Diving the Japanese Battleship that Launched Pearl Harbor with Aron Arngrimsson, and Freediving for Rum

SPEAKER_03 0:13

Welcome to the Deeper Blue Podcast, your weekly guides to everything that is happening around the world underwater. My name is Stephen Whelan. 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, freediving, diving travel, and ocean advocates world. So join us as we explore the Deeper Blue. Hi everyone. Welcome to episode 16 of the Deeper Blue podcast. Coming up today in this episode, we've got the latest news in the last week from Around the World Underwater. Then Jason Nilias sits down with Aaron Arvinson, the Icelandic owner of Dirty Dozen Expeditions, which takes adventure wreck diving to a whole new level. They have a good chat about what draws him to these wrecks, why he chases them around the world, and why seeing these wrecks up close has given him some perspective on himself and mankind. We then hear from fabulous podcast co-host and free diver Megan Heaney Greer. She has a practical tip on how to up your recreational free diving game. And then finally, we hear from Gareth Locke on his best dive ever. Alright, so on to this week's diving and ocean news. Filmmaker Maxwell Hon has reached a fantastic eight and a half minute new mini documentary on an epic scale. It's titled Tadpoles: The Big Little Migration. The film is a labour of love that took over four years to shoot. Maxwell would regularly visit a secluded lake on Vancouver Island in Canada to shoot video and stills of the Western Toad tadpoles in action. The film documents the daily migration of the tadpoles that they undertake and the risks that they run into. It's absolutely beautifully shot and wouldn't be out of place in a BBC Natural History Unit or National Geographic film. You can catch the film by heading to deeperblue.com or directly on YouTube. Some travel news now. Blue Force Fleet has announced that its Red Sea liftboard operations have resumed, which is absolutely fantastic news, as the Red Sea is an absolutely amazing destination for diving and one of my favourite go-to diving areas. The move comes on the heels of the company successfully relaunching its Maldives operations in August 2020. The Red Sea operations are set to relaunch this month in October. And like a lot of diving travel companies, they now have a policy to support customers who want to delay their plans into 2021 or 2022, which can give you some peace of mind. In other travel news, British scuba diving rehabilitation charity, Depth Therapy, will be recommencing its international scuba diving training expeditions this October with a small group trip to Egypt. Depth Therapy is a fantastic organization that helps rehabilitate injured military personnel who have suffered life-changing injuries, and this is all done through the medium of scuba diving. There are really quite heartwarming stories I've heard from participants on the programs as they take amputees and paraphlegic troops to go diving and often hear that the participants in the program report that they are pain-free for the first time since they got injured. Travel restrictions due to COVID-19 mean that training so far this year for the DEP Therapy program members has been mostly limited to online academic study. Now the charity is able to take a group of six beneficiaries for practical training and enjoy the restorative effects of scuba diving in the clear, warm waters of the Red Sea. The expedition is funded as part of a grant from the Veterans Foundation, and the team will be heading to Hagada in Egypt from London Gatwick. Finally, they will then head down the coast of Egypt to something called the Roots Red Sea in El Kazir, which will have only just opened the day before they arrive. During the seven-day stay, Depth Therapy will be running raid diving courses. One of the program managers who is joining the expedition is a 20-year-old who was involved in accidents during basic armed forces training. He's a paraplegic wheelchair user who's been particularly affected by lockdown. I really do support what Depth Therapy is doing, and they are only one of a number of different charities doing this other stuff. And I really do encourage you to go and find out more. In this case, for Depth Therapy, it's Deptherapy.co.uk. A couple of new products have launched recently. Our friends over at Fourth Elements are on a roll as far as launching new products concerned. Last week they launched their latest range of hydroskin rash guards. The rash guards are available in the same smooth, high performance fabric, but are now made with a recycled polyester, decreasing the use of virgin materials. Each hydroskin helps prevent up to seven plastic bottles from ending up in landfill or worse the ocean. They come in a variety of colours and both short and long-sleeve forms. And if you're interested, check out fourth element.com. There's also a new dive computer that's come onto the market from ScubaPro. It's called the Aladdin A2, and it's targeted towards advanced technical scuba divers or free divers. Surprisingly, it doesn't actually follow the trend of releasing these vivid colour displays that we see quite often these days. But OBS are a more traditional sort of dot matrix style display, which, although it is an older type of display, is really nice and clear with some large numbers with easy to read and adverse conditions. It also has wireless air integration that can handle multiple transmitters, which makes monitoring tank pressure and true bottom time much easier, especially for multi-tank technical dives. More information on that on deepaloo.com or the Scuba Pro website. Ocean X, the marine and ocean research company that produces some really truly spectacular videos, a number of which we've actually featured on our weekly video of the week feature, has launched a new one-of-a-kind scientific research, media production and exploration vessel, the RV Ocean Explorer. It's designed and built to be the most advanced combined marine research and media vessel in existence. The Ocean Explorer is both a floating integrated marine research platform and a Hollywood calibre media production studio. The pictures and videos we've seen really does make it look like some sort of space age Star Trek-like set of facilities. Lots of video screens everywhere, touch screens and so on. I'll be honest, I kind of half expected looking at the introductory video to see Lens Flare and the video to be directed by JJ Abrams like he did in the rebooted Star Trek movies over the last sort of 10 years or so. However, you can check out the video showing all this amazing stuff on the ship and what it looks like on deeperblue.com. And I truly can't wait to see what Oceanex are able to do with this new facilities on board the ship. Now, finally, if you're a freediving fan as well as a rum connoisseur, which I definitely am a big free diving fan and a rum connoisseur, you're going to want to check out a new partnership between Marine Conservation Charity, Project Aware, and the UK division of Kraken Rum. Kraken Black Spice Rum is launching a new limited edition bottle called Unknown Deep in the UK that donates £1 to Project Aware for every bottle sold. Now, as a rum fan myself, I think it's pretty cool in its own right, but the limited edition launch goes much further and is pretty special. They've teamed up with the lovely UK British free diving team member Becky Ryan to launch what they call a dive-through. Becky is tasked with diving down and retrieving limited edition bottles for customers from an underwater stash that dwells in the depths of the National Diving and Activity Centre or NDAC in Chepslow in the UK. As a Rum fan, I have to say I've already got my bottle on pre-order. So if you want to pick up yours, head to deeperblue.com, check out the news item and find out how to claim yours. That's it from the news this week. Remember, you can catch up on all the latest news and happenings around the world underwater by heading to deeperblue.com or checking us out on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. And finally, if you like what you've heard, please subscribe, like, comment wherever you hear your podcasts. These comments and subscribes really make a difference.

SPEAKER_00 8:27

You're listening to the world's only weekly podcast for scuba diving, free diving, dive travel, and ocean advocacy. This is Freediver Megan Haney Greer, and you are listening to the Deeper Blue Podcast.

SPEAKER_04 8:47

Hey there, it's Jason Leis, producer of the Deeper Blue Podcast. Today, a conversation I did with Aden Angremsen, the Icelandic owner of Dirty Dozen Expeditions, which takes adventure wreck diving to a new level. Aaron talks a little bit about what draws him to these wrecks, why he chases them around the world, and how seeing them up close and personal has given him some perspective on himself and mankind.

SPEAKER_05 9:14

So hi guys, my name is Aron Aron Grimzon. I'm from Iceland, and I'm the founder of the Dirty Dozen Expedition, and I'm speaking to you right now from Kyiv, Ukraine.

SPEAKER_04 9:23

So Dirty Dozen Expeditions, for people that don't know, focuses on primarily wreck expeditions. Could you tell us a little bit about what that is and where your passion for that comes from?

SPEAKER_05 9:32

Well, I've been in the diving industry for, I guess, about 15 years now, and I've had my cave period where that's what I was really into, my deep period, my recreational period. And right now I find myself in the wreck phase of my life, which is one of the key reasons I started this expedition company, because to be completely honest with you, it gave me access to places which I could never ever afford to go to myself.

SPEAKER_04 9:58

You and I were talking beforehand about why rec diving means so much to you, why your company focuses on this and where your passion around this lies. Can you kind of tell us where that passion comes from in you, what it means to you, and some of the places that passion has taken you?

SPEAKER_05 10:16

The rec diving originally started with me on a quite big project called Hamilton, Expedition Hamilton, where we positively identified a US Coast Guard cutter in Reykjavik in Iceland that sank in the Second World War. It was the first Coast Guard casualty for the Americans in the Second World War, it was sunk by a Nazi submarine, and it had 26 souls on board. And this is an expedition that took around four or five years. And that kind of sparked my passion for wreck diving for a couple of reasons. First of all, wreck diving is not always about the wreck itself, it's about the adventure, it's about assembling a team of friends and people that have a different set of skills and setting up, you know, the great adventure of finding something. And finding US Coast Guard cutter Alexander Hamilton was crazy because it's named after one of your founding fathers, right? So again, you know, one of these crazy side adventures from wreck diving. Another one was the emotional impact of it, because on the second expedition, we went and took this granite memorial plaque with all the names of the tailors that passed away, and we attached it onto the ship at 300 feet. We've obviously been speaking to the families of the fallen men for years at this point, and we only had a limited budget. We spent all the budget on the boat for one day. The weather window only had one day and one dive. So the stress was palpable, and it was such a big buildup. I remember finding myself at 300 feet, putting the the plaque on and a few tears passed down my full face mask at this point because it was just so overwhelming. But that's my introduction for passion of wreck diving because it just has so many facets to it. It's not just going diving.

SPEAKER_04 11:58

It's about the emotional connection to these places. And the last thing I would ask you is you talked a little bit beforehand about your perspective and where you were raised in Iceland and how you sometimes go to some of these wrecks around the world in naval ships that are wartime ships. And can you just mention some of those ships that you've been on and what that emotional contrast brings up in you?

SPEAKER_05 12:21

So to give you a bit of a background, I'm born and raised in Iceland. You know, I'm a pacifist by that fact because our country doesn't have an army, our police doesn't carry guns. We had, I think, one homicide in our country's history a couple of years ago, where our SWAT team called the Viking Squad, where the police actually had to shoot someone for the first time because they're the only people that carry guns. So we're not very familiar with conflict. We've always stayed neutral in major conflicts, and me being 33 years old, I haven't witnessed and experienced a major conflict. So being thrown into this perspective and doing wreck diving. Well, Truck Lagoon harbors a humongous amount of merchant vessels, and some Navy vessels being submarines, oilers, or destroyers, and that conflict itself carried 5,000 casualties. And even to this day, there are several bodies lying below the waters, and when you're confronted with them, you get the sense of your own mortality. But it's also about the history. When I'm in Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands, where they conducted the nuclear tests, Operation Crossroads, where they detonated two nuclear devices onto a naval assembly fleet that they designed. So if it was the Nazis Prince Eugen, we have the aircraft carrier USS Saratoga, or if we're speaking about the pride of the Japanese Navy, the IJN Nagato, where Admiral Yamamoto launched the attack from Pearl Harbor from in the bridge. You know, when you dive down to these wrecks and you go to that bridge, I mean I'm feeling it right now, the way you feel is it it's just out of this world. It just gives me a different perspective. When I go out with people that are my age, I see something I'm quite jealous of sometimes, the blissful ignorance from conflict. Because now when you start seeing it all in perspective, you start to understand. And I thought it was a disadvantage, and I started questioning it at some point because I went going, why am I going to Chernobyl? Why am I going to Bikini and truck? I'm experiencing horrors and death and all the rest of it. But I'm I'm really thankful for for having done it. It doesn't always give me a great feeling seeing what I see, but I'm thankful for having seen it. So I feel I've just gotten this perspective of remembering where we came from. We're living in the world of long peace right now, even though it maybe doesn't feel like it. We've been a lot worse off, and we should we should remember that to be able to avoid any conflicts in the future so history doesn't repeat itself.

SPEAKER_01 15:15

I'm an instructor trainer for scuba, a writer, a filmmaker, a dog walker. And you're listening to the best 30 minutes about diving, the Deeper Blue Podcast.

SPEAKER_04 15:32

Today's top tip comes from Deeper Blue Podcast co-host and iconic freediver, the always effervescent MHG. At least that's how I know her.

SPEAKER_00 15:45

Hey guys, this is Megan Haney Greer, free diver and co-host for Deeper Blue Podcast. And I have a top tip that I want to share with you. It's for practical free diving. So if you are just trying to up your recreational free diving game, maybe be able to get down more gracefully on the reef where you're snorkeling, or increase your bottom time a bit so that you can check out that eel or other critter under the ledge, or maybe just photobomb the scuba divers down there breathing off those big old tanks they're lugging around. One thing that's often overlooked is the importance of streamlining and cutting your drag underwater. So when you're underwater, free diving on your own power, breath holding, moving efficiently through the water is really important because it allows you to conserve your energy and efficiently utilize your air supply. And it also gets you to where you're going more quickly, which can increase your bottom time. So, for example, if you think about how an airplane is built to slice through the air, or in nature, how a shark or dolphin is perfectly designed for cutting through the water without any drag. That is your goal for streamlining underwater for free diving and really at any level. So, what you want to do is be as streamlined and hydrodynamic as possible. So, my top tip is to let your hands fall over your head all the way down and just gently clasp your hands together and then keep your ears in line with your biceps. And while you're keeping your muscles relaxed in this position, you only need to tilt your head occasionally to peek your eyes forward in the direction you're headed. And what this does is it keeps your forehead and your mask from getting out of line with your body, which when it comes out of line from your body, it creates all this extra drag on the way down. And this simple adjustment will help you be a much more efficient and practical free diver for all your underwater explorations.

SPEAKER_02 18:03

Hi, my name is Gareth Locke. I'm based in the UK, Wiltshire in the UK. And my favorite dive, my most memorable dive, would have to be the Frisia off the west coast of the Orkneys, which I dived in around 2007, 2008. It sits in 40 to 42 meters, and the reason it's so memorable is because it was my first experience of absolutely stunning visibility on a UK dive. We got a couple of meters, five meters below the surface, and we could see the seabed below, 35 meters down. We could see the remains of the wreck, which is uh an engine boiler, the hull, and the propeller, and it was just fantastic. And I've never been in that situation. As we were descending down, it was like being in space. The water was dark, the bubbles were white, I was with some great guys, and I just loved it. And I think back to this saying that actually this is what UK diving can be like. It is awesome. So thank you for inviting me along. If you ever get the chance to get diving in good visibility in the UK, nothing beats it.

SPEAKER_03 19:15

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 Deeperblue 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 bestdiveever at deeper blue dot 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