Autumn Blum on how she was shaped by a secret super power she discovered with her father, and Brett Stanley on how not to float through life

Jason Elias:
Season three of the DeeperBlue Podcast is brought to you by Suunto. Finnish engineering pioneering adventure from mountain top 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, freediving, dive travel and ocean advocacy world. Join us as we explore the deeper blue.

Jason Elias:
Hello everyone. Welcome back to the DeeperBlue Podcast. This Jason Elias, producer of the podcast.

Stephan Whelan:
And I'm Stephan Whelan, the host of the podcast, back from sitting putting my feet up sipping piña coladas in a cold, rainy, British beach.

Jason Elias:
You just told me not to mention you went on vacation.

Stephan Whelan:
I know, but you said it for two weeks, so I might as well continue that theme, right?

Jason Elias:
Well thankfully with you back now the good looks are back on the podcast, which is super important to our ratings. I'm glad you're back.

Stephan Whelan:
Absolutely. Audio only, we've all got faces for radio, right?

Jason Elias:
Let's start off with the news. We're going to start off with some gear news.

Stephan Whelan:
Yeah. Oceanic, one of the brands of Huish Outdoors, they actually have just launched a new set of free diving gear. The best bit about this, I think, is that it's called Predator. I love it.

Jason Elias:
I like that. Yeah.

Stephan Whelan:
Predator freediving gear.

Jason Elias:
I do like that.

Stephan Whelan:
It's fins, mask, snorkel and mesh carrying back for it. It's designed for entry-level freedivers and spear-fishers, designed with ease of use. Oceanic really is one of those brands, even in the scuba diving world, where a lot of people who are getting into the sport, it's good quality but affordable. Really, really pleased that they're getting into this now and doing some freediving stuff. Always good to hear more brands doing freediving stuff.

Jason Elias:
For sure. One thing I like about the Oceanic stuff is it's not just all black. Now don't get me wrong, Stephan knows me well, my wife knows me well, I wear black basically almost every day from top to bottom and yet, for some reason, now when I'm getting in the ocean I like to have different colored gear. In fact, I'm putting this idea out there, I wish I could make my own design for scuba diving gear, I could upload my own design. It'd be awesome to be able to do that with my own scuba gear, like a wetsuit or my fins. That'd be pretty cool, wouldn't it? I would just have a picture of Stephan on both fins.

Stephan Whelan:
Well you'd need both fins to fit my face on it. The irony is, of course, that obviously what our listeners can't see is we do have some video going on to be able to see each other as we're recording this and we are both wearing black.

Jason Elias:
That's right. That's Oceanic. Now Fourth Element, big supporters of DeeperBlue, have some cool stuff coming out.

Stephan Whelan:
Although I try and avoid talking about it, Jason you keep bringing this subject back on a podcast, but apparently there's been some big pandemic been going on.

Jason Elias:
Haven't heard of it.

Stephan Whelan:
Haven't heard of it. Absolutely. Quite a lot of personal protective equipment or PPE, masks, various different bits of plastic and so on have been around in the last year-and-a-half. Unfortunately quite a lot of it has gone into the ocean. The lovely folk at Fourth Element have teamed up with recycling and repurposing experts, Waterhaul, to do something which they call Retask the Mask. They're taking single-use plastics, which are PPE single use plastics, and creating diving tools from it. They've got grand ambitions to do more stuff, but they've started off very much in the technical diving world, the cave diving world. They have these little blue rings, little markers they put on lines when you're in caves which are laid to mark certain distances and stuff on this, they've created a whole load of these things made completely out of recycled plastic that comes from PPE. I think it's fantastic.

Jason Elias:
That's awesome.

Stephan Whelan:
Huge kudos to the boys and girls at Fourth Element.

Jason Elias:
That's awesome. I've got a tagline for them. Fourth Element, putting plastic back in the ocean. How's something like that? That's a great marketing slogan right there. How about something like Fourth Element, we love plastic in the ocean, something like that?

Stephan Whelan:
Well Jason, the good thing is Fourth Element are looking for a marketing manager right now, so I'll speak to the team and we'll see if we can-

Jason Elias:
Give me a call. Give me a call.

Stephan Whelan:
... get you a job.

Jason Elias:
I have to say, I very much respect Fourth Element in a lot of ways, but this kind of stuff is fantastic. This is, I think, the way the world industry is going to have to start slowly turning towards and I think that they're doing that here for this industry, which is fantastic.

Jason Elias:
Moving on to a story that I find interesting. Impossible Burger and Beyond Beef have both introduced a new potential for plant-based sushi. They've just debuted some tuna roll that they call Tunato, because it's made from tomatoes or tomato as someone once told me.

Stephan Whelan:
I think you mean tomatoes, Jason, rather than tomato.

Jason Elias:
This is obviously another way that the world will have to be turning at some point. We talk about that a lot in the podcast, how over-fishing is probably the greatest threat to the world's oceans. These kinds of things are what we want to see. Now I haven't tried the Tunato yet, although I do make Impossible Burgers at home all the time and, I have to say, they're pretty phenomenal.

Stephan Whelan:
Are they? I went fully vegan for the first two months of this year and one thing I never did was try and cook any of the Impossible Burgers or the other meat-free burger type stuff. I did some of the vegan bacon type stuff which was really good.

Jason Elias:
How was it? It was good?

Stephan Whelan:
Yeah, really good. I think this is fantastic. I think we need to eat and consume less protein that is derived purely from animals. There's a lot of debate as to whether we should ... my view is you should try and eat sensibly, eat as local as possible and you should also have a certain element to your diet which is vegan or vegetarian, plant-based. This sort of stuff is fantastic. Actually when you look and taste and try some of these things, they are absolutely amazing. You would not know the difference.

Jason Elias:
What I would say, the Impossible Burger, I think you can still tell the difference, but it has a great beef taste and mouth feel to it, which is a big part of this whole thing. What does the mouth feel? Does it feel like you're eating beef? It does. There's a picture of this Tunato and it actually looks like tuna. Now of course I understand there's probably a PR person that got this quote out there, but a tuna marketing executive took a bite of this dehydrated tomato seasoned with olive oil, algae extract, spices and soy sauce, which is the Tunato, and he said, "This is going to be a problem for us." I haven't tried the Tunato yet, but perhaps it actually does taste something like that. I just recently talked to a guy who wrote The Outlaw Ocean and he was just talking about that the commercial fishing on this level is just not sustainable. It's just not sustainable.

Stephan Whelan:
Totally. Hopefully the commercial tomatoes survive compared to the tomatoes. I think tomatoes will survive compared to tomatoes.

Jason Elias:
Well here people, I'm not quite sure, I can't understand your accent, so I think you're saying something in English. I eat tomatoes a lot. Moving on.

Stephan Whelan:
Let's not start the aubergine/eggplant debate. Honestly, we'll be here for hours.

Jason Elias:
I prefer the term pamplemousse for my grapefruits. Next is Caribbean Cup Freediving Competition. Do you want to speak a little bit about this?

Stephan Whelan:
Yeah, absolutely. Whilst I was off the Wimbledon of Freediving was happening, which was the Vertical Blue competition, which was actually amazing. 24 world records set. Blew my mind. The next competition, world-class freediving competition that's starting is in Roatán, Honduras, which actually starts on August the 11th. This is absolutely a stunning, stunning competition. I know Esteban who runs the competition. It's a relatively new one. I think it's the sixth or seventh year that it's running, but it's, again, a world-class competition doing things like constant weight, constant weight no fins, free immersion, constant weight by fins, basically all the main depth categories that you can do in a competition and fully expecting totally world-class athletes to come along. Right on the heels of the Wimbledon of Free diving we have the Caribbean Cup, or the Caribbean Cup as some people might say.

Jason Elias:
Yeah. Of course we will have news of all the events going on there as they happen here on this podcast and at DeeperBlue.com, your source-

Stephan Whelan:
Oh my word.

Jason Elias:
... for the world underwater.

Stephan Whelan:
I didn't even pay you to do that one, Jason. That was fantastic.

Jason Elias:
Next is a story about, it's something that Stephan really wanted to talk about, which is there's a program to help military veterans with scuba diving, which I think is a great story.

Stephan Whelan:
Yeah. NAUI, one of the diving certification agencies, has just announced the introduction of two initiatives centered around veterans and armed forces personnel. This one is a NAUI Hero Certification Card Program, which will offer 1000 limited edition certification cards every quarter for a donation of $10 per card. Those proceeds will then go to nonprofits dedicated to supporting veterans. Then NAUI and the Department of Defense SkillBridge Partnership is there to allow service personnel to gain civilian work experience in the last 180 days of their service and members who take part in the program can stay and work at 65 Veteran Association, VA approved centers worldwide. This in itself, amazing news. NAUI does a lot around supporting veterans.

Stephan Whelan:
The reason I wanted to talk about it was scuba diving is an amazing sport to do as a veteran, particularly if you've been injured in any way in your service. There are lots and lots of people, agencies, charities, nonprofits, who work with veterans to help rehabilitate them. You can imagine, you've had an injury of some sort in the line of duty and often you have quite chronic pain and those sorts of things. You get into a weightless environment, which is diving, and it opens up a whole new world. It is absolutely fantastic. I think any of the agencies, any of the nonprofits who are doing stuff around helping veterans and all that sort of stuff is absolutely amazing. It's great to see NAUI doing something else to help in this case US armed forces, but it's the same thing, there's lots of organizations around the world helping veterans of armed forces everywhere.

Jason Elias:
Yeah. We just wanted to give them a shout out and say thank you for doing that. Great program, we wanted to highlight that. Another shout out we wanted to give is someone that we know well in this podcast, Inka Cresswell. We had an interview with her with Sarah Richards not too long ago on the podcast. Inka Cresswell, a British filmmaker and underwater photographer, has just been honored by Adobe as one of the rising stars of photography, which is fantastic for Inka. She's a very nice person and she's very talented, very young and Adobe is recognizing the work that she's been doing. We just wanted to give a quick shout out to her and say congratulations. We're really happy for you and we look forward to seeing where your career goes.

Stephan Whelan:
I actually follow Inka on social media. Obviously she has been on the podcast, on things like Clubhouse. There's a little group of young up-and-coming wildlife photographers, videographers, producers, directors. We've had quite a few of them on the podcast actually and absolutely amazing to see. Plus they're all British, so I feel very proud that my British brethren are doing such great things.

Jason Elias:
Yeah. Besides the fact that they're British I'm really happy for all of them, so that's fantastic.

Stephan Whelan:
Despite British, okay, fair enough. Fair enough.

Jason Elias:
Our next story is an uber nerd story for me. I know that every time I see one of these things I want to include it. This is about the ancient Egyptian city found underwater, Thonis-Heracleion. We talked about this on the podcast before, but they've discovered some new things there including ... this was an ancient Mediterranean port before Alexander the Great founded Alexandria in 331 BCE. This ended up becoming the main port for Alexandria. We talked about this last time on this show, but the wonders that they're discovering there continue to come forward and this time they have found things like, I'm not quite sure how they did this, 2400 year old wicker baskets filled with fruit and Greek ceramics.

Jason Elias:
What's amazing is that, when you look at the pictures of these things underwater, it's almost like they were laid there yesterday. The first picture is a picture of a pot. It's emerging from the mud and it just looks like it was made today. It's absolutely stunning. We talked about the fact that there is an underwater dive park here opening up soon, or that just opened, that allows you to dive in these areas. I just think that ... the thing is, on the DeeperBlue salary that I make I could literally just travel the world first-class all the time, I just haven't put this on my itinerary yet, but soon hopefully I will get over there to dive these places because it just looks awesome.

Stephan Whelan:
Cargo first class, right? On a ship? Yeah, absolutely.

Jason Elias:
I've been trying to fit myself into one of those doggy boxes so that I can go underneath in the belly of the plane, but that didn't work.

Stephan Whelan:
Plane? Mate, that's too expensive. I'm saying shipping, three, four months at sea in a container. That's more like it. You know what? I hope I look as good at 2400 years old when they dig up my body, that I look this good as this wicker basket.

Jason Elias:
Yes. Well we are planning on sealing you in resin when you go, so hopefully that will last.

Stephan Whelan:
Like Jurassic Park? They'll get my DNA and resurrect me and combine me with some weird animal and then I'll come back as a podcast host in 5000 years.

Jason Elias:
And still terrify people. Still terrifying people.

Stephan Whelan:
Yeah, exactly.

Jason Elias:
That takes us to our last story. I didn't really want to include this story, but Stephan is a man who-

Stephan Whelan:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. This is definitely my side of the story.

Jason Elias:
... loves these kinds of stories. There's a mansion for sale in ... where else? Florida. Of course it's Florida. There's a mansion that is huge, I think it's selling for, what? $5.5 million. Now this mansion is actually built right on the edge of the water overlooking a reef. The pictures are stunning. You can literally step off of your mansion and get into a reef and yet that wasn't enough for the owner of the house, he actually built a reef in his pool inside his house so that you can snorkel and scuba inside the pool in your house.

Stephan Whelan:
It's a 25,000 gallon aquarium. It's stocked with spiny lobsters, angel fish and puffer fish. The bit that I find hilarious is the house only has four bedrooms. I'm like, if you're going to spend that much money, don't you think you need a few more bedrooms? It does have six bathrooms.

Jason Elias:
It's just amazing to me that you actually go to a place, you pay the money to actually overlook an actual reef, an actual coral reef and you say, "You know what? That's not enough. I want one next to my couch."

Stephan Whelan:
I want a fake one, I want one in my pool. The best bit is he has a Tiki bar though.

Jason Elias:
That is pretty sweet. I've got to say it, that is pretty sweet, pretty nice. If you put a bid on this house, expect a bidding war with Stephan. He has mentioned before how these kind of places are what he's looking for. That takes us to the end of the news. Thanks Stephan, welcome back.

Stephan Whelan:
Thanks Jason. Remember everyone, you can catch up with all the news of the week, apart from the ones that Jason likes of course, the real trashy stuff, you can catch up with the real news of the week at DeeperBlue.com.

Jason Elias:
Also remember it's tomato.

Stephan Whelan:
Tomato.

Tony Myshlyaev:
You're listening to the world's only weekly podcast for scuba diving, freediving, dive travel, and ocean advocacy. I'm Tony Myshlyaev, also known as Tones of Blue. This is the DeeperBlue Podcast.

Jason Elias:
Today we hear from Autumn Blum, founder and CEO of Stream2Sea. Autumn is a cosmetic chemist and a passionate diver whose company is focused on biodegradable, reef-safe skincare and sunscreen products. Today, Autumn tells us a story of what inspired her to start her company, the pivot she did under COVID and how, as a little girl, she discovered a superpower that shaped the rest of her life.

Autumn Blum:
I've been a cosmetic chemist for 20 years. I started a previous natural skincare company. I've always thought about how these ingredients would impact our bodies, I had never connected how these ingredients would impact our waters until I was diving in Palau and I see this oil slip coming off a group of snorkelers and it was like, bam, wow, these ingredients, I knew they weren't good for our bodies. I mean there wasn't a health food store in the world that would carry most sunscreens out there. Couldn't possibly be good for our reefs.

Autumn Blum:
When I came back, I knew that I had to start Stream2Sea to make something that wasn't just safe for us, it was safe for the waters too. You would think that would just go together, but I had never read a safety data sheet before on the ingredients that I was using, it's embarrassing to admit. I'm a pretty good cosmetic chemist and we look at the sustainability, we look at how it behaves in a formula, but actually the safety data sheet, the shipping departments deal with that, right? You start opening this and there's section 12 in the safety data sheet which talks about eco toxicity. I had never read one before I decided I was going to start Stream2Sea. It's embarrassing, but it's true. I also learned that a lot of ingredients, just because they're safe for us does not mean they're safe for the waters.

Autumn Blum:
Clear zinc is one good example. Clear zinc is Ecocert approved, but every single toxicity study that I've seen shows that it does impact the waters, it's considered mycotoxin. Basically their nanoparticles mush together and that's how they make them clear. We can't use clear zinc even though it would go on our skin so much nicer.

Jason Elias:
Well, Autumn, that's an incredible story. Everyone here at DeeperBlue understands that, during COVID, the dive and travel industries were hit very hard, but Stream2Sea used that as an opportunity to pivot to some new products. Can you tell us a little bit about that story and how that came about?

Autumn Blum:
When COVID hit we were just starting the launch with all of the cruise lines. Richard Branson had endorsed us and we were gearing up for 2020. It was just going to be an explosion year. I built a new warehouse. We built a new production facility and hired new staff. Then COVID comes and everything just dies off, because we're selling to the tourism industry. I mean all the dive centers out there, they're not buying sun cream because they don't have the visitors there. We had a serious panic moment. I was able to get my hands on some alcohol that was fermented from orange peels, locally sourced, pretty cool and we were able to shift our production to sanitizer.

Autumn Blum:
The government actually reduced some of the hurdles to bring something to market. Normally it would take six to nine months to bring a sanitizer to market because, like sunscreen, it's regulated as a drug. Because they eased the restrictions, I was able to bring the sanitizer to market in about six days. It was wild. There was no sleep for those six days of course, but we were able to do it really fast and shift. We had a lot of packaging back there that we were able to repurpose. The default packaging wound up going to sanitizer packaging and we got it all out there on the market really fast.

Jason Elias:
Well you obviously have a very deep connection to the ocean. Is there some story you can tell us that helps us understand where that deep connection comes from?

Autumn Blum:
I'm a water baby. I could swim before I could walk. I'm a dive instructor as well. I'm a rebreather diver underwater photographer. I love the underwater world. Every single moment underwater you're free. The stresses of the world go away. In my earliest diving moment my daddy was a NAUI dive instructor. I remember being four years old, a little pony bottle that he would hand me and I'd go scrub algae off the bottom of the pool. I believed that I was assimilating the oxygen from the water. I grew up believing it was my superpower because I could make that little pony bottle last so much longer than my daddy.

Paul de Gelder:
Hi. This is Paul de Gelder. Shit, take one, number one. Hi, I'm Paul de Gelder from Discovery Channel's Shark Week. You're listening to the best 30 minutes about diving, the DeeperBlue Podcast.

Linden Wolbert:
I'm here with Brett Stanley who is going to give us his top tip. Brett, what's your top tip for divers?

Brett Stanley:
Yeah. My top tip for divers is buoyancy control. This is, for me, by far and away the most important thing. If you can control your buoyancy and you are either taking photos or you're shooting some video, it's going to make the world of difference to your footage because it's going to be steady and you're going to have control over everything. There's nothing worse than getting lost in some footage and realizing you've just floated to the surface.

Linden Wolbert:
Oh, that is the worst. A wonderful top tip. Thank you so much, Brett.

Brett Stanley:
Thank you, Linden.

Jason Elias:
And action. When I say action, that means you're supposed to say something.

Stephan Whelan:
Oh, okay. Okay.

Jason Elias:
Season three of the DeeperBlue Podcast is brought to you by Suunto.

Stephan Whelan:
Suunto. This Sunday we want to have a quick chat about ... these dive computers look damn good I have to say these days. They're not these big, clunky, massive wall clocks strapped to your arm/wrist type thing that I used to remember diving 25 years ago with. These are really nice. The D5 Copper, this is one really nice looking piece of equipment.

Jason Elias:
Right. Well that's important to me because obviously, as you know, I'm an extremely good looking man. When I go diving, what I like nothing more is to walk out of the water and straight to the baccarat table. You've been very quiet while I said that I was very good looking. You didn't respond.

Stephan Whelan:
Professional journalist here, Jason. It's always good about listening to what people say. The good thing is I do remember in season one you referred to yourself as a piece of flotsam. You've upgraded yourself to Daniel Craig, James Bond, 007.

Jason Elias:
[inaudible 00:23:08].

Stephan Whelan:
You're going to have to work on both your British and French accents for that to work I'm afraid.

Jason Elias:
Well, I did say I was a piece of flotsam. I'm like a piece of seaweed wrapped around dead wood floating in the surge. That's more of my dive technique.

Stephan Whelan:
Well at least you can look good whilst doing it with a D5 Copper strapped to your wrist, right?

Jason Elias:
There is something to be said. There's a lot of smart phones and smart watches out there, there is something nice about identifying with an adventure watch like Suunto, a dive watch. There's something about having that on your wrist that kind of keeps you connected to the ocean in a way when you're not there. I really do like that.

Stephan Whelan:
I think one final thing I'd say on this point is there's been numerous times where I've looked over and seen someone wearing a dive computer smart watch like that Suunto D5 and give that knowing look, that wink and a knowing look and then you start a conversation about diving because you know that they're a diver. On that note ...

Jason Elias:
Yeah, thank you for sponsoring, Suunto.

Stephan Whelan:
Thanks, Suunto.

Stephan Whelan:
Finally, every episode we share a story from you, the dive community, where we ask you to tell us about your best dive ever.

Alan Shah:
My name is Alan [Shah 00:24:21]. I've been lucky enough to have been diving for over 60 years, first as an amateur and then professional and now as a senior citizen back to enjoying warm water diving whenever possible.

Alan Shah:
I've experienced many things underwater, some awe inspiring, some hilarious and some downright scary, although my first dive was the best that I can recall back in 1960 at the age of nine. I was brought up in Aden and practically lived in the sea, snorkeling every day after school. My dad was something of a diving pioneer in the Middle East and I finally persuaded him to teach me to dive. On my ninth birthday he offered to take me with him to inspect damage to a large oil tanker anchored in the outer harbor. Equipment was a little different then and consisted of an old toweling shirt for protection against barnacles, a makeshift webbing harness which I think came from an old plane seat and a small cylinder, the obligatory Siebe Gorman twin-hose on top. There were no BCDs then. As a last minute adjustment my dad fastened a couple of steel shackles on my arms for good luck.

Alan Shah:
The tanker was huge. As you passed the water line, clouds of small fish were feeding on the weeds prolific over the first few feet of sunlight. Then, as we dropped lower, the intimidating dark slab side of the tanker, I could see large shoals of fish sheltering in the semi darkness, quietly avoiding exposure to the dangers patrolling in the sunlight. I was vaguely aware of my depth and buoyancy, even breathing. It was all so fantastic. Then I felt a firm hand on my harness and was dragged over to the enormous bronze propellor. I was unceremoniously tied off to the rudder shaft. With that, my dad gave a cheery wave and headed off to inspect the keel damage, leaving me dangling alone surrounded by so many fish. A friendly grouper was keeping an eye on me as groupers always know how.

Alan Shah:
Once settled I can now sit back and see the patrolling hunters all around who were trying to look nonchalant and then darting quickly into the groups of fish and disappearing in the cloud of scales. It's hard to believe in the sixties most ships just dumped waste over the side, so sharks were always in the water. As I found out over the years, they certainly were not interested in me. All too soon it was over. With a little help countering the shackle weights I was back on the surface jabbering excitedly while my dad started the boat and headed back to the inner harbor. It was my best dive for so many reasons.

Stephan Whelan:
We'd love to hear your story about diving. At the end of the show you'll find out all the info you need to submit 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 show wherever you get your podcasts as those shares and likes really make a difference. Thanks so much and see you next week.