Cristina Zenato the "Mother of Sharks" on the trust she places in her children, and Jennifer Idol on how the best underwater camera might just be in your pocket

SPEAKER_04 0:04

The DW podcast is brought to you by Sunto, Finnish Engineering Pioneering Adventure from Mountaintop to Ocean Floor since 1936. Welcome to the Deeper Blue Podcast, your weekly guide to everything that is happening around the world underwater. My name is Stephen Wheeland. I'm the founder of DeeperBlue.com, the world's most popular diving website. Every week, the Deeper Blue Podcast covers everything that's happening in the scuba diving, free diving, diving travel, and ocean advocates world. So join us as we explore the Deeper Blue.

SPEAKER_05 1:01

Hi, it's Jason Elias, producer of the Deeper Blue Podcast, on location at the heart of scuba diving industry, the deserts of Arizona. In today's episode, here's what you'll hear. First, Steven Whelan, the founder of DeeperBlue.com, and myself will discuss all the news of the week underwater. Then we'll hear from the woman called the Shark Whisperer, Christina Zanato, who tells us a bit about her life living with sharks. Then we hear from Jennifer Idol, the underwater designer, who talks a little bit about what it means to be a better photographer underwater. And finally, we hear from Abington about her best dive ever. But first, this week's news. Three, two, one, and action.

SPEAKER_04 1:46

Action. That was a that was a rather subtle welcome to the news this week, Jason.

SPEAKER_05 1:50

Welcome to the weekly World News Underwater from Deep Wu.

SPEAKER_04 1:55

Excellent. So all good, Jason. Happy good week.

SPEAKER_05 1:57

Oh yeah, I'm speaking to you from the hot point of diving, Arizona Desert, visiting family. How are you doing this week?

SPEAKER_04 2:04

Yeah, good, good. Well, the UK is still in lockdown, so not much has changed.

SPEAKER_05 2:09

Still in the same room.

SPEAKER_04 2:10

I'm still in the same room. My room hasn't changed.

SPEAKER_05 2:13

So normally we have sometimes we do these news and we don't have a lot of news items. And today we actually had so many we had to cut a few. So why don't we get to them? Uh Steven, you want to start us off with the first story?

SPEAKER_04 2:22

Absolutely. So this is a great one. There's a gentleman in Canada, he was known as Scuba Steve, which obviously I I relate to. I relate to Scuba Steve. He was unfortunately found unconscious. And I mean, Jason, this is this is a real hard-hitting piece of journalism.

SPEAKER_05 2:39

Oh my god, what happened to Scuba Steve? Is he okay?

SPEAKER_04 2:42

Last June, found unconscious in the Detroit River, tethered.

SPEAKER_05 2:47

Was he rescuing was he rescuing someone? Was he down there for uh something idealistic? What was he doing there? What was he doing there?

SPEAKER_04 2:54

He was tethered to 185 pounds of marijuana. He uh Scooby Steve. Ah, Scooby-Steve. He later confessed to operating a collection of sophisticated C-Bob DPVs. I can see C-Bob using this in their next advert, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_05 3:10

And he was using this to smuggle weed back and forth between Canada and Detroit, right?

SPEAKER_04 3:16

Brilliant. He pleaded guilty in October to illegally entering the US and drug trafficking and drew 71 months in federal prison, forfeiting one of the seabobs, which costs as much as $16,500.

SPEAKER_05 3:30

So in my mind, in my mind, the D the C Bob, is it like a mini submarine? And if that's the case, was he like thrown from the submarine? Did he crash it?

SPEAKER_04 3:38

I know it's a diverse it's it's a small little it it's you know it's probably two foot long, okay, and he holds onto it and it propels him along.

SPEAKER_05 3:46

Human beings. That's just fantastic. So uh he had apparently been doing this for a long, long time, right?

SPEAKER_04 3:52

Uh not something that it's not it's not a specialism that you can learn the best he can underw underwater drug smuggling speciality. It's not something that you can uh you can learn. Oh Steve and Steve.

SPEAKER_05 4:05

So that's a great first story. So what is it? What's next? What does that take us to next?

SPEAKER_04 4:09

This one slightly more hard-hitting, this one in a genuine term. It's a bit sad actually. So on air, one of the Caribbean islands, is unfortunately seeing a bit of a rise of COVID-19 infections, and they've implemented a higher level of lockdown in the country. Uh, and that means that all non-essential businesses, which unfortunately, as a lot of us in the diving industry know, unfortunately diving is classed as non-essential, which is unfortunate. Uh, so that means that hotels are still open, they're still serving meals to guests and all those sorts of things, but actual diving in Bonaire is not happening at the moment.

SPEAKER_05 4:45

Right. And the reason we put this story in there was to, I mean, I'm fortunate enough, I've already gotten my first shot. So I in my in what I start to think, oh, things are starting to open up. And like I mentioned a couple weeks ago, we're starting to buy guide travel guides around the world. And the reason we wanted to bring this up is because we still have a long way to go here, particularly in the dive industry. We as Westerners, and probably many of the listeners that listen to this, are probably in places where there are more access to vaccinations. But a lot of places we like to travel and do this diving in are still being pretty hard hit. So it's just raising awareness around we have a long way to go on this still. There's a lot of positive things, but Bonair, for example, is in a place where they're actually sliding backwards.

SPEAKER_04 5:24

So you know, we talked a bit last time about the Dan travel insurance, right? This is gonna be even more important as you know, it's gonna take a while for everything to settle down, and it's important that people understand that.

SPEAKER_05 5:34

So okay, so next, I think it's because we now have a we in a weird obsession with David Winkel.

SPEAKER_04 5:41

David Vinkel. I feel like I know David. I don't know why. I feel like he's he's become, you know, it's three episodes in a row, I think.

SPEAKER_05 5:48

Sure, he's a great guy. So David Vinkel and Katerina Nekrasova both set records under the ice without fins or a wetsuit. And David Winkel lost his record to Katerina. Now, the there is interest in the story in that a new world record was set, but the reason we wanted to talk about this is because it opened up some commentary or some ideas about what these records represent. And Stephen, I think you had some opinions about that.

SPEAKER_04 6:14

You know, whilst these are often classed as free diving records, they're not actually free diving records. They are people who happen to be holding their breath and swimming long distances underwater in ice wearing very little clothing. This is Guinness World Record status. It's not by the official agencies that do proper certification of records. I think these would be very much classed as stunts. They're very much publicity stunts. So, to give you an example, you know, David Venkel's previous record was 81 meters that he set last month. Ekaterina set 102.7 metres. Now that is a big jump in distance.

SPEAKER_05 6:53

It's not something you would see typically in a competition if they're indicative of something that's big they were not really pushing the human boundaries to begin with. Right, right, right.

SPEAKER_04 7:01

You know, in free dime records, you see, you know, a meter, maybe two meters being put onto a previous record because people are pushing the boundaries of what they can do and what the human body can do. This is uh you know 20, 20-ish meters longer.

SPEAKER_05 7:18

So let me ask you something. As a as a person that is not necessarily a free diving aficionado, you're obviously much more connected to that side of the industry than I am. Is there any value in these records being set in sort of raising awareness around these kind of things, or is it is even that kind of bogus?

SPEAKER_04 7:34

My personal view is I think these are stunts, they're publicity things. They uh there's value in the sense that it raises the profile of free diving, even though it's not actual free diving. It is very much publicity, in my view, which is a little unfortunate, but it is getting quite a bit of press. It's the sort of thing that mainstream press love.

SPEAKER_05 7:53

Right. Mainstream press love is but it's equating someone that has trained all their lives like a William Trubidge and pushing the boundaries of what a human being can do with someone else who simply set a record and in the general public's mind might find an equivalent, but people that in the know might not necessarily feel the same way. Understood. Yep, completely agree. Okay, well, that's a that's a very interesting commentary, a very interesting insight. Uh so next. I think it's uh next is something a little more fun, right?

SPEAKER_04 8:20

Absolutely. So uh Jason, have you ever done an escape room?

SPEAKER_05 8:23

I love them. I love them. Uh the one where I had to pull the record out and play it backwards, and then I heard that there was something in Russian and I had translated it in the book, and that told me what book to pull off the shelf and it opened the secret cubby. That was pretty awesome.

SPEAKER_04 8:34

Okay, well, yours are probably a bit more intellectual than the ones I go to, but uh but escape rooms where you go and you have to try and escape the room that you're in uh by solving a bunch of puzzles. That's what it is. So the the great thing here is uh it's a UK story. Um, there is a uh a quarry in North Wales, and they have set up the very first, world-first, underwater scuba escape rooms.

SPEAKER_05 9:00

I love it.

SPEAKER_04 9:01

It's brilliant. So uh and actually I've been diving in Vivian Quarry, which is the quarry that's set in. It's a beautiful, beautiful little quarry in the UK. And the people who set it up have said that there will be six different underwater escape experiences from diffusing a nuclear bomb, classics escape room stuff, and finding hidden loot to rescuing a princess and dodging predatory zombies.

SPEAKER_05 9:24

Oh, that's mine right there. Oh, that dodging zombies, that's pretty awesome. I really love the idea of this. I don't know, though. One thing is okay, how do you get how do you get your hints? When someone dumb like me goes through an escape room at a certain point, I say, I need a little help, and you know, you know, the raven's holding a key in her hand, pick the key and open the door. How do they do that underwater? Do they have to do that?

SPEAKER_04 9:42

So this is a quarry, which is quite enclosed. So you can there's like one way in and out. So what you do is you go in and then you close off the gate. And it looks like there'll be above water and below water hints and tips. You need to go and find a clue underwater and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_05 9:56

Oh, that's so cool. So I guess you can find out more at scubaescape.org.

SPEAKER_04 10:00

I can tell you're excited, Jason, because this is the first time you've ever told the listeners where to go.

SPEAKER_05 10:04

That's exactly right.

SPEAKER_04 10:05

I want them to succeed because I want to do that. I'm not cutting out my my prompts to go to the deeper blue website to go and find the news.

SPEAKER_05 10:12

Yeah, does anyone go to that website?

SPEAKER_04 10:15

World's most popular derving website, Jason.

SPEAKER_05 10:19

Okay, what's next? So yeah, this one. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 10:23

If you remember a few years ago, there were the 13 football team of the young kids in Thailand who got trapped in a cave that was flooding, and there was this huge international effort to rescue them. There was over 90 divers involved, 50 of them were from the global caving community, flew in from all over the world. Some of the British cave divers who were involved were knighted by the Queen for doing the work they did. It was amazing, absolutely amazing. Obviously, Hollywood has got hold of the story, as Hollywood does, and they have announced that there's an upcoming film coming out about it called 13 Lives. It's gonna be directed by Oscar-winning director Ron Howard. Huge. So huge, big, big director, big A-list, and it's got people like Vigo Mortenson, Colin Farrell, Joel Elgington, just an amazing, amazing cast of A-list celebrities. So it is going to be fantastic. They're gonna start production this month, and it's gonna be shot in Australia and Thailand.

SPEAKER_05 11:21

And anything with Strager in it, oh, next.

SPEAKER_04 11:25

Well, talking about cave diving, Jill Heinhirth, who a friend of our podcast. Friend of our podcast, friend of your podcast, yes, uh, Sunto Ambassador. There you go, Sunto, managed to weave in a mention of you guys. Jill, who is apart from being one of the most lovely people on this planet, super cool. And a great book writer, amazing book, into the planet, amazing read. She has launched a newsletter which she's going to be sharing her unique viewpoints, expedition tales, and various different opportunities around learning and growth that she thinks would be useful and has helped her as part of her cave diving career. So I I have to say, I heard about this. I saw Jill post about it on social media. I immediately went and signed up. So I think everyone who listens to this podcast should go and do it.

SPEAKER_05 12:13

We're big fans of Jill. And I think probably you can get her newsletter, you can go to her website, which is indieplanet.com or deeperblue.com.

SPEAKER_04 12:21

Or you can read the news item on deeperblue.com where you can find all the news that we're talking about today.

SPEAKER_05 12:27

Uh, what's next?

SPEAKER_04 12:28

From Jill to another one of our friends, the lovely people at Fourth Element.

SPEAKER_05 12:33

Super cool people, fun people to drink.

SPEAKER_04 12:35

During the course of the lockdown last year, they were trying to come up with some ideas of what to do, and they launched this fantastic competition called Underwater Bath Photographer. No, that's not right. Underbathwater photographer of the year. It is absolutely amazing. These photos people take are absolutely amazing. And they launched it again this year and they've just announced the winners. And I I have to say, people are amazingly creative. They these photos, the wit one of the winning shots by a guy called Miko Passy is was filmed amazingly in his hotel room whilst he was in Jakarta traveling in Indonesia during quarantine. And it's this amazing scene. It looks like you're in this ice cave and it's water with a little dive boat and a polar bear on some ice. Honestly, if you just looked at it without paying attention, you would go, that's an amazing photo of a cave somewhere. And it's just taken in a thing. Really creative, really creative.

SPEAKER_05 13:33

That's the thing that's really cool about it. It just shows the ingenuity of human beings, how creative they can be, particularly under extreme circumstances, not being able to get back in the water, and then this kind of coming from it. There are so many great photos in here. Highly recommended you can see that on peopleblue.com. It just says what's so great about this community in particular is that there's such a passion there and such a creativity. It's just really nice to see those two come together. Okay.

SPEAKER_04 13:58

So this next one, Jason, I think you should do. This one is brilliant. I love this one.

SPEAKER_05 14:02

The headline for this piece, there where we found it, said called it the big swim. A North Korean defector used Scooby Deer to swim to South Korea in mid-February. All props to him. The man, a civilian in his twenties, appeared to have swum across the maritime border and crawled through a drainage pipe beneath the barbed wire fence.

SPEAKER_04 14:22

I'm pretty sure North Korea isn't overflowing with scuba equipment everywhere. I think he probably needs to be quite ingenious to go and find some scuba equipment. But he said that he was captured after a three-hour manhunt. So I don't think he actually made it.

SPEAKER_05 14:35

It looks like he uh so we'll have to report back.

SPEAKER_04 14:38

This feels like something we have to report back on, Jason. Hard-hitting journalism here. We need to go and do some investigation.

SPEAKER_05 14:43

This was this was one of my new stories that I put in here. And what again, what it really speaks about, is like the ingenuity of human beings, right? People long to be free and try to get out, and just an impressive story. But that also takes us to our last story, and it reminds me that sometimes I wish I could put on Scuba Gear and Escape because there's a new clubhouse room where people moan like whales.

SPEAKER_04 15:05

Well, hold hold on, back up a sec, uh Jason. What's Clubhouse?

SPEAKER_05 15:09

So there's there's crazy invites that are going out for everyone. That this new app on iPhones only, it's a clubhouse. It's basically like a it's like you remember party calls back in the 1990s, you can get on a party call, everyone calling, it's the same kind of idea. But this has heavy hitters behind it, and there's a lot of celebrities on it, and there's a lot of famous people, and people are thinking of it as a new social community because you can actually talk and you can raise your hand to be recognized and be brought up on stage. And so there's actually a lot of very interesting conversations going on there. There's a lot of interesting creativity being explored there. People can get together from a roll around the world and discuss in real time things, but also, like every part of the internet, there's parts of it that have really started to weird people out. Every societal problem we see has has arisen on there, but also every kind of weird fetish in the world also is getting its own room. And one of these is a room that was off of people now go in there and just moan like whales for an hour or two. So I guess you get brought up on stage and you can start start moaning. I mean, maybe people need this. I don't know. Maybe I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 16:18

It might be some weird sort of zen thing. You know, you go and moan and babble like an animal in a room, you know. I mean, I I I did wander in, so I'm on Clubhouse and Deeper Blue has its own room.

SPEAKER_05 16:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 16:29

Yeah, so Deeper Blue has its own club, so people can go and join in. Uh and in fact, one of the sessions we do do on Clubhouse is a wrap-up of the weekly news, which is what we're doing right now. So you can get a sneak peek of some of the news that we cover in the week by joining into the Clubhouse room for Deeper Blue. But yeah, I wandered into a room and it was completely silent, and I was like, what on earth was going on? And I looked at the title and it was a silent networking room. So everyone goes in, no one says anything, and you just go and look at who else is in the room and you go and follow each other. Um so there's all sorts of stuff.

SPEAKER_05 17:01

Well, listen, I live in Los Angeles, I live in Hollywood, I'm a Buddhist, so I'm at the nexus of all the progressive free idea movements that are that bubble up in the world. So this is nothing I'm not surprised by this, but again, I You don't know. I don't I don't I don't know. Um if that makes them happy, fantastic.

SPEAKER_04 17:18

The ocean community is really galvanizing on the clubhouse. That's one thing I will say. There's a huge amount of stuff around conservation. There are now there's a club for free divers, there's a club for scuba divers, there's deeper blue, which is covering everything. Girls at scuba are on there. There is some absolutely amazing rooms and some great conversations going on. The only problem for me, I spend all day on conference calls, and it just feels like another conference call to me. So that's the only the only disadvantage to it. But there is some amazing to be able to hear people talk about stuff is amazing. Go and check it out. Club Clubhouse, go and join Clubhouse, search for it.

SPEAKER_05 17:51

And if you do join up, Moan Like Wales, you look for Moan Like Moan Like Whales.

SPEAKER_04 17:55

Moan Like Whales. And after you've gone into the Moan that Whales room, go and join the defaBlue.com official club on Clubhouse.

SPEAKER_05 18:03

Well, on that note, thank you for the weekly news, Stephen. We will chat next week.

SPEAKER_02 18:08

Thanks, Jason. You're listening to the world's only weekly podcast for scuba diving, free diving, dive travel, and ocean advocacy. I'm Alex Findon, a co-founder of Mammals and an underwater cinematographer. And this is the Deeper Blue Podcast.

SPEAKER_05 18:33

Hi, it's Jason Leas, producer of the Deeper Blue Podcast. Today, one of our co-hosts, Lyndon Walbert, speaks with a woman from the Bahamas who has dedicated her life to protecting and preserving cetaceans and is sometimes known as the mother of sharks.

SPEAKER_06 18:47

There is a woman in the Bahamas who has dedicated 26 years of her life to exploring and documenting uncharted underwater cave systems and promoting the protection of sharks. Known as the shark dancer, Christina Zanato's unique relationship with her local sharks off the coast of Grand Bahama Island have led her to be featured in global publications and documentaries. She is creating interactive 3D maps of the cave she dives deeper and farther into whenever she can. A Platinum Pro 5000 recipient, Explorers Club Inductee, and member of the Women Divers Hall of Fame. I'm curious to know when did your world become aquatic?

SPEAKER_07 19:28

My world was always aquatic. I was born a water baby. The sharks were my childhood dream. I wanted to be an underwater scuba ranger who had sharks for friends, and it became aquatic on a professional level in 1994 when I traveled to the Bahamas to learn how to become a scuba diver. And in a week's time decided to leave everything that I had in my previous life to actually dedicate it to this life that I've been conducted for the last 26 years. When I first did my plunge in the ocean, here there were sharks, and I was just like, well, this is it. So the evolution into the cave came a little bit later. But both of them were connected to a gentleman called Ben Rose. And Ben Rose was the guide that took me to my first cavern dive. And then through the years, I realized how much caves and sharks are vitally interconnected, how the caves are these ways to transport nutrients but also pollutants through the islands under the mangroves into the oceans. And so where the sharks also go and reproduce. And I became enthralled with both of them. I love sharks with their personalities and their connections and their capabilities of communications. And I love caves because to me they tell us a history of this planet and is a live geological book. And so they all connect together into this diving for living, living for diving, and a passion between wanting to explore them, understand them, and protect them.

SPEAKER_06 21:04

It's amazing to see you interacting with sharks underwater. And I've never experienced an energy where I can see a very obvious relationship between a shark and a diver in the way that you engage with those animals. What does that feel like for you?

SPEAKER_07 21:24

For me, it's maybe one of the easiest places to be. Sharks, but is really they trigger that protection towards them, and that's what I feel when I'm with them. I I want to take care of them, I want to protect them, and I want people to see them this way, it's the same way I see them and feel them.

SPEAKER_06 22:15

Tell me about people of the water.

SPEAKER_07 22:38

We need to explore and find the new. We need to educate ourselves so that we can share this with others. And obviously, once we understand, we learn also to protect it because we usually want to protect what we love. So only through understanding then we can actually promote conservation.

SPEAKER_06 22:57

Christina, you've been to so many places around the world. You have dived into cave systems that no one else has ever seen or laid eyes on, no other human. Take us on a dive with you. Take us down into a memory that you have that is just the most quintessential moment for you of perhaps a connection that you feel in the water.

SPEAKER_07 23:24

It's a memory that repeats itself every time I'm on the water with sharks. It's the weight of the shark that relaxes into my lap. It's the rhythm movement of her jaw as she opens and closes her mouth in order to pump water through her gills. It's this complete surrender and abandonment in this moment in which this wild animal, which is still wild, tells me, I trust you and I'm okay with this. And so it is a moment that keeps repeating because every time a shark goes into my lap, it brings back the first time it happened and the same emotional feeling. It never gets too old or boring. It's always this renewed privilege.

SPEAKER_04 24:24

Sunto! I'm trying the happy Sunto way of doing things this time. Sunto, the Finnish Dive Computer Company.

SPEAKER_05 24:34

So one of the things that Sunto does that we both really like is they sponsor a number of athletes that we really like. Every company of the Dive World sponsors athletes, but the athletes that they sponsor at Sunto are a couple of people that we really respect, and I really like that quite a bit. Uh, William Truebridge, friend of this pod, having been on this pod. Joe Heinerth, who we spoke about in the news section this week, she's also sponsored. So I really like the fact that they sponsor these amazing athletes that are pushing the boundaries of what we in the dive community really connect with.

SPEAKER_04 25:07

And the important thing is, you know, they're very different people as well. So William, 19-time world champion, free diver, really amazing. I mean, really amazing guy, top of his game as far as free diving is concerned, very introspective, very calm.

SPEAKER_05 25:23

I like that about him. As a Buddhist, when I interviewed him, I really like that. Our interview consisted of us sitting in silence for 45 minutes.

SPEAKER_04 25:29

Yeah, exactly. And then you've got Jill and Jill Hineath, an amazing cave diver and explorer. You know, she she these more people have been to the moon than places that she's been inside this planet, diving. I mean, it's just uh utterly mind-blowing. The absolutely fantastic thing about it is that Sunto believes in you know promoting these, and I've always said we need more kind of ambassadors, people to look up to in the diving community to help encourage people to come into diving. And this is Sunto's doing that by putting these absolutely amazing diving heroes in front of us, admittedly wearing a Cunto rather good-looking Cunto dive computer, dive watch at the same time, like the uh the D5 Copper. Excellent, beautiful piece of uh engineering that.

SPEAKER_05 26:15

I love the name of Copper, yeah. I like that name. I do respect the fact that they give back to the community in that way by sponsoring these people that are pushing the boundaries in ways that I really respect. You know, you and I are not necessarily sponsored by Cunto. Uh the podcast is you and I could I'm open to sponsorship. I am for sale. So if I sale.

SPEAKER_04 26:37

Yeah, I so I so I did have a look on the website. There isn't a particular piece of flotsam floating in the ocean category for sponsorship, from what I could tell.

SPEAKER_05 26:45

Do they sponsor any seaweed wrapped around a log that's up against a rock?

SPEAKER_04 26:50

Seaweeds wrapping it around the log, slightly gently butting its head against the wall irregularly.

SPEAKER_05 26:57

Because if we're only sponsoring that, I'm I'm available.

SPEAKER_04 26:59

Okay, okay. Well, I'll tell you what, what we'll do after we've finished this episode, Jason, uh, I'll give Centro a ring and see what we can do to help you out. Okay.

SPEAKER_05 27:09

Even the fact that they sponsor this podcast says that they believe in this community. And I just very much appreciate that. And Craig, who we deal with over at Cinto, is a a great guy around this kind of stuff. He's both both creatively supportive of what we're doing, but he also really believes in the brand. And I think that says a lot about the company.

SPEAKER_04 27:27

So go and check them out. Cinto have got uh Cinto.com, got the ambassadors listed on the page. Uh, and you know, you might cruise by, maybe have a quick peek at some of the cool equipment that they have from a diving perspective. Um, and thank you, Cinto, for sponsoring season two of the Deeper Blue Podcast.

SPEAKER_05 27:44

Yeah, thank you, Cinto.

SPEAKER_03 27:48

Hi, I am Addison and Paul from Connect Ocean, and you're listening to the best 30 minutes about diving. The Deeper Blue Podcast.

SPEAKER_05 28:01

In today's Top Tip, we speak with the woman known as the underwater designer, Jennifer Idle. Jennifer is a renowned underwater photographer and is the first woman to have dived all 50 states, documented in her recently published book, An American Immersion. And today, Jennifer shares some profound but straightforward advice on how to be a better shooter underwater.

SPEAKER_00 28:21

As an underwater photographer, I'm most often asked, how can I get into underwater photography and become either a pro shooter or just take better photos that my friends can see and experience? I also work in conservation and love the wildlife that I show people. Through our photography, we give everyone, our friends, family, even pro-level magazine articles, whatever level you are, you give them insight into the underwater world, no matter the photo you're taking. And that's why it's important to think about what you're shooting and how you represent it, so that you can do justice to things like sharks and help people understand that they're not man-biting animals, but they're beautiful animals worth having experiences with and understanding better. To get involved in photography, you can shoot with any device you want to. Not to say droids can't do it either, but just putting a case on one of these magnificent mobile phones can create footage, be it filmmaking or still photos, that can last a lifetime of memories. And be sure to print out the photos that you create so that you have those memories in a hard format and not just digitally. But for the social media, anything you shoot underwater is an insight into the world you're passionate for.

SPEAKER_04 29:44

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

SPEAKER_01 29:52

Hello, hello. My name is Abingdon, and I'm out of Las Vegas, Nevada. My best dive ever was in Bocas del Toro, Panama. And it was actually my very first dive. It was an intro dive. I was on a group touring through Central America, and some of the people in the group had brought their dive equipment and wanted to go scuba diving when we were in Panama. So I asked if I could join them, and then I just rented some gear and went out with them and kind of had an intro dive with the dive master. She just stuck with me and kind of showed me the ropes a little bit about how to do this safely, and it was absolutely stunning. Um, I'd never experienced anything like it, and it convinced me to get my dive certification. We even did a little bit of a drift dive, and so it was totally effortless. We saw reef sharks, we saw uh so much wildlife, the colors were amazing, and uh, we even played with some jellyfish that didn't sting you. They were like the size of a sand dollar, and they were all over us, and it was just absolutely incredible. I love the warm water, obviously, of the Caribbean. I've done some cold water diving too, but this was just beautiful, and it's why I love to scuba dive that very first one.

SPEAKER_04 31:11

We'd love to hear your story about diving. So at the end of the show, you'll find out all the info you need to submit your best dive ever. Thanks for listening to the Deeper Blue Podcast. Find out more on all the stories you've heard this week, plus connect to the world's largest online dive community at deeperblue.com. And if you like what you've heard, please subscribe, like, and comment wherever you hear your podcasts. These comments and subscribes really make a difference. Before we go, I want to give a big shout out to Jason Elias, our producer. In case you didn't know, he has an amazing podcast about people who have a deep connection to our world's oceans. Connections strong enough that they have dedicated some part of their lives to being in or working on behalf of the water. Take a listen when you get a moment to Jason's show, the Big Deep Podcast. Every week, we want to hear your stories and share them with the world. So please record and send in your short story of your best dive ever. Keep it brief, no longer than two minutes, please. And in it, tell us your name and location, where you were on the dive, what happened that make it so great, and why it's meant so much to you. You can get that over to us at best dive ever at deeperblue.com or head to our website podcast.deeperblue dot com forward slash best dive ever. Join us again next week and explore much more of the deeper blue.