When you're out of winter lockdown, you can go diving in an acid pit!
Hello everyone, thank you once again for joining us on the latest edition of our
InDepth video series, brought to you by myself Nico Lurot, head of GUE YouTube productions,
and joined as always by the rockstar, diving royalty, mr Michael Menduno.
How are we doing? Good! How are you today Nico? Very, very good. My Shearwater Teric
tells me it's been 56 days since I've dived and I'm "jonesing" to get in the water.. Wow,
that brings up a question though! What.. what are divers to do, who are on lockdown,
and the cold climates like you, what's... what's a diver to do in a situation like that Nico?
If..I mean, in the UK, it's difficult because we're on an island obviously, but if
permitting - I know you can't fly and travel - get in your car and drive to a warmer country?
That could be a thing to do, but that's that's not what we did. Try again!
Get in the bath.. get in the bath and test your underwater housing? So yeah, I think
Fourth Element is encouraging people to do this, put on your underwear (gear) and get a bath tub,
but that's not it. You're gonna actually, you're gonna probably have to wait till the end of the
video to find out what we uncovered. Oh you're keeping me dangling? Fine,
as long as.. as long as the solution means I get to go diving, fine. Guys, stay tuned until
the end of the video to find out what you can do. But while you're keeping me in suspense,
what other stories do you have for me? We got a couple things, pretty interesting I think.
Most people have probably heard of the Rebreather Training Council. This is
the parallel organisation to RESA, which is Rebreather Education & Safety Association,
which represents manufacturing, manufacturers, and as we're now on the verge/precipice hopefully of
getting back to diving, and specifically getting back to Rebreather diving,
the RTC is working on a number of initiatives, safety initiatives, one of those is looking at
a mouthpiece retaining straps. The issue is, with Rebreathers is still, though we've made a lot of
improvements, the fatality rate is still quite high relative to open circuit scuba and, you know,
how do people die in Rebreathers? They drown. I mean, there are triggers to get that to happen,
but the ultimate result is they drown. So the RTC, right now, is looking at a number of initiatives,
one being mouthpiece retaining straps, part of training class, part of the Rebreather kit, and
so we are running a seminal article, written by Paul Haynes, a former special - UK special forces,
now a Tech diver, an instructor trainer with RAID and other organisations, like BSAC for example,
and so it's a really interesting issue, looking about the efficacy of mouthpiece retaining straps,
you know, the pluses and minuses, so that's.. that's going to be one of the stories we're
running this time. Cool! Anything that can lead to more Rebreather safety, i'm all for. Absolutely.
What else have you got for me Michael? Well it's sort of interesting, if you remember, we've run a
couple stories now on PFOs - people with the hole in your heart, that lets bubbles through, that can
cause problems and I personally, I don't know about you, but I know several people who have been
diving most of their lives, and only now in their older age are starting to have problems with
getting bent, on undeserved hits, I mean on mild dives, but getting skin bends and all. So we went
to Doug Ebersole who's a cardiologist, a K.I.S.S. Rebreather instructor, many people know him, and
we've put together a piece "Everything you wanted to know about PFOs and decompression illness but
were too busy decompressing to ask". So it's a it's a deep dive into PFOs, and testing,
and how these can develop over time. So it's our medical story and a good one. Cool. Yeah,
I'm looking forward to hearing about that. I've met one person in my lifetime who I worked with
for a prolonged period, who has succumbed to this unfortunate scenario, and can't dive anymore.
Very sad. What else have you got for me? So, we have actually an amazing tech conservation story,
a woman named Nath Lasselin who's a filmmaker and producer, she's a royal geographic
society member, explorers club member, and she lives in Quebec, and of course
the St Lawrence river way runs past Quebec, and they get 80 percent of their water from the St
Lawrence (river way). Quebec itself gets about half their water, and so Nath decided that she was
going to explore this waterway and basically did a 71 kilometre traverse - that would be 44 miles for
you imperialists - spent 30 hours underwater, and went from one end of the St Lawrence, near Quebec,
to the other. It was quite harrowing, she used hypnosis to teach herself to sleep underwater
(so she could sleep), and had a close call as a part of this! Her stories - actually I think we
talked about this last time, the "Close Calls" book - she almost got run over by a tug boat on
the way. So it's really a remarkable story, how she pulled off this 30 hour dive basically. Yeah
that's unreal. Sleeping underwater!?! New technology, or at least - not new
technology - new techniques, very good. Hypnosis meets tech diving, I love it.
Right? Scooters, Rebreathers and Hypnosis you know what.. what could go wrong? She
just needs to come up from the dive and answer the question, "How does that make you feel?".
That's right, and then we have some.. actually she did a video for us, a couple of videos that are
embedded in the story. So it's quite interesting, you'll get a good take from it. So as far as
exploration is concerned, you've always got something good for me. Talk to me. We
have a really cool story about Hranice Abyss. This is the.. we ran a story about this about
a year or two.. a couple years ago, it's the deepest freshwater abyss on the planet. Right now
they've got it logged down to 473 meters - this wasn't with the diver, this was with
an ROV - about 1540 feet for imperialists, and it's a really challenging environment to dive in.
The visibility has gotten worse over the decades, so not good visibility,
the water is actually Acid, it stings your your skin, exposed skin around your face etc,
and remarkably (I didn't know this) but the surface of the water, because of the acid, there's
about a meter thick of CO2 above the water, so you can't just bail out to the surface and
breathe, you have to take into account that you have to get
above a meter above the water before you can actually breathe. So of course you would go
diving there! Acid water, CO2, deep, bad vis, of course you would go diving there!
And huge vertical, I mean there's.. there's drops of, you know, 50 meters, 100 meters, so
if you do not have good buoyancy control you.. you could definitely have problems at this place,
yeah. So it's pretty cool. Bearing in mind that Zacaton, which took the life of his
"Exleyllence", mr Sheck Exley, was not as deep as this. Yeah that's right, that's right, yeah. So..
and there's a whole group, the Raniki cross, 7-02 Raniki cross is the speleological group
that's.. basically has access to the site, and is continuing to explore it, so there's a lot to go,
a lot of new passages and everything else, yeah. Cool! Yeah, and of course we have some
other stories for you too as well that are really good. So this will be out this Thursday around
the world, we'll be releasing the new issue and the like, yeah. Yeah but do you think I'm gonna
let you go so easily without actually telling me what I can do about diving when we're in lockdown?
So in the winter, in the winter.. so a few intrepid souls have been doing ice diving,
and so we have a feature on ice diving, how they spent their winter "lock-ation"
is what we call it. "Lock-ation", I like that. "Lock-ation" right?
And it's it's quite fun, we've pulled communities around the globe in cold climates, so we're doing
ice diving, we have some of our friends, Becky Shot is right now doing a photo shoot for Seiko
in Michigan and the Great Lakes under ice. So she sent us some stuff. We have some Freediving
with Dive Alaska up in Rabbit Lake, cutting a hole through the ice, wearing Wetsuits, right,
because Free divers don't wear Dry Suits, they're not carrying any gas. So Freediving in there.
DAN Europe has just sponsored, in Vladivostok, the world ice diving games, so that's kind of a
fun thing we did, and Fourth Element had sponsored a expedition to Shiretoko National Park in Japan
and it's to shoot these rare free-swimming Sea Slugs. I think they're called the "Clione
Limacina" (sp), and so we have.. we have some stuff on that as well. So it's a fun feature,
we took some artistic license with it to celebrate diving under frozen H2O, so yeah. In summary,
ice diving is what you do when you're in winter lockdown. When you're out of winter lockdown,
you can go diving in an acid pit, and a deep one at that, and if you manage to do all that,
remember that when you get older, you've still got to worry about a hole in the heart.. Wow..
Are we a crazy group or what? Oh my god..
I do wonder sometimes, I wonder, ay-ay-ay.. Well look, it all sounds absolutely fascinating
Michael, just tell the people where they can find all of this goodness, and when it comes out,
and we'll end it there. Great, so you can point your browser at Indepth.blog or gue.com/blog and
that will take you there. The new issue will be posted on this Thursday, March 4th, and yeah, we
have a lot of extra stuff we haven't talked about, so be sure to tune in and check out what we got.
Fantastic, and lastly from me guys, curtailing a little bit into the ice diving story that InDepth
are running, that's a little sneak peek as to what the TOP 10 is going to be this coming month on the
Youtube channel. So third Monday of the month, you know where to look out for it, 4 p.m GMT - or
do the time difference wherever you are - but it'll be up ready 4 p.m GMT, third Monday of
the month, TOP 10 Ice Dives. Yeeeaah! Yes.. we just love cold water diving.. I'm sorry,
I'm such a wuss - I'm going to Mexico as soon as I've got my jab! - such a wuss..
Michael look, I'm not gonna keep you any longer, thank you so much for your time as always,
I will speak to you next month. Thank you Nico.