Jill Heinerth

Into The Planet

Rebreather Pro

Jill Heinerth is an explorer. Her curiosity and photographic skills give us a tantalizing peek at a breathtaking world few will ever experience.

Best known as a pioneering technical diver, Jill combines a mastery of underwater technology with a formal Fine Arts education to produce artistic documentation of the natural environment above, below and inside our planet.

An award-winning filmmaker, Jill wrote, produced, and appeared in Water’s Journey, the PBS documentary series that takes viewers on visceral travels through the world’s greatest water systems. Hollywood directors call on her to produce difficult underwater scenes and international magazines and websites look to her to document extreme environments with high technology.

Jill is a reasonable voice in the world of conservation, and is often sought out for insightful opinions by the press. She is a recognized expert legal witness in matters involving SCUBA and Closed Circuit Rebreather technology.

Jill’s many diving accomplishments are highlighted by an Antarctic cave diving expedition inside the largest iceberg known to man, (National Geographic - Ice Island), and significant contributions to the United States Deep Caving Team’s Wakulla 2 project, using paradigm-changing technology to map an underwater cave system in three dimensions. At Wakulla, secondary to a scientific mission, Jill established a women’s diving world record.

Some of Jill’s numerous professional diving, photographic and filmmaking awards:

• Sport Diving Magazine: Named A Living Legend
• Women Diver’s Hall of Fame: Inaugural Inductee
• Explorer’s Club Film Festival: Best Documentary
• Canadian Technical Diver of the Year
• Fellow: National Speleological Society
• International HD Film Fest: Best Documentary (two time winner)

Jill Heinerth holds various SCUBA, Cave Diving, and Closed Circuit Rebreather instructor credentials. An ADOBE PHOTOSHOP expert, she also teaches Underwater Digital Photography workshops and classes.

A former Toronto ad agency owner, Jill takes on limited advertising clients, applying her distinct skill set to each application.

As Cold As It Gets: Cave Diving in Siberia in February

When you go cave diving in Siberia in February you need to learn it's not safe to get drunk and then go outside to pee by yourself at night, and that you have to freeze-proof your regulator. In that order.

Inside Antarctic Ice

Using closed-circuit rebreathers, explorers Jill Heinerth and Paul Heinerth explored the fissures of a grounded Antarctic iceberg. On the evening of their last dive the iceberg, with a shudder and a cry, shattered into shards.

Into The Lava Dome

I recently participated in an expedition to Atlantida Cave in Lanzarote. That gave me the dubious honor of having explored caves created in the coldest and hottest conditions on our planet. It was also a part of my plan to spend part of my winter in the tropics rather than the Siberian outback.