0:01

Hello listeners, it's Steven

0:03

Davis here. I hope you

0:06

enjoyed the secret history of Antarctica, Death

0:08

on the Ice. If

0:10

you haven't finished all six episodes yet, go

0:13

back and listen to them now. In

0:15

the meantime, I wanted to share

0:17

a clip from another podcast I thought you'd

0:19

enjoy. It's called

0:21

Oceans, Life Underwater,

0:24

from Crowd Network and Greenpeace. It's

0:28

an immersive podcast all about the

0:30

oceans and the mind-blowing

0:32

life within them. It's

0:35

feel-good cinema for curious, nature-loving

0:37

ears. Wildlife

0:39

filmmaker Hannah Stutfall meets

0:42

submarine pilots, free

0:44

divers and whale experts, learning

0:47

about our oceans and why

0:49

they're so important. There

0:51

are episodes about octopuses, sharks,

0:54

maritime lore, the Galapagos

0:56

Islands and of course

0:59

Antarctica. I'm going to play

1:01

you a clip now from episode one, to

1:03

listen to the rest of the episode and

1:05

the whole series. Search

1:08

for Oceans, Life Underwater in

1:10

your favourite podcast app. Here

1:13

it is. Enjoy. Let's

1:18

take a typical dive. Let's

1:21

not go too far. Let's go to the

1:23

coast of Cornwall. We

1:26

take a boat out into the middle of the

1:28

ocean, the Atlantic. It's a beautiful

1:31

day. Sea is not too wavy, but

1:33

there's a little bit of wave. You

1:35

take this big yellow buoy in which you have a

1:37

dive line. You

1:39

drop the line to however deep you want to go, let's

1:41

say 50 meters. You

1:44

have a straight dive line so you know exactly like

1:47

I won't wander too far from there. You

1:49

click onto the dive line with a lanyard

1:53

and then I just like to lay on the surface

1:55

of the ocean and

1:57

kind of literally get on. the

2:00

sea's wavelength. Because you

2:02

know, like you can feel the waves, like they

2:04

kind of rock through your body, and if you

2:06

let that happen, you instantly fall into the rhythm

2:09

of the sea. And

2:11

you take a nice big breath, you

2:13

turn around, and

2:15

you face that line, and you face the depths of

2:18

the sea, that blue. And

2:20

you take a moment, and

2:22

then you just start swimming down, gently,

2:24

slowly. And the deeper

2:26

you go, the smaller your

2:28

lungs get. And at a certain

2:31

point, your lungs are so small that you're no longer

2:33

buoyant. So then comes the

2:35

best, you can just stop swimming, and

2:38

you just start falling into that blue. And

2:41

you can just completely surrender, like everything

2:43

you have, you don't have to do

2:46

anything anymore except for equalize. So

2:48

everything you are is just in that little bowl

2:50

of air in your mouth that you use to

2:53

equalize your ear. And the

2:55

rest of you just dissolves into the water. Like

2:58

you slowly merge with something as

3:00

powerful as an ocean. It's

3:04

flying. You're surrounded by nothing

3:07

but blue, cream, these

3:10

weird sounds of the ocean, like you can't

3:13

really hear the surface anymore. But

3:15

the ocean is full of sound, the sound travels

3:18

further on the water, little

3:20

clings, and sometimes you can

3:22

hear dolphins in the distance, sometimes

3:25

you can hear boats miles away.

3:30

But the overwhelming sensation, especially at

3:32

depth, is one of your heartbeats.

3:35

You can hear it go... every

3:39

three seconds or so. And

3:43

there's just a calmness.

3:47

Oh, other thoughts are gone. And

3:52

then you come back up and you

3:54

have, like, after a successful life, the rest of your

3:56

day is good. Because,

3:59

like, you have... one good dive at that

4:01

moment of being at one with the sea,

4:04

that means that's a good day. This

4:12

is Oceans, Life

4:14

Underwater, a new podcast

4:16

all about the oceans and the

4:18

mind-blowing life within them. I'm

4:22

Hannah Stitfall, I'm a zoologist, wildlife

4:25

filmmaker and broadcaster and I'm

4:27

on a mission to learn everything I can

4:29

about the big blue. The ocean

4:31

is just mind-blowingly

4:34

huge. Did you know that

4:36

more than 70%, seven tenths

4:38

of the earth's surface is

4:40

covered in seawater? You could drop all of

4:43

Mount Everest into the ocean and still

4:45

you'd have an enormous amount of water above

4:47

it. Over the next 12

4:49

episodes I'll be talking to marine biologists,

4:52

freedivers, submarine pilots, explorers,

4:54

ship captains, scientists and

4:56

policy makers, hearing

4:59

the most incredible stories about our seas

5:02

and the people who are devoting

5:04

their lives to protecting them. You

5:06

know almost half of our planet

5:08

is a vast ocean beyond national

5:10

borders and I believe

5:12

that we have a collective responsibility

5:14

to protect it. The ocean is

5:17

important to Māori because without it we cannot

5:19

thrive. Cages, yellows, reds,

5:21

just incredible layers of life.

5:24

I mean every square centimetre

5:27

covered. If you've ever been

5:29

in the richness of like the presence

5:31

of a will and her calf, you

5:34

know inherently you want to preserve that. Protecting

5:36

the ocean is not rocket science. We know how

5:38

to do it. We just have to

5:40

do it. This

5:45

is Oceans, Life Under Water, episode

5:48

one. It's

5:53

early 2024 and I'm

5:55

sitting in a studio in Devon with

5:58

Dan Verhoeven. Now Dan's a freediver. and

6:00

a filmmaker. He's the official cameraman

6:02

of the Vertical Blue competition in

6:04

the Bahamas, which if you've

6:07

watched The Deepest Breath on

6:09

Netflix you'll have heard of.

6:11

It's the world's deepest blue hole

6:13

at 203 meters, which

6:15

is pretty incredible. Now Dan's

6:18

been free diving now for over 20 years

6:20

and he lives in Cornwall with his

6:22

wife who is also the UK's free

6:25

diving champion. So it gives me great

6:27

pleasure to welcome on Dan. Hello Dan.

6:29

How are you today? I'm good,

6:31

thank you, how are you? Very

6:33

well. Now look, I love

6:36

the oceans but free diving is

6:38

something that it

6:41

slightly terrifies me to be honest

6:43

with you. How would you

6:46

persuade anybody that's skeptical

6:49

about it to maybe

6:51

give it a try?

6:54

Well, obviously I understand

6:56

the fear because you

6:58

can go without food for weeks, unpleasant

7:01

weeks, but you can. You can go without

7:03

water for a couple of days, but without

7:05

breathing, that makes people anxious, that

7:08

makes people a little bit

7:11

short of breath almost instantly. I think

7:14

I did a similar thing to what

7:17

most people have, like in the beginning I remember

7:19

being petrified of water as a kid. We

7:22

had to take swimming classes and I

7:25

was petrified. It was so much water, it was

7:27

so scary, it was so overwhelming.

7:33

The way I got over that is my stepfather took

7:35

me on his back with little floaties on my arms

7:39

and he pushed off the wall and you

7:41

could feel that rush of water and whenever I wanted to I

7:43

could just let go of him and pop back up to the

7:46

surface. But then I

7:48

got that first sensation of

7:50

being able to fly. Like underwater

7:52

it's as close as you can get to

7:55

flying for most people and

7:57

I love that sensation. So

8:00

that fear almost instantly turned

8:02

into a passion. Water

8:04

and being underwater was always about playing. It

8:06

was always about being free. Like

8:09

you become an aquatic. You're no longer terrestrial.

8:11

You're no longer breathing. So

8:13

it becomes about being with water.

8:16

Like I've been doing it 20 years. I know people who've been doing

8:19

it 40 years. And

8:21

it brings immense wealth to their lives. And

8:25

it became part of

8:27

my identity. It became who I am in

8:29

a way. Because I don't

8:31

just go in the water and dive a little.

8:35

I adjusted my diet. I stopped smoking. I

8:39

started going out more to free diving

8:41

competitions. It brought me out of what

8:43

was essentially kind of a depressing

8:45

life. And

8:48

I guess when you're going

8:50

to such great depth, there has to

8:52

be a big

8:55

sense of calm around it. And

8:57

it has to be in control and

8:59

I guess lower your anxiety levels. Because

9:02

imagine if you're diving down and then you start panicking. So

9:04

I guess there's a kind of a sort

9:06

of meditation with it as well. Yeah.

9:09

I often say that free diving is kind

9:11

of like the opposite of a normal

9:13

extreme sport. Like

9:16

most extreme sports are about adrenaline and how

9:18

high can you pump up your

9:20

heart rate and you have to make six million

9:22

decisions in one second. Because

9:24

with free diving, you

9:26

want everything to slow down as much as you

9:29

can because you want to

9:31

make your oxygen last as long

9:33

as you can. And

9:35

so your heart rate, just

9:37

by putting your face in the water, your heart

9:39

rate drops by 20 or 25 percent. And

9:43

as soon as you go deeper, the

9:45

deeper you go, the lower your heartbeat

9:47

gets. So instead of going

9:49

to like 180 or something, or extreme

9:52

sports like two something until your heart explodes,

9:54

the night goes down and down and down

9:57

until like 20 beats a second. Maybe.

10:01

And. You can actually noticed that

10:03

like if your heart slows down. Your.

10:06

Thoughts tend to slow down, And

10:09

your hope A slow start. everything

10:11

becomes. Language. They.

10:13

Quit. Smoking.

10:16

Everything becomes fluid. And.

10:19

It's a really nice day to be in. Specially

10:21

if you can do it for a couple of minutes. My

10:25

wife can hold their breath for seven

10:27

minutes. Not many many seven minutes. Yeah,

10:29

I can do six forty five and

10:31

she still at bay thing that. Is

10:35

my your eyes? He did. I love it.

10:37

I love seeing or perform well. I'm and

10:39

she's a much better free diver than I

10:41

am. But. The

10:44

sensation she gets like you don't need to

10:46

do the hold your breath for seven minutes

10:48

to has. Those

10:50

interesting sensations like. If.

10:53

You just lay down and holds her breasts. It can

10:55

be very pleasant for I can or two minutes. And

10:58

own You don't have to swim two hundred

11:00

three hundred meters on the water. To.

11:03

Know what it's like and to feel that

11:05

sensation of like what is this is like

11:07

flying. You know you don't have to dies.

11:11

To. Sixty seventy meters even. Like I said,

11:13

really pleasant. dies to five or ten

11:15

meters and just being there and just

11:17

hanging around. Now he doesn't

11:19

need to be extreme. But.

11:21

Yeah, In in it's competitive form. But

11:25

as competition isn't it.