Latest / Adventure Sports Podcast / Ep. 1193: SCUBA for Preservation Around the World with Andi Cross

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Ep. 1193: SCUBA for Preservation Around the World with Andi Cross · Adventure Sports Podcast

0:06
[SPEAKER_00]: your listening to the Adventure Sports podcast.
0:09
[SPEAKER_00]: We talk with adventures from around the globe to give you the inspiration you need to get started in the outdoors or keep moving if you're already there.
0:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Now here's your host, Kurt Lindville.
0:20
[SPEAKER_02]: Hello, hello, hello, can you believe it?
0:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Happy St. Patrick's Day yesterday and Friday is the first day of spring.
0:28
[SPEAKER_02]: So cool, spring, equinox.
0:31
[SPEAKER_02]: What are your plans for the summer?
0:33
[SPEAKER_02]: I hope to get some summits under my belt.
0:36
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0:40
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0:43
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0:44
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0:49
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0:55
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1:04
[SPEAKER_02]: I know that I am inspired by the guests that I get to interview and I'm inspired by you because there are thousands of you out there who also are taking the time to listen and thank you very, very much, you're what make this show possible.
1:18
[SPEAKER_02]: Now let's jump into this episode on scuba diving for preservation all over the world.
1:26
[SPEAKER_02]: This is going to be a really fun episode.
1:28
[SPEAKER_02]: I can already tell.
1:30
[SPEAKER_02]: I am so excited to learn more about Andy Cross.
1:35
[SPEAKER_02]: Andy Cross is a technical diver, a scuba instructor, but she also does expeditions around the world.
1:42
[SPEAKER_02]: And in the last I believe three years, she's been to over 50 countries.
1:46
[SPEAKER_02]: She's documenting remote ecosystem.
1:50
[SPEAKER_02]: and learning about them so that we can better understand them and protect them and welcome to the program.
1:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much, excited to be here.
1:59
[SPEAKER_02]: I find it so fascinating, Andy, to first of all, just to hear 50 countries in the last three years.
2:07
[SPEAKER_02]: That is a lot.
2:09
[SPEAKER_02]: Are you doing this full time then, I would assume?
2:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, we, my partner and I have been on the road for the last three years together, working in these amazing places, pretty much full-time, and we have a very interesting way of going about our full-time endeavors.
2:24
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not very normal at all, but it's been very eye-opening and quite rewarding.
2:30
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, that's fun.
2:30
[SPEAKER_02]: We're going to get into all of that.
2:33
[SPEAKER_02]: I think what I'd like to do is talk about the scuba portion of this first and get that backstory and then we'll dive into the expeditions that you're doing and you also have an organization called edges of the earth or sometimes I guess people call it edges of the earth expeditions so we're going to get into that as well and just the name of that sounds romantic.
2:54
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay Andy, where are we talking to you right now?
2:58
[SPEAKER_01]: I from Western Australia, I am in the Perth.
3:01
[SPEAKER_01]: The most isolated city in the world, which is very far away from all places, but it has some of the most amazing diving over here on the West Coast of Australia.
3:12
[SPEAKER_02]: So the West Coast of Australia, and I said before I hit record here, that means that it's sometimes tomorrow where you are.
3:20
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, exactly.
3:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you, it's also the middle of the night, I think.
3:25
[SPEAKER_02]: So thank you very much for talking to us.
3:28
[SPEAKER_02]: We could have adjusted the schedule, had I known, but I'm very, very thankful for you.
3:33
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, how long have you been scuba diving?
3:36
[SPEAKER_01]: I started scuba diving in 2018, which is pretty crazy to think about because that's in diving world.
3:43
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a very short period of time.
3:46
[SPEAKER_01]: But once I saw what was all down below, I got the bug and if anyone's listening who is a diver, you know what that bug is like, once you see it, you can't unsee it.
3:59
[SPEAKER_01]: And I basically tried to cram years and years and years
4:06
[SPEAKER_02]: Andy, I know it's terribly rude to comment on people's ages, but I'm going to do it anyway.
4:11
[SPEAKER_02]: I heard that you learned how to swim, not scuba dive, but swim at the age of 30.
4:17
[SPEAKER_02]: And since you're only 25, I don't understand how that happened.
4:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Exactly, yeah, so I'm 38, which is pretty wild to look back on, you know, only eight years ago, asking the lifeguard in the hotel pool right before I was taking my open water diving exam if he could teach me how to swim a lap because I was a quite nervous about my abilities in the
4:47
[SPEAKER_01]: met my husband Adam.
4:49
[SPEAKER_01]: He was watching me in the pool and he said, do you not know how to swim?
4:55
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, I don't know.
4:58
[SPEAKER_01]: I think I do.
4:59
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I can float.
5:00
[SPEAKER_01]: He's like, that's not swimming.
5:03
[SPEAKER_01]: You can't, you can't make it a lot in the pool.
5:06
[SPEAKER_01]: It was a very eye-opening experience that if I wanted to advance in diving at all.
5:11
[SPEAKER_01]: I probably needed to do learn how to swim properly.
5:13
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, this is the first I've ever heard of this.
5:16
[SPEAKER_02]: I just did the mental math.
5:18
[SPEAKER_02]: You're learning to swim and learning to scuba dive.
5:21
[SPEAKER_02]: Almost at the same time.
5:23
[SPEAKER_02]: Matter of fact, you're diving before you're swimming.
5:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, so the lifeguard at the pool did a great job helping me pass my open water exam.
5:31
[SPEAKER_01]: So I was able to make it through one to two laps with a very unique doggy paddle as they called it.
5:39
[SPEAKER_01]: And the properly learning to swim was pretty critical in advancing my diving career to the real level and it required many training sessions with my now in laws who
5:51
[SPEAKER_01]: gave me a little blue kickboard and took me to the kitty pool and they were like you need to learn how to do this one if you want to spend time in Australia and two if you actually want to become a diver.
6:02
[SPEAKER_01]: So it was a very eye-opening journey to realize that I'm facted not have any swimming capabilities at all.
6:10
[SPEAKER_02]: Wow, okay, so that's, that's very, very unique.
6:12
[SPEAKER_02]: I want to dive into that.
6:14
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know pun intended, a little bit more because it's so fascinating to me.
6:18
[SPEAKER_02]: So where did you grow up that you didn't learn to swim?
6:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so I grew up in a place called Brumal Pennsylvania.
6:25
[SPEAKER_01]: My parents definitely took me to the community pool but our version of swimming and spending time in the water was going up to your ankle or to your knees and splashing around.
6:39
[SPEAKER_01]: I spent a lot of time in North Carolina and I got exposure to water.
6:43
[SPEAKER_01]: But I was fearful, I suppose, I never wanted to go further than where I could stand.
6:52
[SPEAKER_01]: And there were times where I definitely recall being interested, but it wasn't.
6:58
[SPEAKER_01]: It wasn't a passion.
6:59
[SPEAKER_01]: It wasn't what I was exposed to.
7:02
[SPEAKER_01]: It wasn't what my family was doing.
7:04
[SPEAKER_01]: It wasn't how we spent our time.
7:05
[SPEAKER_01]: So although I loved Marie and life and I loved going to aquariums and I loved reading about fish in particular, I was not your average kid of actively wanting to go swimming a pool or really wanting to do much physical activity at all.
7:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I was
7:23
[SPEAKER_01]: not an athlete.
7:24
[SPEAKER_01]: I did not like gym class.
7:26
[SPEAKER_01]: This was not my passion.
7:28
[SPEAKER_01]: My passion was reading about fish and encyclopedias and in books.
7:32
[SPEAKER_01]: So, it's a pretty wild transformation to go from someone who was a little scared of this whole process to now being borderline obsessed.
7:43
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, wow.
7:44
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
7:45
[SPEAKER_02]: I've heard and seen and met many people who scuba dive because
7:51
[SPEAKER_02]: they love water so much and they swam and wanted to be able to stay down longer.
7:54
[SPEAKER_02]: That's usually the story I hear.
7:57
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think I realized that I did not know how to properly swim.
8:02
[SPEAKER_01]: That was the piece for me where I guess I always thought, you know, treading water or, you know, being able to doggy paddle or that that was good enough, right?
8:13
[SPEAKER_01]: I could get five.
8:14
[SPEAKER_01]: But not realizing that if you want to advance and support like this, and you really want to spend time in the water, that's just not going to cut it.
8:23
[SPEAKER_01]: You really can't get past any basic level of scuba diving without having deep knowledge on how the ocean works or how you move with the ocean or when there's risks in front of you.
8:36
[SPEAKER_01]: and frankly, how to get out of it, which oftentimes requires the ability to swim.
8:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, it's super diving's interesting because the device is that you wear in the equipment that you wear, it doesn't require you to really propel yourself through the water on your own.
8:54
[SPEAKER_01]: And you have support, you have that buoyancy device that's, you know, keeping you hovering.
9:00
[SPEAKER_01]: And you're making small motions to move yourself through the water.
9:03
[SPEAKER_01]: but to properly get out of trouble or to surface swim or to do anything in rescue or to go into your dive master and you know your instructor level work you need to be able to swim make it to safety and support other people in that process too.
9:19
[SPEAKER_02]: Wow, will you're an inspiration?
9:21
[SPEAKER_02]: I know a lot of people that maybe they're curious about the underwater world, they're curious about scuba diving, but then they just discount it and say, you know what, I'm not even a water person.
9:30
[SPEAKER_02]: I probably shouldn't do that.
9:32
[SPEAKER_02]: What would you say to that person?
9:34
[SPEAKER_01]: I am not a water person.
9:35
[SPEAKER_01]: I had the steepest learning curve of them all, especially when you're in your 30s, and you're accepting beginner minds that all over again, with something so basic that you think you know, even in the slightest bit, and then whenever on a round you was saying, wait a second.
9:52
[SPEAKER_01]: that's not right.
9:53
[SPEAKER_01]: And you have a long way to go.
9:55
[SPEAKER_01]: That's quite an intense feeling.
9:59
[SPEAKER_01]: So if anybody is feeling like they're sitting on the fence where they're not a water person, I can say that in no way shape or form was I1, but you can become one if that's something you really want to do.
10:11
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'll also say it's not something you should force yourself into as aggressively as I did.
10:17
[SPEAKER_01]: where, you know, I really pushed my own limits pretty much every day for five years straight to get to the point that I wanted.
10:25
[SPEAKER_01]: You can take baby steps into this and it's all a journey that can be done at your own pace.
10:31
[SPEAKER_02]: That's an amazing story.
10:33
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, good for you.
10:34
[SPEAKER_02]: I just want to celebrate that for a minute.
10:37
[SPEAKER_02]: That is a life accomplishment.
10:39
[SPEAKER_02]: When you set out to do this, did you realize what you were up against and now when you reflect on it, how does it make you feel?
10:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, every time I complete a dive exam or I pass and graduate to a higher level, it is the most exciting day of my life because I look back on that time, just floundering and feeling so self-conscious and like, I don't understand like how this happened or why I'm in this position and having these really negative thoughts about,
11:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Why am I so far behind my peers or, you know, why did I get this opportunity when I was younger?
11:18
[SPEAKER_01]: But that's no way to look at things.
11:20
[SPEAKER_01]: It's about seizing the moment, the minute you realize or the minute you have the opportunity to.
11:26
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's so, so exciting to see how far you can go from zero.
11:31
[SPEAKER_01]: to all the way into running multi-month multi-year expeditions where I am swimming all the time, and passing swim tests quite regularly, which is a huge, huge accomplishment for me.
11:44
[SPEAKER_01]: And I take the small wins for what they are, so it's great.
11:48
[SPEAKER_02]: Beautiful example.
11:50
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
11:51
[SPEAKER_02]: Why did you try scoop?
11:53
[SPEAKER_02]: How did that happen?
11:53
[SPEAKER_02]: There must be a story there.
11:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
11:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
11:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
11:56
[SPEAKER_01]: So like I said, grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, went to school in Washington, DC, moved immediately out of school to New York.
12:05
[SPEAKER_01]: And I did what I was supposed to do.
12:06
[SPEAKER_01]: I climbed the corporate ladder and my whole focus, my whole world was, I need to make it in New York because if I can make it
12:17
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what they say, and that's how I grew up.
12:20
[SPEAKER_01]: I wasn't skiing or snowboarding or roller skating or cycling much.
12:26
[SPEAKER_01]: I was learning to be a professional, and that's where the focus was.
12:32
[SPEAKER_01]: So my life calling was to be a great marketer.
12:35
[SPEAKER_01]: That was my job.
12:36
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I took that really seriously.
12:38
[SPEAKER_01]: And for 10 years, I lived by the corporate rulebook.
12:43
[SPEAKER_01]: I stayed late.
12:43
[SPEAKER_01]: I worked hard.
12:44
[SPEAKER_01]: I moved up as quickly as I could.
12:47
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was 2017 when I saw, I was doom scrolling, it was Instagram days and I saw a photo in National Geographic of a polar bear shriveling on ice and it was this whole story about climate change and I hadn't really consumed news like that, I'd obviously seen some of it but
13:11
[SPEAKER_01]: hadn't been struck by something quite like that photo.
13:15
[SPEAKER_01]: And it just hit me like a ton of bricks that I'm sitting in this high-rise New York building.
13:22
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm using my skill to sell sneakers to the privileged, you know, I work at this big marketing firm and we work with mega brands that are just its consumers into the max.
13:34
[SPEAKER_01]: And I thought, is this really how I want to spend my time
13:37
[SPEAKER_01]: and I flashed back to a childhood reading these books about fish and wildlife and these people who went on adventures and exploration and I realized like at the core of who I was, that was the thing that I cared most about.
13:50
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I reached out to the photographer on LinkedIn who took that photo and said, I know absolutely nothing about conservation, restoration, climate change, but I'm a marketer and I think my skills could help you in some way.
14:06
[SPEAKER_01]: and surely enough they needed a marketer and I started working with that team and they opened my eyes to this whole other world and I was amazed couldn't unsee it again and one day they asked me if I love the ocean so much.
14:22
[SPEAKER_01]: why had I never tried diving or getting in?
14:26
[SPEAKER_01]: And I honest to God had not ever thought about that in my life.
14:30
[SPEAKER_01]: I never even imagined myself as a scuba diver.
14:33
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't actually even think I fully knew what it meant at that time.
14:38
[SPEAKER_01]: And so in 2018, I went to take my open water course in a Manhattan public swimming pool.
14:46
[SPEAKER_01]: It was green.
14:46
[SPEAKER_01]: It was a quite a unique experience.
14:52
[SPEAKER_01]: And I remember the instructor said,
14:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow, you are going to really struggle with this.
14:57
[SPEAKER_01]: This is not going to be an easy journey for you.
15:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Are you sure you want to do this?
15:04
[SPEAKER_01]: And I said, yeah, I think so.
15:05
[SPEAKER_01]: And I said, our recommendation is go down the Bahamas, get some swimming lessons in a pool, be in warm water and give it a go.
15:12
[SPEAKER_01]: There's no better place to go try.
15:14
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I booked a flight down to the Bahamas.
15:19
[SPEAKER_01]: I worked with the lifeguard in the pool.
15:24
[SPEAKER_01]: of a modern exam and I shockingly passed and passed genuinely.
15:29
[SPEAKER_01]: It wasn't just a little sign off, it was real.
15:33
[SPEAKER_01]: I did what I was supposed to do.
15:36
[SPEAKER_01]: I saw sharks on my first dive and I said,
15:42
[SPEAKER_01]: my whole life just changed right here right now.
15:45
[SPEAKER_01]: I am now a scuba diver and I am going to move to a place where I can do this all the time and become a professional and expert level diver and build my whole career around this.
15:57
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's what I did.
15:58
[SPEAKER_01]: That was in 2018 and then I moved to Western Australia by 2019 and I went on a pretty significant five-year journey to dive master.
16:08
[SPEAKER_02]: fascinating really really fascinating I want to point out one little nuance of what you said there people ask me what I do for a living and I try really hard not to say I am because I would have to say I am an RF engineer which I'm not that's just the work I do I would much rather say I'm a podcaster
16:30
[SPEAKER_02]: I like to talk to people about adventure.
16:32
[SPEAKER_02]: That's an IM statement.
16:34
[SPEAKER_02]: Or I'm a mountain near.
16:35
[SPEAKER_02]: I climb mountains.
16:37
[SPEAKER_02]: Or I'm a backcountry skier.
16:39
[SPEAKER_02]: That's an IM statement.
16:40
[SPEAKER_02]: Whenever you talked about scuba-dime you said, I am now a scuba-diver.
16:46
[SPEAKER_02]: Your identity, I mean, it pegged it.
16:49
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that people, we should pay attention to that a little bit.
16:54
[SPEAKER_02]: When we find an IAM moment where we say, no, this is what I really am, this is me, we should listen.
17:01
[SPEAKER_02]: What did that feel like?
17:03
[SPEAKER_02]: What did that feel like?
17:04
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, you were leaving New York, corporate America, and you became someone who pursued scuba diving.
17:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that was a catalytic moment, truly.
17:14
[SPEAKER_01]: And I remember diving in the Bahamas, but I can't even imagine what my form looked like or how bumbly I was.
17:23
[SPEAKER_01]: And I remember thinking, yeah, I have this really long road ahead, but if this is the long road ahead that I'm up against, I'm so in, because this is incredible.
17:34
[SPEAKER_01]: And I've no idea what I'm gonna do with this fully, but I know there's
17:39
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm gonna unlock some version of myself and I'm gonna blend all of these things together because to your point, I never wanted to say I am a marketer, that's...
17:49
[SPEAKER_01]: I have a skill that is in marketing, but what I really am is this water, it is person interested in water, this person who's deeply fascinated by marine life, and above all else just a curious person, and willing to push really hard for the things that I care about.
18:07
[SPEAKER_01]: So I wanted to
18:09
[SPEAKER_01]: re-engineered this next chapter of my life around those core truths.
18:13
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, it's what I like to call my default mode.
18:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, when I, if I had to hit the reset button and just strip it down to the, like, core of who I am, these are the things.
18:23
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like that as a child.
18:25
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like that.
18:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, and those are my favorite things about me.
18:29
[SPEAKER_01]: So why not double down on them?
18:31
[SPEAKER_01]: And moving to Australia, everyone in my life, except two people, said it was a horrible idea.
18:36
[SPEAKER_01]: I was ruining my career and worked so hard to get to this point, they couldn't believe it.
18:40
[SPEAKER_01]: They said, you're moving for a die, you're moving for that.
18:44
[SPEAKER_01]: There was excuses of all the variety.
18:47
[SPEAKER_01]: And I appreciated hearing all that feedback, but it was the fuel to the fire.
18:54
[SPEAKER_01]: The more people said, no, the more I said, yes, I'm like, okay, I'm moving on, Shelya.
19:00
[SPEAKER_01]: And I chose, I'll Shelya for a lot of reasons.
19:05
[SPEAKER_01]: by this ocean in particular because it is so challenging and it's so intense and there's so much wildlife.
19:12
[SPEAKER_01]: I wanted to learn in an environment that would just push me so hard not to say other oceans aren't magnificently challenging.
19:20
[SPEAKER_01]: They are, but for some reason in my mind, this was ferocious.
19:26
[SPEAKER_01]: This was the wild west.
19:28
[SPEAKER_01]: And if I could learn it here, I
19:29
[SPEAKER_01]: could do it anywhere.
19:31
[SPEAKER_01]: So it was again a similar mindset to New York.
19:34
[SPEAKER_01]: And when I moved out here I had no friends, I had no connections.
19:38
[SPEAKER_01]: My now has been was living about four hours, three four hours away from me.
19:42
[SPEAKER_01]: And so when I was spending time with him it was long distance back and forth and I just emerged myself and this wild world completely alone, mainly to see if I could do it, if I could cut it.
19:56
[SPEAKER_01]: And that transformation moment was the most exciting because I had to sit with myself and sit with my strengths and weaknesses and really identify what they are.
20:06
[SPEAKER_01]: And be really honest with myself about my capabilities and what it was going to take to achieve those goals.
20:13
[SPEAKER_01]: And I cried a lot in 2019.
20:16
[SPEAKER_01]: I've been a lot of time wondering if I made a terrible decision and by 2020 it was sealed that it was the right one.
20:25
[SPEAKER_02]: nice you know you didn't use the word fear in any of this conversation but a lot of people are thinking fearful thoughts because they're thinking I don't even know how to swim I'm afraid of water can't imagine sharks scuba diving all the animals she's talking about uh challenging oceans those are scary words was it was it was it a scary thing for you?
20:48
[SPEAKER_01]: I was more afraid of myself if that makes sense, afraid of my inner abilities, and afraid of my strength.
20:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Carrying all this gear requires some strength, and especially as you advance and you get into technical diving where you're carrying a lot more gear than your basic recreational kit.
21:07
[SPEAKER_01]: And I just didn't actually feel strong in any way.
21:10
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that was the theme of moving to Australia.
21:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Am I strong enough mentally, physically, can I really do this?
21:20
[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't think it was so much fear, because I love risk, and I love adventure, and I love diving into the unknown.
21:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Those are, are not, those aren't fearful things for me.
21:29
[SPEAKER_01]: But I was more so questioning, do I have the ability, the actual, like, guts or what it takes to achieve these things, and that was the part that I was scared of.
21:42
[SPEAKER_01]: I was scared of quitting and coming home and saying that I didn't complete the mission.
21:48
[SPEAKER_01]: I was afraid that I made the wrong choice.
21:50
[SPEAKER_01]: I was afraid of, you know, these things that were all stemming from me.
21:54
[SPEAKER_01]: The ocean was scary for sure in moments but I worked with really amazing people who were the best teachers and such good guides and they took the fear out of it and I think that for other people who are listening who might be afraid of some of these natural things.
22:14
[SPEAKER_01]: If you find there are people who really
22:16
[SPEAKER_01]: care about the educational and training journey.
22:20
[SPEAKER_01]: That fear can be eliminated.
22:21
[SPEAKER_01]: But if you feel like you're on your own and you're doing this yourself, yeah, of course it's scary.
22:27
[SPEAKER_01]: But I got really lucky with the people who I've surrounded myself with who took me under their wing thought it was quite pommical, my situation, and put me through a five-year boot camp that got you ready
22:43
[SPEAKER_02]: That's amazing.
22:45
[SPEAKER_02]: I have a theory, Andy, which is that things that scare us a little bit are also more exciting when we challenge that fear.
22:53
[SPEAKER_02]: And I absolutely love scuba- it's one of my favorite things to do, but it's never really been exciting for me much.
23:01
[SPEAKER_02]: And the reason is because I was so comfortable in water.
23:04
[SPEAKER_02]: I was a fish.
23:05
[SPEAKER_02]: I just always was in the water swimming and holding my breath and doing all the things.
23:09
[SPEAKER_02]: So scuba diving is just an extension of that for me.
23:12
[SPEAKER_02]: But I've known other people that are a little bit edgy about the water and they tend to get more excited about scuba diving.
23:18
[SPEAKER_02]: It's more fun,
23:20
[SPEAKER_02]: Because they're challenging themselves in an area that's a little less familiar.
23:25
[SPEAKER_02]: Where would you fall on that spectrum?
23:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, well, it's not that I've ever been afraid of the ocean.
23:33
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not that the water scares me.
23:36
[SPEAKER_01]: It was always that I never really knew what was coming.
23:42
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'd always be on edge, right?
23:44
[SPEAKER_01]: And that adrenaline made diving really exciting.
23:48
[SPEAKER_01]: So I know exactly what you mean.
23:50
[SPEAKER_01]: But the best example I have is my father who learned to scuba dive at 67,
23:57
[SPEAKER_01]: And he went to the pool every day to practice this swimming, but as he too is not a strong swimmer.
24:05
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not sure he knew how to swim, but not very well, and he was so scared for his open water terrified.
24:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Freaking out, had flashcards, was reading all his flashcards about deep diving theory.
24:19
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, dude!
24:20
[SPEAKER_01]: He's going to be fine, it's not what this is, but he was so, so, so, so, so afraid of the ocean and so afraid of his capability and so afraid of what could happen and running all these scenarios of what ifs, it's like completely understand because like watching his journey, but again, when you surround yourself with the right people and you have a holding hand through that journey, those fears can be eliminated really quickly.
24:46
[SPEAKER_01]: But if you're a water person and you're born a lot of person and you have that ocean awareness or you have water awareness, yeah, there's a lot of excitement that comes from putting yourself in harder or crazy your conditions, and maybe you know you get there a lot faster than someone like me or my father, but I will say, I'm now in that position where
25:07
[SPEAKER_01]: recreational diving sometimes feels quite calming.
25:11
[SPEAKER_01]: I say it's like taking a nap and I'm chasing much different dive experiences because always looking for that exciting rush.
25:23
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, let's go there a little bit.
25:24
[SPEAKER_02]: You've been using two words, open water and technical.
25:28
[SPEAKER_02]: And you've been saying, open water diving.
25:30
[SPEAKER_02]: That's how we start as open water divers.
25:32
[SPEAKER_02]: And then you've been talking about technical diving and being a diving instructor, what's the difference?
25:39
[SPEAKER_01]: shorter.
25:39
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'll walk you through the process.
25:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Open water diving is basically, well, there's discover diving, which enables you to go scuba diving without necessarily getting certified.
25:50
[SPEAKER_01]: It should taste your glimpse.
25:52
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're not so sure, if you would like this, discover diving is just the little gateway.
25:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Snorkeling is another gateway too, right?
25:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Open waters where you get certified, you go through a process where you're training in confined
26:05
[SPEAKER_01]: you're doing theory and online learning and then you have multiple days where you're in open water, the ocean, a lake, you know, some sort of water body where you can train the skills you learned and can find water environment like a pool and and test it all out.
26:22
[SPEAKER_01]: that step one.
26:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Then there's a whole bunch of different steps you can go through like advanced diving, which basically focuses on specialty skills, whether you want to do wreck diving or boat diving or night diving or practice your buoyancy.
26:37
[SPEAKER_01]: You have the opportunity to choose the handful of dive specialties and move forward.
26:43
[SPEAKER_01]: And then there's rescue diving, which is arguably one of the most important
26:47
[SPEAKER_01]: dive courses you'll ever take, which is not only worrying about your own safety, but worrying about the safety of others.
26:52
[SPEAKER_01]: I highly recommend all divers move through to rescue diving.
26:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Then there's some specialty courses you can take, like diving with nitrox or, uh, you know, perfecting any certain skill that you might have that you might be worried about.
27:07
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you can move into dive master, which is what I am.
27:09
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm not an instructor and one level
27:13
[SPEAKER_01]: under me, the instructor level that focuses on guiding or helping navigate certain dives or working with divers to perfect certain skills, while I can't actually certify a diver to any certain level.
27:29
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm part of the pro community where we're helping take people out in the water.
27:33
[SPEAKER_01]: So, divemasters really focused less on yourself, obviously want to keep yourself safe, but the safety and the collective experience of others.
27:41
[SPEAKER_01]: But I'm not a divemaster in a traditional sense because oftentimes, divemasters work at dive shops or dive resorts and they're guiding dives.
27:48
[SPEAKER_01]: The reason I went to dive master is just for further education and skills, so I could say that I put in the work, I put in the time, and I got to that pro level to go on these types of expeditions and keep myself safe and the others that I'm diving with.
28:03
[SPEAKER_01]: But then you can go into instructor, instructor trainer, and that's more on the recreational path where you're helping others get in the water and learn.
28:11
[SPEAKER_01]: there's another path and that's called technical diving and this has become my very true and real obsession over the years and I told myself I would not go here when I started diving and here I am because it's a very long road and it's technical diving all diving is
28:32
[SPEAKER_01]: technical, technically.
28:33
[SPEAKER_01]: But this type of diving is about going deeper, about going farther, and about staying down for longer.
28:41
[SPEAKER_01]: So we call it extended range.
28:43
[SPEAKER_01]: It's basically extending your time underwater and extending the amount of places that you can go.
28:49
[SPEAKER_01]: So,
28:50
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm sponsored by a group called Scuba Schools International where they're a big dive training agency and they specialize very much and extended range diving to basically get you into caves or get you into mines or get you into super, super deep shipwrecks below 40 meters.
29:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Or going to places that are a little more tricky, a little more complicated that require far more equipment, far more training,
29:17
[SPEAKER_01]: deep technical knowledge of diving in theory and in practice.
29:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Interesting.
29:23
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to over-simplify this for the listeners.
29:25
[SPEAKER_02]: And then maybe you can fill in the gaps.
29:27
[SPEAKER_02]: Really scuba diving at its core is about not holding your breath when you're using scuba gear and about not staying down too long.
29:36
[SPEAKER_02]: And really, as an open water diver, those are the two big ones, right?
29:41
[SPEAKER_02]: As a technical diver, you introduce everything else.
29:45
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, the underwater navigation is a big deal.
29:48
[SPEAKER_02]: Now you are stained down what would be considered too long for an open water diver.
29:53
[SPEAKER_02]: And you're having to work in environments where visibility is in question.
29:58
[SPEAKER_02]: You have maybe their crazy currents to contend with.
30:01
[SPEAKER_02]: There are places you can get lost.
30:03
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, fill in all those gaps for us.
30:05
[SPEAKER_02]: How big of a leap is it from open water to technical?
30:10
[SPEAKER_01]: So open water, you could be experiencing low visibility.
30:15
[SPEAKER_01]: You could be experiencing extreme currents.
30:18
[SPEAKER_01]: You could be experiencing all kinds of different environments.
30:22
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just about your comfort level.
30:23
[SPEAKER_01]: And oftentimes open water divers.
30:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Someone could stay in open water diver, they're entire dive journey, have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dives and never go into the technical or extended range world at all and have amazing experiences and experience lots of challenging, interesting conditions.
30:40
[SPEAKER_01]: The ocean and water bodies are wild.
30:43
[SPEAKER_01]: However, if you want to start really exploring
30:50
[SPEAKER_01]: other parts of the ocean and feeling comfortable, truly comfortable doing it and you get this level of training.
30:58
[SPEAKER_01]: You're just building, building, building, building on your knowledge set and it enables you to feel true comfort, but it also opens up a new set of gear.
31:06
[SPEAKER_01]: So open water diving is usually on an open-circuit kit where
31:12
[SPEAKER_01]: your breathing bubbles are coming out.
31:14
[SPEAKER_01]: You have a single tank on your back and you have lots of different equipment that can either support lightweight travel.
31:23
[SPEAKER_01]: If you won't more gear on you can have a heavier gear on you can have that.
31:28
[SPEAKER_01]: an extended range diving you need multiple tanks, redundancy.
31:32
[SPEAKER_01]: It's all about being as safe as possible in these wild extreme conditions.
31:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Or alternatively, you could go on open water dives, basic open water dives, and use this gear and just stay down so much longer.
31:48
[SPEAKER_01]: So the real difference
31:55
[SPEAKER_01]: as a diver, the more and more you dive, the more and more you realize you want more time down there.
32:01
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's the big one.
32:03
[SPEAKER_01]: But then again, going farther, going to these different places, it requires you to know how to use far more gear, how to carry far more gear, and how to be completely confident in all of these conditions as best you possibly can.
32:20
[SPEAKER_01]: So,
32:21
[SPEAKER_01]: There's so many gaps that we can fill in.
32:23
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you could be diving in kelp forests.
32:25
[SPEAKER_01]: You could be diving coral reefs.
32:27
[SPEAKER_01]: You could be diving in ice.
32:28
[SPEAKER_01]: You could be diving in altitude.
32:30
[SPEAKER_01]: And all of that requires training, training, training.
32:34
[SPEAKER_01]: But you get to a certain point in your dive journey.
32:37
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's this burning question of what else is out there.
32:41
[SPEAKER_01]: And you know that there's so much unexplored.
32:44
[SPEAKER_01]: And you start meeting people in the diving community.
32:46
[SPEAKER_01]: You start seeing them using multiple tanks,
32:51
[SPEAKER_01]: or backset and you're wondering, wow, wow, why do you need all those tanks and you start asking questions and again, like you couldn't unsee open water, you can't unsee this and with time the more people you meet, the more passion you see and you hear these incredible tales of exploring these underwater cave systems and these amazing minds or these super deep racks and you say, I want to do that.
33:19
[SPEAKER_01]: and then you just realize you need more tanks on your body, more redundancy, and you need to learn how to go deeper, deeper, deeper, deeper.
33:26
[SPEAKER_02]: Wow.
33:27
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I want to transition from just the scuba diving into what you do with your scuba diving and the edges of the earth and all of your travel and we need to go there, but just so people get a picture for it or for scuba diving, will you tell us a brief story about a dive experience that just lit you up?
33:50
[SPEAKER_02]: You're like, wow, I can't believe this happened.
33:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Sure.
33:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow, I have so, so, so many, and somebody wants to tell me in my early days of diving that there's no such thing as a bad dive and the aim of your dives no matter what if you can't see anything, if you can see everything and you have 30 meters of visibility is to find something.
34:12
[SPEAKER_01]: that you've never seen before or that intrigues you or that special because the ocean has so the water bodies have so much to offer.
34:19
[SPEAKER_01]: And so every dive for me has had some element of magic.
34:26
[SPEAKER_01]: But I would say there's two dives that stick out and I'll keep it short.
34:29
[SPEAKER_01]: The first time I
34:35
[SPEAKER_01]: It was the first time I had a navigate a dive by myself.
34:39
[SPEAKER_01]: I was very nervous about my abilities because again, I'm now leading a dive.
34:45
[SPEAKER_01]: People are relying on me.
34:46
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't have somebody more senior or more pro than me.
34:49
[SPEAKER_01]: I think I was on about dive number 60 at the time.
34:52
[SPEAKER_01]: and we're diving through the shallows of the california kelp forest.
34:56
[SPEAKER_01]: And I remember getting lost in that kelp and thinking, I have shuckled.
35:02
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the most amazing thing I've ever seen.
35:04
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like the Sequoia forest underwater.
35:06
[SPEAKER_01]: What else is out there?
35:08
[SPEAKER_01]: I need to become a better diver right now, because if this is what I'm seeing in the shallows, what else is going on.
35:16
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that was one.
35:17
[SPEAKER_01]: And then number two.
35:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Diving in the Wondo River in the Carolinas, in South Carolina, outside of Charleston, and it's very low visibility diving.
35:27
[SPEAKER_01]: It was probably on about dive number 400 or 500 at this point.
35:33
[SPEAKER_01]: And we, the, the Karen Cirks usually strong in the Wondo and Cooper River.
35:38
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's teams, Carolinas and Dive Locker in particular, who takes people out to look for fossils from
35:48
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is that I love fossils.
35:50
[SPEAKER_01]: I love searching hunting for fossils.
35:52
[SPEAKER_01]: And so this was my big dream.
35:54
[SPEAKER_01]: And they said, look, this diving is not for the faint of heart.
35:57
[SPEAKER_01]: How many dives do you have?
35:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you feel confident?
35:59
[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, um, in good.
36:01
[SPEAKER_01]: No worries.
36:02
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm a pro, you know.
36:04
[SPEAKER_01]: And we get on the boat and they we kid up and they give me two picks to like, like mountaineering picks.
36:12
[SPEAKER_01]: They said, okay.
36:13
[SPEAKER_01]: you're going to go down and you're going to anchor to the river bed and you're going to move yourself along the river bed and you're not going to be able to see anything and you're going to sift around and try to find big, big, big, black triangles and it's like, oh hey, great, that sounds perfect.
36:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, I have never felt more disoriented in my life, dropping down into that river, and it was such strong current so intense, and you could not tell left-right up-downs, so you're relying on where your bubbles are going and you're completely disoriented, you get to the floor, you cannot see anything, it's completely silted out, and I remember thinking, I have no idea what I'm doing, and I'm, I'm, I've thought,
36:52
[SPEAKER_01]: I thought I knew.
36:53
[SPEAKER_01]: And after a couple dives, then a couple tries that it became quite familiar and it is my favorite diving period.
37:01
[SPEAKER_01]: It's incredible.
37:02
[SPEAKER_01]: And you're relying on your other senses to find these gigantic hand-sized triangles, a prehistoric sharks that were very abundant in up and down the East Coast of the USA, millions and millions of years ago.
37:17
[SPEAKER_01]: but that stood out and that changed the game because that opened my eyes to a different kind of diving where it's not so much about glamorous shots or incredible megafauna or charismatic species approaching you.
37:29
[SPEAKER_01]: It's about looking so much closer for ancient relics that can just tell you so much about where we've come from.
37:38
[SPEAKER_02]: Those are not the answers I anticipated, and I'm so glad that was cool.
37:43
[SPEAKER_02]: So cool.
37:46
[SPEAKER_02]: Several episodes back.
37:49
[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't episode with a friend about River Snarkling, which is...
37:52
[SPEAKER_02]: something that I kind of laugh about, we even made some stickers that say adventure sports podcast, river diving, or river snorke, white water snorkeling.
38:03
[SPEAKER_02]: Anyway, the point is that I see things in rivers below my mind.
38:07
[SPEAKER_02]: And the visibility is going to be questionable and the currents are crazy and you know, but I love it.
38:11
[SPEAKER_02]: I absolutely love it.
38:12
[SPEAKER_02]: I love exploring that stuff.
38:14
[SPEAKER_02]: And I always expect someone like yourself to say,
38:17
[SPEAKER_02]: It was the tiger sharp shark, you know, that I was in the end in Ocean, and you know, but instead you're describing an environment that you couldn't do without the scuba gear, but you're doing something fascinating, really cool.
38:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
38:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, those are, listen, I love the megafauna.
38:35
[SPEAKER_01]: I love sharks, I love whales, but as you advance in your diving, you start to look for the things that are less seen, and it's quite interesting what you can find.
38:46
[SPEAKER_02]: Wow, okay, which brings us, I like this, I like this segue, edges of the earth, it's like, okay, we're going places to see things that are not always known or found.
38:58
[SPEAKER_02]: So, what is edges of the earth?
39:00
[SPEAKER_02]: What are you doing with that?
39:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, for sure, so while back I mentioned that I wanted to blend my professional career and my new professional career of diving and I thought, where's their gap?
39:11
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'd worked with a lot of nonprofits and ocean conservation teams and realized there was incredible storytelling about well-sharks, dolphins, but the human connection piece was missing for me.
39:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Why should I care as Andy living in Broom all Pennsylvania about these amazing species?
39:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, what does this have to do with me or where can I fit my skills into the equation?
39:34
[SPEAKER_01]: And that was a narrative that was never shared with me growing up.
39:37
[SPEAKER_01]: which is why I became a marketer and lived in New York for many years in my life.
39:41
[SPEAKER_01]: And I thought, I wonder if there's a lot of people like me wondering and wishing that they knew what their options were.
39:49
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're an accountant, a lawyer, a doctor, a marketer, a project manager, where do you fit into this whole thing?
39:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Where do you fit into the conversation, the ocean conservation, etc.
40:00
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, my husband and I decided to build a business called Edge the Birth, and it's a consulting business that helps these incredible organizations, whether it's a nonprofit and institution for a business focused on mission driven work, accelerate and scale their story, and be able to scale their story to different audiences than what is expected or who they're already reaching.
40:24
[SPEAKER_01]: That's part one.
40:25
[SPEAKER_01]: But then part two, we didn't feel like we could really say we could consult these businesses if we didn't go and live alongside them in the field or better understand what was at stake in their communities.
40:39
[SPEAKER_01]: So we were working on a global scale and we started visiting our organizations we were working with where they were.
40:46
[SPEAKER_01]: That could be off the coast of California, that could be off
40:52
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we started to realize, through that process, when we were working with these teams to sharpen their story and better communicate their impact, while there are so many amazing people doing incredible things with unbelievable jobs that have carved out these special niches.
41:11
[SPEAKER_01]: How can we start telling their stories more?
41:13
[SPEAKER_01]: So for two years, we planned all the places we wanted to go, all the stories we wanted to tell, where there was some sort of big impact happening in a region, but it was hardly reported or understood.
41:24
[SPEAKER_01]: So for example, women who were harvesting kelp and using kelp's properties to obsolete single-use plastic or an indigenous tribe in New Zealand,
41:38
[SPEAKER_01]: changing the mindset of their First Nations communities from hunting and gathering to gardening or, you know, female divers in Japan who are sustainably harvesting seafood and creating a culture of employment for women in diving.
41:57
[SPEAKER_01]: So many stories that
41:59
[SPEAKER_01]: just for opening my eyes to all these different ways you can contribute in their career path.
42:03
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, we basically were chasing marine aggregations.
42:06
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the schedule that we are following.
42:08
[SPEAKER_01]: So, who was focusing on either great ecosystems or megafauna that we were using these ecosystems, whether for migrations or for feeding or breeding?
42:20
[SPEAKER_01]: And what we started actually going around the world and documenting these stories of incredible positive progress, we realized that what we're seeing is something called positive deviants, which is this concept of succeeding against the odds when everything is stacked up against you.
42:37
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a theory that's used in understanding societies or understanding communities.
42:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Why does one community succeed while the other one doesn't?
42:49
[SPEAKER_01]: We're seeing this too with ecosystems.
42:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Why are some ecosystems succeeding and others not?
42:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Why are the kelp forests dying off in central California, but they're absolutely thriving in the south of Argentina, like what is happening there?
43:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Are there enabling conditions that are causing that?
43:07
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's what we started studying.
43:08
[SPEAKER_01]: It really has evolved from this idea of just showcasing stories, the positive progress, to where are these real outliers of complete success stories when it comes to fighting climate change or mitigating climate change.
43:23
[SPEAKER_01]: And how can we tell those stories and share the stories of people who are on the frontlines working in those fields to inspire other people to realize there's paths for them and there's solutions that are actually working, maybe they can get involved with those projects or kick off their own project that's similar in a region that needs that same type of help.
43:47
[SPEAKER_02]: you know here's what i like about that and i i don't want to over speak but i think climate change regretfully was politicized and so that makes people wonder what's fact and what's fiction and that's too bad and CO2 is
44:04
[SPEAKER_02]: an invisible tasteless, you know, odorless gas that plants use.
44:09
[SPEAKER_02]: It's hard for us to think in those terms, but I was just telling my son last night, but we have nitrous oxides.
44:15
[SPEAKER_02]: We have ozones.
44:16
[SPEAKER_02]: We have sulfates and sulfides that we should be doing something about.
44:21
[SPEAKER_02]: We know the effects of these.
44:22
[SPEAKER_02]: We can smell them.
44:23
[SPEAKER_02]: We see what they're doing.
44:25
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's like if you take care of those things, you take care of the CO2 thing at the same time.
44:30
[SPEAKER_02]: and I see a parallel thing going with you because you're saying no we're finding places where kelp forests are doing well and where they're not.
44:38
[SPEAKER_02]: And people say well what's that have to do a CO2?
44:41
[SPEAKER_02]: That's not the point.
44:43
[SPEAKER_02]: The point is we're figuring out what the ecosystems are actually doing and everything becomes a microcosm of the bigger picture.
44:50
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's so cool because you're able to
44:56
[SPEAKER_02]: lots going on and you're doing it all over the world.
44:59
[SPEAKER_02]: I like that.
44:59
[SPEAKER_01]: That is exactly right.
45:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
45:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's exactly right.
45:03
[SPEAKER_01]: And some of these stories, while you and I might have heard of them, there are so many people who do not know what a kelp forest is.
45:12
[SPEAKER_01]: And while we're very focused on, again, the Megafana, the big charismatic species, I love them.
45:18
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the whole amazing to be in the water
45:20
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the stories of ecosystems, total ecosystems and the people who are fighting to keep these ecosystems intact because if we keep these ecosystems intact, we ensure our survival is the species and it's just bringing the ocean and humanity.
45:36
[SPEAKER_01]: hand in hand in these stories as best we possibly can showing real people doing real work and the feedback that we often get as well.
45:44
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't realize that I could be that that could be a career path for me or I didn't know that company existed or I didn't know that solution was out there.
45:52
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to work on that or I want to be a part of that and that's the most exciting thing because as a New Yorker who's sitting in my I rise selling sneakers to privilege people.
46:02
[SPEAKER_01]: I never, never, never thought in a million years that this is how I would be spending my time, but if you see a photo or you read a story or you're inspired by somebody that's enough, that's enough that could absolutely upend your whole world and prove about that.
46:17
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think this whole effort has been to replicate that for as many people as possible because if I can learn to swim, then pretty much anybody can.
46:28
[SPEAKER_02]: Wow, will you tell us the story in account of one of these edges of the earth places that you went and what you witnessed that was an aha sort of a moment for you like this is the story that has to be told.
46:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, for sure.
46:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
46:45
[SPEAKER_01]: This is actually a recent one.
46:47
[SPEAKER_01]: I met a group of people called the Jaguar Rivers Initiative at Climate Week and they were telling me their story about how they are connecting multiple countries through river corridors in South America.
47:01
[SPEAKER_01]: to create these protected areas to enable jaguars to move through these rivers and obviously other species that are native to the region and basically work across these governments or work across these countries like never before because oftentimes you have conservation and it's in a very particular region and there's a set of requirements from local government and it's
47:30
[SPEAKER_01]: and Paraguay, and it was all formed by Rewild in Argentina, which is a very established group, obviously out of Argentina, and with Chris Tompkins as it's a leader with a very local, very qualified and credible team, with so much experience, years and years, Rewilding Argentina.
47:51
[SPEAKER_01]: basically helping to transform land that was used for agriculture or farming or that was completely degraded or destroyed for some purposes for humans and bringing back to his wilds day.
48:05
[SPEAKER_01]: They brought together all of these teams, these non-profit teams that have deep expertise in their country, they created a committee, created stakeholder groups,
48:14
[SPEAKER_01]: And basically came to a universal agreement that they needed to protect these river corridors.
48:20
[SPEAKER_01]: So we had the chance to go and work with them for about two weeks and document their journey from Argentina into Brazil.
48:28
[SPEAKER_01]: And to dive, we snorkeled, but to snorkel these rivers and to see how much life is there and how much is worth protecting how rich it is, how biogiversite is.
48:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Nobody's dove these places before.
48:45
[SPEAKER_01]: So it was an incredibly incredibly exciting for us, obviously.
48:49
[SPEAKER_01]: But on this scale of this is so extreme and it's such a blueprint for success.
48:56
[SPEAKER_01]: If they're able to pull this off, this is a roadmap for countries all around the world to think about
49:02
[SPEAKER_01]: what conservation measures need to go into place, what rewilding looks like how to convene stakeholder groups from organizations, different countries.
49:12
[SPEAKER_01]: There's so many layers to this.
49:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Those are the types of stories that we chase, where there's really is a game-changing scale of effort.
49:20
[SPEAKER_01]: And we use diving, snorkeling, getting in the waters are vehicle to connect a lot of these stories.
49:26
[SPEAKER_01]: While we do a lot of work on land, most of our work is ocean and water-based.
49:31
[SPEAKER_01]: we use the water as a means to express the power of these stories through visual documentation, but also writing and our consulting work.
49:42
[SPEAKER_02]: I love it.
49:43
[SPEAKER_02]: So cool.
49:45
[SPEAKER_02]: I've said several times on this show or the last 10 years that if you go to the doctor because you're not feeling well, they're going to do a blood test.
49:52
[SPEAKER_02]: They're going to check your urine.
49:54
[SPEAKER_02]: What are they doing?
49:55
[SPEAKER_02]: They're checking the liquids of your body to see what's wrong with you and how healthy you are.
49:59
[SPEAKER_02]: And if we want to know how healthy that nature is or how healthy the earth is, you do the same thing.
50:04
[SPEAKER_02]: You got to check the water.
50:05
[SPEAKER_02]: And if you have healthy water, you have a healthy ecosystem.
50:10
[SPEAKER_02]: And if you have unhealthy water, there's a problem with the ecosystem.
50:14
[SPEAKER_02]: It's that, it's that straightforward.
50:16
[SPEAKER_02]: And
50:17
[SPEAKER_02]: To be able to do that in rivers and streams, I mean, that's amazing and fantastic.
50:22
[SPEAKER_02]: But when you get to the oceans, suddenly it takes on almost a global reach for me.
50:29
[SPEAKER_02]: You see so much more, because the oceans are so big and vast.
50:33
[SPEAKER_02]: And you're able to bring this in story form to people in a way that they can connect with.
50:41
[SPEAKER_02]: That's a special one.
50:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
50:44
[SPEAKER_01]: And that, that's the goal to just make sure all the work that we're doing is connecting people to water bodies in ways they never expected were possible.
50:57
[SPEAKER_02]: Very, very cool.
50:59
[SPEAKER_02]: So what are some of your favorite places that you've been?
51:02
[SPEAKER_02]: Just the shortlist of how this place was so cool because
51:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Ah, this is the hardest question of the mall, because everywhere has something special.
51:13
[SPEAKER_01]: From the creeks in Japan, where we've searched for giant salamanders, in freezing cold water, in dry suits.
51:23
[SPEAKER_01]: looking under rocks or in the glaciers of Alaska where we're diving in the summer, where the glaciers are melting and there's caves you can dive through them and you'll never dive that site ever again because the glacier melt is different every single year.
51:42
[SPEAKER_01]: So the caves and the caverns that ever had the chance to dive.
51:47
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll never go back.
51:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Those are pretty impressive anywhere on the Pacific Northwest.
51:52
[SPEAKER_01]: It is some of my favorite favorite diving.
51:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I mentioned before at the Calbin Southern and Central California, more so in Central California.
52:03
[SPEAKER_01]: When you go up into British Columbia and you go to the very, very tip of Vancouver Island, it is like another world down there.
52:12
[SPEAKER_01]: It is hands down one of my favorite dive destinations.
52:14
[SPEAKER_01]: God's pocket is the resort that you base yourself out of.
52:18
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the only place you can base yourself out of to go see some of these sites and it's fantastic.
52:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Super cold water requires a lot of training,
52:33
[SPEAKER_01]: kind of moving all the way around down there, Argentina, some of my favorite diving for kelp, it's one of the last places that has truly intact giant kelp forests like you could never imagine hardly doves.
52:46
[SPEAKER_01]: And then Australia, I picked this place as my home base because
52:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Everywhere, every single corner of Australia has diving like you wouldn't imagine.
52:56
[SPEAKER_01]: From X-Mouth here in Western Australia, where you're interacting with whale sharks, or incredible manteras, or shark species, level of all kind and crystal clear water down the south of Australia, where you're diving with the giant cuddlefish.
53:11
[SPEAKER_01]: There's its mating season in July, August, and you could be in the water of 250,000 cuddlefish as they fight each other for mating.
53:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Great white sharks, endangered southern sea lions, they're so, so much, the great barrier reef, even just diving off the coast of Sydney, they're so much happening in a place like this.
53:33
[SPEAKER_01]: But for me, I'm never a good person to ask about where to go to dive because
53:38
[SPEAKER_01]: I tell people things like the Wondo River where you'll see nothing and you'll be beating for shards or icebergs and glaciers but if I just say some of the best best diving especially for people who are just getting started in Donetia is amazing.
53:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Malaysia and the Philippines are absolutely incredible.
53:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Florida has a lot to offer.
54:02
[SPEAKER_01]: There's places that are a little bit less aggressive than what I might be talking about, but pretty much where there's body water, there's something that we found.
54:11
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's always an adventure.
54:14
[SPEAKER_02]: you have taken diving to a whole other level.
54:17
[SPEAKER_02]: I've talked to several people about recreational diving, which is absolutely wonderful, but you're taking diving to a different level.
54:24
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like, I wanna see the thing that hasn't been seen.
54:27
[SPEAKER_02]: I wanna see the dynamics of ecosystem.
54:31
[SPEAKER_02]: I wanna see what's going on, not just drop and and visit a reef and come back up.
54:36
[SPEAKER_02]: I wanna engage all of it.
54:38
[SPEAKER_02]: That is super, super interesting.
54:41
[SPEAKER_02]: and believe it or not, we've burned through our time already, but will you tell us how people can learn more about Edges of Earth and what would be your question or mission for it that you would like people to know about?
54:58
[SPEAKER_01]: for sure.
54:58
[SPEAKER_01]: That's why we just launched our new website.
55:02
[SPEAKER_01]: That's edgesofbirth.com.
55:04
[SPEAKER_01]: So definitely take a look, check us out.
55:06
[SPEAKER_01]: There are a lot of people who have way more experience in diving than I do featured on that website.
55:12
[SPEAKER_01]: So be inspired by their stories because there are some people who have explored places that are
55:18
[SPEAKER_01]: even more wild and crazy than what I'm talking about.
55:21
[SPEAKER_01]: So definitely check that.
55:23
[SPEAKER_01]: And the best thing to know about the hope that I have is if you take a look at our content and you are even remotely inspired to get in the water, just do it.
55:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Just try.
55:34
[SPEAKER_01]: If you hate it and it's absolutely not for you, at least you can say you gave it a go.
55:39
[SPEAKER_01]: but it's so worth it to if you have any shred of interest to do a discovered dive or go through your open water and see how it seals or even just try some snorkeling and recognize that there's a whole big blue world out there of which we don't know very much.
55:58
[SPEAKER_01]: It's very unexplored and we need more people getting in a lot of it's the best possible way to care when you see it.
56:05
[SPEAKER_01]: You really can't unsee it.
56:07
[SPEAKER_01]: So that is my, my hope, my ask.
56:11
[SPEAKER_02]: I love it.
56:11
[SPEAKER_02]: So edges of, is it edges of earth or edges of the earth.
56:16
[SPEAKER_01]: .com edges of earth.
56:19
[SPEAKER_02]: So no of the, everyone.
56:21
[SPEAKER_02]: It's edges of earth.com.
56:24
[SPEAKER_02]: Andy, thank you so much for your time.
56:25
[SPEAKER_02]: That was fantastic.
56:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much.
56:29
[SPEAKER_02]: Everyone, I say this every show.
56:31
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't think I can say it better than Andy did.
56:34
[SPEAKER_02]: Get out there and have some fun.