Aspiring opera singer Emily Riedel and team leader Zeke Tenhoff (Discovery Channel)

By LARRY GETLEN

Imagine you’re 25 feet underwater, grazing the cold sea floor as several solid feet of ice lock you into the deep, separating you from land and sky like the metal door of a bank vault.

On the second episode of “Bering Sea Gold: Under the Ice,” a five-part series about Alaskan deep-sea gold miners that premieres on the Discovery Channel Friday at 9 p.m., viewers will see 24-year-old Emily Riedel take that dive for the first time.

“I was trying to mentally prepare myself for the fact that I could end up drowning under the ice. I tried to condition myself to not care about whether I might die,” says Riedel, an aspiring opera singer who took up gold dredging to raise money to attend a conservatory in Vienna.

“I expected it to be horrible, like being on death’s door, but it’s beautiful. It was still, the light looked incredible, and I was looking at five feet of ice above my head. I think there was a mental disconnect about what I was doing.”

The new show, filmed over six weeks this past April and May, is a spinoff of sorts of Discovery’s “Bering Sea Gold.” That show had the highest-rated premiere in the network’s history in January, as it showed teams of miners in Nome, Alaska, including Riedel and her old friend and team leader, 25-year-old Zeke Tenhoff, diving for gold during the (relatively) warmer weather.

This new series follows three teams, including several repeat participants, doing the same work under far deadlier conditions.

After cutting the ice to create a dive hole, the diver descends to the sea floor.

As he sends dirt to his team through a large vacuum hose so they can sift for gold, the diver’s wet suit has oxygen and warm water pumped in. Malfunctioning heat, which the miners on the show experience numerous times, can potentially lead to hypothermia.

“One of its symptoms is confusion,” says Tenhoff. “It’s conceivable that hypothermia could set in quickly, and the diver wouldn’t know. You have to monitor your heat closely, because if your heat dies and you ignore the problem, [hypothermia] could set in faster than you think, and you could kill yourself.”

The key to conquering the fear of death, he says, is to block the prospect out of your mind.

“We condition ourselves to ignore the fact that it’s dangerous,” he says.

“When you’re underwater, fear leads to panic, and that leads to accidents. We have some gallows humor about it; we talk about taking life-insurance policies out on each other. But for the most part, we don’t talk about the danger. We just focus on the gold.”

The current down economy has made dredging for gold a popular activity.

“The bad economy results in the price of gold being high,” says Tenhoff. “When the economy was good, the price of gold bottomed out, so there was hardly anyone doing it. Plus, now it’s hard to get a job. So there’s a boom of people up here dredging.”

Executive producer David Pritikin also cites the economy, plus the show’s wish-fulfillment factor — one diver found over a million dollars in gold during the summer season — as reasons for the shows’ appeal.

“These series are two extremes,” he says. “In the summertime, people view that show as, ‘Wow. I think I could do that.’ I think people will look at this series and go, ‘Wow. I can’t believe they’re doing that.’ But then there’s also the relatable desire and need [of the show’s participants]. Some of these guys, if they don’t find gold, they don’t eat. If somebody in the lower 48 doesn’t have a job, it’s the same struggle.”

While Riedel’s quest is unusual, her own financial dilemma, and the hardships she has suffered, are not.

When she returned to her native Alaska in 2011 to dredge (she graduated in 2010 from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts), she faced brutal conditions.

“I lived in this tiny beach shack with no water or electricity, and it was freezing cold,” she says. “I had a stove, but I couldn’t get it warm enough to heat [the place] because there was no insulation. I would work all day, and then I had to haul water so I could make dinner. It was so hard, and I was completely alone.”

Ultimately, though, it was that hardship that attracted Riedel to the endeavor, and made gold mining a passion for her almost on par with her love of opera.

“I thought, this is the most challenging thing I’ve had to do, but I never felt more alive,” she says. “I never felt such happiness in the face of such enormous adversity.”

(She currently shares an apartment with Tenhoff, whom she used to date. Both use terms like “complicated” to describe their relationship, but say that they’re currently just friends.)

Both Tenhoff and Riedel say that their love of dredging has evolved beyond financial factors, and that they’ll continue for the excitement it brings, as much as, if not more than, the prospect of riches at the bottom of the sea.

“Sometimes you encounter things that invigorate you to the extent that you can’t stay away. That’s how I feel about gold dredging,” says Riedel. “I’m addicted to the challenges. You’re in control of your destiny, your fortune and whether you live or die. And, you aren’t reporting to anyone except yourself.”

BERING SEA GOLD: UNDER THE ICE

Friday, 9 p.m., Discovery