Tony Myshlyaev on why diving in Indonesia quite literally shook his world, and Rannva Joermundsson on what you don't learn in dive school

SPEAKER_05 0:03

The Deeper Blue Podcast is brought to you by Sunto, Finnish Engineering Pioneering Adventure from Mountaintop to Ocean Floor since 1936. Sunto. Welcome to the Deeper Blue Podcast, your weekly guide 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, free diving, diving travel, and ocean advocates world. So join us as we explore the Deeper Blue.

SPEAKER_07 1:02

Hi, this is Jason Leas, producer of the Deeper Blue Podcast. In today's episode, we start off the News of the Week underwater with myself and DeeperBlue.com founder and host, Steven Whelan. Then Steven speaks with underwater photographer Tony Mishlayev, better known in the social media world as Tones of Blue. Following that, we have a top tip from SSI TDI instructor and cave diving specialist Ranva Jormansand, who gives you a tip you won't find in any class. And then finally, we hear from Ezildin Ahmad from O'Cairo, who recounts a life-changing moment when he speaks of his best dive ever. But up first, the news.

SPEAKER_05 1:41

News of the underwater world. Diving and ocean news of the underwater world. By Jason Elias and Stephen Whelan Whelan from the last week.

SPEAKER_07 1:52

So, Stephen, a week's worth of news, and you were feeling a little out of it. So our lovely co-host Lyndon took over last week. So welcome back.

SPEAKER_05 2:00

Yeah, thank you, Lyndon. Thank you, and thanks for all the love on the episode. I did appreciate it. So where do you want to start here, Stephen? I've got a cool one. My kids would love this one. So scientists have discovered three new shark species that glow in the dark. And they've been discovered off New Zealand. They've been able to document the luminescence of three species.

SPEAKER_07 2:28

One of them is named Etmapterus Lucifer. That's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_05 2:34

Discovered in New Zealand off Chatham Rise, apparently. I'm not sure where Chatham Rise is, but it's an area of ocean floor just off the east side of New Zealand.

SPEAKER_07 2:41

There's a two parts of this that I find very interesting. One is yes, this bioluminescence speaks to a part of the world that we just never get to experience. Most of the times we spend our time looking shoreward towards the reef, or even if we're free divers, we're still aware of some level of sand somewhere below us. And then you always turn around and there's that deep blue. What is out there? It's so nice to know that there are things we can still discover. The other part is, of course, I have a two-year-old, you have a very young child, you have more than that. Glowing sharks. I mean, that's pretty badass. It is pretty bad.

SPEAKER_05 3:20

I mean, I mean, you know, if they could shoot lasers as well. I mean, you know, it this is another Hollywood movie in the making, I have to say.

SPEAKER_07 3:28

I also want to know who named it Lucifer. That's pretty awesome. What would you name a shark if you discovered it?

SPEAKER_05 3:33

Sharkus Papa Smurfus.

SPEAKER_07 3:36

Sorry, that already exists.

SPEAKER_05 3:40

And for the listeners that don't know what we're talking about, my nickname on the community is Papa Smurf.

SPEAKER_07 3:45

In fact, right now when we're recording, his name on the little tag thing that says his Papa Smurf is in the house.

SPEAKER_05 3:50

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_07 3:51

So let's say you're able to actually go to New Zealand to see these sharks. That's a good segue to our next story.

SPEAKER_05 3:58

Yeah, absolutely. When we manage to get on a plane to go to New Zealand, it would be great that if something happens due to anything like a misconnection or a cancelled trip or illness or anything like that, that you got covered. And obviously these days, COVID-19 is quite important if your trip gets cancelled or interrupted because of it. The team at Divers Alert Network, great team that do a lot of stuff around diver medicine and travel insurance, just launched a host of new insurance plans which cover things such as COVID-19 cancellation delay. So really useful, really useful in this current climate.

SPEAKER_07 4:28

Very, very good. So just so everyone out there knows, when we're going through the news stories, I've mentioned this before, I'm always striking through all the ones that Steven pulls in because I'm always like, oh, who wants to hear about that? That's not interesting. This actually is one that I felt was actually maybe it's not the most interesting in the world, but this is actually a valuable news story. I think the idea of having insurance for COVID-19, particularly the fact, I mean, we're at the place where vaccinations are starting to come out. I know a lot of people who are getting vaccinated already, but that doesn't change the fact that a lot of the places that we're gonna go when we go diving, when we're finally able to get back on planes, there may not be, there may not be as great herd immunity as the places we're going. They may not have the access to the vaccines. And so the idea of having a COVID-19 insurance policy, I think is just really important to know that it's out there. And I give props to Dan for actually putting that out there in the world. So thank you for from the dive community. Even though that was a story that in the past, insurance stories I would usually strike through because I don't, you know, my I prefer the stories about glowing sharks and sunken chick wrecks with mermaids and that's Stephen Hard hitting news wheeling, Jason Hollywood.

SPEAKER_05 5:34

You live in Hollywoods, I live in, you know, where the Times of London is. So uh that's right.

SPEAKER_07 5:39

So that takes us to our next story, which is actually being a Hollywood guy. Uh, this was one of the wings I brought to. So Netflix has a new movie coming out, being released soon called Sea Spiracy. Sea Spiracy. And if you watch the trailer for it, it is a it is an action-packed trailer, and it it does have some heavy hitters in the show. Sylvia Earle is in there, Captain Paul Watson from uh Sea Shepherd is in there. But one of the things I really do like about it, it really talks a lot about the primary issue facing the oceans these days, which is overfishing. And one of the reasons we're talking about this now is because we're coming off of fish free February. It is.

SPEAKER_05 6:16

A lot of people in diving community and outside of diving community do fish free February, just like there's veganary, something that I did, but then a lot of people stop eating fish in February.

SPEAKER_07 6:25

Hugh Pearson, who we've had on the show, who is the major filmmaker behind our planet, did all the underseas episodes. He he is really strident on this point that the primary thing affecting the ocean right now is overfishing. So this sea spiracy actually addresses that exact thing. The trailer is very Hollywood. There's, I don't know if you've seen the trailer yet, but there's a lot of like knives being scraped along nets and like a guy ducking behind the corner with like a little camera and a microphone, and someone speaking a foreign language coming at like looking for him with a gun. So it this is the same guy that did Cowtopia, I think it was, or Cowboys. Conspiracy. Conspiracy.

SPEAKER_05 7:03

He's not very creative on the old titles, I have to say.

SPEAKER_07 7:09

But I just wanted to highlight the attention to this so that it can raise an awareness around a topic that we all as divers are concerned about.

SPEAKER_05 7:15

Uh March 24th coming out on Netflix, just so everyone knows.

SPEAKER_07 7:18

Yeah, I've got it saved to my cue. It's saved to my cue. What's next?

SPEAKER_05 7:22

In keeping with the be able to travel after lockdown, the team who do something called Diving Talk. So this is a really fantastic conference that goes on every year in Portugal in usually October time, and they get all these really big names to come and do talks. So people like Jill Heinhirth, Ahmed Gabba, who we covered a little bit in the news around Guinness World Records, Mark Powell, very very big tech diver, Mark Powell, Phil Short on the tech diver, all these amazing divers who've done amazing feats. Get together, you can go and do some talks in Portugal, 8th to 10th of October.

SPEAKER_07 7:57

This was actually one of the ones I put on the list. And the reason I put this on the list to talk about was yes, it's wonderful that we had this dive convention going on, but it's also, I just I am an optimist, and I like the idea of actually saying, hey, the conferences that we could all travel to in the past, they may be starting to happen again soon. And that just feels good that maybe we're actually lifting our gaze as a world and as a dive community.

SPEAKER_05 8:18

Plus, there's some really badass divers in there who are talking about diving.

SPEAKER_07 8:21

Some badass divers, yeah, totally. Who's the Egyptian diver's name?

SPEAKER_05 8:25

Ahmed Gabba.

SPEAKER_07 8:27

Yeah, so there's a lot of interesting stories about him. I'll be curious to see what he has to say at Dive Talks and what the audience response is to him.

SPEAKER_05 8:35

Well, you know, the Guinness World Records have come back and said that his his record is valid. They've done checks into everything and it is confirmed as valid.

SPEAKER_07 8:44

Interesting. Very, very interesting. What's next?

SPEAKER_05 8:47

The United Nations are asking for submissions for their 2021 World Oceans Day photo competition. A whole bunch of really impressive photographers. There's like eight of them who are judging this. And you can go and submit all sorts of different categories above, below water, seascapes, faces in the ocean, discoveries, and basically you submit your photos online, and it's by the April the 30th you need to submit your stuff. And then they announce it on June the 8th during the United Nations World Ocean's Day annual event, you get announced. So you get your names up and go and look on the Deeper Blue website and you can find a news item to uh nice ABC almost a plug, right?

SPEAKER_07 9:24

A B C always be closing. I like it. I do find underwater photography, particularly in this year that we've all kind of been locked out, a saving grace to keep me feeling connected to the ocean. And I also say, as a profession, professional photographer myself, which I have to mention every single time that we do this, I'm continually amazed by some of the images that I see. Gone are the days of a little fish in a sea anemone. Photos these days are so much more sophisticated than that. And I'm really I'm quite impressed by some of the stuff I see.

SPEAKER_05 9:55

Talking about amazing photography, the deeper blue Instagram has daily amazing photos, and it is some absolutely epic photos that get featured on there. And they're all from people that some are professional photographers, but the vast majority of them are just amateurs who are submitting photos to be featured. So go and have a look. Go and go and check it out.

SPEAKER_07 10:15

And then that takes us to our final story of the week, which uh again, I it's one of your stories, right?

SPEAKER_05 10:21

This is this is this is your story.

SPEAKER_07 10:22

Well, if you're looking for hard-hitting news, you can just hit fast forward on because I just love my favorite stories, are the ones that show the frailty of the human condition. I just love stories that just shows how people are just so screwy. So in Argentina, there were some brewers that decided to do an experiment where they got 17 casks of beer and they decided, let's take those casks and see how they age underwater. So they took them down to a place off the coast of Argentina, off Buenos Aires, where they took them to a ship 66 feet under that had been sank, and they attached them there and they were gonna leave them there for a few months just to see how they aged underwater. And after they they took them a long time to get the permits to do this, and they had to they put 185 gallons down there that was gonna end up equaling 264 gallons of beer. Well, they put it down there and they were gonna leave it for a few months. And then the day before they were gonna go collect them, they went to go check on them and they swam down their 66 feet, and the casts were gone, and they assume dun dun dun. They assume talk about a sea spirit. They assume that they were stolen. So, what I love is that human beings will find every opportunity they can to cheat the system. And somehow someone found out about these beer casts being down there and went and stole them before it was over. Just what it took to do that and why someone would do that, I have no idea. But it's just human beings are such they just continually amaze me. And I I have so much compassion and joy when I see how screwy we are.

SPEAKER_05 12:08

So the three things in this story which I absolutely love when I read it. So the first one is the dark ale, because of course it's gonna be dark ale that you do this, was attached to the chronometer wreck. It's an ex-Soviet wreck, you know. It's a good way to, you know, if it's gonna get stolen off somewhere, it's gonna be the chronomether wreck. So that's quite good. The second thing is they are obviously a gluttons for punishment because they're not giving up, they're gonna go and try again to do this, which is fantastic.

SPEAKER_07 12:36

The brewers are gonna take more cast down, right?

SPEAKER_05 12:38

And then the final bit, which I thought was great, for all those pirates out there. Pirates normally like rum. But in this case, the pirates stole the beer. I love it. It's great. It's very good.

SPEAKER_07 12:50

I think I think my takeaway from all this, again, I just love the confusion of human beings. It just makes me have such joy and compassion for every human being that's trying to figure out because the thieves stole beer that is actually not drinkable. It required another step in the process once they actually brought it up for it to be drinkable. So, to quote the brewers, if they stole it for their own consumption, they're gonna have to throw it away. It was a lukewarm, gasless liquor that would be difficult to drink. And again, I'm like, oh, guys, human beings. Oh man, human beings. And on that, that's the week's news.

SPEAKER_05 13:26

That's the week's news.

SPEAKER_00 13:31

You're listening to the world's only weekly podcast for scuba diving, free diving, dive travel, and ocean advocacy. I'm Annie Crawley, multimedia producer and a voice for the ocean. And this is the Deeper Blue Podcast.

SPEAKER_07 13:57

In today's episode, Deeper Blue founder Steven Whelans speaks with the underwater photographer Tony Mishleev, better known in the social media world as Tones of Blue. Tony talked to Steven from his home in Thailand. And he spoke of how he got into underwater photography, what he's passionate about in his images that seem to resonate with so many. And finally, an incredible moment underwater that literally shook his world.

SPEAKER_06 14:20

Tell us, first of all, where you're based in the world at the moment. So at the moment, I'm in the middle of the second lockdown in Kotao, Thailand.

SPEAKER_05 14:30

It's probably very different temperature-wise to where I am at the moment in the UK. It's I'm looking out on the very snowy outlook outside. I'm pretty sure it's not the same for you.

SPEAKER_06 14:40

No, no, I'm looking at palm trees and birds, and I do not have a shirt on. It's way too hot.

SPEAKER_05 14:46

So I'm sure a lot of people know you from Instagram as Tones of Blue, but why don't you tell us first of all a little bit about what you do as an underwater photographer?

SPEAKER_06 14:55

At the moment, I have developed to become an underwater portrait photographer with an emphasis on art and composition. So originally I was a scuba photographer and photographed marine life, though I have evolved to photograph people more so in the past couple of years. And that just kind of came with the evolution and development of my love for the ocean. And it went from scuba into free diving. So my roots are definitely in being a dive master and marine life photographer.

SPEAKER_05 15:30

Tell us a little bit about your journey into becoming a diver. How did that all start?

SPEAKER_06 15:35

I think it's important to say that at first I was a photographer and I did take a two-year program on land. I went traveling with my girlfriend after the program, and we decided to just try open water the course in Kotao, and we fell in love with it and ended up staying and becoming dive masters, which is quite a typical story for people in Kotao. I didn't have a camera housing at the time. I was just focused on becoming a proficient scuba diver and then ended up selling some of my land equipment to buy a housing and took some courses and went very passionately into it full time. I spent a year working in Indonesia on a live abord, specifically in Raja Ampot. So that was an amazing experience. And I had the pleasure of meeting many talented photographers. I returned back to Kotao. And recently, during the first lockdown, I met a photographer that goes on Instagram by the name of Suehuatica, also known as Michael. And I have him to thank for helping me develop into an underwater art portrait photographer in the way that I am today.

SPEAKER_05 16:40

Here at Deeper Blue, we love your photography. I know that you get featured several times on our Instagram feeds that we do daily photos. You actually ended up being the top photo that we featured in the whole of 2020. What do you love about taking photos underwater?

SPEAKER_06 16:57

What do you love about doing it? My primary love is light. Even the way it dances in the shadows or bounces off bright surfaces. I love that. And I love Adventure on Land. I love Adventure Underwater and I love light. And it's just about putting it together in a way where it conveys that to the viewer. Especially in the picture that you are talking about. It's in a canyon. And that canyon was discovered on my own through adventure. I I was there by myself first. I had snorkeled to that place. I found it. It's not a very well-known location, but I just fell in love. And when I find places like that, then I bring people there, and then I try and create that mood.

SPEAKER_05 17:38

With all this photography, both above and below water, you must have some amazing stories to be able to share. So is there one particular story that really resonates with you that kind of connects you with the ocean?

SPEAKER_06 17:53

Well, I would say I have a story that I thought about this because I mean, working in Indonesia, you have so many amazing experiences, and I have to draw from that time. It's just it's so beautiful. This was in an area known as the Sangihe Archipelago, but the locals will call it Sangir. It's just north of Sulawesi, and the archipelago connects all the way to southern Philippines. So it's a very unusual place to do a trip, and I think all the better for it. I was working on a liverboard. The liverboard had a bit of a malfunction, so we had to moor up next to a volcanic island where in the night, at the crater of this enormous volcano, like in the very traditional iconic style, like a giant, giant volcano out of a very round-shaped island. It was glowing bright red in the night, like this crater, very high above the sea. And in the morning, we had guests, we still had to dive, and you know, we had to think of a dive. It wasn't our plan, but we just dived on the side of this island. What we didn't realize is that you could literally feel and hear underwater the rumbling of the active volcano above. And it was so interesting to connect what we saw in the night with this red hot crater high above us with this immense rumbling. There is nothing more humbling than that experience. I mean, there were amazing whale shark encounters and mantas and rare octopus, but to me, this was such a unique experience, and I just don't think I'll ever have anything like that ever again.

SPEAKER_04 19:51

The world underwater every week. I am Adas Follow Paul from Connect Ocean. And you are listening to the Deeper Blue Podcast.

SPEAKER_05 20:07

And action. This season of the Deep Blue Podcast is brought to you by Sunto, Jason. Did you know that? Did you know it's brought to you by Sunto?

SPEAKER_07 20:15

I did know that, particularly because I've got copyright in front of me telling me that. So yes.

SPEAKER_05 20:22

Today I want to have a quick chat about something that it's really useful, which is, especially in this day and age, nothing bugs me more than some of these computers having integrated batteries that you can't change. We talked on one of the previous things about AirPods and Apple products, which notoriously, once the battery runs down, you're stuffed. And you've just got to throw it away and go on. Well, you know, you would need to, if you want to change your Cunto battery, what Cinto have done is they've invested in this service network. So all these trained professionals, there's a trained professional with a shiny crisp uniform that, you know, will service and replace things like replace your battery, look at O-rings, make sure it's serviced and so on. Which I mean, I'll be honest, it's not the most interesting of topics to be talking about, but it's damn useful, especially when you're traveling and you want to get something serviced.

SPEAKER_07 21:07

Oh, yes, it's very interesting. It's super cool to own a Tesla. Like it's that's a badass car. But you have to be able to go in here with it. You have to have charging stations along the way. There have to be strategically located charging stations. So maybe thinking about charging stations is not the reason you got into a Tesla. You really got into it because you like the goal wing doors. But the truth is you actually have to have charging stations along the way. And so I will respect the fact that Sunto makes it easy to kind of walk in. I don't know if they're dressed specifically the way that you say. I think that seems slightly dystopian, but I do think that you walk in there and they the fact that they have they make it easy to get this stuff serviced is fantastic. I think that must be some part of their finish side.

SPEAKER_05 21:50

I can guarantee you, having traveled a lot and jumped in puddles and ponds in all different parts of the world, if your computer's gonna fail, it's gonna fail at the most inconvenient time, which is you're far away from home and you want something. You want to know that you've got you know the backup to be able to get something serviced pretty promptish from a local dive center, right? So yeah. And I think if you go to Cinto.com, you can actually check out, you can type in where you are and it will tell you where the nearest round is in England.

SPEAKER_07 22:14

Thank you, Cinto.

SPEAKER_05 22:15

Thanks, Cinto. Sinto.

SPEAKER_07 22:22

Today's top tip comes from SSI TDI instructor and cave diving specialist Ranva Jormanson. Ranva gives a recommendation for dry suit divers who are staying hydrated. A tip you might not find in any of the training manuals.

SPEAKER_02 22:37

Hi, my name is Ranva, and my top tip today is that you have to remember always to stay hydrated when you're diving. For the ladies who dive in dry suits, there are a couple of options to be hydrated there. You can either use a diaper or you can use a sheepy. So my top tip today is when you use a sheepy, just beware not to glue your butt together.

SPEAKER_03 23:03

Let's just leave it to that. It's fine. It's a bit of a laughing matter when that actually happens. You do feel a bit of it's more your pride that it goes over.

SPEAKER_05 23:22

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

SPEAKER_01 23:31

Hi everybody, my name is Ez. I'm 66 years old. I live in Cairo, Egypt, and I work in FinTech. My best dive ever was actually my first. It was in 1972, I was 17 years old, and it was in the Mediterranean city of Masumatruh, which is some 60 kilometers west of Al Alamein, where in World War II Rommel and Montgomery clashed. It was summer, weather was hot, water temperature was warm, and just a beautiful day. I don't recall much of this first dive, except water was clear and the bottom was very sandy. I stayed underwater for almost 15 minutes. I was with my neighbor who was in his 40s and he was a great companion for a first dive. Then, in those times, regulators were single stage and BCDs were horse callers. Anytime I watched James Bond on the bold underwater battle, I laugh about how far diving had evolved. Now, why did I choose this dive as the best dive ever? It's quite simple. This very first dive changed my life forever. The impact of this dive had on me, got me hooked in diving, making diving a centerpiece in my life. Although first dives are usually stressful, only one thing was imprinted in my mind. This is where I belong. I want to be forever in the sea diving. I have no idea what my life would look like if diving wasn't part of it, but for sure would not be as beautiful as mine is now. Really, it is the best dive I've ever done.

SPEAKER_05 25:15

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 Deeper Blue Podcast. Find out more on all the stories you've heard this week, plus connect to the world's largest online dive community at deeperblue.com. And if you like what you've heard, please subscribe, like, and comment wherever you hear your podcasts. These comments and subscribes really make a difference. Before we go, I want to give a big shout out to Jason Elias, our producer. In case you didn't know, he has an amazing podcast about people who have a deep connection to our world's oceans. Connections strong enough that they'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 bestdiveever at deeperblue.com, or head to our website podcast.deeperblue.com forward slash best dive ever. Join us again next week and explore much more of the deeper blue.