After the Winter Photo Workshop I luckily had another event in Trondheim, just before Christmas time. I was invited by Andreas Møllerløkken from the Baromedicine and Environmental Physiology Research group to attend a research symposium right here in Trondheim, Norway. I had a quick look at the speaker program and I realized this was an amazing opportunity. The symposium title was ”Man in Extreme Environments: Applied Physiology from Subsea to Space” – and it attracted speakers like Michael Gernhardt, a NASA astronaut and Manager of Environmental Physiology Laboratory at Johnson Space Center, David Elliott, the Civilian Consultant in Diving Medicine to the Royal Navy and also the man behind ”the Bible” of Diving Research, and Randy Jirtle, Director of the Epigenetics and Imprinting Laboratory at Duke University. Needless to say it was going to be a mindblowing conference.

The symposium was put together in honour of Professor Alf O. Brubakk, the head of the mentioned research group, and the different sessions certainly reflected his broad field of interests. During the 2 days I heard top notch researchers telling us about advances in medical technology, physiological genomics, the relationship between altitude and temperature, environmental physiology and exercise physiology. Very fascinating stuff, and when it comes to exercise physiology you might be excited to hear that just 8 minutes a week of intensive interval training might be enough to make your mitochondria awesome. NOT joking. We also got some wise words from Gernhardt, who during hard core training for a space mission was motivated by his training supervisor by ” There is no problem YOU can´t make worse”. Which I guess is true for all of us, and should also be a motivating factor when it comes to preparation for heavy diving. We were also reminded of the record on-shore-hyperbaric-chamber-dive to 701 m by Comex diver Theo Mavrostomos in 1992, where they used a Rolex Sea-Dweller during the dive. It is breathtaking just to imagine being at that kind of pressure.

The event was concluded with a  lecture series called Explorer´s Night, a real festive night with tales from explorers like the Norwegian Børge Ousland, who was the first – and only – person to complete a solo expedition to the North Pole without re-supplying. The event also hosted Sir Chris Bonington, a famous climber, astronaut Jay Buckey and the world champion free divers Herbert Nitsch and Tanya Streeter. It is motivating beyond belief to see and hear these persons talk about their adventures, and like Børge said about crossing the South Pole; ”You just have to keep putting one foot in front of the other, because if you do, you WILL cross the pole”.