Stuff You Should KnowIt’s a good, old fashioned how it works episode where we break down all of the nuts and bolts and threats to safety that make scuba diving such a unique and thrilling hobby. Dive in feet first with Josh and Chuck on the undersea adventure of a lifetime!
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Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, And it's a good old fashioned barn burner whiz banger of an episode. I ran out of weird colloquialism.
Oh yeah, yeah, just now, didn't you hear? Uh? Yeah, but I just figured you were still doing them in your head.
No, I was frantically grasping for another one in my head and it was just dust and a tumbleweed.
So this is sort of continuing our underwater series we'll call it.
Yeah, this is so stuff you should know. We've done, like stuff that's like much more specific about the general category that we're talking about. And now we're finally doing the general category.
Yeah, we did the diving, Bell did the butterfly, We did we did cave diving. In fact, Cave Diving was released as a as a select just this year. Yes, such a good one. And uh, do I need to remind you about the other related episode. I forgot about that. I'll get you.
Yeah, I remember, I remember the Scuba Cat episode. Didn't you interview Scuba Cat?
Oh? Yeah, I mean for those of you who don't know. The short version is many many years ago. In the very early days of the podcast, occasionally we were sort of told to do certain things, and two of them really stand out to me. One of them was Scuba Cat I know what I Know you do, which was this guy who trained his cat to scuba dive. And it's literally like a a blurb or maybe a little fluffy news piece at the end of a of a news program and there like do a stuff you should know episode on this cat and this guy. Why though, do you remember did they just want page views or something.
I guess, or else that guy happened to be friends with you know, whoever owned the company at the time.
All right, So there, I think there was an article on the website we worked for and they were probably just trying to drive people to that. So we did one on scuba Cat. I would really love that just to be scrubbed. But then the archive, well, way to go bringing it up.
Then what was I going to say, Chuck, wasn't this thing in like a little submarine kind of is Isn't that what the scuba diving was?
I don't think so. I think he built him a little little outfit. Oh okay, wow, a little thing with like a you know, a big bubble mask.
Okay, that's worth an episode.
We could redo it. We should two thousand and eight redus. What's the other one you want to I know we're going to say it.
I we could say at the same time. I think he's going.
To be three two one innovators. Yeah, what can you do with an Altoid's den? Yeah?
For real, Like, I don't know how that one came up either, but we were instructed to do an episode on tenovators and they were interesting, but not episode length.
Interesting even when they were six minutes long.
Yeah, and a tenovator, Just for those of you who don't know, they take Altoid tens and they do things with them like turn them into radios. Maybe they hold coins instead of altoids. It's just repurposation. And yeah, exactly, it's repurposing an altoidenovation.
Very well boy. And we always talk about Jackhammers in the sun like that's because we're literally too ashamed to even mention those other two. But here they are. Go listen to them. Just quickly wanted to say I got back from Mexico and I did not scuba dive, I snorkeled, Oh yeah, it's fun, and I didn't. I mean, I love the experience, but I learned that I and especially my daughter are free divers. Oh yeah, she couldn't do it. Man, We got her, I mean, she loves to swim more than anything. And we got her in all the gear, put her in the water, and she was bitch to fit quite frankly.
Oh like, she couldn't breathe through the tube.
She does it in pools like it just you know, when you're eight, things happen and you can't explain why a kid will dig in. But she wasn't into it. We were very frustrated, did not handle it well. She asked to get back on the boat. She got back on the boat and cried, while we scuba are sorry, snorkeled. We're like, we're out here, we're gonna do it. You know, you'll be okay. And then once we were done, she asked the scuba guys or the snorkel guys, can I just get in with my mask and free dive? And it was in Mexico. They're like, sure, right, and she did and she turned into a dolphin and I recounted this on Instagram. It took some great pictures of her just swimming like no kid has ever loved swimming before, and it was just a big lesson for everybody.
I know what happened, though, I think, unless I'm misreading it, she got claustrophobic from having to breathe through that tube.
Now she does it all the time in pools. What it was I think was wearing the life fest keeping her up on the surface.
Oh okay, well you left that little detail out.
Well, I mean that's part of snorkeling. Is you gotta vest on so that keeps you up top? And she was like, no, no, no, I belong down there. My home is the sea. As funny Prince Billy.
Says, I got youa okay, well that makes a lot more sense. I guess I was just projecting onto her because I used to get claustrophobic trying to breathe through a snorkel.
Well, a lot of people on Instagram supported that and said, you know, I have a hard time with this equipment too, and I love to swim, but it was really that lifefest. I think.
Okay, all right, well we finally established the root cause.
Then yeah, but here we go with scuba.
Oh okay, I guess okay, So what does SCUBA stand for?
Chuck? Self contained, underway, breathing, uh, situation, appomattics, appomatics, apparatus.
That's right, scuba. It's actually like an acronym, but it's so used, so widely used now it's a lower case word. I'm not sure really, yeah, I mean like it's not nobody does it with capitals and periods or anything like that. It's just lower It's a word. It's its own word. Now it's almost lost its meaning as far as like the acronym goes. And yet it's gained so much meaning over the years because as scuba has been around for over the decades, more and more people have found the joy of going underwater.
And I heard you laugh at me, by the way.
And breathe if you breathe fully underward, no snorkel, Like your head is nowhere near the surface of the water, and it doesn't need to be like significantly distant from the water. It can just be like a foot below the water. But you're breathing underwater. It's an amazing feeling, for sure, and a lot of people have discovered that over the years and said, scuba is the life for me.
Well, as of December twenty nineteen, you had scuba dived once. Yep. Have you done it since? No?
And I'm actually a little troubled because I read that you're supposed to go like three or four open water dives, and I only went on one. So I've been under the impression that I've been certified to scuba dive all this time, and I'm like, I, is that true. I can't remember where my card is or anything. So I wonder if I actually wasn't fully certified or satisfied, I would find it very dissatisfying if that were true.
Well, do you want to do it again? Because I didn't get a good read on you in twenty nineteen. Maybe I didn't know you then, like I know, you know.
Maybe because I before. The reason I didn't like is because I got it made me seasick, like the air mixture did not sit well with me, and then getting on the boat in between dives made it even worse. So I was like, I don't feel like doing this over again, but I think enough times past that it's possible I would try it again.
Well, I want to get certified now, for sure. I did anyway before and we thought we'd wed our beaks with snorkeling. The big problem I had, man was the fins. I mean, there were a lot of currents, and I just I felt like I couldn't go and get anywhere. Yeah, And then at the end, when Ruby was free diving, I did the same thing. I took off all my stuff except for my mask, and I went down there and I was like, all right, well this is I feel like I can swim again.
Yeah, it's all It takes a lot of getting used to because it is it's meant to help you, and it does if you are familiar with it and comfortable with it, but if not, it's all encumbrance. It makes everything difficult. And like, yes, you just want to take it all off and just free dive, like you're.
Saying, yeah, Emily was cruising around, but you know, we saw a little my first like coral that I've ever seen, like live coral, and it was beautiful and you know, the little stripey bright fish and I was I was in there with those guys for the first time, and it was it was remarkable and amazing.
Was it a dory or a nemo that you saw.
Oh, I don't know. It had I think yellow stripes. I don't think it was technically a clownfish, although maybe they're all types of clownfish. I'm not sure what's a clownfish. I think like a dory or a nemo. I saw this one big thing that was like the size of a dinner plate. Another big flat guy. Wow, he was cool. And then Emily saw sea turtle, which I did not see. And then we also saw their efforts to you know, with artificial reefs, with like these PVC sort of pyramids that they were building down there. God blood anyway, people, Right, Yeah, this coral wasn't in great shape. It was in parts, but other parts were not great and that was sad.
Yeah, you can thank the fossil fuel industry for that. That's right, So Chuck. One thing that I had no idea about with researching this scuba episode is that it actually the scuba phenomenon, I guess you could call it dates back to the mid nineteenth century, and it's not like somebody had an idea and then one hundred years later somebody actually created it. Someone in the eighteen sixties actually created the first scuba equipment.
That's right. Are you going to say his name? You're gonna make me do it, but I'll say the first name, mid Benoir, Okay.
And it's a rook way roll or rock and Roll's that what that means? I don't think so, but it looks when you pronounce it, it sounds a lot like rock and roll.
Yeah, rooke and or roll.
Rookoy roll yeah, rock and roll.
Yeah. So he's obviously French, and he was not trying to figure out a way to recreationally dive in the ocean. He was trying to figure out a way to help others, rescue workers rescue people in collapsed minds because these things would get filled up with nasty gases. And he was like, well, I think I can invent the system that allows these rescuers to go down there and breathe safely so they can save these people. And he called that first one a regulator for equalization of compressed gas A little on.
The noise, A regulator, sure, sure, so I guess it was a little verbose.
Yeah, or a demand regulator. Yeah.
And the reason it was a demand regulator, and this is the this is the big deal like you could feed somebody air continuously, but you're gonna use up a lot of air. You might overinflate their lungs accidentally, which is that it could be a problem with novices in scuba. But a demand regulator means that you're only sucking in that compressed air when you're breathing in. When you exhale, that air is no longer coming into your mouth, into your gullet.
Yeah, it's on demand, like the best movies.
And this guy along with a guy named Auguste Deni Rouse Denay Rose dene Rouse, it was in there that last one I think nailed it. But I think so Ben Waughan Augos, let's call him. That they got together and figure out how to turn this not just into a mind safety equipment piece of equipment, but actually to use it to breathe underwater. So they put the whole compressed air thing in like a backpack. I get the impression. It was like a fabric bag holding the compressed air. They put that demand regulator on, and they were working underwater, untethered from any boat, using the first genuine scuba in the eighteen sixties.
Yeah, it was like the first Legit diving suit. Essentially, they had lead sold shoes and they had weights hanging under your arms. At first, there was still no mask. They had used a nose clip, but then a year later in eighteen sixty six, they brought about the first mask, which was a copper helmet with a single window that they called the groin because it was French for pig snout and it kind of looks like a pig snout, Okay, And they won for this. For their efforts, they won the begold medal at the eighteen sixty seven World's Fare called the aerophoor.
Yeah, they called it the aerophor, right. So, but again, the thing about this is like you're like, yeah, I've seen those before, Like there was a haunted one on Scooby Doo. There's an air hose coming out of the helmet. No, that's the distinction. There's no air host. They were untethered to anything. They could roam as free as they wanted on the seafloor.
That's right.
So fast forward a few years, geez, about seventy Yeah, about seventy years there was another person who had a very similar idea. What was his name, Christian Lamberton.
Yeah, well there was a guy in the twenties, eve La Prio, okay, who and Dave helped us out with this. Dave duck this guy up and it was sort of one of the first sort of modern takes on a scuba system. But the air still wasn't on demand at that point. They adjusted the airflow like as they went along, and then Christian Lambertson came along in nineteen fifty four and did a couple of things. Well, actually he came along in nineteen thirty nine with the Lambertson Amphibious Respirator Unit or the LaRue. Didn't rename it scuba until nineteen fifty four. But this was a rebreather. It still wasn't the same thing. He had a CO two filter and he was trying to pitch it to the military. He's like, he was an American guy. He's like, look, this thing's got no bubbles. So he pitched it to the Navy, like, you know, you can sneak up on people in other words, sure, And he pitched it to the Navy. They rejected it. And then the OSS which the US had at the time the Office of Strategic Services, would eventually become not become the CIA, but sort of become the CIA yeah more. Yeah, and they the OSS loved it and like their underwater unit like started using this lamberts and scuba unit, even though it still wasn't a it was a rebreather and we'll talk about all that stuff soon.
Yeah, which is more advanced than scuba. So this guy basically just created the more advanced version of scuba out of the gate, you know.
Interesting.
Yeah, it is very interesting. And his invention was so successful that it was used from the fifties to the eighties by the US military. Yeah, unchanged kind of like you know, you see like those mid to late eighties movies and the cars are still look like they're from the seventies because nobody updated their stuff until that four Tourist came out in nineteen eighty eight and RoboCop.
It's like that, what a great movie.
You know. In the eighties they were like, this is this is an old timey rebreather.
We need to update this, Yeah, exactly.
So there was a that's almost like a separate track. Like Christian Lambertson was very much dedicated to inventing this stuff for the military. He invented a more advanced version of scuba call a rebreather, which we'll talk about. Like you said, the much more familiar version of the scuba story kind of went in parallel and started a few about the same time as Christian Lambertson. And it was a pair of French guys who up to Christian Lamberson, they were running the scuba world. And it was Jacques Cristeau and Emil Gagnum, and those two together are the ones who gave the world scuba.
That's right. I saw Gagnan then also saw he was French and it was Gagnon.
Yeah, I know, it's just I didn't want to attempt it. I'm so tired of failing.
Oh no. So they got together, like you said, and they kind of took Roquai roll. Yeah. Yeah, they took his old arm demand regulator and said, all right, I think we can update this thing. Gaignon and World War two had invented a regulator that used cooking gas to feed into the carburetor of a car because the Germans said, we're taking all your gas Paris, and so he sort of retrofitted a way to make a car work. And Cusseau was like, this is brilliant. We can use this for scuba.
And he's like, you want to huff cooking gas underwater? He's like, no, no, we're gonna We're not going to use the cooking gas gagnin.
Yeah, and also scuba hasn't been so named yet. It was still probably about ten years before that, so they called it the to Jethrow Tolls de Light the Aquaalong.
Now I had an idea, and I don't know, maybe I can convince you right here and we'll go back and edit this part out of anytime we said aqualogue. Just playing that one little riff, Yeah, exactly. I think that we could get away with it. After hearing the intellectual property episode, I think we could get away with just that little bit.
Well, at the very least, you could play my mouth version, because that's pretty and clear.
All right, we'll look into it in the edit.
It's funny our old pal friend of the show, Paula Tompkins, every time the word aquaalong comes up, he gets upset, well not upset, but makes a point of why did Jethro Tol put that one line in there? It snot as running down as notes. That line really bugs him, does it? Yeah, it's pretty funny.
I've not heard that one. Yeah, anytime I think of Paula F. Tompkins, I think Kik Cake Boss.
It's good stuff. Yeah.
So they didn't call it scuba yet, Custa didn't. They call it the aqua Loong like you said, right, And but it was the same thing. It was what you if you go and take up this of scuba now, it's essentially what you're doing, like what Cousteau was using. And the reason it caught on is because he made a movie called The Silent World that was released in what fifty six, nineteen fifty six, and it was an oscar. It was an amazing documentary and I was watching Hi, I'm like, Wow, there's some amazing wreck diving scenes in there, but it's also hilarious. One guy like pulls the door off of the hinges of a shipwreck to get into the shipwreck. They're just totally like vandalizing this ship.
Yeah.
But I was also at the same time thinking, like all that audiences have never seen something like this.
That's it. That was the ticket with Silent World, that was there had not been a lot of underwater photography and it blew mines in nineteen fifty six. Not only did it when the Oscar it was the first Golden Palm winner, it can for a documentary. Yeah, and stayed that way until Michael Moore won for Fahrenheit nine to eleven. Oh wow, and it grossed in today thirty three million bucks. Oh not bab as a documentary. That's a theatrical doc that's really really good money for sure. And also just to finish up on going on. Sure, he was not happy with that first version, so in fifty eight he finally released what was called the Aqua Master Regulator and sold a million of those up until like nineteen seventy two. That was like the go to regulator, gotcha.
So yeah, these guys essentially created the recreational version of scuba, introduced it to the world through The Silent World, and sat back and took kudos from that point on. And if you watch The Silent World, it bears a strong resemblance to The Life Aquatic with Steve Zizu.
No mistake.
And one other thing about Jacques Cousteau, I didn't realize he worked for the French Resistance as a matter of fact during World War Two.
Well, Dave, we're gonna have to do one on him because Dave sent us this material. It was like, please please, please, let me do one on Jacks and we went. Now.
Speaking of Dave, also Chuck. You know he has his podcast, Bible Time Machine.
Yeah, it's about Bible stuff, but you don't have to like you know, it's from like a historical perspective.
It's highly accessible.
Yeah, that's what I'm trying to say. I know.
But he had a blockbuster guest on the other day. Actually, I think it came out a couple of weeks ago. He had John Cleese and he interviewed him about the life of Brian John Cleese.
How did that happen? I couldn't get a John Cleese on movie Crush.
I don't know how. They must have their ministers or friends or something.
Yeah, that was great, So big congrats to Dave on the John cleece epp exactly.
And if you like John Cleese and you like Dave, go listen to him talking to one another.
Yeah. Shall we take a break.
I think it's high time we finally made it through the first section.
All right, we'll be right back. All right, So we're back, and we're going to talk a little bit about the different types of scuba diving that you can do. There's the aforementioned open water diving that you talked about. That is, you know, it's the most common one. It's what you think about when you think about going on vacation, somebody taking you out in a boat, throwing that gear on you and saying, have a lot of fun, everybody.
But it can also it doesn't have to take place on vacation or even in a tropical locale, or even in like a sea or an ocean. It can take place in a lake. Sure, it can take place in a quarry as long as I think that I'm not kidding, as as long as there's no what they call ceiling over you, there's nothing between you and the surface of the water, that's considered open water diving. And that's the far and away the most common recreational diving.
That's right. And you can go down if you're certified, and we'll get to the certification. You can go down to one hundred feet with your advanced open water certification.
Yeah, well with the main one, the first one that you get, just the regular open water diving certification at sixty feet.
Oh okay, I wasn't sure if that was official. You got to go back for the extra forty feet. You want an extra forty it's gonna cost you.
So there's also night diving is another one fun, same thing, but at night, and there's apparently a whole different world out there in the ocean at night, which is pretty cool.
Yeah. I love so swimming at night in the ocean, but I can't do it.
I just like, I'm just I'm scared of dark water.
I get it, dude. Even an ocean swimming person like myself was out in this water last week at night and fine, having fun, but at a certain point I was like, huh and then it's like I'll just casually swim back in.
Yeah, so I would have started out with that, huh, Right, It took me a little while. Yeah, but it does sound pretty cool. Like if you're not afraid of dark water, then of course just that would be a great time to scuba dive. It's a little more dangerous though than regular open water diving because you can get lost very easily. So most of the time you're tethered to the boat, so you can find your way back.
That's right.
What about drift diving? This sounds like you did the reverse of this snorkeling.
Yeah, drift diving is you know, oceans have those strong currents, or certainly if you're in a river, and I think the point of drift diving is to get dropped into one of these currents and off you go.
Like those sea turtles and finding Nemo.
Yeah were they sea turtles?
Yeah, they were riding like that underwater current. It was like a highway that you could get on and.
Just zip off. I haven't seen that in a while.
I haven't either, but apparently it made a really strong impression on it.
It sounds like it.
So it's cool because you don't have to expend as much energy, which is like, well, who cares. Actually scuba diving requires a lot of energy. It's really hard work, so to save yourself any effort or energy is pretty great. And then also because you're working hard, you're breathing harder, so you're actually using more oxygen without a current than you are with a current, which means you can conceivably stay down longer because you.
Have more air. Yeah. That sounds great, Sure it does.
That's why people love it.
You got technical diving, which is an umbrella term for most kinds of advanced diving that we're going to continue to talk about here, and maybe we should just talk about those because most of these next few fall under technical diving, first of which is wreck diving. You can go out and swim around a legit sunken battleship or ship, either one that was naturally sunk or well nothing naturally sinks I guess like that, or so not supposed to at least, but you know, like one that was sunk in battle or one you know. Now, they go out there and don't use PBC like I saw, right, I saw these little PBC pyramids. They will sink a full ship and say, all right, do your work coral, Yeah.
Exactly, and they do it to form coral reefs. But at the same time, also it's just something interesting for divers to come look at too.
Yeah, but I don't think you're I think you've got to be pretty advanced. Actually, if you want to swim through like the kitchen or something like that, Yeah, generally you're just sort of swimming around it, right.
You can do just regular basic open water certification diving around it, like you said, on top of it. When you want to go in it, you better add several years to your diving experience. It's it's extraordinarily dangerous because there's all in a shipwreck, there's all all sorts of things you get caught on and get stuck on. You can get lost if the ship's big enough and dark enough.
No, thank you exactly.
And like all of the other technical diving, it has a ceiling. There's something between you and the surface that would impede you from going up to the surface if you needed to. That's when really makes it so dangerous.
Yeah, I mean that sounds interesting and fun, but I'm gonna stick to no ceiling.
I like watching videos of it. It makes my toes curl, but because you know, it used to be above the surface.
But I wouldn't.
I don't think I would want to wreck dive either, but I like watching wreck diving videos.
Yeah, you got your deep diving, which requires deep dive certification, and I believe you can go down to one hundred and thirty one feet and beyond if you're you know, if you really get those certifications in order and you've got the wherewithal.
Yeah, I think when you go and get your first deep diver certification. The most they want you to go down as one hundred and thirty feet forty meters, right, But then I think with experience and like you hook up with other deep divers, then you start going further and further down.
But that's what's they make funny you at dinnert exactly.
But they they I mean, just the extra thought and preparation and all the extra things that can go wrong with a deep dive. It's amazing even if there's nothing over you, between you and the surface, just being down that deep as it can be very dangerous and forty meters you're like, I mean, that doesn't seem like that deep. There's like the Titanics at like twelve thousand feet or something crazy like that. That's significant because your body's not designed to be down forty meters that many atmospheres below sea level.
No, and we'll get to decompression sickness and all coming out.
Well, let's talk about it here. How about that?
Oh, that sounds like a great idea. Actually that sounds exactly as how we discussed it. Sure, so you've probably heard of the bins. Yeah, that's sort of the common name for decompression sickness. And that is a It can be pretty rough. Apparently, it can be very painful. It can be fatal, and it's caused by nitrogen bubbles. Nitrogen. Nitrogen bubbles in your blood, in your bloodstream. That's the problem with the bins.
Yeah, because the air we breathe has like seventy eight seventy two percent nitrogeny eight seventy eight percent nitrogen, twenty one percent oxygen. The rest is trace stuff, right, and that nitrogen typically at sea level or even you know, higher than sea level. But whatever, I think, I just made this more complicated than I needed to. But then nitrogen typically goes through our body and where we expire it breathe it out, it does nothing. It doesn't react with anything. It's too hard to chemically deconstruct and use for something else. It requires too much energy, so we just pass it through. But when we're down breathing the nitrogen that stays in our body at any given time, when we're below surface, below sea level, it turns into a gas and permeates our blood stream. But as we go up, if that gas isn't absorbed slowly into our tissues, it will form bubbles, just like when you open a pop, a soda, a coke, whatever you want to call it. It's inside, there's no bubbles. But when you open it up and introduce air and change the air pressure, the atmospheric pressure inside the can, all that gas turns into bubbles carbonation of CO two, carbonation, and that would be the same thing that happened in your tissues and joints. And that is not something that you want to happen.
No, if you want a topo chico or a soda or a nice frothy beer, you want that then carbonated. You don't want your insides of your body carbonated.
No, you definitely don't, because it's agonizing. Apparently sailors named it the bends because you be doubled over in agony. That does not sound great. And then on top of it just being extraordinarily painful, it can kill you in some some circumstances. So there's they've figured out that you actually you can stay down at a certain depth for a certain amount of time, and then if you do, you're going to have to do what are known as decompression stops on the way back up.
That's right in your way. You gotta know how deep are you gotta stop when you're supposed to. You got to hang out for a little body, give your body a chance to equalize the pressure, and then you go up a little bit more and then do it again. And obviously this is all completely regulated by your dive instructor. They're telling you what to do, unless you know you're out there on your own and your like super experience, you know how to do all this stuff. But they're telling you how much time you need to spend at what depth to ascend safely. Just to give you, Dave dug up this kind of fun fact about the I think the deepest scuba dive on record was over a thousand feet by an Egyptian diver named Ahmed Geber and fourteen minutes down I imagine you just you've seen the videos of those deep divers where they just put on the gear and they have some sort of a weight and they just get dragged to like the bottom of the ocean very quickly. It took fourteen minutes to get down that deep, but it took fourteen hours to safely decompress on the way back up.
Yeah, just slowly. I mean, that's that's crazy.
It's a long time. So yeah, a lot.
Of the deeper dives, are you spend way more time doing decompression stops than you do actually doing your dive, right, Yeah, So you have to like calculate this stuff. There's tables, there's dive computers that we'll talk about, but you have to before you go into the water. You need to know exactly how long you're going to be down there, exactly what depth you're going to be at, And then you have to know, based on those two factors, how well many decompression stops you have to make in at what depth back up on the way back up that you need to stop at.
Yeah. Two words you're never going to hear scuba diving are wing it? That's right? You don't want to wing it? Maynah, No, you definitely don't. You got altitude diving. So if all this talk of going down, down, down and different pressures and things makes sense, then it would make sense that if you're diving in a lake, super super high above sea level, that that would change things too, and it does. If you're more than a thousand feet above sea level, it's going to be a different experience. So you know they're going to know what they're doing there too. As far as you know how you're going to decompress and going down when you're actually high up.
Right, which it's strange, You're like, Okay, you're actually high up. But because you're underwater and all that extra water pressure it has apparently you're more exposed to decompression sickness at high altitude dives than you are a below sea level. You remember very famously in the Firm two things. The Firm introduced the world to red stripe beer and the awareness that you can't scuba dive and fly in the same twenty four hour period.
And my cousin and my uncle who lived in Memphis at the time and were very briefly in that movie.
Oh really were they the person on the beach?
Now?
My cousin was a little girl at the time, My cousin autumn, and she was like a full screenshot of her and another kid at the big company party early on. And then my uncle Steve, who you've met that lives out near San Francisco, he had like he was trying to be an actor at the time. He had a speaking line. I think, if I'm not mistaken, he came into an office and said something about, you know.
These pretzels are making me thirsty.
I think that was it. Anyway, I didn't know red stripe was that in the firm, Yeah, definitely.
No one knew what red stripe was until then, and all of a sudden it was like the Hippus beer on the planet because the.
Eighties were so shallow.
Okay, so that's altitude diving and our little side trip on the firm. There's also cavern diving and cave diving, which are usually.
Put hand in hand. Yeah, we covered those.
They definitely do connect. But really, cavern diving is just not really going all the way into a cave, and once you are out of the light, you are now cave diving. If you're in the light, you're cavern diving, And so that means things like Saint OTE's and Springs qualify as cavern diving. There's easy access to the surface, whereas with cave diving.
If you've gone and.
Listened to that episode, there is no access to the surface and you are completely out of your mind to even try it once.
That's right. It's our episode from December twenty nineteen, Cave Diving Colon Totally.
Nuts yep, appropriately named.
Yet Ice diving. Yeah, you can actually go dive in the cold, cold water under thick ice and go see those animals like penguins and seals and things.
Apparently there's a place called Romu Quarry in Estonia that has good ice diving, but in the summer. The big draw is there's a sunken underwater prison there in the quarry.
Cool.
Yeah, like you can swim around those bars on the on the windows and stuff like that.
It's pretty neat. Oo sounds spooky, it does.
So what about the gear, Chuck? If you say, Okay, I like this, I want to go ice diving, I want to go cave diving.
On do it all?
What do I need to get? Josh and Chuck, Well, I say, we tell everybody what to get.
What do you say, Well, you got to get an oxygen tank. No, no, no, you're not supposed to say oxygen tank because it's not oxygen. It's a scuba tank or it's a cylinder. And like we said, it's filled and not with just oxygen. It's air that you breathe. You got to breathe like you normally breathe. Right, So it's going to be twenty one percent oxygen seventy eight percent nitrogen in those trace gases. They want to give you a experience like you're used to as far as breathing goes, sure, unless you do something called enriched air diving that's got thirty two percent oxygen and less nitrogen which they called nitros thirty two, and this lets you stay down there a little bit longer and you don't apparently at all, I have to make those decompression stops.
I know, I'm sure that there's a depth in a time, at depth that you would have to make decompression stops, but they're there. It's much deeper and much more time before you would have to. That's my impression.
Okay, all right.
There's also a BCD and a BCD in addition to your tank. Your cylinder is probably the most second most important piece of equipment for scuba diving. And the reason why is because this is a little inflatable or very importantly deflatable vest that you wear that, if you use it properly, allows you to hover completely motionless, like during your dive, and if you're really good at it, you can use it to like back out of a place upward or downward. There's just a lot of really neat things you can do using this buoyancy control device. And if you can't do it, then you might start going up to the surface, you might be stuck on the bottom. It takes a lot of practice, but when you get it right, you can really gracefully and really smoothly move through the ocean.
Yeah. I mean that's the videos you see. No one does videos of you and snorkel fins going I can't swim in these things, or my daughter crying on a boat, or somebody floating up bobbing up and down with their BCD being a pia. Yeah, exactly, you know, pia. Oh, I see it, I got it all. Just looks like all you do is just jump in that water and you're just immediately perfectly floating and meeting nemo. Yeah.
And I think that's a really great point, Chuck, because it takes a lot of practice at this. Nobody goes into scuba diving and it's just a natural at it because we're not naturals at scuba diving. It's something you have to learn. You have to practice that, but once you do, it's very rewarding.
Yeah, I look forward to it. You got your regulator which we talked about that different people help perfect over the years, and that is going to regulate that flow of the pressurized air into your mouth. They differ a little bit, but generally you have the first stage part that's the one that actually attaches to the scuba tank and is going to do that first sort of pressure reduction to make sure you're not getting blasted out. Then you've got your demand valve or the second stage that goes into the mouthpiece that you're using to breathe, and you're going to have a second mouthpiece. It's almost like a backup parachute, right.
Yes, it's a really great way to put it. If you are out on a dive with a buddy, which you always want to be on a dive with the buddy, and your buddy's air runs out, you have a second mouthpiece that accesses your air that you both can use as you start going back up. You can save your buddy's life with the additional hose pretty good.
Or I'd imagine if something went wrong with your own, right.
Well, I guess, but that would mean that you're actual like your mouthpiece or something broke and you could use the other one. Sure, if that happened. If something went wrong with your air, no, it would be just as useless as your other one.
You know what happened when I was snorkeling what I snorkeled for a few minutes and I went to put that thing back in my mouth and it wasn't there. It fell off. I was like, hey, dude, I'm not feeling one. I can't there a do I have a mouthpiece and a snorkel? And he would no, and then he went, I see it, it's on the bottom. Let me go get it. I guess it just became a glipped or something.
Yeah, I forgot they are I think they do come in pieces.
Then well, no, this this was the tube, the whole thing.
Oh, I see. So you just had it attached to your mask and it just fell away.
I see fell away.
Speaking of masks, Chuck, By the way, you can have a single lens mask or a dual lens mask.
Did you know that. Yeah, I've also got for and I was gonna take it down there, one of those full face snorkel deals, which I have used in swimming pools and they're quite fun. But I did not take it. But I do like the idea of sort of the old school single lens.
I do too. But the great thing about a dual lens is if you wear glasses and you have two different prescriptions for your eyes, you can get prescription lenses for your mask, which I had one of those. It's really neat.
It's helpful.
Although you can also just wear contacts like a normal person.
Do you still have those that mask?
Don't know where it is.
I don't.
I don't have it handy, so I'm not sure where.
Well, your prescription might have changed anyone. You should just get a new one. It's true.
I just wear contacts now, I could use any mask.
Oh that's true. What else, Well, we got the spins. You don't call them flippers because they're going to make fun of you. So you got those fins, and they are pretty standard. They're the ones that I saw mostly were split fins, and they are just there's no getting around it. Those things are awkward to swim in if you're not used to them. I felt just like I was stepping on my It's kind of like we're in snow skis. It just felt very awkward.
Well, also, in addition to being awkward, you can really accidentally tear up coral or do all sorts of stuff if you're not you know, adept at using your fins, or you're not aware of where your body is. So it is, it is. It's not just you to add trouble with fins.
Yeah, my toe on my left foot kept cramping up too.
Man, It's not a terrible experience.
It was. It was great once I took those things off, so one of them.
So, scuba diving is a very expensive hobby. It's an expensive upfront, it's expensive during, it's expensive after. It's just an expensive hobby. And one of the things that has the most expense is a one time well expense is your dive computer.
Yeah.
It's essentially a giant watch that gives you all the data you need for your dive. And I saw I did not know this, but Apple has one coming out called the Oceanic Plus, which looks pretty awesome. It's probably going to be a million dollars. But there's much more like affordable dive computers slash watches available and they're all going to basically tell you the same stuff, right I hope.
So, I mean they're going to tell you, you know, how deep you are, how deep it gets below you, how much air you've got in that tank, how cold or hot the water is, your compress your decompression status. This is the Yeah, like all the it just says chili. You know, all the stuff that you need to know about your ascension when you're going back up to the top is going to be there. And you know, as far as whether or not to invest is a purchase with all this stuff, it's up to you. Like I would, I would say, go out and give it a shot. And if you really really love it, and it's the kind of thing where you're like, well, hey, I know every year we go to this island, and you know, it might be worth it to go ahead and invest in buying your own stuff. Probably not the tanks and all that, but the mask and the snorkel and the fins and maybe a dive watch and stuff like that.
Yeah, and the dive watch also. I mean, like if you're going on a dive that's you know, led by somebody, that dive master is probably going to have the dive computer and you don't really need your own because the dive master is going to tell you where you go and win. But I mean they're pretty slick apparently they'll tell you to slow down if you're a sending too fast, where to stop, when to stop. It's just it's pretty neat. I can't imagine what they did before dive computers. It just must have been exponentially more dangerous than it is today with dive.
Computers, I would imagine. And as far as investment goes, the same goes for your wetsuit, even if it's you know, if you're going down, even if the water it's a hot day and the water feels warm, it can you know the water's gonna get colder, and you may want that wetsuit and you wetsuits are awkward and weird too, so, but they work if you find it. If you find a good wetsuit that fits, and you're going to be doing it a lot, maybe buy your wetsuit. Yes, and I mean, or if you don't like putting your stuff in things that other people's stuff has been in.
Here exactly because those are very tight fitting for a reason. You let a little water in there, and then your body warms the water, and the warm water keeps your body warm in return. They work really well. There's also the dry suit for water below fifty degrees and you might say, well, then when do you need a wetsuit? Apparently water is warm as eighty degrees farent height can give you hypothermia if you're in there long enough.
Wow.
Yeah, so even if the water feels warm and you get in, you still probably want a wetsuit while you're scuba diving.
We mentioned the rebreather earlier that was sort of invented early on by Lambertson but then perfected later. But this is what you do if you don't well for a few reasons, but one reason, if you don't want those bubbles coming out, you can get a rebreather. That is exactly what it sounds like. It's going to capture the air that you're exhaling, scrub that CO two off of it, and then add back in the oxygen to make it breathable air again. And you know the military disease. If you're an underwater photographer, you might want to use these, and it allows you to dive longer, and you know, if you want to stay down there for a while, rebreather might be for you. Yeah.
Apparently the record of staying down using a rebreather is one hundred and forty five hours. My guy named Saddam al Kalini. Yeah, pretty pretty impressive. So I say we take our second break and come back and talk a little bit more about scuba. Okay, Chuck. So if you are going to go scuba diving and you don't have a certification, you go get in the water, the scuba police will probably arrest.
You no matter where you are in the world.
True or false.
That's false. And it kind of surprised me that there are no laws per se or not even per se, there are no laws that you have to have a license. It's just sort of one of those things where A it's really really really really smart to do that so you know what you're doing safely, and B I would dare say almost any dive outfit in the world will require that you have that. Maybe there's some super janky ones, and I don't know if i'd get on one of those boats. If they're like, like, nah, you don't need a card, who cares? You don't want I wouldn't. I wouldn't go with that. So they're going to ask you for your card because they're.
Risks even to fill up your tank. If you show up, they'll ask to see your certification your card.
Oh so you don't just run off and then you know, do your own solo dive.
I guess, I guess. I think it's just like they just want to make sure that nobody who isn't trained is scuba diving, and that's a good way to do it. Yeah, so if you want to get certified, there's a few ways to do it. One of the most popular ways to do it is is called Discover Scuba, and it's a very shortened abbreviated version of the sort of certification process where you go to like a resort and you take like a less than an hour of classroom time, you go into the pool, you do a test dive, and then you go, you know, down to the beach and get in the water and scuba around. It's probably where other people are snork. It's very low risk and you're not fully certified after that, but it's enough for you to go enjoy scuba on vacation without having to go get certified first.
Yeah, you're not going to be super deep. You're probably not going to be out with like a good coral reef or anything either. You never know, I guess you never It depends on where it is. But you know this, we run a boat for you know, twelve thirteen minutes, like kind of hauling out into the ocean to get to this one neat or are they right off the beach Sometimes sometimes yeah, they can be what do I know?
I mean that's surfers will get tangled up in coral sometimes it can be a real hazard.
Well, those are deep water surfers.
So that's the most basic way to get certified, and again you're not actually certified. The basic certification, the open water certification usually takes a few days to complete, at least just even the first part. There's classroom time. They call it theoretical where you're learning the thing. The guy who I took lessons from said that you spend the first hour learning how to scuba dive and the rest of the time learning how to stay alive while you scuba dive, because it's actually not that hard to scuba dive. A lot of it requires practice, like inflating your BCD and achieving neutral buoyancy, but it's really just just it's not hard to understand. It's hard to remember what to do when you're panicking underwater, so that you don't do the wrong thing, and that's really the bulk of the classroom time.
Yeah, it's going to cost you, it depends, but you know it's generally around five hundred bucks. You Again, you know you can do it whenever you want. If you want to go down on your vacation and spend time doing this, you can do that. But you're on vacation, like, it's probably smart to go ahead and get it done before you get down there, so you can just hit the water. And in every state in the country, like the least water like state in the country, has scuba classes you can take.
Yeah, because again you can be certified in like a quarry and basically any state has at least a flooded quarry, if not a lake, you could be certified. And for open water you only have to be ten years old. There's no maximum age. But this is really important. If you have a pre existing condition, you want to talk to your doctor about whether or not you should scuba dive, because again, you are exerting yourself way more than you think you're going to and if you say, have a heart condition or something like that, it can actually trigger a heart.
Attack in you.
And even without the exertion just the difference in atmospheric pressure on your insides can accidentally trigger a heart attack in you too, So it's it's definitely not something that you want to just take lightly if you have a pre existing condition.
No, I can't imagine any more terrifying than cardiac arrest. Under the ocean. That's pretty bad for sure. Yeah, I guess in the ocean. You're not under the ocean. Under the sea, so you have to know how to swim, though, I mean, I think that's a given, but we should say it. You're gonna be certified for life, which is kind of cool. You're gonna get your little card for you to misplace, and generally these days you can you can have that stuff online on apps and things like that through pa d P a d I Professional Association of Diving Instructors. That's kind of the big daddy, the Big Patty rather But there's also n aUI now E the National Association of Underwater Instructures, and also SSI Scuba Schools International, and they can all certify you. But like I said, Patty sort of the biggest one. And you're gonna spend a lot of time early on with this course learning the stuff like you've talked about, like most of this is done you can do online at your house and over the course of you know, five to ten hours, learn all the stuff. Learn the hand signals, learn the terminology, learn the equipment, and kind of all the basics that don't involve actually getting in the water.
Yes, but if you have the time and the wherewithal the go take classroom instruction for the first part. Like in the classroom, you should take that opportunity because you will be hanging around the local scuba community. You'll be immersed in it, rather than showing up the first time for your what's called your confined water dive, which is essentially where you put all the stuff you learned in the classroom to use in a swimming pool in the back of the scuba shop.
So you'll know them and they can say, go, Josh, you.
Got this proxactly. If they don't know you, they'll be like, you probably have this.
We can't really say either way. Yeah, I have no emotional attachment to you though, so either fail or pass, I don't care.
So I told you early on that having like just even a little bit of water over your head while you're breathing underwater is amazing and that's your first experience, and that confine water dive in the swimming pool, it's amazing. It's also kind of boring because they're like, what does this hand signal mean? Or show me how you can inflate or deflate your BCD that kind of stuff. You're just showing that you know what to do as a novice. And then after that, if you pass that part, you go do your open water dives, which is the real deal.
Yeah, and like you said at the very beginning, you need to get four to six of those under your belt, depending on the certification program. You've only done the one, but they don't all have to be in the ocean. You don't have to wait un till you go to the Bahamas or whatever. You can do that at a nearby lake or that what do you keep talking about, the reservoir quarry, the Quary's You can do it there if you know that they have it set up there. And basically you're just gonna practice with someone there, learning how to get that ear pressure equalized and like you said, the buoyancy and just kind of getting it all down pat because what you're really looking to do when you finally go out to that coral reef is not be hassled and feel very comfortable and at ease and know what you're doing.
Yeah, and a lot of people do the classroom and the confined water dive at home and then go do their open water dives on vacation. So you can start at the coral reef if you want. But what you're saying makes a lot of else as well too. For sure. There's a big question about all this. And from what I read, the certifying companies or agencies or whatever they're called, the bodies, they don't like to talk about the inherent risks of scuba like they acknowledge it is a risky activity. It's riskier than staying at home knitting, but it's probably even riskier than is generally thought of. It's a dangerous thing to do, and you should know that going into it.
For sure. Yeah, I mean not to scare anyone off.
Oh, I'm trying to scare people off.
Danger is relative term. It's a relative term. But about one hundred people in North America die annually scuba diving, compared to forty six people last ski season in the US. But there are a lot more skiers than scuba divers, So that's about one hundred I'm sorry, another one hundred internationally scuba diving. So that's a fatality every two hundred thousand dives compared to a fatality per one million skiers.
But the scarier way to look at it is that fatality rate is three point four to four point two per one hundred thousand divers because many divers go on more than one dive a year.
Yeah, so I mean that's a low number to me still, But like I said, everyone has their own risk tolerance.
It is apparently if you go scuba diving and you aren't alone, you're with somebody who knows what they're doing, and that person that's taking you, the dive master, is not a risk taker, you're probably.
Going to be totally fine.
It's it's the foolishness is what skews those numbers, because something like forty percent of scuba fatalities came after a diver got separated from their buddy, and an additional fourteen percent came from people who were on solo dives like they didn't they purposely didn't go with anybody, They just went and scuba dive by themselves. That is a very dumb, reckless thing to do going dives. Fifty yeah, fifty four percent was these people didn't have a buddy with them. So if you have a buddy with you scuba diving, which they say you always should have, like that just completely changes your risk exposure just based on those statistics.
And they don't even have to be your buddy.
No, they're just called that. You can really dislike each other. As long as they don't want to actively harm you, you're probably going to be safe with them.
I mean, I would want someone to like me, at least they we don't have to be best friends, but at least pretend, right, Yeah, like I want them. I want to know that they care about me.
Well, OK, all right, that's a lot to ask. Okay, I do have one more thing before we go. I know we've gone really really long. But one of the things that as a common cause of death or at least injury is something you wouldn't think of. If you're panicking and you like say your air runs out, you're triggered, you start swimming upward. First of all, you can get the bends, but you're probably holding your breath because you're underwater. That's what your body and your brain tells you to do. That's a terrible thing to do because as you get closer to the surface, your lungs are filled with air, and that air is now expanding beyond the capacity of your lungs, so you can pop your lungs. You can also create bubbles that go into your arteries and creates uh and it's it's just a bad jam. So there's actually something called the SISA, which is a controlled emergency swimming ascent where you basically swim upward slowly as your panic mind can do while you're exhaling the whole way, so that when you reach the surface, you don't have a lung full of air.
Pretty neat, Pretty neat. Baby's Got the Bins. That's a great album name. I think Radiohead.
Yeah, Baby's Got the Bens. It was the It was the EP that followed Okay.
Computer No, the Bins was their full length LP.
I know, this is the EP that they were testing all the material out on.
Oh Okay, I Got you Okay. So I just couldn't figure out if you knew it was an actual song.
I did, but I'd forgotten when I was making the joke. So for all intents and purposes, I didn't know. Uh, you got anything else?
Just one more radiohead test, let's hear it. No I got nothing.
Okay, that means then it's time for listener mail.
Just a couple of kombucha corrections for us. This is someone named Frederick over By Peterson overb overb Okay, how do you know that?
Because there's a really great reporter named Peter Overbe, and I think there's also I think his brother Dennis overbye maybe and they spell it that way.
Be whitey okay? Well, and also probably so people don't say overbye, right.
I'm sure kids say it anyway, but you know.
I'm sure they do. So. Frederick brews kombucha for friends and family and wanted to share a few things that we got wrong. But very sweetly, Frederick just says, are worth adding. You don't need a Scobe to start, guys. Store bought kimbucha is actually enough if you brew your sweet tea and let it cool down, and then add a little bit of store bought kombucha drink to the tea. The kombucha you add, we'll start eating the sugar. Inform as Scobe seemingly from nowhere. So nice because it makes it super easy to get started and you don't have to seek out that Scoby from your neighborhood social media pick. That's pretty cool. And not all kombucha is related. Unfortunately, all this is as beautiful as it might have been. Guys, they are not a scoby's form when making some kinds of vinegar. When making homemade apple cider vinegar, for example, a scoby can form on the top. Now, I never managed to make my own scoby from scratch, but I've seen it several places and many guides on how to do it. But it's not as easy as making kombucha. And that is Frederick Overbe Peterson.
Thanks a lot, Frederic. First of all, great name, very stately. Secondly, thank you for all the information that was great info to If you want to be like Frederick Overbe Peterson, then you can get in touch with this like they did by email. Send us an email to Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
