Submarine pilot Erika Bergman is a restless spirit who fearlessly explores unchartered waters and always finds wonder in the world. In celebration of her passion for adventure, National Geographic and Coors Light sent Bergman on an epic expedition and invited her to share her experiences with other explorers. In the first of four photo essays, follow Bergman as she prepares for her trip and talks about why she wants to climb high into the rainforests of Costa Rica.
Learning by Doing
I grew up around the water on farms in Florida, Hawaii, and Washington State. So, I was a water kid, and it wasn’t unusual for the places we lived to have farm equipment, such as tractors and engines. The combination of the two helped sparked my early curiosity in marine environments and in how things worked. My parents knew I liked to get my hands dirty, and they were all for it. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, having opportunities to tinker with the farm equipment was my first introduction to hands-on engineering.
My parents also gave me the freedom to explore and play on my own most of the time. I was outside all day and didn’t come back inside until dinner. By the time I was 11 or 12, I had a real sense of independence around the water, an appreciation for exploration, and a basic understanding of diesel mechanics.
If somebody’s not teaching you about something, you're going to go figure it out for yourself. Whether it was the seashore or small engines, everything was up for exploration, which is pretty cool. We also moved around, so I built this sense that home is not necessarily a place. Home is the people that come with this world. For me, home is people.
Discovering Submarines
Becoming a submarine pilot wasn’t part of my plan, because, I’m not sure I even knew that was a possibility. Honestly, my career choice came about by being in the right place at the right time.
I had never been bound by a place, but I always have been drawn to the water. That led me to study at the University of Washington [UW] because they had an amazing oceanography program. The whole time I was in college, I was working as sort of a marine mechanic on anything with an engine—tall ships, steamships, different kinds of ships—at the marinas around Seattle.
I was on my way down from the lab at UW and saw that there was a manned submersible, the submarine Antipodes, in the basement for a presentation. When I saw that little submarine—it carries five-person crew—it was like the heavens opened in the lab. I remember thinking, “That’s something to do with my life.” I’ve been a submarine pilot ever since and it is wicked amounts of fun.
Since I spend most of my time underwater as a submarine pilot, I’m used to looking up at the world through the shimmering surface of the water. Going to Costa Rica with Coors Light and having the opportunity to climb high up into the tree canopy of a tropical rainforest will completely flip that perspective. Instead of sitting on the seafloor, I’ll be sitting up in the canopy and, I hope, achieving somewhat of a meditative state looking down at one of the most diverse ecosystems in the world. I’m looking forward to seeing how the view of the world expands as I look down from above. That will be a life-changing experience for me because it opens an entirely new perspective.
Going Global Under the Sea
I’ve taken submarines all over the world. When you think about it, an estimated 99 percent of the habitable space on Earth is in the water, so working on ships and submersibles has given me the opportunity to explore so much more than most other people. It’s impossible to choose a “best” trip out of all those experiences, but Papa New Guinea is the one that comes to mind. It really is a biodiversity hotspot and it is insanely rich in natural resources—like a gold mine covered by hardwood on top of oil reserves. There is an amazing diversity of marine life, too, with corals, fish, bizarre-looking invertebrates, sea turtles, whales, dolphins, and endangered species like dugongs. It’s just really fun to dive submarines in Papua New Guinea because of the biodiversity of the ocean.
On top of that, there’s this whole human story. Papua New Guinea has a wealth of World War II-era planes and ships on the seafloor, and a lot of them are undiscovered. Being there is sort of a spiritual experience. You’re underwater looking at this wreck, and you start picturing the people who were on the ship some 70 years ago. Here you are in the same spot, and yet, now there’s just fish moving in and out of the wreck. For me, it was a reminder that as dramatic and complex we humans are as beings, life on planet Earth has been going for millions of years and will continue to go long after we are gone. I like that there is a little layer of human history across the seafloor that is there forever.
Inspiring Discovery
As amazing is this Costa Rica adventure will be for me, honestly, what I’m most excited about is sharing my story with others. That’s what makes the Coors My Next series the perfect fit for me. A major component of my undersea expeditions is connecting people above the surface to everything I am seeing, doing, and discovering underwater. My team and I regularly use internal and external cameras mounted on the submarine and hand-held cameras to give the public an up-close look at what it’s like to dive to the bottom of the sea in a submersible.
People can follow me on my expeditions and ask me questions. By making my adventures interactive in this way, I’m hoping to inspire people of all ages to get excited about science and nature, just like I did as a kid. One big passion of mine is encouraging people to become Citizen Scientists, that is, volunteers who participate and collaborate in scientific research to increase understanding of our planet. When you’re curious about the world around you, you naturally ask questions and want to learn more. Anyone can do that. You don’t have to be a research scientist or engineer. In the same way, there’s no rule saying that only professional explorers, like submarine pilots, can be adventurers. I’m excited that Coors Light wants to inspire a new generation of adventurers through the My Next series and that I get to be part of the effort.
Sharing the Journey
As a Citizen Scientist who encourages everyone to explore, I knew this would be the perfect opportunity to have someone join me on this adventure. I also knew the perfect person: my sister Arianna Barrans. Arianna and I have lived about as opposite lives as two 30-year-old women can. She is this amazing mom, is extremely emotionally intelligent, and is very knowledgeable about fashion and beauty. Then, there’s me.
Being in Costa Rica together will take both of us way outside our comfort zones. I’ll be going from the seafloor to the treetops, and she’ll be climbing trees and rappelling down waterfalls—not typical activities for someone who is a mom and professional hairstylist. My hope is that people will find inspiration in each of our journeys, that is, realize that anyone can be an adventurer. All you need is a willingness to be open to new experiences and a curiosity about the world.
Using peoples’ natural curiosity as a launch pad for adventure is part of another passion project of mine, Open Explorer, a digital field journal hosted by National Geographic and open to anyone who wants to learn more about the planet we share. As an Open Explorer editor, I help people design and share their own expeditions, whether in their own neighborhood or to some remote location. Open Explorer is building a connected community of citizen explorers who support, follow, and learn from one another. Basically, that’s what my Costa Rican adventure with Coors Light is all about, too: discovering something completely new—rain forests, cloud forests, jungles, and the top of the tree canopy—and inviting the world to tag along and learn with me.
