t challenging enough already, I realize that my suit is leaking. Even though the holes are only needle size, as I later find out, there is enough water seeping in to soak me. I’m trying to figure out the best strategy of getting over the dry passage with all the tanks and tubes. At least I don’t have to worry about sweating as I’m totally wet already. Diving out will not be fun. I’ll just have to endure it, that’s all. The first task is to move the rebreathers. Carrying them is otherwise fine, but the last restriction once again means crawling face-down in the water, squeezing between the rocks with the unit in the back. When reaching the other side of the restriction, I am breathing heavily and feeling totally out of energy. We have a brief discussion. The gear could be left behind for the next day, or it could be hauled out immediately. We decide to carry everything immediately, a decision that I soon regret. The work intervals get shorter and shorter. As your strength dwindles, it becomes harder and harder to find a good step in the streaming water, not to mention climbing over the boulders littering the passage. I keep thinking about the next day. If I can carry all this out, I do not have to return. That gives me just enough strength to get the last cylinders from the sump two. I find a dry pair of gloves in the dry tube. I know they won’t help long, but they feel heavenly until I submerge again. I immediately feel the cold water starting to make its way towards my fingers and gradually numbing them until they are almost useless. After we have carried the diving gear through the second dry chamber, Sami and Kai are ready for the push dive. Standing on the narrow strip of sand, we help them kit up and wish them good luck as they disappear into the darkness. It is time to see how far the diveable cave continues.Although there is only a half an hour dive out, it feels like hours. My hands are clumsy. My thinking is slow, and I have to concentrate on every small task. Each time a stage has to be moved it takes a lot longer than usual. I am shivering. Looking at others, it seems I’m not the only one fighting against tiredness. When we get to the final restriction before the chimney-like crack in the stone leading to the surface, we need to organize our gear for the ascent. This usually takes a minute or two, but this time, it seems it takes us fifteen minutes to get through. Everything is happening in slow motion. When we reach the narrow upwards corridor, I shiver from relief. The last obstacle has been cleared, and the cold doesn’t matter anymore. After more than 12 hours inside the cave, we surface into the night among the fells. The stars greet us, slowly blinking above us as if showing the way home. But I don’t waste any time getting out of the water. Walking along the shore, I feel the water filling my boots. Had the dive been an hour longer I would have been in serious trouble. And as if we hadn’t had enough to endure, the snowmobile decides not to care about our attempts to start it. After an hour of tweaking, the old engine bows and kicks into life. At least we have transportation back to the car. Even with all the carrying it takes a full hour before I start to feel warm again. Day 3 The following morning isn’t the most pleasant. My body is still aching from previous day’s efforts. We still need to complete the photogrammetry from the first sump, so I have no choice but to crawl out of bed. Again we assemble and load our rebreathers into the car. The temperature is still close to zero degrees, but this time, a fierce wind is making the air feel much colder. Being tired and worn out, plus having still damp undergarments add to the chill. My body feels cold, and my sleep-derived mind is slower at making decisions. I have to keep telling myself to keep focused. Entering the water, we soon discover a bigger problem. The o-ring of the camera housing isn’t in place, and the camera is flooding. So much for the photogrammetry. This is such a typical example of small mistakes that begin to pile up when you become tired and try to get too many things done at the same time. We dive anyway and take a few stills. After fetching the stages left behind the day before we were ready to call it a day – and a project. My suit is still leaking, and I happily turn around once the pictures are taken. The push dive is over, but there is still hours of carrying, diving and crawling ahead. After some 12 hours inside the cave, we finally surface.Later on, we are sitting in Torsten’s sauna and reflecting on the excitement of the project. In two days, we were able to push to the end of the line and stretch it a bit further. We were moving fast, with the minimum safe amount of equipment. We were able to help the two push divers reach the end of the line. We would not have been as tired had we allowed ourselves a day or two more for the diving. But we wanted to move fast. And I must admit that is all part of the excitement, pushing the limits enough to feel it with every cell in your body. I am so happy that I am lucky enough to have this possibility. To push on with these determined explorers, always ready to expand the limits. Underwater photos and videos: Janne Suhonen, Kai Känkänen and Sami Paakkarinen Story: Antti Apunen Surface photos and videos: Thomas Broumand Divers: Antti Apunen, Veli Elomaa, Kai Känkänen, Sami Paakkarinen, Janne Suhonen and Jenni Westerlund READ MORE SIGNAL SEEKER – A SHORT STORY ABOUT BO LENANDER'S LIFELONG JOURNEY

Sam Gyde competed in his seventh Kona Ironman this year and has won his age group three times. On Saturday he finished a solid third in his M40-44 age group. The 41-year-old Belgian says getting to Kona is all about having the right perspective. Sam Gyde had no background in endurance sports before he started triathlon when he was 27. Until then, he couldn’t even swim. He completed his first Ironman in 2007, at age 32. Since, he has competed all over the world, and won his age group at the Ironman World Championships in Kona, Hawaii three times. This year, he achieved his fastest time ever (08h42m) at the Ironman Austria-Karnten. After competing at Kona seven times, he’s well qualified to explain how to get there. He says if you have “endurance genes” it’s fully possible for busy people with families and jobs to qualify. But you have to play it smart. Image by sportograf.com Slow and steady Long distance triathlon is something you should build slowly. It’s important you build a very solid base and capitalise on that. It's really important to listen to your body, to track your data, to have a good coach who can be objective about your training. You could get to Kona in your first year of training, but I think in the long term it’s better to build slowly and progressively. It will help you to keep enjoying the sport. Strength at home The training required to qualify is intense, especially if you have to balance it with family and work. Having a balance in life and getting support from the people around you is important. You have to find mutual goals with your family; if all the sacrifices come from one side only, then it doesn’t work so well. Don’t overdo it My personal belief is many people overdo their training. You don’t need to train more than 20 hours a week. If you have a well-balanced training programme of around 15 hours a week, with some peak weeks, it’s enough. Volume is important, but don’t obsess about it. The right focus with the right intensity is much more important. Focus on the right disciplines Spend time on training whatever discipline will give the most gains. Sometimes it really pays off to focus on the things you don’t like. And some things are time consuming and offer little gains. For example, I’m a weak swimmer and it takes lots of time to go to a swimming pool. You have to ask whether investing all of that time is worth it. These are decisions to be smart about. Work with a coach It’s important to have a coach who can look at things from a distance. If you’re slacking or if something happens in life and disrupts your training, a coach will stop you from panicking, and will find a work around. If things are going really well, and you have plenty of time to train, a coach will help you to hold back to avoid going into overdrive. Go with your strengths To choose a race to qualify at, follow your strengths. If you know you’ll lose a lot of time swimming in choppy, open water, then don’t choose a race with an ocean swim. If you’re a strong biker, go for a more challenging bike race. If you cope well with the heat, then choose a race that matches. Focus on your own strengths. Image by finisherpix.com Pick the right race The number of qualifying slots of a race is proportionate to the number of starters. There are some races with a lot more slots than others. There are races with a very limited number of slots that are very competitive. In the US, qualifying is usually less competitive than Europe. And races early in the year are usually less competitive, but it means you have to train during winter. Qualifying is harder for some For some people, and some age groups, it’s very hard to qualify. It’s especially difficult for women to qualify since there are less women competing in Ironman races. Usually that means there’s only one slot available for each age group. With some male age groups there are a lot of slots. If you finish second, third or fourth, you often still qualify. Whereas, as a woman, even if you come second, you won’t. Don’t be fooled People look at the history of qualifications to find out what the times were for a race in the previous years, but a race with a slow qualification time this year might have a very fast qualification time next year. The best bet is to look at your own strengths and weaknesses and select a race accordingly. Focus on one race For ordinary working people, it’s hard to combine different races in one year with normal job and family commitments. If you find yourself in this category, the best bet is to work on your base and focus on one peak qualification race. If it works out, great, if it doesn’t, try again next year. In my first two Ironman races I failed to qualify by 30 seconds. Click here for more information about how to qualify for the Kona Ironman. Main image by finisherpix.com READ MORE Talking training with sub-8h Ironman Patrik Nilsson Patrik Nilsson – Training for the love of it

In 1979, Bo “Bosse” Lenander was hiking in the Bjurälven natural reserve. He was enjoying the northern Swedish landscape with its lush green beauty of the summer, making his way along the river running through the limestone valley. Bosse arrived at the river source. Being a curious individual, he was soon in the water, freediving to the bottom of the pool. There he found a 10-centimeters wide opening, water flowing through it. There was a cave behind. The Swedish word 'dolin' describes a formation where erosion causes the ground to collapse into a water-filled cave. The cave in Bjurälven Valley originates in the lake Bosse dived, Dolinsjön (Dolin lake), and was therefore given the name Dolinsjö cave. For many years, Bosse's discovery stayed as a footnote to the Swedish cave exploration. Attempts were made to enter the cave, but the hard flow denied access during the summer months, hurling water out at tremendous speeds up to 20 knots. Exploring the cave in winter In 2007, a group of Swedish cave divers decided to make an attempt during the low-flow winter season, even that it meant hauling gear through the deep snow and making a hole in the meter-thick ice. On the other hand, the snow would protect the fragile nature reserve from being damaged by the expedition. The idea proved right. After transporting the gear through the snow filled valleys and forests, divers managed to dig their way in and map 50 meters of the underwater passage. The cave kept going. So the divers returned every winter, to add a few meters of line and discover what's behind the next corner. Signal seeker joins Expedition Bjurälven In 2011, the expedition team invited Bosse to join. A glimmering blanket of snow covered the Bjurälven Valley when he arrived on-site. This time, he decided, there would be no freediving for him. But Bosse had another idea. As he was an active radiolocation hobbyist, he had built a device that could detect magnetic pulses from underground. These, he figured, could be used to pinpoint the exact location of the divers and features of the cave. This may all sound like an easy task until you consider that the cave is surrounded by a thick sheet of marble and layer of gravel originating from the ice age, blocking most signals from passing. Bosse's concept proved to be working and is now used by the expedition to record exact locations of the cave formations. 244 hours of diving in a week The cave was re-mapped during the 2016 expedition. A new generation of precision equipment had become available, and a new map of the cave was soon created, including a full 3-D rendering. Suunto EON Steel compasses were the tool of choice for the underwater mapping. Also, fixed points were placed inside the cave and located on the surface using radiolocation and advanced satellite positioning. In April 2016, the Expedition Bjurälven team managed to extend the mapped parts of the cave to well over 2 kilometers. They found a massive collapse after sump five, and another sump after that. Longest exploration dives to the end of the line took 7 hours to complete. Divers spent 244 hours in the cave during the expedition week. Today, 37 years since Bosse's discovery, Dolinsjö cave is one of the longest water-filled caves in Sweden. Bosse is still an active member of the expedition team, regardless of his age of 70. Well, you know what they say about rolling stones.