Kathy Conlan

Imagine jumping into a 6-foot-long tunnel drilled through solid ice and landing in 29-degree water, with only a rubber diving suit and facemask to keep you warm. You know the cold could crack the 55 pounds of SCUBA equipment on your back, rupturing your air tank at any minute. The only way out is the single hole above you, shining an eerie spotlight down into the water.

Kathy Conlan admits she was nearly paralyzed with fear the first time she made the plunge into Antarctic waters. Her lips went numb on impact, and she thought her SCUBA regulator had fallen out of her mouth. But she knew she was still breathing, which meant it was in place.

Clinging to her dangling dive line, Kathy found herself in one of the most amazing places on Earth. Looking up, she saw giant ice chandeliers hanging from a smooth blue ceiling. Looking down, she saw bizarre animals like fan worms, Antarctic toothfish and sponges the size of a person. She could hear seals calling in the distance. She was still on Earth, but it was an alien world that only a handful of people had ever seen.

Kathy emerging from the tunnel on her first dive

As a marine biologist with the Canadian Museum of Nature, Kathy has traveled to some of the strangest (and coldest) places on Earth, made hundreds of underwater dives, observed all kinds of odd animals, and made some important discoveries along the way, too.

Animal Attraction
Kathy grew up spending as much time as she could out in nature, and she developed a particular fascination with ocean life at a young age. On a family trip to Vancouver (on Canada's western coast), she ran from tide pool to tide pool, fascinated by the variety of plants and animals in each miniature sea.

Starfish devouring a jellyfish

By the time she got to college, her major was obvious: biology. After getting her undergraduate degree and Ph.D., she joined a team of marine biologists in California and started going on field trips to the Arctic Ocean. She mastered diving, and she got to know the bizarre world of underwater life.

Then, when a research team invited Kathy to join them at Antarctica's McMurdo Station, she found herself heading for even colder waters.

Submerged Sewage
At McMurdo station, Kathy observed the effect of pollution on native sea life. Antarctica is still one of the most pristine places on Earth, but people have been dumping their garbage there ever since explorers Scott and Shackleton arrived in 1902. Human visitors had cleaned up their act by the time Kathy arrived: McMurdo Station had started shipping its garbage to a landfill in Washington State. But it was still dumping as much as 71,000 gallons of raw sewage a day down a sewer pipe that emptied underwater.

Kathy diving under the Antarctic icecap

To make matters worse, the cold water tends to slow down natural processes, so it takes much longer for pollutant materials to degrade. Even something like a small oil spill or an old, rusting tractor can damage the environment for years and years.

Kathy and her team collected and analyzed water samples and animal life living near the pipe, and discovered that a range of animals had disease-carrying human bacteria in their system. They also saw that the animal and plant life around the sewer pipe was fairly sparse compared to the huge variety of life farther away.

Kathy shooting video on the ocean floor

Thanks to this research, McMurdo Station's administrators agreed to overhaul their sewage treatment system, cutting back dramatically on pollution in the area. Kathy went on to write "Under the Ice," a book chronicling her experiences in Antarctica and the Arctic. Today, she keeps busy continuing her research on marine life, traveling around the globe, and telling everybody she meets about the amazing beauty of the two coldest places on Earth.