Beneath the Ice

When Neil and Cathy, a pair of Arctic researchers, lose contact with another seal, Cathy decides to dive beneath the ice to determine why their telemetry system is malfunctioning. Something gives her tether a violent tug, and Neil takes up the slack while Cathy approaches a pod of seals and notices one with an unusual corkscrew pattern of scars spiraling around its body. She thinks it might have been caused by a Greenland shark, but Neil disagrees, claiming via radio they’re too slow and blind to catch live prey. They prefer to wait for their prey to die and can live for more than four-hundred years in the ice-cold waters. It is then he realises Cathy’s tether has been completed severed. Cathy tries to go back the way she came but is soon completely disoriented beneath the vast ice sheet. She tries to relocate the pod as they could lead her to a breathing hole, and she sees what appears to be a seal with its head protruding through a hole in the ice. But it is in fact a headless seal carcass trapped beneath the surface. Cathy’s tank is almost depleted and her regulator is starting to freeze when she sees the forty-foot Greenland shark slowly circling beneath her with a pair of parasites dangling from its sightless eyes. She urges it to finish her off quickly, but Neil was right. It waits.