Into the Planet: Jill Heinerth on Cave Diving, Climate Change, and the Explorer’s Mindset

Video Transcript

Scott McDougall: Jill Heinerth welcome. I'm so pleased to meet you. You're not far away, you're in Carleton Place. I'm up in Chelsea, Québec. We should have met over a coffee or somewhere. But this will have to do. It's a great pleasure to meet you. Welcome.

Jill Heinerth: Oh, it's great to meet you too.

SM: As you know, my role at Adventure Canada is director of sustainability and regenerative travel. But I have a long history in diving, so I have been a follower and fan of yours. So you'll have to permit me to gush a little bit as we work our way through this.

JH: Cool, cool.

SM: I mean, we'll bounce all over the place. But tell me, in a nutshell, like your Genesis story. You're a Toronto girl, trained in visual media, but now you're an underwater explorer. How does that happen?

JH: Yeah. You know, as a kid growing up in the sixties, we all watched the Apollo missions, and that's bound to make anyone want to be an explorer. But we also had that common media experience of watching Jacques Cousteau every Sunday night and Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. Right. You know, when you only have two TV stations and the entire country is tuned into those same stations, then Monday morning you go to school and you get really excited about what you've seen. So there's no doubt that media, TV, Jacques Cousteau and others, were a huge influence on my curiosity and my desire to be an explorer.

SM: And was it that? Because you studied—I think you studied visual or graphical design or visual arts?

JH: Ya

SM: At York University?

JH: I did

SM: So was your first fascination with the visual medium kind of in order to document the natural world?

JH: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I'm still that little girl in kindergarten that loved show and tell. You know, running to school was some new thing I'd seen or something from a magazine and sharing it with my friends. But I was always a curious kid, you know, digging in holes in the backyard, collecting snakes and, just, you know, learning about the natural world firsthand.

SM: So your pursuit both of the underwater world and of kind of visual medium and technology was that at first because you just enjoyed being out there and doing those things? Did it at some point become more purpose driven?

JH: Yeah. I mean, another one of my influences early on in life was Rachel Carson, the environmentalist.

SM: Ah, Silent Spring.

JH: Yes. Yeah. And The Sea Around Us. To me, she was the living embodiment of sort of systems ecology and even, you know, what we look at as citizen science today, you know, observe and document and share kind of thing. So I always kept these sort of field naturalist kind of notebooks where I would draw and observe and that, you know, sort of fueled, a lot of my explorations underwater, too.

Yeah. Yeah. She was a huge influence.

SM: Yeah. I feel the same way. Interesting we both grew up in the same generation. I still in a lot of my work I reference Rachel Carson as kind of the founding gospel of the modern environmental movement, and it's still very timely.

JH: Absolutely. And a lot of people don't know her name. 1952, I guess she won the National Book Prize and yeah.

Yeah, enormous influence.

SM: Drew all of our attention. I think, helped us shift from what had been a more conservation-oriented mindset into, from an environmental point of view, one that was more focused on the subtle ways that we harm the world around.

JH: And interconnections. You know, I think up until that point it was like, oh, look, this is, you know, x, y, z. And they're important to, you know, conserve and that's, x, y, z. But she put it all together. It's like, oh, but if you destroy this, then this will happen. And the chain events are quite clear. And, I think that was one of the key messages that I got from her is the interconnectivity. Like, there's the charismatic megafauna, but there's the little algae that you have to protect too.

SM: And in her pointed example the DDT accumulates does exist. Maybe does very little harm in the first receiving environment. But by the time it magnifies and accumulates in raptor species it can be devastating.

JH: Yeah. And that was revolutionary thinking in our young lives. You know it's like oh wow. We're connected. Holy crap. Well that's awkward. We're going to have to do something about it, aren't we?

SM: So out of pursuit of both kind of personal bliss and compelling passion, you made your way to the Cayman Islands and were a professional dive instructor down there?

JH: Yeah. I started with a small graphic design company right near Adventure Canada's office down in Oakville. And I loved the creative process, the problem solving and the sort of pursuit of curiosity, but I quickly realized that I could not live my life indoors. I needed to be out in the field.

And so I abandoned that and said, all right, I'm going to be a creative person. I'm going to sell this business. I'm going to move to the Cayman Islands so that I can put myself in the environment that I want to be in, and then work slowly to improve my skills and abilities to better tell stories about the underwater world and its interconnections to everything.

SM: You couldn't have imagined when you were teaching in Tobermory or in the Cayman Islands, you couldn't have imagined the kinds of environments you'd been diving in since.

JH: No. You know, some of my friends reach out to me from time to time like I was premiering a movie down in Sydney, Australia, just a couple of weeks ago. And believe it or not, a couple of my high school colleagues turned up at the premiere, and I'm like, what? And they said, oh, well, you know, we've been following you, and we're kind of glad one of us got out of here and did something really interesting.

But I would never have imagined this life. And yet it was the life that I dreamed of.

SM: It's fantastic. You've come such a long way. What was the name of the movie you were premiering?

JH: So, there's a movie that's been made about my life. It's a feature documentary film called Diving Into the Darkness, and we've been on the festival circuit this year, you know, kind of ticking all of those boxes. And at some point early in 2025, we'll have a global streaming option that we'll share with all of our friends at Adventure Canada.

SM: That's remarkable. So for people in the United States and Canada, what's their best way to do that?

JH: Well, we can't announce, or we won't have a solution to offer until early in 2025. But we'll share it widely at divingintothedarkness.com.

SM: So exciting. So you now, it seems like such a contradiction in terms to me that you would be an Explorer-in-Residence. It sounds like sounds like armchair explorer. What does it actually mean to be an Explorer-in-Residence?

JH: You know, it's funny. It’s probably over ten years ago now that John Geiger, the CEO of, the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, called me up and he said, “Hey Jill, we have been talking, and we would like you to serve as our first Explorer-in-Residence. And frankly, we don't really know what that is. We just know that National Geographic has them and so we want some too.”

But I believe that National Geographic has since then actually changed the name to Explorer-at-Large, because many of us are never in residence, we’re out in the world. But it was an opportunity for me to fulfill a voluntary appointment and let them know how I wanted to use the, you know, the title.

And for me, it was all about being the woman I wish I'd met when I was ten years old. I wanted to reach more young people about exploration and science and fulfilling their curiosity and helping them to understand that they are explorers and that active exploration and using their explorer’s mindset, you know, pushes discovery and new things that are important for, you know, saving the planet and communicating with others about the existential threats that that our ecosystem faces.

SM: I really look forward to coming back in our conversation, this idea of the kind of philosophy of exploration and how we can all build it into our day-to-day lives. But a moment ago, you said one of the things you're proud of is to kind of become the woman that you wish you'd met at ten years old.

Is the woman part of that important to the way you see your role? Is this kind of breaking traditional gender norms? That seems to me to be a significant contribution.

JH: Yeah, I mean, I wish it wasn't the case. Because I don't want to just encourage young women. I certainly want to serve as a tangible, visible role model for young people everywhere. But I want to let, especially young women, know that anything is possible in this bizarre life that I've turned into a career is achievable through hard work and there should not be any barriers for gender or socioeconomic background or anything.

I mean, it doesn't matter where you come from, what colour your skin is, what gender you are, what size you are. Especially when we're underwater. Because, as you know, I mean, we're all floating neutrally buoyant in paradise together. And there's this wonderful sense of equality where the voices above the water are quietened in the underwater world, and we could do some exceptional things together.

SM: One of the things that I've always enjoyed about diving is the way it forces eye contact upon us. We must, without words, we must communicate and understand one another often. I mean, your kind of diving I imagine you have more sophisticated communications, but in mine, I must look in the person's eyes and kind of judge their emotional valence at that moment, are they comfortable or are they uncomfortable? And it's a kind of intimacy that we don't get in many circumstances.

JH: Yeah. I mean, I think that's a wonderful thing to consider, because the other thing that happens when you're looking eye to eye and you can't speak to each other, is that you are sharing in a much more visceral way the experiences underwater. And you can't talk. And so you look at each other and, I mean, there are times I moved to tears underwater for the beauty and, you know, sometimes for the harm that I've seen.

But once I've shared that space with someone, you never forget those experiences and those connections made.

SM: Yeah, it's beautifully said. You've described yourself, Jill, sometimes as diving through the blood vessels of the planet.

JH: Diving through the veins of Mother Earth.

SM: The veins of Mother Earth.

JH: That's how I like to put it. Yeah.

SM: Such a compelling image. Do you mean that very literally?

JH: Oh, in many ways. So I'm a cave diver for those that don't understand that. Which means I'm swimming through water filled passageways; tunnels inside the earth. And I look at that as the circulatory system of the planet. So as I swim through the veins of Mother Earth, it's both literal. This is the lifeblood of the planet that feeds humanity, wildlife, and even the industries that, you know, we require for our modern lifestyle.

But it's also a very spiritual undertaking for me. I really feel that visceral responsibility too that I am going to a place that nobody has ever been before. I mean, more people have walked on the moon than have been to the places that I've seen inside the planet. And I want to tell people and show people, telling stories that whatever we do on the surface of the Earth, will be eventually returned to us to drink.

And so I'm protecting the underwater world. But I can't do that without understanding the connections and protecting the topside world as well.

SM: Is there a notable example you can cite of how, while swimming through the bloodstream of the planet, you notice consequences in those literally inaccessible environments that are direct causes of harm we've done at the surface?

JH: Absolutely. I mean, if I start at the micro level, if I sample the water that's coming out of springs; water that's resided in the planet for, you know, at times decades since before it was rainfall. If we sample that, we'll find PFAs chemicals, birth control, antidepressants, all kinds of things that aren't filtered, you know, through the soils of the Earth.

But also as I swim through caves, I find very, you know, big examples of, you know, ways that people have used sinkholes as what they call “go away holes.” Like there's a hole in the ground, throw some tires in it, there's a hole in the ground, throw a battery in it. Well, you're throwing it into your drinking water.

But I've also seen the flow of springs diminish over time, because we've withdrawn too much water from the groundwater from the aquifer. So there are many, you know, small and large examples of things that I see that have changed in my lifetime. And a woman of my age shouldn't have seen so much change on the planet, whether it's the bleaching of corals or the loss of sea ice in the North. It's happening very fast and at an accelerating rate.

SM: Is that particularly true when you dive in polar environments—in Arctic and Antarctic environments? Do you notice that kind of change?

JH: There's no question that the Arctic is changing faster than anywhere on Earth in orders of magnitude. And anyone that spends time on floes, for instance—the place where the sea ice meets the open ocean—knows that each year we have to go up a little bit earlier if we want to camp on the ice because it's breaking up. And it's forming up a little bit later every season. And that is creating, you know, dramatic changes for both the culture, the people of the North, and for the wildlife.

I mean, imagine that the Inuit people look at the sea ice as the land, they call it the land, and that's because it connects them to other communities. When it's formed up in the wintertime it allows them to visit their neighbours, but it also allows them to participate in their traditional cultural practices, like hunting, bringing the next generation out onto the ice.

And if it's getting rainier and the ice is breaking up sooner and they're more likely to fall through the ice, or if the school system timing is misaligned with their opportunities to go out on the land, then that creates, a terrible crisis for their culture. Something that we in the South should appreciate and understand.

SM: It's a beautiful but also kind of terrible burden that you carry by putting yourself at the coalface of experiencing environmental change. You do it in order to share the message and I think to point people towards solutions. Where do you—I presume you find some sense of hope and optimism or you'd run out of energy? Like where do you find hope and optimism?

JH: Well, I have to remain hopeful. If I also look at the course of my career, I realized that early on, there were a lot of gatekeepers for getting messages out into the world. You had to find a commissioner to make a film. You needed a major publisher to write a book, and nowadays that's not the case. People are self-publishing.

They're just starting their own YouTube channel and sharing their messages about how they want to save the planet. So, communications and connections are more available than ever before, and that gives me hope. But also, I find that the next generation, the youngest people, although they may be suffering from some very severe, you know, climate anxiety, they're not just becoming paralyzed.

They're picking up the torch and becoming environmental advocates and activists and, spreading the message far and wide. They're not going to live as comfortable a lifestyle as you and I have. We've perhaps lived in one of the greatest and most, you know, open generations and now face a world that is contracting in some sense. But, you know, we were naive in the earliest times.

These kids are not naive. They know what they face. They're seeing the economic consequences of a completely different lifestyle. But a lot of them are willing to pick up the torch. And technology and communications are moving very, very fast, as is citizen science. And that's where I find hope.

SM: Very action oriented sense of hope you see. So we have the great pleasure of looking forward to travelling with you in 2025 on our Heart of the Arctic expedition as part of our partnership with the RCGS. How does a role like that, how does you're coming aboard our ship with 150 folks—many of whom would never been exposed to a polar environment at all—how does that contribute to your sense of personal mission or your role at RCGS?

JH: I love the opportunity of sharing my message, and when you put a ship full of people in a very, you know, intimate setting together, experiencing things they've never seen before, people's ears are open wide, their eyes are open wide. And, we can have these incredible experiences, but we can also shove a little truth in there. But what I love about the Adventure Canada model is that I'll be out in the field, you know, walking on the ice with people, sharing stories.

I'll be sitting down to dinner with a different group of people every day. It's a lovely spirit of community. You know, in the mornings we share what's coming up and what we might see, and then the evenings recap of what we've seen, what some of us might have missed and why that's important. And I think that when somebody comes along on an Adventure Canada trip, they think if they're there for the first time, they think that they're just going on a great vacation, but they come away better informed with new connections and they can't look away.

We do create an entire new community of action-oriented people that want to save the planet. It's that simple. So, it's beautiful. And I think many of the passengers have a chance to be up close and personal and have conversations that are enlightening and also difficult. I mean, I've been moved to tears, you know, learning from some of the Indigenous people that share their stories on board in such an intimate way.

But I've also been elated and my heart full with hope stories that I see as well. So it's an experience that's beyond a vacation. It's life-changing for the passengers, but also the crew and for people like me.

SM: It's very true. You’ve captured really well the thing that Adventure Canada endeavours to do, and I think does quite well: we let people tell their own stories. First of all, we let the Inuit stories be told by Inuit people themselves rather than try to interpret those stories for them. We, you know, we talk about science in ways that are both rigorous but also emotional.

Lots of folks—tell me how you feel about this—lots of folks will participate with you and they'll be like, “What a life of adventure. How do I bring that same sense of exploration back to my day-to-day?” They may not have the same appetite for risk that you do.

So what does it mean to have a philosophy of exploration and adventure in your day-to-day?

JH: I call it the explorer’s mindset. And I hope that a little bit of my explorer’s mindset rubs off on other people. If I had a nickel for every time a journalist called me “fearless,” I'd be a rich woman. But I am not fearless. You know, we're all afraid. Whether it's afraid about, you know, putting a new proposal on our boss's desk or whether we're afraid about stepping out of a Zodiac onto an ice floe.

Right. Fear is healthy. Fear means that we understand risk, that we want to come home safely from an engagement or an opportunity that we've had in life. But fear also, you know, recognizes that you are stepping into the darkness. And we all have that opportunity in our everyday lives, out in the field or even at work. And when you step into the darkness and you let your eyes adjust to this new level of light, then you are an explorer.

And by stepping into the darkness, you're engaging in discovery. Maybe something new for yourself, maybe something new for humanity. Maybe something new that you can bring back to your family and friends. But engaging in that fear safely with good risk assessment, is one of the most wonderful opportunities in life, and I think one that people have when they go out with Adventure Canada, they're doing something they've never done before.

SM: Yeah. You probably encourage the whole world of people that in their own ways are their own explorers in residence.

JH: Yeah. There's no there's no question. And when you come away from an experience like that it's exhilarating. I mean every kid is scared before they jump on a big roller coaster. But once they get on that roller coaster and their hands are in the air, they're screaming wildly and they come off like, WOW, you know. So it's a bit of a roller coaster experience, except it's through an awakening to what's going on in the natural world.

SM: The other thing that we try to do on our trips with Adventure Canada—you’ll have seen this, you certainly will see it again—is be very transparent about the reality that these kinds of expeditions are themselves resource intensive. They have, for example, a carbon burden. And we, I mean, we take great pains to offset those burdens. We take great pains to work on decarbonization to the extent that we can, but we think it's important to be transparent with our guests so that they know that we're taking it seriously and we're trying to do the right thing.

This must be true of your expeditions, too. They are inherently resource intensive, I presume. How do you handle that tension?

JH: Yeah, it's a great question because, you know, I'm just about to turn sixty and I'm looking on my life ahead thinking, you know, I may not be travelling so much in the future. And part of that is because each time I jump on an airplane, I recognize the carbon impact and try and find a way, either financially or through my personal actions, to offset that in a bigger way than I've had by flying someplace.

And yet, I think, you know, the threats are real enough that the travel may change dramatically in the future. And I think if all of us takes that responsibility, like even though Adventure Canada is offsetting some of the direct carbon impacts and creating as sustainable as possible of a cruise environment, that's one thing, but let's all each personally understand, what we've just added to the carbon on the planet. Or even in terms of resource use and try and personally ensure that that we spread what we've learned that that new knowledge and understanding doesn't just reside in us and that we also make very tangible and active, actions in our own communities through, you know, planting trees or working on environmental initiatives or, you know, finding other ways to do things. I actually, about ten years ago had a documentary film that I had made called, We Are Water. And I thought I wanted to tour the movie across Canada and, you know, share it to audiences small and wide.

And so my husband and I wrote our bicycles across Canada to do that tour. We camped and we rode 7,000 kilometres and showed that movie every day and every night to as many people as we could and tried to have as close to a zero-carbon impact movie tour.

SM: Good for you.

JH: If you have the chance to slow down and think about, you know, interesting, creative, and tangible ways that you can do something better. I mean, we still got to travel, but I think we did it in a much more responsible way.

SM: Very thoughtful approach, very thoughtful approach. Listen, we're so excited to sail with you next year. Between now and then, I mean, in 2025, folks may be able to find a streaming service that will support Diving Into the Darkness. Between now and then, do you have a couple of books that anyone could read to learn more about your life?

JH: Absolutely. My memoir, Into the Planet and my children's book, The Aquanaut, are available on Amazon worldwide and also in small bookstores that I always love to support—if you have a little bit more time order it at a bookstore if you can't find it on the shelf. But those books are both about I mean, my memoir is really it's about my life story, but it's also about that explorer’s mindset and engaging in fear and The Aquanaut, my children's book, is intended to, you know, do what I got from Jacques Cousteau to see a tangible, real-life explorer and understand that if you want to be an explorer or no matter what you want to do, as crazy as it seems, you can achieve those childhood dreams and, and do whatever you want.

SM: It's wonderful. I'm going to read the children's book. Other than my age group, what age group is The Aquanaut aimed at?

JH: The Aquanaut is really aimed for kids four to eight years old. It's a picture book. And it's so funny because I get emails from parents all the time, and they're like, “I think that I can recite your kid's book word for word now, because my kids now read it for the last 200 nights, every night before bed.”

SM: It’s the perfect literary target market from my own bedtime reading too.

JH: Yeah, absolutely.

SM: Jill, that was great fun. Thank you.

JH: Cool. Yeah. Thanks. My pleasure. Thanks so much.