Floating Above A River of Sharks on "Our Planet" with Kat Brown, and Getting All Techie With It In New Dive Computers

SPEAKER_02 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 19 of the Deeper Blue Podcast. Coming up today in this episode, as always, we've got the latest news in the last week from around the world, underwater. Then co-host and founder of Girls That Scuba, Sarah Richards. She interviews Kat Brown, an underwater camerawoman who specializes in wildlife filming. They sit down and have a great talk about working on the documentary series Our Planet, about how to get into the underwater filmmaking scene, and about becoming a mother. We then hear from another female underwater filmmaker, this time the legendary Michelle Hall, who gives us a top tip on how to maximize the fun and enjoyment out of your dives. And then finally, we hear from Faye Wilde on her best dive ever. Right, let's dive straight into this week's diving and ocean news. If you're an avid diver or snorkeler and have a current or old generation iPhone, you may want to check in with the folks at Sea Life. On the same day that the iPhone 12 was revealed, they announced their new Sport Diver housing that caters for all iPhones from the 7 upwards and including the new iPhone 12. The housing comes with the new Sport Diver app, which allows you to view full-size images and thumbnail strips, so that allows you to quickly locate the image that you want on your phone. The housing itself is made from aluminium, stainless steel, polycarbonate, and optical grey glass. It's rated to 40 metres, that's 130 feet, and retails for 299 US dollars. It's a fantastic little unit, and I can't wait to get my hands on one to give it a go. Although I'll be honest, I'm always nervous about using my phone in these small housings, as the latest iPhones can be worth north of $1,1200 in cost. And should something go wrong, not only would I ruin my camera, but also my primary communication device, and probably most disturbingly my ability to take selfies and post them on Facebook. In other product news, Garmin this week has launched the Descent Mark II Mark IIi dive computers, as well as their T1 transmitter. The Descent Mark I was generally hailed as a great wrist dive computer, and the Mark II has improved on the design with a 1.4 inch sunlight readable colour display, which is 36% larger than the Mark I. It has all the usual support for diver modes such as single and multiple gas diving, including Nitrox, Trimix, and 100% O2. There's a gauge mode, free diving, spear phishing, and closed circuit rebreather. The Mark IIi also introduces air integration via the newly released T1 transmitter, which shares tank pressure and consumption rate data directly to the Mark IIi risk computer through sonar. Garmin actually says this is more reliable and has a greater transmission distance than the traditional air integration units of other vendors. It also allows connections to multiple transmitters, so instructors, dive masters, and even buddies can see their fellow divers vital data from up to 10 metres away. That's 33 feet. I personally am super excited to see this computer launch. I love the Mark I and I remember seeing it for the first time at Dima several years ago. And we do have review unit on the way, so we'll be doing a full review on the site in the coming week. So keep an eye out for that for both scuba and free diving. Now, figuring out whether a wetsuit or swimsuit is going to fit, particularly if you're a woman, can be quite the challenge. And the folks at Fourth Elements have baired nearly everything to help divers of all shapes and sizes find a suit that will suit. Getting the right size wetsuit isn't easy. Clothing sizes are far from standard. A size 10 from one brand is not the same as a size 10 from another. This is complicated yet further by different size charts and different countries. And for many women, the frustration doesn't end there. If you can't try a wetsuit on, it's almost impossible to know if it's going to fit, and many dive shops don't stop for full range of women's sizes. Now, Fourth Element has taken this on. 65% of the UK staff at Fourth Element are female. And like all women, they also face the daunting question when picking up new dive gear of what size do I need when they're shopping? Where Fourth Elements gear is concerned, they compare their own experiences with customer feedback and decided to share their measurements and handy tips along with photos showing them wearing the products. Of course, this isn't representative of all body shapes, but customers can now hopefully find a body shape and size close to one that they identify with. They can also take advantage of the personal descriptions of the products and get an insider view of how the swimwear, undersuits, and wetsuits feel to wear. Fourth element's range of women's dive wear spans from a UK size six up to a UK size 20, but even this can be confusing. So the company is moving to a universal system from that numbered system, and the sizes will go from extra, extra small or double XS, all the way up to extra, extra, extra large. And this is to make it easier for customers across the world to identify the size they need. So we've been following the story on social media, and these sorts of campaigns can be really hard to implement properly, especially when trying to tackle that thorny issue of diversity. There's been a somewhat mixed response online to this size matters campaign, and a lot of people have seen the positive in what Fourth Month have tried to do by featuring 10 of their staff in the campaign. However, some of the responses have called for a wider range of body types and ethnic backgrounds to be represented in the imagery used in the campaign. Using that lens and looking back at the campaign, I can see how it can seem like 10 very white-looking faces in the campaign, which in the current day and age would seem like an oversight. However, talking to Jim Standing, one of the co-founders of Fourth Element, I know that they wanted to help address the challenge of sizing in the dive equipment industry. For example, many dive centres just don't stock larger sizes. So often divers who come in don't know that larger sizes even exist and they don't always look at the vendors' websites. They also wanted to make sure that the campaign was very grassroots level, featuring staff from the fourth element headquarters in Cornwall and UK. Sadly, the diving industry is probably one of the least diverse industries I know. So any company that's trying to move the needle on this should be applauded in my view. However, we also do need to listen to the wider community and understand the wider issues on people's minds to ensure that this gets implemented properly. So kudos to Jim Strikey and the fourth element team for starting this conversation and doing something about it. But the really important thing is let's all keep this conversation going, be positive about it, and let's see how we can move diversity forward in the diving industry. Now, most of us in the industry would be right now in New Orleans at the annual Dima trade show, which, as we've covered before and you may know, has been cancelled for this year, like so many other shows out there. What this does mean is that I and many of my colleagues are looking longingly at the calendar to figure out what shows we might be able to attend next year. Luckily, the Boston Sea Rovers have announced that their annual event has moved from spring to fall or autumn, to those of you who speak the Queen's English like I do. The dates have changed for the foreseeable future. So next year's event, which was originally scheduled for March 6th and 7th, will now take place on October 2nd and 3rd, 2021. This new event dramatically decreases the chance of snow snarling the events, although it is Boston, so you never know 100%. Do remember my first trip to Boston in December 2000, where I'd never seen so much snow in my life, and that's coming from England. However, this will cap the New England dive season. Um, it will feature the freshest content from that season, and a load of people that I know absolutely rave about the Boston Sea Rovers event. So looking forward to attending that next year. Finally, as it's the epic holiday this week, known as Halloween, where we can normally fulfil our fantasies of dressing up as whatever we want without people judging us too badly, and eating enough sweets and candy to warrant worrying looks from our doctor. Like everything this year, we're probably going to be doing this at home rather than gathered outside, but luckily the History of Dive Museum is here to help. They have announced a virtual fancy dress costume contest to celebrate Halloween. There are three categories you can enter: children, adults, and pets. Entries must be submitted by October the 28th, and to enter the competition you simply post your image on Instagram with the tag HDM Halloween or on Facebook with the tag Diving Museum. If you are on neither, you can also email your entry in. Winners will be announced on October the 31st and they will be notified on social media. Winners will also receive an age-appropriate prize with a pet category winning a pet friendly prize. I personally can't wait to see all the entries on this and I am going to possibly try and give it a go myself. So let's see how many of these entries we can get into the History of Diving Museum event. That's it for the news this week. Remember, catch up on everything around the world underwater by heading to deeperblue.com or checking us out on social. And finally, as always, subscribe, like and comment wherever you hear your podcasts.

SPEAKER_01 10:30

Hi, this is Luke Hinneman. I was the dive safety officer for parts of Planet Earth 3 for the BBC Natural History Unit. And you're listening to the Deeper Blue Podcast.

SPEAKER_05 10:46

I'm Sarah Richard, co-host here at the Deeper Blue Podcast and founder of Girls That Scuba. Today I talk to Kat Brown, an underwater camerawoman who specializes in wildlife filming. We talk more about her work on the BBC Our Planet, narrated by David Attenborough, about how to get into underwater filmmaking and also about becoming a mother.

SPEAKER_07 11:13

Hi, I'm Kat Brown, an underwater camera woman specializing in wildlife filming. I currently live in Cape Town, South Africa. But I used to live in Plymouth for many years. I only moved to Cape Town three years ago.

SPEAKER_05 11:25

How did you go from murky waters in Plymouth here in the UK to places that we've seen on Blue Planet, which you've also been a part of? And now in South Africa, what was that transition?

SPEAKER_07 11:37

Any tropical waters seem like a holiday, even on jobs, just because the diving conditions are often, well, they appear very simple. Obviously, they've still got currents and bad weather. But uh just good visibility makes the diving feel much easier. So I did it the right way around, really. I had a really good solid basis in diving. The tropical stuff was nice and easy. Cape Town's pretty similar to the UK, actually. Pretty chilly, sometimes very low visibility. But I love it because it's very similar with marine life as well. So it's not too far removed from home.

SPEAKER_05 12:11

I'd love to know how hard, how easy it is to actually get a professional career in underwater videography and some of the projects that you've worked on.

SPEAKER_07 12:21

I think trying to get into the industry is probably very difficult. I was actually completely put off. I thought if I can't make it on these natural history, David Attenborough, National Geographic jobs, I'd rather not bother. So I went and studied environmental science. But I had such a passion for it that I was just diving, diving, diving, taking a camera in and meeting people with similar interests. And some of them were in the industry. And so bit by bit, over time, I got into the industry.

SPEAKER_05 12:49

When it comes to projects like this, where you're filming for these incredible shows, it can't all be action and good times and great visibility. There must be some very boring, very cold, wet days. I mean, tell me the opposite of these amazing experiences.

SPEAKER_07 13:08

Yeah. It's always incredibly hard work. You're always lacking sleep. It's always very tight on the boats with equipment. So on that particular job, for example, I slept next to several pelly boxes on my bed. Partly because I had the luxury of having a room to myself because I was the only female on the job, but that did mean I had to share with the kids instead. Some jobs can be very boring, especially as an assistant. So I've done a lot of assisting. And the macro shoots can be quite boring because you can't see what's happening on the camera. You're just sort of safety diving once everything's set up. So we use tripods. You have to bring a lot of kit in, which is hard work, but then but then you might just sit there for three or four hours and yeah, you get really bored, especially if you do that for four weeks, and you do get cold. But you know, the one thing for me underwater is you just never know what might swim past, even on some of the boring, boring, boring dives. You just have to keep hoping and something unusual is gonna swim past and make your day.

SPEAKER_05 14:07

Another thing I wanted to get onto as well is that you haven't mentioned the listeners yet, but you are a mother yourself, and I'm quite interested to know how that affects your career or even just your passion or even your time to dive. How has that happened? How hard has it been?

SPEAKER_07 14:24

It's been hard in mostly in the fact that I've just put it off and put it off and put it off because I've known that it will mean massive compromise. And also it's really hard to say no to work. So as I got more successful, you know, every job I got out, I would think, okay, well, we'll just wait for this one. And and then Zika virus came in, and I was then really putting it off because I suddenly started going to all these Zika areas, and you know, then it's another six months. So having put it off for so long, I'm very happy that I hadn't left it too late. It was very hard saying no to work initially when I was pregnant, especially before wanting to tell anyone, because I didn't really want the industry knowing if it didn't work out. And then COVID really changed it all because there was no work. And South Africa had a massive lockdown where we couldn't even leave the house, never mind go to the beach or go to a job. So that sort of covered most of motherhood time for me. So I'm only just able to start thinking about work now again. And it's gonna be really hard doing the first job because it generally involves four weeks away. And if you start worrying about quarantine, it'll be six weeks or eight weeks away, and then leaving a little one-year-old, or he's still under one at the moment. It's gonna be tricky, I think. Yeah, haven't had to make that decision yet. The other side of it that's so tricky is that you're freelance, so you haven't got maternity cover or anything like that. So you start saving for a bit, but then you don't really know and you don't want to stop working forever. So it's a really tough decision in that respect, unless you've got a partner that can look after you for a year or two.

SPEAKER_05 16:01

As a female, then if you've chosen to you want to have children, but you have to make that conscious decision of when to have children when you are in this kind of industry because you're obviously unable to work underwater for nine months. And if your job is to be underwater, then those decisions you know don't come lightly, and it is very interesting to always hear about motherhood and diving and working in diving. So, yeah, thanks for sharing your story with us. So you must have met some incredible people along your way and had some amazing experiences. Is there any experience really pops out, any underwater moment or story that you'd be able to share with us?

SPEAKER_07 16:41

One of my favorite stories is working on our planet, on the sharks feeding at night off Tahiti in French Polynesia. So it was tropical diving, so quite nice and warm. Really good visibility. I know the team quite well. So great to work with um Gisler and Doug Anderson. They're always trying to find new ways to get the picture a slightly different look. So they're innovative in the field, and with the same equipment, they try and make changes. So it's quite fun from that point of view. But also the diving was challenging, it was strong currents and night diving, and then we had to wear full chain mail suits. So for the first time in my life, I had to worry about adding buoyancy rather than whether to add weight or not. And then just watching the sharks, it wasn't scary, but it was exciting, it was exhilarating, and you definitely had to be on your toes and aware. It was in a channel, it was so it was very fast-flowing water, also just to get shark action. Because we were wearing chainmail, it was it was hard to move. We pretty much went with the flow, it was a one-way dive. We had to be very careful where we got out because we didn't want to miss our exit point, because then it would have got very tricky trying to get out at all. So that added a little edge on. But we run rebreathers and full-face mask comms, so that helps with the communication of where to get out. I was doing the lighting on that job. So I had four lights on a scooter and I was hovering above the scene, so I had a really good view of what was going on. And just seeing the mass of sharks and how they behave. For me, it was fascinating. You can move slowly amongst them as a fish or a person, and they don't react at all. And as soon as you make a sudden movement, well, they all pile in on top of you, all the fish. So, I mean, we were lucky we knew it, we hardly ever had any problems. But if you forgot for a moment and pinned too hard against the current, you very quickly got reminded to stop moving. Because the viz was amazing. I was literally just looking down onto this massive landscape of just sharks, just moving across the reef. Like it's like a river of sharks, of grey reef sharks, until they start really hunting, and then they all just go into this massive pile of shark. Just fascinating to watch.

SPEAKER_04 19:13

Hi, I'm free diver William True Rouge, and you are listening to the best 30 minutes about diving, the deeper blue podcast.

SPEAKER_00 19:29

Hi, it's Jason Elias, producer of the Deeper Blue Podcast. Continue with our theme of female underwater filmmakers. Today's top tip comes from acclaimed underwater filmmaker, the legendary Michelle Hall.

SPEAKER_06 19:45

Gosh, there's so many, but I'll narrow it down, and I would say slow down. So I'm thinking about what I do when I'm out diving and when I'm getting ready to get in the water. I think it's really important in those last moments with all the excitement and talking with your friends to slow down, pay attention to your diving gear, do that last check with your diving gear, breathe off your regulator before you get in the water, and then have fun. So the have fun part is for everything, for the diving, for your career, whatever you're doing. Have fun with it, and it'll be successful. And don't take your camera with you if you don't feel comfortable, and don't make the dive if you don't feel comfortable with it. It's never shameful to say, I'm gonna skip this one. This just doesn't feel right to me. I've done it. And oh well, if somebody looks at me cross-eyed, safety first.

SPEAKER_02 20:55

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_03 21:04

Hi, this is Faye Wilde, and I'm from London in the UK. I would say my best ever dive has to be in Pontador and Mozambique. I wanted to see tiger sharks for years, but I really wanted a natural experience, not like a baited or a feeding dive. And in Pontadura, they have a really healthy population of sharks, including tigers. No baiting was coming there, so you just end in the blue and see what you see. And I will never forget just ending on that first shark dive and seeing a really beautiful tiger shark just coming straight past. Tiger shark is really nice and relaxed, it's just doing its thing, and it's just an absolutely amazing experience.

SPEAKER_02 21:37

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've 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 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