Jennifer Idol on her thoughts after diving all 50 states (sorry North Dakota), and NOAA Scientist Dr Steve Gittings on how best not to be left adrift at sea at night

Jason Elias:
Season three of the DeeperBlue Podcast is brought to you by Suunto, finish engineering, piloting adventure from mountain top to ocean floor since 1936. Suunto.

Mehgan Heany-Grier:
Welcome to the DeeperBlue Podcast, your weekly guide to everything that's happening around the world underwater. My name is Mehgan Heany-Grier. I'm a free diver ocean explorer and the imperfect conservationist, also, cohost of the DeeperBlue Podcast. The podcast for deeperblue.com. The world's most popular diving website. Every week the DeeperBlue Podcast covers everything that is happening in the scuba, free diving, dive travel, and ocean advocacy world. So join us as we explore the deeper blue.

Stephan Whelan:
Welcome back.

Jason Elias:
Hello-

Stephan Whelan:
Look at that.

Jason Elias:
everyone-

Stephan Whelan:
Welcome back.

Jason Elias:
Welcome back.

Stephan Whelan:
This is fantastic. Jason, welcome back to the DeeperBlue Podcasts.

Jason Elias:
Thank you.

Stephan Whelan:
We should probably remind people who we are because they've probably forgotten what our dulcet tones are. So I'm Stephan Whelan. I am the founder-

Jason Elias:
The grand fromage.

Stephan Whelan:
of deeperblue.com.

Jason Elias:
The big fromage.

Stephan Whelan:
The grand fromage, and I'm the founder of deeperblue.com and host here on the podcast.

Jason Elias:
And I'm Jason Elias producer, bon vivant-

Stephan Whelan:
Bon vivant.

Jason Elias:
and literate man, who says, "whom," when I'm speaking.

Stephan Whelan:
I'm very surprised we have that this evening, I have to say. So I'm really excited, Jason, we're back season three of the podcast, and we've got even more stuff coming up this season.

Jason Elias:
We have some great interviews coming up. Plus the fantastic co-hosts of the show who are far more interesting and charismatic than you and I are going to have a larger role on the show. And we're very excited to be back. So let's get to the news.

Stephan Whelan:
So this story is Christian Pulisic-

Jason Elias:
Pulisic, American.

Stephan Whelan:
Apparently who is some big football soccer player. He has caused quite a bit of controversy because he has posted a video, which I've seen on social media on Instagram of him, essentially abusing a Goliath grouper so that the grouper has been caught fishing by looks of things. It's exhausted. It's up against the boat. And Christian is there kicking a ball above it on the facade of the boat playing around. He then slips in collapses on this distress fish and stuff. I'll be honest as an ocean lover and fish lover. I find this utterly appalling to watch.

Jason Elias:
I actually am a soccer fan, a football fan, and Chelsea is become one of my favorite teams specifically because Christian Pulisic, Americans star, and he's playing as a striker for Chelsea. So I follow him regardless of what he was doing on this. So that's how I found out about this video is I saw it, and I have to say, I was also pretty disappointed with this video.

Jason Elias:
Now, if you eat fish, you can not be against fishing. This was something different though. This was like you were saying a fish that was being harassed, that was exhausted against the side of the boat. And there was some playing above it. And I have to say, even I was a little disappointed with it. It was kind of hard to watch. Particularly for the idea of like laughing and joking over an animal suffering. And I say that with full cognizant of the fact that I'm a huge fan of Christian Pulisic and think he's a great, he's actually a really nice guy. So it was tough to see.

Stephan Whelan:
It's interesting. So I talked to a number of people in the ocean advocacy world, and obviously they're quite horrified about this. And particularly a lady called Zakia, who is on Instagram and Clubhouse's Mother Ocean Blue, and she highlighted this to me, and I would encourage people to do this. If you feel as strongly as we do about it, I would encourage you to go onto Instagram, go to Christian's Instagram accounts, and actually you can go and report the video as harassment. And if you go into it, you can select animal abuse as one of those things. And the more people who do that, the more chance that the video gets taken down. It's not something anyone should be able to see, but if you feel strongly about it, then please do consider going and having a look at that.

Jason Elias:
So that takes us to our next story, which is the idea, we were hesitant to actually talk about COVID-19 cause we're also tired of talking about COVID, but if you're a listener to this show, and maybe this is one of your main connections to what's happening in the broader diver world, we thought we'd bring you a little bit of COVID news.

Jason Elias:
First off, there have been some medical reports that if you've had COVID particularly long haul COVID, which means that the symptoms last for longer. There is lung damage. And so there are people now who are advocating that if you've had long haul COVID that maybe diving is no longer in your future, which is very hard to hear for very dedicated divers. There is some controversy around this. This is not set in stone, but the idea is that long haul COVID sufferers may not want to dive.

Stephan Whelan:
That's interesting, actually, it's not on this report that we read, but I know from other doctors and other reports that I've read, when they've x-rayed people's lungs who have had COVID, and they may not even have particularly bad symptoms around it, it looks like you've been smoking for 20 years. Is this sort of thing that your x-rays of your lungs show? So it's obviously having particularly bad impact on people's lungs. We just don't know what the long-term impact of COVID will be.

Jason Elias:
But on the flip side of the bad news for long haul COVID suffers, there is also some very good news. Obviously we all know that the world is opening up. So some good news on the travel front Bonaire now has resumption of nonstop flights from American and Delta, from Miami and Atlanta. There are of course PCR tests and antigen tests that you're required to do. But the idea is, is that the world is starting to open up again. I believe Costa Rica opened up in the time that we were down as well. So it's very exciting to hear that people are going go start diving again around the world.

Stephan Whelan:
Yeah, absolutely. And you know, from a European perspective, places like Malta, Spain, Greece, and so on, they're starting to open up for divers. So it's fantastic.

Jason Elias:
Yeah. That's great news. So enough of the COVID news, we've all had enough when we see it all the time. So let's move on to something more fun-

Stephan Whelan:
I blame you, Jason, I did not want to talk about-

Jason Elias:
I did want to talk about it. I thought it was important.

Stephan Whelan:
The big C 19, but you wants to talk about it. So if anyone writes in to complain, can you address it to Jason, please? Not to me.

Jason Elias:
Let's talk about subway sandwiches, but this is a big thing here in the United States. A couple of weeks ago, I'm an avid reader of the New York times, and the New York times has sent in a Subway tuna fish sandwich to go get it tested, to see how much tuna was actually in there, tuna fish sandwich. And it turned out 0% tuna in the tuna fish sandwich. Now, why would we bring this up on a show about diving? Well, I think really what it comes down to is that first off Subway kind of-

Stephan Whelan:
There goes our Subway sponsorship.

Jason Elias:
Sorry, Jared. Why would we bring this up on a dive podcast? Because what it really speaks about is that there have been followup articles saying that are we really shocked that you can't have giant foot long tuna fish sandwiches available at thousands of Subway restaurants around the world? It's just unsustainable fish wise. And that's kind of what these followup articles are talking about is that we should probably expect more of this in the future.

Jason Elias:
Additionally, they say that maybe we should actually just get used to the idea of not eating fish on a commercial scale like this. And so maybe there is no such thing as a sustainable tuna fish sandwich at Subway.

Stephan Whelan:
Well, that kind of goes back to the whole Seaspiracy conversation we had in the last season, when that came out. It's a very big, broad debate. And one of the things that absolutely shocked me, one of the findings from the study, was that a lot of fish is mislabeled. And this isn't just tuna. It's actually one of the ones that surprised me the most is shark meats. As we know, sharks are being massively over-fished in the sea. Estimates between a 100 to 120 million sharks killed every year for Germany shark fins, but shark meat does end up in the ecosystem as well.

Stephan Whelan:
The thing is, as a Brit, one of our favorite dishes is fish and chips. And one of the things that absolutely shocked me is there is studies that show that a lot of the fish you get in fish and chips is actually shark meat without realizing it. So things like rock salmon, lemon fish, grayfish, catfish, flake, huss, gummy. These are all types of fish that shark meat is labeled as. So it's something that just absolutely staggered me, to be honest.

Jason Elias:
It's also indicative of the type of conversations we're going to have more and more around sustainability around these kinds of things, and where we're going to have these kinds of conversations more and more often.

Stephan Whelan:
An interesting segue into our next item, Speedo renown for their slips that men wear in dodgy resorts around the world.

Jason Elias:
You've got a strange accent. You must be one of those guys that wears one of those bathing suits.

Stephan Whelan:
UK is not European anymore. So we get to wear board shorts instead of budgie smugglers, as we call them over here.

Jason Elias:
My wife says that my board shorts are always so long, they look like a skirt. So I am on the opposite end of the spectrum from the Speedos. Maybe it's my lack of self-confidence.

Stephan Whelan:
Well, yeah, bits of flotsam in the water don't need Speedos. Speedo have revealed, what they're calling an intelligence swimsuits. That's custom 3D printed for the person. It uses customizable compression, adaptive buoyancy, and textures inspired by the underbelly of a whale. Which is a little bit unfortunate, I think because I'm not the youngest of the young anymore. And I already think that my belly looks very similar to a whale's belly.

Jason Elias:
That's right. I was inspired by a whale-

Stephan Whelan:
The problem is sometimes when I get in the water, I see harpoon boats start coming up next to me.

Jason Elias:
People start seeing sea shanties when you're in the water.

Stephan Whelan:
Exactly. So interesting, this is more about swimming than it is about diving. But interestingly, it's got some features around AI, around monitoring athletes, vital statistics, and provide coaching. And there's an exoskeleton to enhance muscular power in the pool. So this is one of these technologies that's trying to help freestyle swimmers-

Jason Elias:
That's pretty cool.

Stephan Whelan:
So that's pretty cool. Maybe crossover into the diving world at some point.

Jason Elias:
So that brings us to the next story that I think is very cool. And you know, I've been a diver for 20 years, and I feel I'm a nominally intelligent person, but when I go diving, it's rare that I know what the type of fish it is that I'm looking at. And I say that as a flaw in my dive, I don't do logs, I don't care around those books. I know there's some people that do, but I would argue that most people don't. There is a new software called Name That Fish, which allows you to take photos underwater, and then it will automatically identify them for you.

Stephan Whelan:
Even better than that, Jason, it takes video.

Jason Elias:
Oh, that's awesome.

Stephan Whelan:
You send your video into them and it will compare it. So it uses visual recognition, computer AI to recognize what it is. And it's really interesting. So when you watch the video, and if you go on deeperblue.com, there is a news item about it-

Jason Elias:
There it is.

Stephan Whelan:
And you can actually go and watch a video, which shows you divers in the water, fish arounds. And it's actually got like boxes around the fish and it describes what the fish is, the name of the fish. So it was really fascinating to watch-

Jason Elias:
That's very cool. I love that. I will actually be using it. So that takes us to-

Stephan Whelan:
The next one is, unfortunately a little bit of an environmental bad news story again I'm afraid. It seems to have been quite a bit of bad news whilst we've been away. There has been again, videos that have been circulating on social media of the ocean on fire-

Jason Elias:
Yeah, it's crazy.

Stephan Whelan:
Which is absolutely crazy. So a circle of flames have erupted in the Gulf of Mexico after a gas leak caused by an underwater pipeline burst, and it ignited, and ships were rushing to try and put out this fire. It was crazy. because you got a big red boiling flame coming out of it and there's ships trying to pour water on it, which I just think seems ridiculous-

Jason Elias:
If you have not seen it, it is the closest thing I've ever seen to the ISR in this world. It is absolutely insane. It looks like a portal to hell.

Stephan Whelan:
So this takes us to the next story, which is the freediving news actually. Researchers have developed a wearable smart light device that tracks free divers, specifically their heart rate, brain oxygen levels and blood volume during deep dive. I'll be honest, free diving is still a little bit of a mystery to the medical community. How we can hold our breath for so long? How we can flat line ECGs? What happens to bloods, we know that bloods travels, when you're holding your breath, blood travels from your extremities down to your core to protect your brain and your heart and so on. Yeah, lots of really, really fascinating stuff happens physiologically to the human body, which just blows people's minds as you go free diving.

Stephan Whelan:
So researchers have created this device to do it. It uses near infrareds spectroscopy. There we go. And it's also been developed to with stands deep water pressure by University of St. Andrews. So UK University. This device is monitoring heart rates as low as 11 beats per minute, low oxygenation levels, which should be at 98%, but drop to 25%. All these things happen with free divers, absolutely fascinating. And they publish some research results from it, and a journal that obviously we'd all be subscribed to, the Philosophical Transactions of Royal Society B, goodness me, it's something that I read regularly, as you can imagine.

Jason Elias:
Philosophical Transactions of Royal Society B. What I want to know is who's the society A? Is this the B team? That's messed up.

Stephan Whelan:
It's something I don't think any of us will be subscribing to any time soon.

Jason Elias:
The thing about this is I can see, of course this is developed for free divers, and of course that's the place that would be most relevant, but it would be really interesting to actually start bringing... It's only a matter of time before this starts coming into all wetsuits at some point where we can have continual feedback of our body's systems. Stephan and I happen to be science fiction nerds. So we're always talking about what science fiction series we're watching. And it's only a matter of time before we have continual feedback for the entirety of our lives. Which is both wonderful and terrible, but I can see this kind of thing being relevant to even scuba divers.

Stephan Whelan:
Completely agree. So this brings us on to our last bit of news, which is a great bit of news. There seems to be a bit of an arms race going on at the moment in the diving world. And the arms races, who can build the biggest pool and the deepest pool. It's amazing. Earlier in the year, we had a pool, the deep spot in Poland. There's some news that happened whilst we were off around the 50 meter pool in the UK that's trying to be built. And now both of those been pips to it, by Dubai. So there is a-

Jason Elias:
Of course, it's Dubai.

Stephan Whelan:
Because funny enough, you need quite a bit of cash to build these pools. And they have built a 16 meter pool. It's full of what looks like abandoned apartments. It's got a fake library full of sunken books, a games room-

Jason Elias:
It's got a foosball table you can play. You can play foosball under water. And it looks like there's roots from Tomb Raider on that, right? And of course, Dubai, we do this. It's like the Vegas of dive pools.

Stephan Whelan:
The thing that blows my minds, and just shows how much money sloshing around certain parts of the world, is this was built privately. This wasn't built to be open to the public at all. And they've decided to open it to the public. This sort of stuff requires tens of millions of things.

Jason Elias:
Who is it for?

Stephan Whelan:
I don't exactly know who it was, but it was built for one of the rich guys in Dubai, which there are quite a lot of them.

Jason Elias:
Yeah. So here was his personal private pool. And then they decided to open it up-

Stephan Whelan:
Test the private pool and they decided to open up. And so 30 degrees Celsius as a body temperature, whatever that is in funny Fahrenheit.

Jason Elias:
98.6, my friend.

Stephan Whelan:
And the other thing, which I think is fascinating here is the guy who was running it. So the diver who's in charge of running the facility is Jarrod Jablonski. In the diving world. He's very famous. He is the guy who created GUE, Global Underwater Explorers, which is one of the tech diving community... He's very famous in the tech diving community. And he is the guy who's responsible for running this whole facility. So absolutely crazy.

Jason Elias:
I just love the fact that it's, two things, first off, I love the fact that it was just a rich guy that decided to do it. That's amazing. We are living in a second gilded age, and it's just crazy the disparity. But then the other part is that, when you see the pictures of this place with, there's an apartment complex that looks like there's a working video game with street fighter two in there. I would do that just to get down there and play there.

Stephan Whelan:
Absolutely, completely agree.

Jason Elias:
All right. Welcome back everyone to third season of the show, we have a lot more great stuff coming to you this season. So we're really glad to be back.

Stephan Whelan:
Welcome back everyone. And Jason, welcome back to you. I've missed you buddy.

Jason Elias:
Same to you. All right, on with the rest of the show.

Rannva Joermundsson:
The world underwater every week. I'm Rannva Joermundsson from Fourth Element and this is the DeeperBlue Podcast.

Stephan Whelan:
Welcome to the Deep Blue Podcast. I have a great guest today. Jennifer Idol, who is a underwater photographer, expedition leader, and the first woman to dive all 50 states in the U.S. We always like to start off with telling our listeners, where are you right now?

Jennifer Idol:
I'm based out of Austin, Texas. So sort of central in the U.S.

Stephan Whelan:
Let's go back. First of all, how do you get into diving? What did you do to start off this journey in the underwater world.

Jennifer Idol:
I've always been connected to water since I was a kid. When I was five, I went into a scuba shop, pointed to a little pony tank, and told my dad that's my scuba tank. I've always aspired to be a diver. And when I was 14, I started diving with my first dive down in Cozumel. But of course, being in Texas, we have our own body of local waters with Gulf of Mexico, lots of lakes.

Jennifer Idol:
So I started out as a local diver and in my 50 state journey wanted to connect people also to those local waters.

Stephan Whelan:
Tell us just a little bit about this 50 states thing. So what was the journey you did there?

Jennifer Idol:
It didn't start out as a 50 state journey. It started out as a reaction to Deepwater Horizon. I was flying back from Tobago, had been diving on some pristine coral reefs. On the way home, I saw Gulf of Mexico on fire with oil tankers desperately trying to contain the spill. And I was so appalled that I did not take the photo, watched it passed by, which immediately filled me with guilt and grief. And I wanted to do something about that. To help people understand the local waters are important, no matter where you are in the world, whatever body of water is near you is precious. People, especially in the United States, have forgotten or are unaware of how many natural resources are here.

Jennifer Idol:
So I set out to dive all 50 states and create a book and a way to story tell, go on speaking engagements, and really interact with people to help them learn what's in their own backyard.

Stephan Whelan:
Amazing. So how long did the journey take you?

Jennifer Idol:
Four years, six months and two days, I think it was.

Stephan Whelan:
Anything particularly surprising, any state dives that you think was fantastic.

Jennifer Idol:
I didn't know about the Pacific Northwest when I started diving, and learned about the rich ecology they have there with the giant Pacific octopus, the wolf eels, the giant plumose anemones that captivated me, and then even led me into some Alaskan adventures where I found the only place, big enough to capture my imagination.

Stephan Whelan:
So what was special about Alaska from your perspective?

Jennifer Idol:
I had the opportunity of diving with salmon sharks. They're particularly amazing. They're the world's fastest shark, and our cousins to the mako and great white shark.

Jennifer Idol:
So they've got the dark top and the white underbelly, then they're spotted. So they're beautiful and they're deep water sharks. So they've got these cute giant eyes.

Stephan Whelan:
Goodness me, I don't think I've ever heard of that shark, to be honest, that's amazing. This is probably a cheeky question now, Jennifer, but which was the worst dive you did in all 50 states?

Jennifer Idol:
Two come to mind. One of them really does deserve it. And the other one is surprising. So I'll lead with the surprising one, because this particular state has a fantastic outdoor reputation. But I found Colorado to not have great diving experiences. And that doesn't mean they're not there, but maybe I needed to hike for miles and find some beautiful mountain lake or something of that nature. But I was not impressed with the reservoirs I found that are diving accessible.

Stephan Whelan:
And you said "two dives," what was the other dive?

Jennifer Idol:
North Dakota.

Stephan Whelan:
North Dakota, okay.

Jennifer Idol:
I took photo of the vegetation growing in the shoreline.

Stephan Whelan:
Okay, fair enough. Diving all 50 states, diving since you were 14, wanting to dive since you were five, you must have had an amazing inspirational dive that springs to mind that our listeners would love to hear about.

Jennifer Idol:
I've been a dive professional for more than 15 years. And I took my photography skills underwater, along with my graphic design skills, filmmaking, and all of that culminated into leading expeditions. Where I work with people on their personal experiences, wildlife in particular. I lead trips for Big Fish Expeditions. But I love partnering with Andy Murch on Big Fish Expeditions, and in particular, his Bahamas trip comes to mind, with Tiger Beach, where I get to introduce people to these big tiger sharks and all different other species, nurse sharks, lemons, if you're lucky, the great hammerhead.

Jennifer Idol:
Some of the people who come are not necessarily fond of sharks. We had one particular individual who was terrified of sharks at the beginning of the trip and wanted to join our trip to learn more about their behavior. So he wanted to get over his fear by jumping in the water with them. At the beginning, he was filled with trepidation. He was kind of sure of what the experience would be like. So he hung out in the back of the group, away from the sharks. As the days progressed and we talked about his dives, he got closer and closer to the front of the group. Until by the end of it, he decided he'd like the sharks to come to him, where he asked us to rub him down in fish oil. But I did help him understand their behavior and ways that he could encourage encounters with them.

Autumn Blum:
You're listening to the world's only weekly podcasts for scuba diving, free diving, dive travel, and ocean advocacy. I'm Autumn Blum. I'm a rebreather diver. The founder of Stream2Sea, and this is the DeeperBlue Podcast

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

Stephan Whelan:
Oh, I miss doing this, Jason. Suunto. So listen, it's absolutely amazing. We have the conversation with Suunto when we were off on a break, obviously sunning ourselves on beaches, somewhere, smoking cigars, drinking mimosas in between podcast seasons. And Suunto is so grateful for this, and I know you are too Jason, but they believe so much in what we're doing, that they came back and they are sponsoring this season and actually they're sponsoring next season as well. Huge thanks to all the team at Suunto for all the faith and belief in what we're doing.

Jason Elias:
Yeah, at time that the entire world shut down, and the dive industry in particular, it was hit very hard. So there was not a lot of incoming coming in, Suunto sponsored us, carried this podcast through those times. So we just want to say a very heartfelt, thanks. It's a company that we actually very much believe in, and I think that's indicative of where they put their money. Very much appreciated, and we just want to say a big heartfelt thanks to Suunto, and if you're fans of the show, then support the show by supporting Suunto. So thank you Suunto.

Stephan Whelan:
Thanks Suunto.

Julie Rice:
Hi, my name is Julie Riffe. I am a mother, a spearfisher. I work at RIFFE International, and you are listening to the best 30 minutes about diving. The DeeperBlue Podcast.

Mehgan Heany-Grier:
Today, we have a top tip from Dr. Steve Gittings. Steve, do you have a top tip that you would like to share with divers?

Dr Steve Gittings:
I do. And this one's really only come to me over the last few years, even though I've been diving for 47 years now, I think. We all know that we should always have a dive knife with us when we dive. And I have to admit, I was once saved by having a dive knife on me when I got tangled really badly in some monofilament and fishnet in black water, off the coast of Louisiana in only about 10 or 15 feet of water.

Dr Steve Gittings:
So that one's a given, but I don't think a lot of us think about how important a light can be, even in daytime, because if you get lost or separated from your boat, from your dive buddies, you can count on a really only one thing and that's sunset. It's going to get dark eventually. And it's much easier to find a lost diver at night, as long as they have a light. But really I learned this lesson from a story that I saw in the papers about some coastguardsman that were off diving on a day off of theirs, and this happened to them. They got separated. They happened to have a light and they were only found because that night they happen to have this light. So my advice to everyone nowadays that I talked to about dive safety is no matter when you dive carry a light, pretty simple, but it can be a life save.

Mehgan Heany-Grier:
Finally, in every episode, share a story from you. The dive community, where we asked you to tell us about your best dive ever.

Kay Van Logan:
Hi, my name is Kay Van Leuven, and I live and work in the British Virgin Islands as a dive instructor for Sunchaser Scuba. My best dive ever was right here [inaudible 00:26:47]. On one of my first dives in the British Virgin islands, we went to The Wreck of the Rhone. As soon as we got to the bottom, we found two seahorses. Then as if that wasn't amazing enough, three dolphins showed up and decided to hang out with us for the entire dive. They were so playful and we had so much fun doing somersaults and battle ropes. It was the first time I'd been lucky enough to dive with dolphins. So we didn't even really look at the wreck as we knew that would be there next time. We were just having such an amazing time playing with the dolphins. When we ended the dive, the dolphins decided to go and play with small birds on the surface.

Kay Van Logan:
Forty-five minutes later, when we jumped back in for our second dive on the other part [inaudible 00:27:28]. The dolphins showed up again under the water for some more play time with us, not a bad introduction at all, to diving in the British Virgin Islands.

Mehgan Heany-Grier:
We'd love to hear about your best dive. So please head over to deeperblue.com/bestdiveever to share your story about your best dive ever.

Mehgan Heany-Grier:
Thanks for listening to the DeeperBlue Podcast. Find out more about all the stories you've heard today. Plus connect with the world's largest dive community had deeperblue.com. If you like what you've heard, please share, like, and rate our show wherever you get your podcasts. These shares and likes really do make a difference. Thanks so much. We'll see you next week. MHG out.