Time: 1100 hours

Month/Year: July 2024

Location: Uummannaq, West Greenland, approx.

Longitude/Latitude: 70°40’00.0”N 52°07’00.0”W

Water Temperature: 32ºF / 0ºC

A sudden sound like an exploding fire hydrant reverberates through the field of floating icebergs. Our Zodiac skids to a stop in the glassy waters sunning themselves in the stark amphitheater of steep cliffs and towering horns off of Uummannaq (“heart-shaped”) island.

After moments of scanning, I locate the dastardly disturber of this peaceful Arctic summer day: A blue whale has arrived to feast in the fjord following its summer migration from the tropics to pack on the pounds in these bountiful waters on its hungry holiday.

West Greenland is a gift that keeps on giving. Just a few rocks over is Santa’s official mailbox—if you’ve ever written Saint Nick, that’s where the wish list went. Things nautical are looking nice: The water is clear and blue, enough to make the birds above jealous. We click on our dry gloves in anxious anticipation, psyching ourselves up for the incoming ice-cream headache.

A back roll and an “OK” later, and the cold is allencompassing, clawing its way into my psyche as we descend. Thirty-six degrees at the surface… 34 at 40 feet… and at 90 feet deep, a chilling 32 degrees. The number is as psychological as it is physical. For the past month, I’ve been doing half-hour swims in my 50-degree Monterey backyard to train my brain. And just the week prior, I found my warmest innergarment resting in the attic upstairs: surrender.

As the freezing Greenlandic water swaddles me tighter, I pull the mind blanket in close and feel a warm smile pushing up on my mask: “This is so freaking cool!”

Related Reading: How to Dive Safely in Cold Water

Buddy Chris and I have left Captain Fredilyn and quickly dropped along a steep wall to explore an outcropping of anemones, bryozoans, sponges, shrimps and lyre crabs with billowing sheets of sugary Saccharina draped over the drop like kelpy curtains. The colors are extraordinary. Beyond a few slinking Arctic shanny pricklebacks hidden in the recesses flies a loose shoal of mysid shrimp—the crustacean quanta that eventually build a whale.

As we ascend, the diversity on the rocks fades, giving way to a ghostly field of kelp growing like sea weeds behind the scoured granite scraped clean by the winter’s sea ice. A horde of hungry Greenlandic sculpins sits there patiently as we pass overhead, soaking in the never-ending days after many interminable nights.

The shimmering summer sunshine takes away the cold’s final bite as we rise to our safety stop, passing crimson Aglantha Arctic jellies and pink Mertensia comb jellies as we go. A bright flash catches my eye as a brilliant flapping beastie flies by, its translucent body shining from within with each passing sunbeam. “No way, no way… Yes way!” The ethereal apparition is a sea angel, Clione limacina, a planktonic predator and sea slug that hunts fluttering sea butterflies, another kind of pelagic sea snail.

I snap, snap, snap away—videos and photos flying in quick succession. “The devil is in the details,” I remind myself about these particular angelic assassins: A hidden six-pack of mouth tentacles could stand at the ready to attack a snaily snack. I manage to snag the retreating facial fangs on one exposure. I scream into my regulator, which snaps me out of the trance. I dare to look around and realize I’m surrounded by a choir of sea angels, a vision of charismatic microfauna heaven I’d dreamt about ever since Arctic diving became a possibility.

Eventually, sadly, it’s time to go back into the light. Later that evening, with videos and photos just presented to an audience astonished at the aquatic Arctic (“Wait, that’s out there?!”), my Greenlandic colleague Lars pulls me aside excitedly. “Here we go. I got the lyrics from my wife!”

Related Reading: On a Mission to Preserve the Arctic

That warm smile returns again. The first time I was in Greenland, I learned that sea angels are the protagonists of a popular Inuit nursery rhyme, one that Lars has sung to his son for many years. “Aataaliannguaq” is Clione’s local name, meaning “grandfather.” The sea angel’s seasonal slumber and summertime stirring, awakening with the sun and mosquitoes, make for a delightfully ecological song:

Aataaliannguaq sininniarit: Sweet dreams grandfather Aasaq qiterarpat iterumaarputit: When summer nears you shall wake up Niviukkat ippernat appimmata: The flies and mosquitoes start to buzz...

The song continues, on and on, both in its rhyme and rhythm, the steady beating of aataaliannguaq’s wings fanning the flames of an incendiary desire to return to the biting cold of Inner Space and remain there, frozen in time. Now that I’ve got his address, I suppose I’ll be writing Santa a letter.