DeeperBlue Podcast
DeeperBlue Podcast
Alex Finden on how he found magic under a fallen log, and Bob Talbot on when it doesn't pay to push it
Welcome to Season 4 of the DeeperBlue Podcast! In episode 3 you can look forward to:
- The latest scuba diving, freediving, ocean, and diving travel news that has happened in the last week from around the world underwater with host Stephan Whelan and producer Jason Elias.
- Then Stephan speaks with the Co-Founder/Head of Content at Mammalz and Underwater Cinematographer Alex Finden. Alex tells us about the nature live-streaming platform Mammalz, and how he found magic under a fallen log.
- We then hear a top tip from the internationally renowned marine photographer, award-winning filmmaker, and dedicated environmentalist Bob Talbot.
- And then finally we hear a listener-submitted Best Dive Ever from Mario Elias on flying through the blue like superman.
If you’d like to be notified when new shows air, please subscribe to the show in your favorite podcast app or head to deeperblue.com/podcast to signup for the newsletter.
Season 4 of the DeeperBlue Podcast is brought to you by Suunto. Finnish engineering pioneering adventure from mountain top to ocean floor since 1936.
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Stephan Whelan:
Season four of the DeeperBlue podcast is brought to you by Suunto, Finnish engineering pioneering adventure from mountaintop to ocean floor since 1936. Suunto.
Linden Wolbert:
Welcome to the DeeperBlue podcast, your weekly guide to everything that is happening around the world, underwater. My name is Linden Wolbert, and I'm a professional mermaid and cohost of the DeeperBlue podcast, the podcast for deeperblue.com, the world's most popular diving website. Every week, the DeeperBlue podcast covers everything that is happening in the scuba, free diving, dive travel, and ocean advocacy world. So join us, as we explore, the Deeper Blue.
Jason Elias:
Well, welcome back to the DeeperBlue podcast. I'm Jason Elias.
Stephan Whelan:
I'm Stephan Whelan.
Jason Elias:
The great pumba of-
Stephan Whelan:
The pumba.
Jason Elias:
DeeperBlue.
Stephan Whelan:
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Jason Elias:
Welcome back, Stephan.
Stephan Whelan:
Jason, good to see you again, buddy. Another week, another podcast episode, and we're going to get through the boring news so we can get to, well it's becoming a bit of a regular feature, I think, on this, which is the crazy mansions that have diving facilities that you want to own.
Jason Elias:
Jason's Crazy Dive Mansions.
Stephan Whelan:
Exactly.
Jason Elias:
So we're going to get -he snooze-fest news and then we're going to.
Stephan Whelan:
Exactly. Who cares about all this interesting stuff going on in the world?
Jason Elias:
Environment? Who cares?
Stephan Whelan:
Yeah, exactly.
Jason Elias:
All right. Actually, we're going to start it off this week with something incredible. Some great, great news from Australia.
Stephan Whelan:
The Great Barrier Reef, which I think pretty much everyone has heard of.
Jason Elias:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Stephan Whelan:
And it's been suffering quite a lot from coral bleaching, which they're dying out, huge, huge problem, big concern, and about two third of the reef in Australia, the Great Barrier Reef has been bleached. However, last week, scientists recorded a massive spawning, which is sperm and eggs coming off the reef, an event that typically lasts two or three days, and this is a huge thing about the health of the reef. So we're going to see the reef starting to feel more alive. Basically, it's a big sex orgy, as far as I can tell.
Jason Elias:
Right, exactly, which is, of course, the reason we included the story. It is great, great news. I've been fortunate to dive the Great Barrier Reef, and it was the first time I had ever really been confronted with coral bleaching, and it was impacting to see that. The idea of the coral reef spawning on the Great Barrier Reef has been all over the news, and by the way, if you see the pictures of the coral reef spawning, it is absolutely amazing. It looks like an upside down snowstorm, at night, of all different colors.
Stephan Whelan:
Now, some other good news, around COP26, the Environmental Conference that happened recently. Columbia, Costa Rica, Ecuador and Panama have announced new protection for an ocean highway, a new marine protected area, called the Eastern Tropical Pacific Marine Corridor. Boy, these things are, you'd love to be the public committee that names these things, right?
Jason Elias:
There is a goal of protecting at least 30% of the planet by 2030, so it's called 30 by 30, and right now we're at 7% of the ocean is being protected, so this is actually a great step in that direction. It is one of the most bio-diverse areas in the ocean world, and it's fantastic because not only does it include the marine life, but it also includes the mangrove forests along the coast, which is fantastic. But it's just really great to see that something has come out of COP26. When COP26 happened, there was a lot of criticism saying that no real agreements had been reached, but then we're starting to see things roll out. I have to say, it's also very nice to see that the large players in the environmental world states, Russia, China, even UK.
Stephan Whelan:
Even the UK. [crosstalk 00:03:49].
Jason Elias:
Even the UK, I mean, it's kind of a big country, but, that's with an asterisk, but it's nice to see countries that this impacts even more so because they are smaller economies making those steps, and it really can be inspiring to the larger players to actually say, "If they can do it, maybe we can do something as well."
Stephan Whelan:
Well talking about more good news, ocean good news, and also talking about committees and associations that have interesting names that they spend a lot of time trying to figure out, the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas-
Jason Elias:
ICCAT.
Stephan Whelan:
ICCAT.
Jason Elias:
It sounds like a gif, or gis?
Stephan Whelan:
A gif? Well, that's for a whole different podcast. They've adopted a ban on the catching of North Atlantic short fin mako sharks. Amazing, sharks get caught, we kill between 100 to 180 million sharks a year, so any ban that helps prevent these sharks being caught is amazing.
Jason Elias:
And that takes us to our next story, which is about making changes. Now, I live here in beautiful sunny California. We have a crabbing season here, and the crabbing season has been delayed, once again, due to protecting humpback whales. Now the reason that this has happened is because the crabbers use long lines to hold their traps because the traps go down to the bottom of the ocean. And what has been the issue is that humpback whales migrating north and south along the coast have gotten snared in these lines, and there have been injuries and deaths. Now the crabbing season typically is an eight month season, and now it's only three months, which puts a definite impact on the fishermen. So there's an awareness that this is something that is not just good news, it's multi-layered news, as anything around the environment is.
Stephan Whelan:
Yeah, the crabbing industry is an $88 million industry, this isn't a small industry by any means, and that's an impact of people's livelihoods. You're right, we need to make sure we have a rounded view of all this and take everything into account.
Jason Elias:
All right. Let's take this to news around the diving world.
Stephan Whelan:
Some good news around travel. Obviously we've heard the news this week that there's a new variant, Optimist Prime, is that the thing?
Jason Elias:
That is close to it.
Stephan Whelan:
However, the Cayman Islands say they have a plan to reopen for foreign visitors soon. They accept that there's a bit of a risk around doing this, in reopening, but they have very high vaccination rates, so getting seriously ill is less of an issue, with 81% resident population having received at least one dose of the vaccine. So they are looking at reopening to foreign visitors, which is fantastic, Cayman Islands, beautiful destination to go diving.
Jason Elias:
Right. And I think one of the things is, we're recording this at a time where Omicron has come onto the radar just last week, and so there's still a lot of unknowing about what the efficacy of vaccines is against it, how-
Stephan Whelan:
How transmissible? Or?
Jason Elias:
Transmissible, yeah, is that the right way to say it? How transmissible? [inaudible 00:06:37] We've been in this for two years and I don't know.
Stephan Whelan:
Let's just say it is. Let's just agree.
Jason Elias:
How transmissible it is, and how efficacious the vaccines are against it. So, particularly when we do it, when we're talking about international travel, it is super important that you check before you go. This is changing day by day, so even when we're recording this, Cayman saying that they're going to be opening to tourists, I think they had a date somewhere in like December 1st is what they were saying, something like that, or December 10th, that may change two days from now. So it's really super important to, one, check where you're going, but two, also check with the dive operators that you're booking with, what their contingency plans in case something arises like that, so just super important to remember. But, it is nice we're all straggling back to getting to some level of normalcy, whether that's possible right now or not we don't know, but we wanted to bring up the fact that Cayman Islands is trying to open up again as a sign of spring buds happening again.
Stephan Whelan:
Now talking about events and travel, our friends who actually run the Scuba Dive magazine, Mark and Ross, who Jason and I have hung out with on a regular basis, out at various trade shows when we, again, were allowed to be in person. They actually run a major show here in the UK, which I've been to many times, really forward looking, very interesting new show, lots of big names speaking at the event, big TV personalities, free diving is a big thing at the event. What they've done is they've actually merged with the other big consumer show in the UK, creatively called The Dive Show.
Jason Elias:
I'd love to hear what the marketing tinky over that [crosstalk 00:08:05]. We took your idea about a dive show, we've got this, how about we call it The Dive Show?
Stephan Whelan:
And here's a bill for a hundred thousand dollars through things. So, I mean, this is really exciting. The UK doesn't really have, it's a big market, but I don't think it's big enough to have multiple shows. We're not the US, we don't have-
Jason Elias:
Oh, so what I was saying earlier in terms of the large players in the world, United States, China, Russia, the UK.
Stephan Whelan:
That's okay. We can [crosstalk 00:08:30].
Jason Elias:
I wish you could all see him staring at me.
Stephan Whelan:
We can take this off line, Jason. It's about time for annual review, performance review time, I think, in DeeperBlue towers [crosstalk 00:08:44].
Jason Elias:
My managers [crosstalk 00:08:44].
Stephan Whelan:
So they've got a massive combined event now happening in the UK, March 4th to 6th, next year. I'm super excited about it. They've got some absolutely fantastic people like Steve Backshall, who does a program called Deadly 60, which if anyone's got kids who watch Discovery and Nat G and those things, it's a big kids program on there which is fantastic. That's really good, congratulations to the guys and girls that go diving.
Jason Elias:
Yep. Good on them.
Stephan Whelan:
So I've got another one, actually, this one, can I do this one, Jason? Will you allow me to do this one?
Jason Elias:
I think this is right in your wheelhouse.
Stephan Whelan:
Hold on, let me take a sip of my wine, which will become relevant in a minute. I've been chatting to a company, it's actually an Australian based wine company called The Hidden Sea, and I'd actually seen this across a few Instagram influencers where they've been talking about this company that's pledged that for every bottle of wine that they purchase, they will remove the equivalent of 10 single use plastic bottles from the ocean.
Jason Elias:
Amazing.
Stephan Whelan:
They've got a huge ambition, that by 2030, so within the next 10 years, they aim to remove one billion plastic bottles from our world's oceans.
Jason Elias:
That's incredible. Absolutely incredible.
Stephan Whelan:
The best bit is, I now can help save the oceans by sitting at home and drinking wine.
Jason Elias:
Which you do already. You've already done that already, so now we're actually able to-
Stephan Whelan:
I can justify it.
Jason Elias:
Leverage that, leverage that, yeah.
Stephan Whelan:
I've been talking to the team behind the project, and one of the things I'm suspicious about is, how can they prove their claim is true? And actually ReSea project, which is one of these projects that track and validate and authenticate what they're doing, which is I think is fantastic, you go and check.
Jason Elias:
Right, sure.
Stephan Whelan:
Check out what they're doing, which is fantastic, The Hidden Sea.
Jason Elias:
I'm not a wine drinker, my wife is, and Stephan is, he's actually having a glass of wine as we speak here, but not being a wine drinker, I still love the labels. They're really beautifully done. So, in that way alone, I support them, so super cool. I'd love a T-shirt. Okay.
Stephan Whelan:
So the guys, go ahead and see if you're listening, Jason would love a T-shirt.
Jason Elias:
A T-shirt.
Stephan Whelan:
I would love a crate of wine actually, box of wine. So there we go.
Jason Elias:
So would my wife, certainly.
Stephan Whelan:
Yeah.
Jason Elias:
Okay. Moving on, this is an incredible story that made headlines out beyond the dive world this week. This is from Gizmodo, Mammoth Tusk Found at the Bottom of the Pacific Ocean Stuns Scientists. First off, they found one of the best preserved mammoth tusks that have ever been found underwater, in the seabed, off of Monterey. There's a couple things that are really interesting about it. One is that they found this in over 10,000 feet of water, 185 miles off the coast. Now, how they were looking, like how they found that I have no idea. I believe there was an undersea mount, they were searching, and they found it there, but still, absolutely incredible. They also say that because of its remoteness and its depth, and because of the composition of the soil in the ocean bed, that's actually what helped preserve it in such a pristine condition, which is also super interesting, because you assume that anything that goes down to the bottom of the ocean is just going to be, a couple years later, gone. So just a really interesting story.
Stephan Whelan:
How do they locate it? Well, I'm pretty sure they had a prehistoric Apple air tag attached to it.
Jason Elias:
Yes, probably [crosstalk 00:11:57], that's the most likely.
Stephan Whelan:
The most likely scenario?
Jason Elias:
That's really, he is the brains of the operation here, folks. So you can tell...
Stephan Whelan:
Well, what I'm trying to do, you see Jason, is I'm trying to get our audience warmed up for our usual final story. It's becoming a bit of a thing now, I have to say. So I'm trying to just lower the tone, just a little bit, into tabloids, National Inquirer type level of-
Jason Elias:
I'm trying to give them something high brow right before we get to the lowest of the low brow. So this is all from the MBARI, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, which I just want to give a shout out to them, because they have the most incredible YouTube channel. If you have any interest in deep sea exploration, their YouTube channel is absolutely stunning. And although this is a very high profile thing that broke through and got to the regular news, their regular videos of animals at depth is absolutely incredible, well worth a follow and something that I subscribe to. Okay.
Stephan Whelan:
Come on, come on in, come on, Jason.
Jason Elias:
Okay. [crosstalk 00:12:56]. The story we've all been waiting for.
Stephan Whelan:
People have put up with all this nonsense news that we've-
Jason Elias:
That's true.
Stephan Whelan:
I think, to just get to-
Jason Elias:
And folks, we are aware of the overwhelming number of emails we get about these, about this story. So we're only giving the people what they want. So I live in Southern California, Los Angeles. And just two hours inland is the beautiful resort town of Palm Springs, which is actually where I got married, and it's a place that my wife and I vacation a lot. I absolutely love it. There is a new futuristic Palm Desert mansion, for sale, with six kitchens, selling for $50 million. Now, why would we bring this up? Because it also has a shark tank that one of the kitchens is built underneath. So basically you can walk through a tunnel of sharks around you, to get from the living room to kitchen number four, or something like that.
Jason Elias:
Now, I understand that I don't have Stephan Whelan money, so I can't afford a place like this. But the reason that, again, the reason I always find these stories so fascinating is because it speaks to the folly of human beings, and how life is so brief, and we spend so much of our time focused on things that, in the end, we can't take with us. And particularly in this kind of home, which happens to be in the middle of, if you've ever been to Palm Springs, it is the most desert-y of deserts you can imagine in your desert mind, and to have a shark tank there just speaks to the gilded age that we are living in.
Stephan Whelan:
More money than senses. I think I say this every time, Jason.
Jason Elias:
Yeah, yeah.
Stephan Whelan:
These people have more money than sense. And I have to say, the conservationist to me is not particularly happy about fact they have a shark tank, right?
Jason Elias:
Exactly.
Stephan Whelan:
And we should not be transporting these beautiful creatures inland, into a desert, for someone's folly. A bit much, for me, I'm afraid, but the lives of the rich and famous, which is obviously the final segment of our podcast every week is important.
Jason Elias:
I think you bring up an important point, and that is another reason that I wanted to put this story in there, when I talk about the folly of mankind, and especially these extremely rich homes, I think one of the things that I find interesting about this is, I know, I have seen shark tanks before at aquariums, and they're there to serve a purpose, which is to educate and inform. People have their own opinions about whether any animals should be kept in captivity, and I think that is a very valid discussion to have, but when you have a private shark tank like this, for the seven octogenarians in your life, you begin to wonder about, what is the point of all of this? So that's the kind of the reason that I [crosstalk 00:15:41].
Stephan Whelan:
Completely agree. Completely agree, even though secretly, yeah, when you're rich and famous, you're going to be one of these-
Jason Elias:
Oh, I'm already designing it right now. Yeah, exactly.
Stephan Whelan:
This is research for your future home architect.
Jason Elias:
I'm just sending these to my architect so he can see what I like.
Stephan Whelan:
I get it. I get it. So I think that's it for the week for news. Jason, thanks again.
Jason Elias:
Thank you, Stephan.
Stephan Whelan:
For another week of exciting tabloid news.
Jason Elias:
Always great to see you.
Stephan Whelan:
Always good to see you, buddy. And let's get on with the show.
Jason Elias:
On with the show.
Emma Farrell:
Three, two, one. You're listening to the world's only weekly podcast for scuba diving, free diving, dive travel, and ocean advocacy. I'm Emma Farrell. I'm the owner of Go Freediving, the Freediving Training Director for RAID International, the Freediving Consultant for Blue Abyss, and the author of the book, One Breath, A Reflection on Freediving. And this is, the DeeperBlue podcast.
Stephan Whelan:
Welcome back to the DeeperBlue podcast. Today, we have Alex Finden as a guest on the show. He is the Co-founder and Head of Content at Mammals, and an underwater cinematographer. So Alex, welcome to the DeeperBlue podcast.
Alex Finden:
Yeah, thanks for having me, Stephan.
Stephan Whelan:
First of all, tell us about Mammals, what's that all about?
Alex Finden:
Sure, so Mammals is a new live streaming platform dedicated to stories about nature. It's something that I have been co-founding with my friend Rob, for about a few years now. And the whole goal is to come up with a new way that we can continue telling stories, in an interactive format, for the next generation. We feel like live streaming really is the solution to how we can drive an impact in real time, how we can inspire and connect people with nature in real time, in a more intimate and immersive way. So it's very exciting. We're new, but there's a lot to be seen on the horizon that is going to make a very big difference for a lot of aspiring content creators.
Stephan Whelan:
So, live streaming the oceans to your phone, essentially, is what you're suggesting?
Alex Finden:
Yeah, like giving people a real time scuba diving experience without having to get wet.
Stephan Whelan:
Amazing. So that's been the last few years of what you've done. Let's talk about how you started connecting to the ocean and, and getting into diving.
Alex Finden:
I've always been very impacted, emotionally, by storytelling. It's something that inspired me from the first times that I watched Planet Earth, the Behind the Scenes of Planet Earth in particular, when I was growing up. Those movies, those TV shows, about the natural world, especially the underwater world, were always on my TV. Any chance I had to visit an aquarium, or learn anything out that subject in school, I took. I actually didn't get into scuba diving until it became the only way that I could continue storytelling underwater. I was 21 when I started scuba diving, and the reason I got certified was because I had a film that I was producing for my thesis of my undergraduate career, and I needed to get shots underwater with the scuba diver who was my subject. And so I got certified, and the next dive I did after my open water certification was filming my documentary.
Alex Finden:
So, needless to say, you can see in the footage, how good of a diver I was. It was just up and down, all over the place, shaky cameras, dealing with tech that I had not become comfortable with yet. But, when I came above the water surface, after that first dive with the camera, I just knew that that was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. It was just such a powerful experience being able to not only see firsthand all of the subjects, other life forms, underwater, but be able to capture them in a way that I could share with others. It just was so fulfilling to my soul. And ever since then, I've been trying to figure out a way that I can turn that into a living, something that can not just be a lifestyle of mine, but also benefit me economically so that I don't have to do anything else, which of course is the grand dream of everybody else who gets into storytelling with scuba diving, but it's certainly been a challenge.
Alex Finden:
That's actually what gave me the inspiration to try to find a new solution for this type of a career, and that's why we founded Mammals, was between myself and Rob, who is just as passionate about storytelling, but on the surface, we needed to pave the way for the next thousand diverse David Attenbouroughs who want to come in and tell stories from their own perspectives, but actually make a living doing it. And everything that we've focused on has been on driving that community experience that we believe can actually solve a lot of the problems that us cinematographers, photographers, filmmakers, are all having in the industry right now.
Stephan Whelan:
So it's interesting, it's a bit like the rise of the assistant journalist, all these people who are taking journalism, how much journalism, but taking it seriously, and helping contribute to spreading news and information broadly, you're trying to do a very similar thing through your passion in diving and underwater cinematography. You're taking that passion and trying to enable people to do a similar sort of thing from a visual storytelling perspective.
Alex Finden:
Exactly. Make it accessible enough that anybody with a phone could feasibly become a professional storyteller.
Stephan Whelan:
With all this underwater storytelling that you do, you must have a really amazing experience or story that you have that you might want to share with our listeners.
Alex Finden:
Yes. Well, in my opinion, stories about the underwater world that are always the most captivating are those that involve unsolicited animal encounters. And so I have one in particular that I still dream about, it was actually not too long after I climbed up the certification ladder and decided that I wanted to have a career in scuba diving. I had just graduated from college. I dropped everything and moved to Hawaii, immersed myself into that scuba community and became a dive master. Everything that I experienced in Hawaii was new to me. I had been a San Diego diver, that's where I lived, that's where I learned how to dive, and as beautiful as the kelp forests are and unique the animals there are, to me, everything that I was experiencing on a coral reef was mind blowing because it was just so different from everything that I was used to.
Alex Finden:
One thing that I had certainly never seen before was a seahorse. And in Hawaii, there are occasionally sightings of what are called Hawaiian Smooth Seahorses. They're about four inches tall, so they're pretty big for seahorses. I had heard that there was a colony that was in an area that was brackish water, where the river entered the bay, and I went out there with another employee at the shop I was working at. We swam across to this fallen tree that was under the water. In visibility, that was probably good enough to see your hand if it was extended, so maybe a few feet, but very turbid water, very dirty, smelly, kind of brackish water. And there was not much to see other than this mucky bottom that you couldn't touch or it would blow your visibility to zero, and this fallen dead tree.
Alex Finden:
And we were seeing nothing, and after a couple of passes along this fallen tree, we saw a seahorse, and it was clinging with its tail to one of these little twigs hanging off the tree, blended perfectly in with it. And I stopped there for a moment and got close enough to see it, but of course, didn't want to get so close that I would bump into it with the current, so I was probably still a couple feet away. Well, something in that seahorse inspired it enough to swim off of the twig toward me, and wrap around my finger. And the tail just came right around my index finger, and I was so mind blown that all I could do was stare at it, and hold still. And I didn't realize until about 20 seconds later, that that thing is strong. The circulation in my finger was totally dead. I mean, when it came off, I actually had a bit of a blue finger for the whole rest of the day because this thing was gripping so hard to stay from being swept away by the current, I suppose.
Alex Finden:
But that was one of the most intimate experiences I've had with wildlife, and it was so unexpected. There's just something about that, that in the conditions, in that environment, just affected me so deeply.
Szilvia Gogh:
Hi, I am Szilvia Gogh, an ocean inspired jewelry designer, scuba instructor and stunt woman. And you are listening to the best 30 minutes about diving, the DeeperBlue podcast.
Stephan Whelan:
Hey everyone, so the DeeperBlue podcast is brought to you by Suunto, the Finnish dive computer company, I'm not going to try the Finnish accent, I'm afraid.
Jason Elias:
This is the perfect Finnish accent right here, Suunto.
Stephan Whelan:
So this may be a very short-lived sponsorship, just so you know. So one of the things I wanted to say is, some of the absolute most amazing people that we've had on the podcast, both yours and mine, Jason, actually.
Jason Elias:
That's true.
Stephan Whelan:
Are sponsored by Suunto, they're at Suunto Diving. William Trubridge, the 19 time-
Jason Elias:
18 or 19?
Stephan Whelan:
19, 19 time world record freediving champion.
Jason Elias:
And very nice guy, I did the interview with him, he was a very nice guy.
Stephan Whelan:
Yeah, I absolutely love Will, fantastic guy, had a little baby, which you and I know all about.
Jason Elias:
Jill Heinerth, also, is sponsored.
Stephan Whelan:
Jill Heinerth is the absolutely amazing cave diver.
Jason Elias:
Incredible.
Stephan Whelan:
Jill.
Jason Elias:
Incredible.
Stephan Whelan:
Read her book, absolutely loved seeing Jill and talking to her. She has been to places on this planet, in caves, that less people have been to, that have been to the moon.
Jason Elias:
That's right. And her book, I got to say, my wife just started reading her book last night, because for my other podcast, the Big Deep podcast, I actually did a two parter episode with her. And my wife listened to the episode about her, and she said it was such an amazing episode that she wants to read the book, and the book is actually incredible, and she's able to do a lot of this because she is sponsored by Suunto.
Stephan Whelan:
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely amazing person, Jill, and very humble down to earth.
Jason Elias:
Does Suunto have a specific cave diving dive computer? Is that something that is out there? Is there something like that?
Stephan Whelan:
It's not specific, yeah, I mean, cave diving is a very technical, very precise discipline in scuba.
Jason Elias:
Yeah.
Stephan Whelan:
And they have products which are geared towards that, so things like the eon steel, for example, computer, is very geared towards technical diving. It's a lot of mixed gas, especially deep and long cave dives, it's mixed gas and all that stuff, that's where their products come in. Whereas someone like a freediver, like William, will want the smallest computer, doesn't want something bulky on his wrist that's going to interfere with his dive profile and how hydrodynamic he is.
Jason Elias:
Right. Sure.
Stephan Whelan:
Streamlined in the water, so nice wrist watch that he can just have on his wrist would be fantastic, which is like the D5.
Jason Elias:
Right. And do they make a dive computer for someone like me that floats on the surface like a broken surfboard?
Stephan Whelan:
I'm not sure anyone makes anything that's good for you, to be honest, Jason. But I think, yeah, actually, so certainly they used to have the Zoop, whatever it is, which was the big beginner, bright yellow, very big, easist to read, easy for aging eyes, if you need to need wear glasses type thing. Big buttons, yeah, yeah.
Jason Elias:
For my ham-handed fingers yeah.
Stephan Whelan:
Yeah. So things like that would be definitely. I mean, since they have products for everything from beginners, bits of floaters in the water like you, all the way up to Jill's and the Williams of the world.
Jason Elias:
And I do respect, I actually really like the fact that they sponsor kind of really interesting-
Stephan Whelan:
Our podcast?
Jason Elias:
And our podcast, these divers, and more importantly, our podcast.
Stephan Whelan:
Absolutely. Absolutely, Suunto.
Linden Wolbert:
Bob Talbot's been on thousands of dives in his life, and he's here with us today to share his top tip.
Bob Talbot:
When we were finishing up filming [inaudible 00:29:04], we just had a few days left of shooting, we'd been shooting for eight weeks, doing 200 foot plus dives every day, and knock wood, there wasn't any serious injuries. And we'd had a few days off, and then went down to Honduras, and I guess after beating up my ears for a couple months, that few days gave some time for some inflammation in my right ear, and I was having trouble equalizing. We finished work for the day, and we were just out messing around freediving, and I was still having trouble equalizing.
Bob Talbot:
But instead of doing the smart thing, and just stop, I kept forcing it, forcing it, and forcing it, until I blew out a round or oval window on my cochlear, we're not really sure which, and by the time the surgery was done, they couldn't tell. But as a result, I lost most of the hearing in my right ear, and I've had a wicked case of tinnitus for the last 21 years, which affects your sleeping and all kinds of things. So, my top tip is, if you're having trouble equalizing, give it a rest. It's just not worth it. Our ears are very fragile organs and yeah, go easy.
Linden Wolbert:
Bob, that's an excellent bit of advice. Some of us have perforated ear drums and had bubbles coming out of our ears as we're on our ascent, and I'm really grateful for that reminder, so thank you for that.
Bob Talbot:
Yeah. Well, it's funny because I always thought, ah, the worst that'll happen is I'll blow out an eardrum, how bad is that? I never thought about doing nerve damage, it just never occurred to me. Curses me all the time.
Mehgan Heany-Grier:
Finally, in every episode, we share a story from you, the dive community, where we ask you to tell us about your best dive ever.
Mario Elias:
Hi, best dive ever would have to be Castle Rock in Indonesia. On a [inaudible 00:31:08] board, out with a rip, in the middle of the blue, background negative entry into ripping current, fin like mack, and sit on a [inaudible 00:31:21], and watch everything flying past you, [inaudible 00:31:25], dolphins, sharks coming from behind, a massive feeding frenzy for half an hour. Truly incredible. When you finish, release, fly through the blue like Superman, send up your SMB, and wait for the route to pick you up. That's got to be one of my most memorable dives.
Mehgan Heany-Grier:
We'd love to hear about your best dive ever, so please head over to deeperblue.com/bestdiveever to share your story about your, best dive ever.
Linden Wolbert:
Thanks for listening to the DeeperBlue podcast. Find out more about all the stories you've heard, plus connect with the world's largest dive community, at deeperblue.com. If you like what you've heard, please share, like, and rate our show, wherever you get your podcasts, as those shares and likes really make a difference. Thanks so much, and see you next week.