By Yanshu March 20, 2020
Do you think that dropping everything and moving to a different country is quite extreme? You’re probably right, especially if you move for something you’ve only done once before. But it didn’t stop Byron Conroy from leaving his job at a cheese factory and moving to a different continent to pursue diving.
Eight years later the Brit lives in Iceland, where he works as Chief Operations Officer at one of the largest tour operators in Iceland, Arctic Adventures. He also jumps in Silfra Fissure every chance he gets. Byron’s also an underwater photographer whose pictures from a dive to a flooded ice cave on Langjokull Glacier have been published all over the world.
Totally Iceland’s Yanshu Li spoke to Byron about diving, safety, and Iceland.
When I lived in the UK, I used to keep fish in an aquarium. All sorts of fish: tropical, marine fish, it felt like a coral reef in my house. [...] I thought to myself, “one day that I need to go and see this for real.”
I flew to the Maldives and went diving. I did one dive. [...] And based on what I saw, I decided to sell everything I own, leave the UK and become a professional diver. That was when I was 28 years old and worked at a cheese factory.
Since then, in the last eight years, I’ve traveled all over the world. I’ve dived [in] the coldest seas and the warmest oceans, around shipwrecks and caves.
I came to Iceland on a one-year contract, just to dive the world’s famous Silfra Fissure.
I heard so much about Silfra, so famous, the clearest water in the world. I just wanted to come and see it for myself. [...] I was gonna stay for one year. And now this is my fifth year.
I’m an underworld photographer. When you go to dive shows around the world, all photos are the same. You see photos of a mantel, a whale shark, a shark, all the same.
But when you dive in Iceland, the opportunities are completely different. The photos you take, the creatures you see, the animals, they’re completely different from anywhere else in the world. Very unique.
For example, Strytan [...] the world’s only hydrothermal vent you can dive. It’s like a pillar, a column growing from the bottom of the ocean. It’s around 50 meters high, and the hot water is coming out of the vent. The whole thing is crazy, amazing to see.
That photo has been published all over the world!
Because of the snowmobile operation, we go to Langjökull every day, so I knew the cave was flooded. I knew the staff working there, and one of them, a very good friend of mine, is a diver. He told me the cave was flooded and we decided to go there.
The difference between normal diving and ice diving is that when you are under the ice, you want to come to the surface, you can’t. So if there’s a problem underwater, you can’t come to the surface. You need to be able to find your way out when you get stuck. It’s completely dark in the ice cave [...] so you need to lay a line.
You know adrenaline sports? People say that about diving. It’s not. It’s the complete opposite. People who like extreme diving are the calmest people on the planet. We don’t want any stress underwater.
This floating rope leads to the surface, and it’s also attached to me with the camera. Lena (the woman in the photo) can talk to the surface by pulling the rope. There’s always somebody waiting outside to make sure the hole doesn’t freeze while you’re in the water.
Everyone’s got two air tanks and two regulators, because regulators can freeze. If they freeze inside and stop working, you won’t be able to breathe. That’s why this [dive] is difficult and dangerous.
You know adrenaline sports? People say that about diving. It’s not. It’s the complete opposite. People who like extreme diving are the calmest people on the planet. We don’t want any stress underwater. [...] Adrenaline will cause panic and you will die.
When you get to the surface, when you finish it, then you say “YAY!” The end. But you don’t get crazy excited underwater, you can’t afford to.
I said, “Guys, you need to see this. This is incredible!” When we went, we didn’t know what to expect. The visibility could’ve been very bad. Nobody has ever done it before. The cave is filled with glacier meltwater and it can be really dirty.
When we went down into the ice cave, it was completely dark. The first thing I did, I took huge lights with me. I went down into the cave with a small torch to position the lights in the cave, and turned them on, and BANG! you could see the whole thing all of sudden. It’s really amazing. I did the studio lighting in an ice-cold flooded cave underwater!
When I dive, it’s all about the photos. I dive for photos. I love diving. I love to show what I saw.
I’ve been living in Iceland for four and a half years or so, and I still go to Silfra on my days off for a dive because it’s so incredible. I never get tired of it.
Good dry gloves. [...] You need to be good with your fingers. It’s very difficult to press the buttons when your hands get very cold.
The scenery is different. The creatures are different. Silfra is very famous. It has the best visibility in the world.
In underwater photography, when you are taking a photo of something small, you get very close to the subject. But Silfra is the only place in the world where you can take a landscape photo underwater.
Silfra is the only place in the world where you can take a landscape photo underwater.
You can’t come to Iceland and not dive Silfra. There are many amazing dive sites in Iceland, but you must dive Silfra.
I’ve been living in Iceland for four and a half years or so, and I still go to Silfra on my days off for a dive because it’s so incredible. I never get tired of it.
