Should I Delete That? - “I got trapped in an underwater cave” - the life of a cave diver

Episode Date: May 4, 2025

What would you do if you got stuck in a cave? Cave diving is something that has fascinated - and terrified - us for a long time - and today we had the opportunity to get all our questions answered by acclaimed explorer and cave diver - Rannvá Jørmundsson. Rannvá has a background as a professional diving instructor, specialising in cold water. Rannvá is originally from the Faroe Islands, but currently lives in Cornwall, where she works for the diving equipment company Fourth Element. Rannva has been diving since 2008 and is an IDC Staff instructor and full cave CCR diver, and she is a member of the Explorers Club in New York.Rannvá told us all about her passion for diving, how she feels it's the best form of mediation and also how she uses her extensive training to handle the risks and dangers involved in cave exploration. Stay tuned to find out if she can convince us to take a dive...Follow @rannvaj on InstagramYou can read more about Rannvá’s expedition to Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula here #PerpetualPlanetRannvá cofounded Nixie Expeditions - an organisation dedicated to Aquifer Exploration and Conservation. You can see more about their work on their Instagram - @nixie_expeditionsIf you'd like to get in touch, you can email us on [e-mail] Follow us on Instagram:@shouldideletethat@em_clarkson@alexlight_ldnShould I Delete That is produced by Faye LawrenceStudio Manager: Dex RoyVideo Editor: Celia GomezSocial Media Manager: Emma-Kirsty FraserMusic: Alex Andrew Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I did get stuck in a cave once. Did you? The first thing I thought then was like, crap, my mom's going to be really upset with me if something happens in here. Hello and welcome back to Should I Delete That? Cave diving is something that is fascinated and terrified, both me and M, for a really long time. How dangerous is it?

What do you find down there and what happens if you get stuck? Today on the podcast, we had the opportunity to get all of our questions. answered. Our guest on this episode is Ramva Jermensen. Ramva is a cave diver and cave explorer and she came to talk to us about the beauty and the perils of underwater cave exploration. It's so fascinating and I can't believe I'm saying this but having spoken to Ramva and heard all about what she does, I really want to try cave diving. We really hope you love this episode. If you do, please leave us a rating if you can and follow us on Instagram at I'd delete that. Let's dive in. Really sorry. Here's Ramba. Hi, Ramba. Thank you so much for coming

in to join us today. We are so excited to speak to you. We have wanted to speak to a cave diver for a really long time. I can't believe we're in the presence of one. That's very cool. That's very kind. I'm so excited to be here as well. And thank you for providing me a platform to talk about cave diving, which obviously is my favorite thing on the planet. Yeah. I don't mean to be rude, but it sounds like my least favorite thing on the planet. I have so many questions because I just think, okay, I'm so scared of it. Like I'm so scared of it, which is why we were compelled to talk. What team are you on? You like would love it, would hate it. I feel like from land the idea of it is like absolutely not. But I did do scuba diving once and I felt I absolutely loved it.

Did you? Yeah. All my fears like just went away and I'm the most fearful person in the world. But there is something so peaceful about being underwater, isn't there? It's just, it's one, it's beautiful. But that's exactly why I love it so much. It's like you, pardon the use of word, is you properly immersed. You can't be anywhere else when you're diving. And when you're cave diving, you're just inside this space of just silence and quiet and you're just floating through.

And it's the best form of meditation, but also because, you know, you're far away from anything. if anything should happen. So you also have to be hypervigilant to what you're doing. So the presence and the mental kind of stillness whilst also being hypervigilant, it's such a fantastic feeling. Because when you say it like that sounds amazing, but are you not like just afraid? Yeah, this is a thing.

I mean, when I became a dive instructor, I used to live in Copenhagen and the guys were technical divers there. And they were talking about cave diving and showed me this video of this guy who had to go through a cave or he couldn't fit so he had to take his helmet off to fit through. And I thought, that is this scary shit I've ever seen in my life. And I will never ever do that. But then as you started getting more experience in diving and getting more proficient, then suddenly you're like, oh, maybe it's not so scary after all.

And, you know, like when you do cave diving, it's all about slow progression. You don't start with the squeezy bits. You start by practicing all the skills. And once you go and do your courses, just slightly go in, do a couple of skills, back out again. So it's gently nudging and building experience and building proficiency and then you get happier and happier in there. Can we go back to the beginning and find out how you came to be a diver? Yeah, sure. I mean, I am originally from the Faroe Islands, which is a small island nation in the middle of the North Atlantic. It's 55,000 people. Half of them are my cousins. So it very quickly

it became quite small. And so when I was 20 years old, I was like, oh, how far away can I get? So I went to Australia. Oh, far away. Yeah. And I was doing this gap here and, you know, ticking boxes like skydiving and White River rafting. And I was close to the...

I think we have different boxes. Yeah. But I'd seen Finding Nemo and I was close to the Great Bay Area from. I was like, okay, I need to do a diving course. And then once I got in, I had the same experience that you did were just that feeling of, of of meditation and weightlessness. And I completely fell in love with it right there and then. And six months later, I was a dive master in Bali.

And then, you know, worked as a bit as a die master and just loved it. But, you know, thought, right, time to be a responsible adult and go back and get an education and all of that. And, you know, I tried a bunch of different things like I'm a trained financial advisor and flight attendant and, you know, a few different things. but diving just kept pulling me back. And then I became a dive instructor in Copenhagen, but also found out that being a dive instructor is really quite hard work for not very much money. And then I saw that my favorite brand in the world called Fourth Element was looking for a dry suit repair technician and customer service manager. And this happened to be in Cornwall, which I had no clue where Cornwall was, but I thought,

if I can live in the Faroe Islands, I can live anywhere, right? I didn't get the job because obviously no clue how to repair dry suits. But my combined skill set of customer service and flying and already being a dive instructor, the company created a role for me instead in sales. So that's what I've been doing for the last nine years now. I've been promoted to being global head of sales for the brand, but combining it with teaching and expeditions as well. Okay.

I know. Oh, my goodness. I need to know about the expeditions. Yeah. Can I ask like stupid questions? No stupid questions. No, this one probably is. So a lot of the work you're doing now is like you're exploring new caves and I was super interested really about like the last expedition that you did and it's so much of it. It's like, and this is a terrifying thought to me, but that the ocean is like so widely unexplored and like so much of this is really important for like the climate change and like for science. It's really important that this research is done. And I respect that and I think it's so cool. But like when you first go on an expedition, how do you get invited? Like how do you bring your skill set? Like that's, I know it's a group of scientists going. It's like, well, that's going to be really good. Like, what do you do is your first?

How do you even get into that? And like, when you go, it's like, what do you know what I mean? Like, what's your role? And that's always the question for anyone else who's actually interested in being part of expeditions and helping out because how do you do it? How do you get invited? I've been working in the dive industry. So I've been lucky enough that I get to travel around the world to do dive shows. And you're at the dive shows and you start meeting some really interesting people.

And that's where I started getting in touch with these people as well. So the first cave expedition we did was with Robbie Schmidtner in Mexico. Robbie is a German who has been living and working out in Mexico for the past 20 years. And he is an explorer of the truest sense of the work. like he will spend his weekends with a machete just hacking through the jungle and then going and see if there's a hole that he can pop into and see if there's cave underneath and he's he's amazing and he's personally responsible for exploring more than and mapping more than 250 kilometers of cave and is also responsible for connecting um to cave systems in in mexico does

Ohos and Sahatun and so making it the world's longest underwater cave system. So he is like a living legend in the dive industry and cave exploration. And he tapped me and five other women on the shoulders and said, we need some more women in cave exploration. And I'll put up a project and I'll invite you and I'll mentor your own how to do it. So that's what he did. So we were really quite lucky in that. But what Robbie did is really, like you said, for climate change and everything.

Like I've been a cave diver and just doing it for fun. But what Robbie did, he wanted to prove that everything is connected on the Yucatan Peninsula. So it's essentially a Swiss cheese and all the freshwater sits in the underground. But Robbie has a theory that there's a current insight as well. So Tulum has grown exponentially in the last few years. is particularly, especially after the pandemic, so lots of digital nomads have moved to Tulum. But what happens there is all the sewage and everything just goes straight into the aquifer underneath the city. So now you can't even dive there anymore.

Really? Yeah, and it's dangerous to your health. So Robbie wanted to prove that there's a current. So even though you put the contaminants into the aquifer below, it's not isolated. That just runs up north and into the sea as well and smothering corals and a whole or other issues as well. So he really opened our eyes to that we can actually use our diving for something better, giving our diving a purpose. So yeah, it's a bit of a long-winded answer to your question, but you just have to be there.

You have to put yourself forward and start talking to people, get to networking events if you can. The Explorers Club, which I'm a member of, has chapters all around the world. And they're doing events as well. So just get out there and start. talking to people. That's my advice. I think that's quite a common thing, isn't it? That we just think, like, when you put something in the sea, or like, when you put something in the bin, it's like, well, it's just gone now because it's out my house. But obviously,

you're seeing the effects of, I mean, human waste and whatever. When you're exploring, how much of what we're doing, how much of what humans are doing, are you seeing under the water? Like, is our footprint just really big under there? Unfortunately, yes, yes, it is. It depends where you go, obviously. But over in, in Mexico, well, there's two things on that side as well. Like Mexico is a tourist's destination for cave diving. And you can dive there for a lifetime and you still won't be able to dive all the caves that are there. So what they're doing out there as well, some of the guides are quite good at protecting some of the more fragile sites. So they will take tourists to the

more popular sites. So already there, you can see a lot of traffic coming in and out. out through the caves. But again, you have to bring people there to get them to understand what's actually there. And once you understand and love it, you will help protect it. But for other experts, like, there's a, there's a laundry or a laundromat just outside of Tulum. And one of our expedition members, Julia, she and her husband went diving there, and they could just see suddenly all of this bacteria growth underneath the cave or underneath the laundry. And it turns out it was detergents and everything coming from them. So what they did was actually they took the footage and went up to the laundromat and just show them this is actually

what's happening underneath your feet. And they changed their policies. So they changed what detergents they were using. And then they went back, believe a couple of months after and then all that that bacteria was gone. So that's that's really good in that sense. So directly beneath the laundromat, but like how far under are we talking? Well, but that's, that's, That's another good thing because you have different levels of the caves. Okay. So when Chick-Shulup, the meteorites that hit, that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, it hit on the northwest side of the Yucatan Peninsula.

And it fractured the peninsula. Where is that, sorry? So if you think of the Yucatan Peninsula, you have Cancun up here, you got Tulum and then up on the northwest side. Did it meet you'll hit Mexico? Yeah. I did not know that. Yeah, yeah. So it hit Mexico.

wiped up all the dinosaurs back then. But then because of that meteorite. So when you actually look out, it's called the ring of sonotes. So around the crater, you have sonotes all the way around. But it also fractured the peninsula itself. So you can see fractures coming from Holbush Island down to Belize. And then all the shallow sonotes are on the east side of the fracture. And then all the deep sonnotes are on the west side of the fracture.

So it's affected everything quite interesting. Like I'm not a geologist, so I'm not a sciences either, but that's as far as I understand it. But on the east side, all of the caves are really quite shallow, and they can be as shallow as one, two meters. No. Yeah. Oh, wow. That works for me. I could do that.

Oh, wow. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And they're beautiful and they're white. And like when you're diving there, you're lighting up the cave. like it's sometimes it feels like diving through a winter wonderland and they're beautifully decorated with like stalactites coming down and sometimes they're decorated like they look like a huge chandelier it's it's pretty magical diving over in mexico what about the deep ones the deep ones are are sometimes you know um out of out of reach as well because they get too deep

if it's deeper than 30 meters then you need to start working with trimakes and whatnot so they're bit less accessible if you will so but you know they change all the time and the ones that we explored was that cave was dark and black it had the decorations as well but it was like the walls were all covered in tannins so once you get over it and touch it would just go poof and then it would just be completely white underneath so so that was kind of like it was and it's loads of stalactites too hanging through so it was kind of like diving into the belly of a dragon or something yeah it was pretty cool. And I think I saw on your Instagram that you did a 60 meter cave dive, is that right? That was actually in Egypt. No, I did a 70 meter course that on Instagram. That was the video.

My Insta 360 couldn't go deeper than 60. So that's why I had it there. So I was like just playing around with it, see what we could do with that stick. No, I did a 17 meter rebrew the course. And that's where we added all the trimics to make it go deeper. All the what, sorry. So you add an extra gas into your breathing gas called helium. So then it's a trimix. So it's oxygen, nitrogen, which is what we breathe all the time. But if you add helium, especially when you're rebreated diving, what helps is that it helps prevent or minimize nitrogen narcosis.

So you don't get loopy and drunk, which is not good to get down at those kind of depths. Oh, I don't think that sounds good anywhere, to be honest. So is that the deepest you've gone in 70? Yeah. How was I in feet? Loads. I actually googled what 60 meters and it said it was a 20-story building. So I was diving this incredible place in Dhab in Egypt and they have a blue hole.

And I have been hearing about this blue hole for like all my diving life. And I've been diving and wanting to dive there for so long. So at about 57 meters, there's an arch and you can dive through the arch to the other side. Wow. It's also a bit of a controversial site because it's been. been so popular for experimental deep divers. So there's been quite a few of fatalities when people haven't know what they're doing. What is experiment?

I mean, it sounds like it's just what it says on the tin. But is that a common thing, experiment, like people. It's thankfully a bit less common now. But it used to be a lot of like, let's put on a single tank, have air on it and see if we can swim through. That doesn't seem sensible. Then no. I agree.

unfortunately it still happens you still have like divers like someone that when you're down there one of the guides there was saying that he one day they were doing a dive course and suddenly they could just hear like 13 single tank divers in a in a rows just swimming through and up again i mean of course you can you can do it and there's many many people that have done it and they've been fine yeah but it really the the marginal of error is incredibly low down there um if you you start panicking or hyperventilating, you start breathing a little bit faster, that little tank is really not a lot of gas to get you back to the surface. Or if you blow an O ring or anything like that, we in technical diving is all about redundancy, so we have two of everything. That's why

having a single tank, you only got the one. What is blowing an O ring? So if you think about a scuba tank, it's got 200 bars of pressure in there. And that pressure goes into your regular later so you can breathe from it. So having an O-ring is kind of what seals that pressure as well. And it's such a silly little thing, but you'd be surprised of how often an O-ring blows or is missing and then you can't even go diving. What happens if you don't have the O-ring? You can't get the air in.

You just can't pressurize it. It just starts fizzling through instead. So if you're down in the water, deep water, with one tank and your O-ring goes, you can't breathe? that's awful that's that's also why like we do the in scuba diving we do the buddy system right so you always have a buddy like within arm's reach or as close as you can and they have an alternate air source that you can breathe from and share air that's smart so you guys thought of everything yeah but the thing is we're standing on the shoulders of so many people who've done

the trial and error before us so that's why like we're so lucky today that we can actually explore quite safely because they have been through all the situation. I'm not saying they've done the mistakes, but they have been through all the situations that now have provided us with standards and policies to make exploration safe. Have you ever had an experience that has been scary? Because I imagine that feeling that you talk about of like this like underwater bliss. Like that dream could so quickly become a nightmare if something goes wrong. I actually I'm thinking back to

the documentary on free diving the deep blue deepest breath yeah the deepest breath have you seen it I haven't seen it either but that's actually shot in the blue hole in the hub I thought it was I thought it was yeah because yeah

it's it's a stunning documentary but things can and do go wrong right even I think it's quite recent what happened with that I mean no spoilers but it's an amazing documentary but that I remember feeling this like oh my god it looks incredible what these people are doing and just this like like enormous sense of peace but then when things go wrong they go so wrong yeah I mean there's this is going to sound morbid there's there's something good and something

bad in that like at least if it goes wrong it's over quickly I've I don't know is it though is it well I've been again I've just been I just come from New York from the Explorers Club and you meet some pre-epic people out there who do some phenomenal things. And I spoke to a filmmaker who had climbed Everest, but also insisted he wasn't a climber. He only did it once. It's like, okay, you know, that kind of humbleness is just a, yeah. Not relatable to me. I think I make sure.

Right, exactly. I agree. And he thought that cave diving sounded absolutely terrifying. But then he proceeded telling us about the story when he, uh, he, he was I believe he was up on camp two and there was an earthquake a few years ago in Everest that killed a bunch of climbers and he was it was one of his part like he was part of that and he was one of the very few survivors and he had to stay two days up there to wait for it to get rescued so I've you know if it goes wrong in the cave it's over in like five

ten minutes if you're unlucky and it was about two hours two days for them I don't know if that's maybe a bit crazy thinking like that. I'm jumping around. No, I don't think it is crazy. In my mind, it's like if you get stuck in a cave, I feel like you're just stuck until your oxygen runs out. Yes. So that's a really good way.

So we work from, we just have this mantra. So if something happens, you stop everything, what you're doing. Yeah. And then you just breathe and get your breathing back under control again. Okay. And then you think. And we're like, okay, what's happening? So why am I not getting through?

here and then you start you start doing going through your body like is it my helmet is it here is it and you start feeling your way down so so it is but but this is where training kicks in this is why training is so important that you train for for as many and eventualities that you can imagine but yeah so i did get stuck in a cave once did you and and it was it was one of those cave dives were we've had a ton of fun it was like this yeah these windy not super squeezy but windy bit so if it was less swimming and more like pulling glide and it felt like going through this underwater playground and we were just having a blast and then and that's also where it started becoming a little bit dangerous because complacency kicks in and and i was we were diving in a team of

three and i was in the middle and first guy goes in we came to the store. tunnel. And we couldn't really see if the line continued at the end of this tunnel. So we agreed that he was going to go first, see if there was room for the rest of us and then go in. But he went in and then I made the mistake of, he signaled something to me. And I thought, okay, I'm sure that's fine. And then we'll continue to go through. Turns out he was saying like, no, no, no, do not come in here. There's no room for us because the line ended there. And there was, it was just kind of a bowl. But then I got in, I was like, well, I'm on my way.

I have to come so I can turn around and go back out. And then obviously the body behind me, he couldn't see anything at all. And he'd follow me back as well. And there was literally no room for him to turn in. So he had to turn around inside this little tunnel, which then silted the whole thing out and then you can't see anything. But that's also fine because that's also what we're trained in. This doesn't sound fine.

It sounds pretty stressful. Can you just tell us how many meters down you are at this point as well? I can't remember the exact depth, but we were about 40 minutes in, so we were 40 minutes swim back out again. Oh, my God. Okay. Sorry. But again, training kicks in.

We train with blindfolds to be able to follow the lines to get back out again. So again, no problem at all. So ready to go back out. So you just grab the line and then you go with your normal procedure. and tried to find your way. This tunnel was like a shape like a triangle. And I went a bit too far into the side. So as I was trying to get my way back outside, my helmet got stuck.

And I'm like, oh, okay. And then you try again and then wiggle a bit and then you went through again. And then this time my helmet and my entire chest got stuck. And it's like in comparison. persons who many of the cave that were out there, this really isn't a bad situation. It was just the first time something like that happened to me. So that's why it's so vivid in my imagination. And so that's where you got the, whoosh, that adrenaline rush that came up.

And the first thing I thought then was like, oh, crap, my mom's going to be really upset with me if something happens in here. And then you start going through it all. training kicks in again. You're like, okay, right, start thinking logical. I came through this way so obviously you can get back out again. What was it? The cave was looking like. And like, okay, so scoot back out again and wiggle and then go a bit that way. And then that was true. So you still can't see anything at this point? No, I can't see anything. But I got the line. And then where were your teammates? So one was waiting outside that tunnel. And then we came out and I remember we didn't have a lot of space. It was kind of like that. And I came back out again through the silt and I'm

like, whew, but something happened there. So this was actually the scariest point of the whole thing. Coming out there again, that was suddenly where that adrenaline rush was replaced by panic or the feeling of going into panic. It felt like I was hanging on to my sanity by my fingertips. But it was also 40 minutes back out again. And we had another guy waiting back there. So my trick when I go cave diving is to sing songs if I get scared. So I sing Disney songs. Pinocchio is a personal favorite. Little mermaid.

But what happens when you sing Disney songs is that, number one, you feel a bit silly. And it can stop that negative thought spiral and reverse it back to something positive. But when you're singing underwater, you're humming. And humming stimulates your vagus nerve. Right. So you get your breathing under control, stimulating your vagus. because of nerves. So that's what I did. And then Kim came out at the back and then we all gently proceeded back out again. Can other people hear you as well? Saying like, God, no dude.

Yes. Let me down. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's it, right? Yeah. In between the breasts, when you're, when you're diving, you can actually hear of someone singing. Can you? Yeah. So my very best friend in the world, Maria, who was my cave diving buddy and explorer partner. The thing is that I also sing when I'm happy. So sometimes if I start singing, then she stops immediately what she's doing. It's like, are you okay? I'm like, oh shit, sorry, sorry, I need to have my happy song. Sorry, I'm fine, I'm fine. Just that kind of like ruin your Zen though. It's like you're in this like amazing like wonder of the world, deep blue meditation. And then like someone behind's like, do, do, do, do, do. You feel like, shut up. Yeah, we've been told off

quite a bit. Heavy? Yeah, yeah. Really? Yeah, we're done now with re-breaters. And rebreathers are completely silent. So you can have full-on conversation. I mean, like, you kind of have to know each other because your mouth is open.

So you're talking kind of like this. What's a rebreather? So it's like, it's a rebreater circulates your exhausted gas. So it's so much more. So you can stay down there. So you can stay down there. And like you were saying earlier, if something happens and the air runs out, the rebreather, to me makes it feel so much safer because suddenly I have like more or less limited gas.

There's a lot of ways that are rebreat that can fail on you and so it's a very technical piece of equipment that you need to very very um be very diligent in when you're setting it up and diving but because there's silence you can you can have conversations with each other and and you can visually also just get someone's not audibly get someone's attention by just squealing but yeah and you can sing too and some divers

find it incredibly annoying and can tell us shut up this is a really like morbid question but obviously this job comes

with so many risks and the stakes are really high because it's not just like like you say if something bad happens it's quick has

anything like happened in your community like with your peers and in your network to someone because I feel like that would send me like running for the hills if it because then that feels so close to home right I mean yeah yeah unfortunately unfortunately this we um there's it happens less and less and it's less frequent but it still does happen and it sends ripples to our community every time I bet um especially we had um we had a very prominent figure last year who was part of a dive manufacturer who unfortunately passed away again this was a medical issue it wasn't because he did a mistake okay but it would happen whilst he was cave diving right and and then it becomes very real but i mean none of us

go in there and and think of like ah today i'm just gonna just you know just half asset you don't you you you always fully, fully check everything because we, like, mom's always like, be safe. I'm like, well, yes, but I'm always safe. Like, I'm never, I'm never intentionally trying to be complacent. We always try because we know that the consequences are severe. Is it a common thing that someone would get stuck, like stuck, stuck, in a case? Because I think there is a film, right, put a hole, put a hole in, is there a film called Bat? it's a film genuinely

if you're one from 101 Dalmatians your man from that the dad and that and he this film traumatised me I saw this is where my entire fear came from but he was in a pot hole

he was in a pot hole in he was in a pot hole he was in a cave and he died that's all I remember he just died and it was really bad I can't remember what it was but it was just like

it's given me the absolute hebi-jibis forever because it must happen you're in the time and you've got no idea where you're going that seems super duper scary. If you're making the map, what's to say that you, you know, because you said before, like, quite logically, like, well, I got in so I can get out.

Yeah. But like, I want to say that to like, my necklaces when I get tangled, I'm like, when you weren't tangled, but I can't untangle. Like, sometimes things just can't be undone again. Yeah. Like, do you not have that kind of? So, so with cave diving, we have the benefit of having a line. So we put a line in every time we go into the cave and that is our guide back out again. Okay, Hansel and Gretel. Yeah, so, yeah, exactly, exactly. So cave diving, in that sense, we always have a line going back out.

I am not an experienced potholder, but I have been doing it down in the mendips. What is the difference, sorry, between potholding. Pottholing is dry, you're climbing through the caves. Oh. Yeah, and then cave diving is the easy way of, for, so it's like if you want to see something up under the ceiling, you can just float up, have a look, and go back down again. I'm quite clumsy, so I, you know, pot-holing will be pretty bad because I would just be tripping over my own feet, you know, and then it's really hard to get back out if you got a broken

leg. But, but power-hulling then, I have tried it, and it's also an incredible experience. You've got some of the most amazing caves here in the UK that you can go do it. Like, down in the Mendibs are, they're just gorgeous. But what's, but the difference is when you're dry caving is that they don't put in lines. And I imaging like, well, how are we going to find her way back out again? They were like, yeah, got plenty of time. We'll just retrace. Like, that's, that's fine. But then I start going like, oh, this is really quite scary. Yeah, but it's dark too. Very dark. Yeah. Oh, God, yeah, the ocean's dark. See, that's another, that's another prong to my fear. Yeah, that's, I don't like

that bit. At what point does the sea get really dark? Yeah. I mean, you saw my video. That was 60 meters and I didn't have a light. So, okay. Yeah. So you can get really quite deep. Yeah. I mean, it depends on the visibility as well like i'm so fortunate i live in cornwall we got some epic diving down really really nice diving but you can have all sorts of of conditions from like and that's coming up now where like the algae bloom is so you it's like diving around in green snots you can't see anything and then it gets quite dark down there but then you have torches with you and you know and it's fun and night diving is actually really really quite fun too but it's also where it like all the, all the critters start coming out and you, because you have less visual.

We haven't even talked about the creatures. We haven't even talked about the critters. My God. Sorry. But no, but like when you're night diving, your focus is also on your light beam. So suddenly you're seeing a lot more things or different things that you didn't see during the day. And your, your hearing senses, the most prominent ones, you're hearing more than you don't see it. Like you didn't notice when you were diving during the day.

So, see, that freaks me out there, the idea of the unknown. Like, and you can only see where your torches, your head torches, shining. What about your periphery? Like, that is terrible. It could be, there could be anything that. Ah! Oh, my God, it goes through me. Yeah, exactly.

That's why you have a buddy so you can, like, scan 180 bows. No, I mean, like, considering how many people dive in the oceans every single day and how few incidents there are. That's also, like, just insurances, scuba diving is now part of. of most people's just normal travel insurance. You don't, you don't have to have an add-on insurance. That's how safe diving is now. Okay.

So, I didn't even think about that when I did it. I didn't think about insurance. I should have done. Would you ever do free diving? Yes. Would you? What is that? So, so free diving is diving by just on one single breath.

What? Yeah. So, so that's the documentary you're talking out is about free diving. It's unbelievable. Okay, so hang out, because that's, okay. So you free dive, you, you're free dive. You've got to hold your breath until you get into a cave. No, no, no, so it's a no.

So this is just free diving in the ocean. You can do free diving in caves, but, but again, so because I'm a technical diver, I'm trained with redundancy. I have two of everything. So I always found free diving to be incredibly terrifying because you only have one breath. Like, what if you get stuck in, you know, a fish net or something like that and, you know, what happens? But, but because of my job and we also.

make free diving equipment. I thought, okay, I'm going to go seeing what the fuss is about. So you just hold your breath. Just hold your breath. So it's snorkeling, but you know, but you're free diving. You dive down. How long are you down for? Well, it depends on how long you can hold your breath for, right? How long can you hold your breath for? I think it was one minute and 40 minutes, I think. One minute, 40 seconds. Oh, sorry, one minute and 40 seconds, yes. For a long time, no? Well, not for some of the other ones. I mean, some people go in for, for their first course and immediately can do almost three minutes. And they say also, like, if you want to experience the environment, put a tank on your back.

If you want to experience yourself and go into a meditative states, go free diving. And Sophie's choice that because I don't want to do either of those things. But the deepest free dive is 136 meters. That Alexei Mulsinov. That's Alexi Mulsinov. Yeah, yeah. You guys are built different. 24 minutes and 37 seconds of holding breath.

No. I don't believe it. Alessia Zakhine is a she? Yeah, yeah, I can't remember. She's the subject of the documentary, 123 meters. Yeah. Yeah. How many minutes is that?

That doesn't say I don't. It's usually about three minutes, I think, three or four minutes, if I remember correctly. The 20 plus minute records, that's actually with it. Like a normal person breathing this wouldn't be able to do that. They have been breathing up on oxygen first. So they've been oxygenating their blood before they start their breath hold. So that's how they can do it. They call it technical free diving.

Okay. Would you do that? No. No, not really. But I like the meditativeness of it. So there's an amazing book called Breath. So if you haven't read it, I highly recommend reading it. It looks into all these kind of breathing techniques and like mouth breathing and nose breathing.

And Wimhoff techniques and all of that. So actually after doing the free diving course, it suddenly gave me a whole new tool set of how to, if I get nervous or if I'm stressed of like how to use breathwork to calm my nervous system back down again. So that's what I really enjoyed about it. And also it's an easy entry into scuba diving because diving can be very expensive if you first started. So free diving is just wetsuit fins, mask is snorkel, and off you go. You should do a free diving course because it teaches you how to do it safely. So there's a buddy system, one up and one down. So one stays at the surface to check that the other one's fine and then come back up and then you swap.

And some other safety techniques. But you don't have to go to deep, deep, deep. You can easily just go a couple of meters and then just swim around and be immersed and then back up again. That's what I'd like to do. Exactly. You don't have to do the extreme bits of it. You can also do a static breath hold where all you do is lying in the pool. And then you're trying to experience or experiment with when is it time to start breathing again

and having those convulsions and contractions. That was my favourite activity on holiday as a kid because I'm really good at that. So I would like make a competition with everyone be like, let's hold your breath. the longest. But that's something you're sad. Very sad, yeah. But yeah, I don't think I'd like to do it the same, but in the pool, like, when you go down to the bottom of the pool and then like turn around and look up, oh, it's beautiful, but not on this, not in safe. I think you should do, this feels, everything you're saying feels what you're going to enjoy this. Probably not. I'm sure you will. I don't like fearful, dangerous situations.

But it's super safe now. Speaking of which, are you ever at danger of encountering anything like sharks. I was just in Galapagos for Christmas in New Year's, the sharkiest place on the planet. And I was literally in heaven. What? This was... Oh, really? Yeah.

You're crazy. But again, considering how many people and surfers are in the ocean every single day and you hardly have any attacks, a shark, if it wants to eat you, it will eat you. There's nothing you can do about it because... Well, that's a horrible thing. That's just a sound like a good thing But it is a good thing Because it's clearly a choice of the shark

That is not doing anything to you Can you imagine being out in the savannah Being in the lioness place on earth Right That's true So if you think about it Like there are such sensitive And credible creatures

And they're very much But if you wrong one Like what if it did choose to eat you What if you're looking at it And you're like Then it's over quick again What have you had a paper cut And you're bleeding

You know That's that's that's urban less. Oh, is it? They've, they've, they've been testing that several times. Like, also diving on your period, no problem at all. Like, you have to have like liters and liters of blood in the water before they start having a frenzy. So, founding Nemo did us dirty there. Yeah. However, mention of period has brought me onto a question. When you're going down, how long are you down for? Well, it depends what we're doing. But the project we did in Indonesia, our average dive time was between three and four hours.

Okay, so what happens if you need, I'm assuming you can wait in your soup? What happens if you need to go? You do try and go before you go. But what if you can't go before you go and you're in a line of people? Then, I was adding to my own fears with stupid hours. Yeah, I mean, most people know that you're trying to, like, we plan how long we're going to stay there for and you try to empty before you go. You really need to.

So some people dive with diapers, but it's not recommended to go number two in the diaper. It's just not comfortable diving around in. But in, you know, accidents can happen, but and then, you know, wash and you're fine. But weighing is actually really important when you're scuba diving or technical diving because dehydration is one of the contributing factors that gets decompression sickness. So it's actually really, really important that you are proverbs. properly hydrated before you're going to these long technical dives and so being able to we whilst you're diving is is super important for your safety you can if you got a wetsuit

and just we in your wetsuit and you wash it when you're done but we we use dry suits when we do long technical dives like these dry suits are great because your skin is completely dry so you can wear different layers of undergarments underneath so you're nice and snug which is when you die for three, four hours, there's very few wetsuits that can keep you warm for that long. Then it also is a redundant buoyancy device. So if you puncture your wing that gives you your buoyancy in the water, you can use your dry suit as a redundant buoyancy. But if you're in a dry suit, it's hard to we, right? So you can use either diapers, but that also gets kind of, or nappies, as we say here, is,

gets uncomfortable. So we have something now called a sheepie. By the way, men have it so much easier than women do. But a sheepie is essentially a silicone flap where you use prosthetics glue and you glue it on. To what? To yourself. Oh, wow. Yeah. So you have to be clean shaven and all of that. I know we're very much TMI here. But this is super interesting. Wow. So you have to stick it and then what does it like just come out there? So you actually, so you have like a little. little funnel underneath so you're essentially just kind of gluing a little blue penis on and then you connect that to your dry suit where you have a valve and then it runs just out as you're like coming out like a little willy no no no that's oh that's clever it is really cool it can be really uncomfortable

it's and again men have it so much easier than women do as well because of anatomy and and even from woman to woman it's it can be complicated because our anatomy is different than none of there's very If you were exactly the same. So having that, like it has been a very, like, it changed my diving for me as well because suddenly I didn't have to hold back and, you know, they're like, oh, not drink enough or have to call a dive because I had to go for a way. So it was, it's, is one of my most important tools in my toolbox when I go technical diving.

But also it's, it's helped other sports like paragliders, women. and paragliders are not using that so they can stay up there for hours too so so it's it's transferable but it's annoying it's annoying yeah but what about being on your period and diving can you wear a tampon down there yeah okay yeah yeah same thing tampon or a peer cup or anything like that okay yeah yeah i thought maybe like with a toxic shock it might not be good to go deep i've i've stopped using tampons quite a few years ago because of just that. So I use a period cup so I make sure it's properly sterilized and everything. I'm sorry, just to confirm, have you come into contact the sharks when you're diving?

Yeah. You have? Yeah, of course. I was diving in Galapagos, and there was like walls of hammerheads there. Do they come close to you? Yeah, if you're being really, if you're being really quiet and, you know, and trying to breathe really slowly, they will come really close to you. So I really want to go back with a rebreather.

and so they will get proper close. Can you stroke them like that close? Sometimes they can come that close, especially if you're on a rebreater because then you don't have any bubbles coming out and you're not noisy, then they will come really close. And that's the end goal. You want them to come close to you or you want to be close to them. I think we have different angles.

Shoot, shoot. But that's the thing is if you don't like them, all you can do is like you can take your alternate air source and blow bubbles at them and then they will disappear because they don't like it. That's not great for their brand. is it? It's like scarious. Ooh, bubbles.

You know you can dive with or snorkel with sharks in the UK, right? Can you? Yeah. If you go down to Penzance, you can go blue shark snorkeling. And we did that a couple of years ago. And blue sharks are some of the most beautiful sharks that are out there. And they have this, they have this incredibly hue up front. And they're quite curious.

They're kind of like underwater puppies. They really want to come and check you out and see what you are. but they're also incredibly skittish so if you don't like them you can just slap once in the water and then they disappear so you're describing that I was like that sounds familiar

wow how about basking sharks same you get some basking sharks I was um we had a day after work down in coral and someone's like oh there's basking sharks swimming around and poor scatheels and seals I bet that's quite cool to be fair

it is amazing I like seals they are so cool but like we got resident seals as well down there I took my boyfriend diving for the first time and I was trying to teach him which you know they say you should never teach your partner and I found out the hard way why but anyway but during his first dive and he was practicing taking his mask off underwater and then suddenly I can see this big seal coming behind him and it was his very first dive as well in the ocean and he got to see a seal did he freak out no no he didn't he's a surfer so

He's used to seeing seals popping up. I'm not a free task. Feels are huge. It's deceptive because when you see them in the sea, it's just a little head and you're like, oh, a little seal. And then under water it's like, whoa, you're enormous. Wow. You are just built different.

Yeah, you are. And it's so cool. Oh, my God. Yeah, this has been so much fun. I want to know all of it. It's been absolutely fascinating. But I don't think I'm built different at all. It's again, like you see me at quite a far away long at my journey, right?

but it's all about slow progression and starting somewhere. And I think just diving in the UK is wildly underestimated because the diving here is just incredible and you have so many different varieties. There's this Lundy Island down out of Devon where you can go snorkel with seals as well. You don't have to have a diving certificate. And once you get out to the island,

again, they're like puppies coming up, sticking their heads just waiting for you to come play with you. That's so sweet. And they will come over. Yeah, no. It's amazing. It's so brave, though, because it's like, they could overpower you in like two seconds.

Yeah. Same thing. People go out there every single day, twice a day to hang out with the seal. I fear I'm being influenced and I don't like it. I know. Life long fear of mine and I don't think it should be unpicked. This is been amazing. Absolutely amazing. Thank you so much for coming and sharing with us.

Of course. Thank you so much for having me. And thank you for letting me talk about diving. And if I can even just get one person, come diving after this that would that would just make my heart saying oh i have no doubt i have no doubt i think you're taking alex 50 i mean like any time please come down i would be happy yeah i i might i'll take you up on that yeah for sure you will you will you'll have to my husband's been doing it a bit my brother i've had no i'll leave you know i'll wait i'll wait i'll wait on the

see how i managed it's also super kid friendly down in cornwall as well so you know yeah there you go There you go. Next trip, M. We're on the road to come up. Thank you so much, Rhamba. Thank you. Thank you, guys. Should I delete that as part of the ACAST creator network?