The story behind the scene is always very intriguing. So I want to tell you about the story of “On the Edge” documentary. We had strated our training at Lazurny quarry, our friends DivExpert home site. Visibility there is great all the year around, no fish, but surrealistic underwater landscape with green pine trees staying at the bottom.

Unfortunately, we have very few photos from there; our old camera housing leaked badly and turned unreparable. Nevertheless, despite of all difficulties we succeeded to do some photoshooting and worked out strategy how to do scenes with Natalie, and found the best way to assure her safety.

Then we moved to the  “Polar Circle” dive center situated on White sea:”Polar Circle” dive center has well organized infrastructure for diving: small huts heated with stoves are mounted on sledge runners; this makes possible to quickly move a hut to any place with snowmobile. Thus, we had warm place anywhere we needed. Of cource, they did not forget about toilet which was also mounted on sledge runners. 😉

White whales are living in a part of a bay, separated from the sea with net. Belugas have strong instinct which forces them to migrate seeking for fish. That’s good for wild whales, but those who lived all their life in captivity are not able to hunt; they do not know how to do this and cannot survive without human help.

Sun partly melted an ice brick, extracted when an ice hole had been done.  A girl was stuck in it, so we had to help her.

Natalie enters the water:

Natalie in scenic dress prepares for the dive.

Ice cakes are freedivers’ favorite places for diving and playing

Discussion before Natalie’s dive with white whales:

“Hi girls! How are you?” – asks Natalie

Please, take one which you like! 🙂

videographer beneth the ice  is ready for the work:

Photos by Alexey Sapkov, Victor Lyagushkin, Bogdana Vashchenko.