Jillian Morris on the magic of a birthing shark in Bimini, and Autumn Blum on how to handle "dive-hair"

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Season four of the Deep Blue Podcast is brought to you by Sunto. Finnish engineering, pioneering adventure from mountaintop to ocean floor since 1936. Sunto.

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Welcome to the Deeper Blue Podcast, your weekly guide to everything that is happening around the world underwater. My name is Lyndon Wolbert, and I'm a professional mermaid and co-host of the Deeper Blue Black. The Deeper Blue Disney is everything that is happening in this beautiful and ocean at the world. So join us as we explore the Deeper Blue.

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Hi everyone, it's Jason Lee, the producer of the Deeper Blue Podcast, back here for our weekly news of the underwater world.

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And with me is Papa Smurf, as I'm known to some in the diving industry, the founder of Deeperblue.com.

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The Grand Fromage. Hello, Steven. How are you doing today?

SPEAKER_09 1:26

I'm good, Jason. How are you doing?

SPEAKER_01 1:28

I'm doing great.

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It's the part of the week we get to hang out and talk about the diving world. First up, some UK news actually. The Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust is set to welcome Diving Deep HMS Invincibles 1744, which is the most exciting maritime archaeological exhibition in years. Which takes the visitor as close to the seabed as possible while staying in dry dock. So brand new exhibition, which is the exhibition's actually on loan for the National Museum of the Royal Navy. You know what? I didn't know all these museums existed. It's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_01 2:03

It is very cool. I when I go to Washington, DC, and I start looking at the Smithsonian museums, I'm like, you mean there's a museum for that too? Obviously, we're at a place with Omicron peaking in a lot of places. We all have this cautious optimism that we will be able to get out maybe in the next couple months, maybe back to a more normal life. But until we do these kind of things where we can do things online and still stay connected to the ocean, it's very cool. So that's why we wanted to highlight.

SPEAKER_09 2:26

Yeah, just to be clear. So HMS Invincible, which the thing is about, is still on the bottom of the Solence, which is in the channel between England and France. So this is a virtual exhibit that you can do, which is pretty cool. So I think it's pretty cool. I'd like to go and go and do it because Yeah, we'll check it out.

SPEAKER_01 2:43

Next. Um Hall of Fame diver jailed for fraud. Now I was asking Stephen, who seems to know basically everyone in this dive industry if he knew this woman. Her name is Tamara, or known as Tammy Brown. He did not know her. He said he maybe had a late-night cocktail with her at uh at DEMA at some point. Tammy Brown ran a dive training center in New Jersey, and she was just convicted, recently convicted by the Department of Education for fraudulently obtaining DOE funds to keep her school running. Now, what's interesting about this, of course, is one is she was in the Diver Hall of Fame because of the things that she has done in her life, particularly with commercial diving. But second, this points to an interesting kind of thing. It was a trade school. In order to receive funds as a trade school and to receive accreditation, you have to have a certain level of employment after graduating. And she had falsified those records for a number of years, going back to maybe even 2017. You have to be in the 80% to 90% of graduates going on to work, and she was somewhere in the 50 to 60 percent, maybe even lower at times. So it was just an interesting story, particularly because she's in the diver hall of fame.

SPEAKER_09 3:54

Well, the Women's Divers Hall of Fame, they I mean the major group, they very much celebrate women in diving. And she was inducted in 2000. I mean, she got she had to pay $1.1 million, and she's been placed under supervision for three years after her release. I mean, a lot of people would say I need supervision a lot of the time. So maybe that's a maybe that's uh that's a good thing, right?

SPEAKER_01 4:16

You have the supervision part, you just don't have the $1.1 million. True. So we're moving on to some environmental news, and here's some environmental news that is predicated on climate change, which seems to be almost all environmental news these days. But this is that tiger sharks are actually now starting to move north because of climate change and warming waters. The locations and timing of shark migrations in the North Atlantic have been changing rapidly and has led to tiger sharks likely to find themselves outside protected areas and more vulnerable to commercial fishing, which is the downside because these protected areas are based on the habitats when they surveyed, which was before climate change really started impacting the world. Now that has changed, and so they're moving outside of that. So that's the downside. The plus side is that we may see these tiger sharks in more diveable areas in locations closer to, for example, North American dive areas, which is kind of interesting. So we just thought it was interesting for the dive world, but also environmental.

SPEAKER_09 5:11

Yeah, and I think the fascinating thing about this is how they track them. So they go and they spear and tag sharks, they put a little tracker on it, and they can track it through satellites and stuff. It's pretty amazing to see what they can do. Actually, I got my kids for Christmas. We got them uh a little thing that you can adopt a shark or a turtle or something like that, and you can track where they are because they have little trackers on them, which is pretty cool. You go and look onto a website. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:33

Oh, that's really cool. I'd love to know more about that. Where would I find out about that, Stephen?

SPEAKER_09 5:36

But I go and ask my kids, I can't remember. I'll tell you what, I will find out for next week's show. There we go. Listen, you have to tune in next week to find out how where you get those really cool.

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We put a cliffhanger.

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Wow, this is uh this is a pretty cool one. Researchers have made an unprecedented discovery of 60 million active nests of huge numbers of ice fish in the Antarctic Sea. So I'd never heard of these things, ice fish. Although, in all fairness, if you were going to find them somewhere, the Antarctic would probably be there where you'd find out. It's in their name.

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It's in their name.

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As they were exploring, searches were exploring the seabed of Antarctica, they discovered this thriving, unprecedented collie of ice fish, which they describe as about a third the size of London. They were just kind of bumbling along, bit of flotsam in the water, probably doing a doing a Jason type thing. That's right.

SPEAKER_01 6:24

That's how I that's how I would discover something.

SPEAKER_09 6:27

And they were like, Yeah, they're quoted as saying, Well, we expect to see normal Antarctic seafloor, but during the first four hours of dive, they saw nothing but fish nests, which is unbelievable.

SPEAKER_01 6:37

I think the reason we wanted to put this in here is because the sense of scale of what they found. So typically they have found these ice fish nesting. So the way they nest is like a lot of fish we've seen before, which they create a kind of a circle in the ocean bed and they create their nests there. That's where they lay their eggs. Usual ice fish colonies are 60 to 70 ice fish nests. This is 60 million nests over the course of 100 square miles. It's on a scale that no one anticipated, and that's why we wanted to highlight it because it's if that doesn't show how much we have to learn about our ocean environment.

SPEAKER_09 7:16

And it also shows, right, how little we know and see of the ocean floor.

SPEAKER_01 7:20

Yeah, that's exactly right. Next story. So a little bit of travel news. News of the travel. Oh, I don't know what I'm gonna say.

SPEAKER_09 7:29

Okay. So as many of you may have heard, Tonga, the island in the Pacific, recently suffered a volcanic eruption, which has obviously caused a huge amount of uh problems and devastation on Tonga itself, ash everywhere. Absolutely devastating for Tonga, uh, in addition to all the COVID stuff. Tonga was suffering quite badly. They're very tourism-oriented islands.

SPEAKER_01 7:55

Yeah, the reason we brought this up is because obviously Tonga is a kind of one of the dream destination dive spots for some people, particularly if you want to swim with whales. But the reason we're bringing this up is uh obviously, again, just kind of sending our thoughts to the people in Tonga. And it's obviously at the forefront of the news right now, just sending uh much love. On another sense of news, travel news, the Cook Islands is now open again for tourists. The primary gateway to Cook Islands is through New Zealand. In order to get to Cook Islands, you essentially had to take a flight from New Zealand, and New Zealand had cut off all flights to Cook Islands for an extended period of time. They opened it up early last year, then shut it down when there was a resurgence of uh variants, and they've had a rough, rough time in Cook Islands, but now they're very happy to announce that the Cook Islands are again open for business, which is fantastic. Absolutely. Moving on.

SPEAKER_09 8:47

Well, for those of us that are stuck at home, there's a really cool event coming up on the 1st to the 3rd of February. Ted Harty, who is a former US national free diving captain, team captain. Ted is launching a free diving summit. So he has interviewed 29. Well, let me clarify, he's interviewed 28 amazing people in the free diving uh world. So world champion people like William Truebridge and Alexei Molchanov. He invites people like Kurt Croc, founder of Performance Freediving, uh Stig Steverinson, who founded Breathology, Don Verhoven, an amazing underwater photographer, etc. etc. 20, 28 amazing freediving people and me. So he's got Lyndon Wilbert, one of our co-hosts on there as well, which is uh which is good.

SPEAKER_01 9:36

So I feel that that's how you're added to a lot of lists. Oh, we got so and tell and so and tell. Oh, and Steven too.

SPEAKER_09 9:43

You can get a free ticket if you go to freediving-summit.com. You can go and get a free ticket, and you need to watch kind of live when they go out on the first or the third. He's got a great offer that you can go and buy some uh a ticket to go and watch at any time, get access to the videos anytime you want, and so on. So you can buy like an all access pass type ticket.

SPEAKER_01 10:02

Uh I'm gonna get the all access pass and then just to I'm gonna log into your session like days early and just wait and watch. I'm just gonna sit and wait like a burger.

SPEAKER_09 10:11

Excellent. Very good. So I mean, absolutely really, really interesting. So, like the William and Alexi conversations, they talk about the technique of how they go diving and stuff, and it's really, really fascinating to hear their different ways of approaching a dive and so on. Something you don't normally get to hear about, right? You get to hear about you know hear about the dive depth they went to and how long it took, or you might be lucky to go and watch a uh freediver go down and come up again, but actually to go and hear them talk about what's going on in their mind as they're doing it, absolutely fascinating. So that's that's something pretty cool, I thought.

SPEAKER_01 10:42

Very cool, very, very cool.

SPEAKER_09 10:43

Little little bit of sad news. Actually, the news came out today when we're doing the recording. Tom Mount, who is a legend in the tech diving and cave diving world, has sadly passed away at the age of 83. He has literally been instrumental. So he set up, so back in 1968, he and a bunch of other amazing divers, but I personally think are lunatics because they they go cave diving, so going and penetrating caves and going very deep and so on. But they set up uh National Association for Cave Diving in the US, which pretty much set up a lot of the basic training for technical diving. He then in 1991 formed uh the technical diving agency, INNTD, which for many, many years was the only technical diving agency around. He's won a Nogi Award, which is um basically the Oscars of the diving world given out every year. He's a SSI Platinum Pro 5000 diver, which is the top award that the SSI give out to people. Just amazing. And this legend has sadly now passed away, which is always sad news when you hear these pioneers in the in the modern diving industry pass away. That's a nice term.

SPEAKER_01 11:48

Well, thank you for calling that out. But now on to some more uplifting news. This is a short one, but it's a good sign. A European citizens online petition to ban the shark fin trade has hit one million signatures. And I found this news on deeper blue.com. I love it. Um, but we have until January 31st to sign up and sign the petition because obviously, with that kind of support behind it, it can't help but draw the attention of lawmakers and hopefully push this thing through.

SPEAKER_09 12:21

This is getting amazing traction. Loads and loads of celebrities are posting about it. I mean, Paul DeGelder, one of the guests on the show, has Shark Attack Survivor and conservationists, shark conservationists, uh post about it. Uh Greta Thumberg has posted about it. Paul Nicklin as well, another guest on the uh on the show. He's uh he's posted about it. So I I I love this. So you can go to I mean, you can go to deeperblue.com to find the news about this and and find the petition. You can still sign up for the petition. Really, really important. Million signatures, but every single signature makes a really important difference in this incredible campaign to try and get uh shark finning and shark fin products, more importantly, bands in the EU.

SPEAKER_01 13:01

Good news. On to our last story. Now, our last story we usually reserve for the something that's fun, interesting, and to find those stories. I troll the darkest depths of the internet to find stories like this. Uh, but this one actually comes from the New York Times. This was actually the lead story in the science section of the New York Times, which comes out every Tuesday. And I brought it here because a new study has come out looking at the mysteries of female dolphin sexual anatomy. And really, the really what they did is these researchers studied the sexual proclivities of dolphins. They looked, they studied by looking at the clitoris of the dolphin. And what they have discovered by doing their research is that dolphins are one of the few species outside of human beings that have been shown to have sex for fun. And what's wild is that you have this New York Times article, which is like, you know, the grand dome of the paper of record of the United States, and it has the quotes from this article are fantastic. Particularly, um, they they talk about the kind of sex that dolphins have, how often they have it, how many partners they have it with in a relatively short of short amount of time. But my favorite quote of this whole thing was Dr. Brendan, who actually studied this, uh, studies clitorises from across the animal kingdom. But the white whale of marine clitoris, maybe the blue whales, they've got the biggest of everything, Dr. Brendan said. I would bet you a million dollars if they have a clear torus, and it's probably huge. So there you go. There's the New York Times helping us with our final artist story of the end of the week.

SPEAKER_09 14:38

Goodness me, honestly.

SPEAKER_01 14:41

The reason that I thought this was an interesting story to bring up, I mean, it's got a fun, it's got a fun uh wrapping around it, but what it really talks about is we people of the ocean understand because of our interactions with marine wildlife, it is far more than just fish in the sea. It is and you we understand that there are a sentient beings out there that have rich, full life experiences. And anytime we can bring that up and talk about that to kind of reconnect us with why we connect with these animals, I just think is important to do so.

SPEAKER_09 15:13

Well, I just love the way you justified that story, Jason. So, you know, it's fantastic. So I think that wraps up the news for the week. As always, you can find out the latest news about the diving world and the ocean world on deeperblue.com. And let's get on with the rest of the show.

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On with the show.

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And this is the Deeper Blue Podcast.

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In today's interview, I speak with Gillian Morris, founder and president of the environmental organization Sharks for Kids.

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Hi, my name is Gillian Morris. I'm on the South Island of Bimini in the Bahamas, and I'm a marine biologist and the founder of Sharks for Kids.

SPEAKER_01 16:19

And what is Sharks for Kids?

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Sharks for Kids is an education nonprofit with the goal of creating the next generation of shark advocates through education, outreach, and adventure.

SPEAKER_01 16:28

Obviously, you have a deep dedication to the ocean. Can you tell us a little bit about how you discovered that connection, where that came from, and how that came about in your life?

SPEAKER_02 16:36

Yeah, I was really lucky to have two parents that love the ocean. And I grew up in Maine, and we used to spend a lot of time going to the beach. It was crawling through tide pools and exploring, and then going to Florida every year with my dad's work. So seeing manatees. I saw my first shark when I was eight years old while snorkeling. So really just having a family that loved the ocean, it was a part of my life from a very, very young age.

SPEAKER_01 17:00

So you knew you were connected to the ocean from a very early age. How did that manifest in your life?

SPEAKER_02 17:06

So I was obsessed with ocean animals and being in the water, and it just never went away. I told my parents I wanted to be a marine biologist when I was five, and it just never changed. And so I started to shape my life around opportunities and constantly wanting to be in the water, whether it was a lake that I grew up on or the ocean. And it just that fascination was constant and it only increased the older I got and the more opportunities I pursued and had. Yeah, and still I'm absolutely fascinated by the ocean.

SPEAKER_01 17:34

You became a marine biologist. That's a very large catch-all, as we know, for a lot of different specialties. Is there some specific aspect of the ocean that you really dedicate yourself to or feel very connected to?

SPEAKER_02 17:45

Sharks have been my passion since I was really young. I was just so fascinated by them. And the older I got and the more work I was doing with them, I realized how many people hate sharks. They're afraid of them. And my experiences were very different. I was traveling the world, studying them, going to these remote places, seeing these incredible moments. And I just I wanted to share that with others as well. I wanted them to see the ocean and these animals in particular. I was also really fascinated by their behavior. Why do sharks do what they do? And still to this day, the more I learn about them, the more I want to learn. And so sharks have really become my focus, and most of my adult life is wrapped around this particular animal.

SPEAKER_01 18:23

And when you talk about sharks, is there something specific you study sharks or a specific type of shark you connect with?

SPEAKER_02 18:28

In Bimini, we're really lucky. We have the great hammerheads that travel here in the winter months. It's the only place that we know of in the world where you can swim with great hammerheads, multiple great hammerheads in really shallow water. They tend to normally be a solitary animal. So I'm very lucky to spend a lot of time with that critically endangered species. And I've also traveled all over the world to study tiger sharks and have done quite a few projects. There's something really special. They're one type of shark that will make eye contact with you. And I think that is so cool. Because other sharks just are busy and stuff, but tiger sharks will look right at you. And I think that's really remarkable.

SPEAKER_01 18:59

Do you think that means something?

SPEAKER_02 19:01

I think it just shows us that they're a lot more intelligent than we give them credit for. And they are these animals as you know, they've been taught to push buttons, open boxes, go through mazes, they have social networks. I mean, they're definitely smarter than people give them credit for.

SPEAKER_01 19:13

You also have a young child. Why did you start sharks for kids? As a marine biologist, what made you go give this emphasis to getting kids in the water?

SPEAKER_02 19:20

I think for me, is again, I it goes back to my experience was very different than a lot of the things that were around me and people were saying about sharks and things that I learned. And so I wanted to share that. And kids are so excited about sharks. And I thought, okay, if we can give them facts instead of fear, but then also let's take it to the next steps. But let's get kids in the water to have that personal experience. And here in the Bahamas, we have kids that have never been on a boat before, and we take them out. You know, they don't want to get in the water, they're nervous, and by the end of the afternoon, they don't want to get back in the boat. They are in love with this beautiful world that surrounds their island, and now they have a voice for these animals and a voice for the local oceans. That's conservation success to me when the local community is invested and involved, and it's long lasting.

SPEAKER_01 20:07

Amazing. And how old do kids have to be to come short kids?

SPEAKER_02 20:10

So we work with local kids that are middle school, kind of 12, 13, and up through the high school. We do school visits all over the world. So we we visit, you know, all ages, and we do free science days in South Florida for all ages. But here in Bimini, we work with the local dive shop and we take out the middle school and the high school students for our programs.

SPEAKER_01 20:28

Okay, so I got another nine years before I can get my son to come out there. Okay, sounds good. So that's an amazing experience for the kids that go out with you. I'd love to hear one experience for you that really means something about getting in the water. Just take us on one of the dives that really means a lot to you.

SPEAKER_02 20:44

So I was in Bimini. I've had probably some of the most incredible encounters underwater here. It's a very sharky place. And on this day, we had hoped the tides were right, the moon phases were right. We were hoping that we would find a pregnant lemon shark. And we were patrolling kind of the area around the mangroves. This is where they go as shallow as they can, kind of get close to this mangrove nursery area to deliver their puffs. Beautiful, clear water. We're very lucky that the water around our mangroves, crystal clear, lots of life. And then there's this big, beautiful lemon shark, and she starts giving birth, and she has 10 puffs. Lemon sharks give live birth, so they come out, they have to break free of the umbilical cord, and just watching each little shark start its life. They're on their own. Mom doesn't take care of them, and it's a big world out there, and they're on their own now. They have to find food, they have to hide out, and just seeing that life start and seeing something that people think is this big scary animal, but so small and so vulnerable. It was just remarkable, and I'll never ever forget it. Absolutely one of the most amazing things I've ever witnessed in my life.

SPEAKER_04 22:02

Hi, I am Sylvia Gog, an ocean-inspired jewelry designer, Cuba instructor, and stuntwoman. And you are listening to the best 30 minutes about diving, the Deeper Blue Podcast.

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Let's talk about dive hair for a minute. I know many of us will say dive hair don't care, but when you come up from a dive and your hair is a tangled, snarled mess, it's hard not to care. My name is Autumn Blum. I'm the formulator of Stream to Sea. I'm also a scuba diver with very thick and curly hair. And here's my top tip of how I manage my hair on a dive boat. I like to start with a freshwater rinse if there's one available. I then add a good size dollop of our Reef Save leave-in conditioner. I use a buff to keep my hair out of my dive mask and keep it manageable. My favorite is the scuba-doo rag. After a dive, I do the same thing. If there's a freshwater rinse available, I use it. And then I use another dollop of that leave-in conditioner. I'll run it through, run a comb through. It will detangle easy, and now my hair is protected from the sun as well. I love that many people are thinking about what is reef safe when it comes to our sunscreens. But I really want to encourage you to think about the ingredients which you put on your body and your bringing into the water, which would include a leave-in conditioner. So what makes one reef safe? It needs to be readily biodegradable, but are there certain ingredients that you absolutely want to avoid? These are aquatic toxins, and you want to flip over the bottle and read the ingredients and make sure that they don't contain cyclopentasiloxanes, polyquaternums or or parabens. I know those are kind of complicated words, so one more time. Cyclopentasiloxanes are polyquaternums or and parabens. Please make sure you're avoiding those. So use these tips. You can have healthy hair without hurting our waters.

SPEAKER_01 24:13

Hi, it's Jason Leas, producer of the Deeper Blue Podcast. The Deeper Blue Podcast is brought to you by Sunto. I just wanted to give a personal thanks to Sunto. We are heading towards the end of season four of the Deeper Blue Podcast, and Sunto has believed in this show since the absolute beginning, not only sponsoring us, but also helping us get a lot of our best dive ever by reaching out to their network of divers. They've just shown tremendous support for what we're doing here and the community that we serve. So we just wanted to say a huge thank you to Sunto for believing in us from the beginning and supporting us through now. Sunto.

SPEAKER_06 24:58

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

SPEAKER_00 25:08

Hi, my name's Mark Killian. I'm currently living in Atlanta. And I wanted to tell you all about one of my best dives, which was actually my very first dive. I want to talk to you about it because I want to talk to you about the fear. When I was really little, maybe six or seven, my sister got stung really badly by a jellyfish. Possibly Portuguese man of war. I don't think we ever figured out what it was. But she's in the water, she starts swimming, she's in excruciating pain. We have to call a doctor. And somehow it got in my brain that jellyfish are deadly and dangerous creatures. I was lucky enough that my grandparents had a house in St. John and the Virgin Islands, so we'd go there a lot and uh I would go snorkeling. And I could never fully enjoy it because as wonderful as the underwater world was, I was constantly on the lookout for jellyfish. And as we all know, jellyfish sort of live at the surface. And so I'm constantly scanning the surface of the water, not able really to look down and see what's below me and enjoy it as much as I would like. Finally, I want to say this was probably early teens, maybe 13, 14, something like that. I decide to go on my first dive in the Virgin Islands. It's your typical beginner dive, maybe 20 feet down. We get to the spot and it is covered in moon jellies. At the time I didn't know that moon jellies didn't really sting you, and so all I see is is this flotilla of jellies that we have to jump through to get into the dive. And my heart is pounding and I'm having my quiet internal freak out. But somehow I I push through and I jump in and I jump through, and I remember the feeling of sinking down underneath the water. And I remember being able to breathe underwater and looking up at the surface and seeing that flotilla of jellies and being all of a sudden magically that fear that I carried with me all those years vanished, and I was able to look at these creatures literally from a whole new angle and see their wonder and see their beauty, see how they floated along and pulsated and was able to get on with my dive and see all the other wonderful things, the coral and the parrot fish, and I I don't even remember honestly what was on the rest of the dive. I just remember that feeling of having my perspective of the world turned totally around. Being able to exist and breathe in a foreign environment and everything be okay. Since then, I'm actually do underwater cinematography and every vacation now I take, one part of me is looking towards being able to get out on in or under the water to have another magical experience. So why that might not have been the most exciting dive, and I might not have seen the the most amazing things, and it wasn't the deepest dive, and it wasn't the most technical dive. It was the dive that allowed me to change my perspective about the world around me. And it was the dive that made me regain my love for the ocean. Thanks for listening.

SPEAKER_06 29:24

We'd love to hear about your best dive ever. So please head over to deeperblue.com slash best dive ever to share your story about your best dive ever.

SPEAKER_07 29:38

Thanks for listening to the Deeper Blue Podcast. Find out more about all the stories you've heard, plus connect with the world's largest dive community at deeperblue.com. If you like what you've heard, please share, like, and rate our show wherever you get your podcasts. As those shares and likes really make a difference. Thanks so much, and see you next week.