Sarah (42:24)
Well, that, yeah. Yeah, that was the interesting thing for me because I had gotten into a place of feeling very comfortable in the dry suit, in the open ocean, right? Like, that's what I've been doing. But the second that I got into cave and was starting to work these other skills, you know,
problems with equipment or out of air or whatever. It was like all of a sudden, oh, that thing that I feel like I had gotten decent at, like I felt I was feeling more comfortable. You know, like it wasn't super great anymore. And so, yeah, I don't know. It's just an interesting thing. It's a humbling.
Jay (43:13)
Heh heh.
Sarah (43:23)
experience to move forward with things and move forward with training. I don't know, what's nice for me is part of the reason why going back to my fear of caves is the fact that I'm just not a naturally good navigation.
somebody who's confident with navigation. It's just not like a skill set of mine. I get lost all the time on land. It's gotten a lot better these days, a lot. And I think it's really funny that one of my most popular YouTube videos is about compass navigation for beginners, because I'm just like the chronically lost person, but not necessarily underwater. Not necessarily underwater these days for normal dives.
Jay (44:14)
Hahaha!
Sarah (44:20)
But that's, I wouldn't have said like growing up and to this point that like, oh, I'm great at knowing where I am in the world. And that's also part of like the mental game. And so what's been cool about this time around, like even though I've struggled with some of the skills and the buoyancy, my sense of where I am, oh my gosh, like that has, that actually clicked. And I think that's because
I'm just more experienced at this point, where I'm in the cave, we've done the briefing, and we've talked about the plan and everything, and I'm like, I know where I am. That never really clicked for me when I was doing the course before. So it's really cool. If that's something that I guess I want to encourage people, if you're like me, you've experienced some kind of diving that you're like, eh.
Jay (45:07)
Hmm.
Sarah (45:17)
I don't know about that. Maybe don't shut the door on it completely. It just might not be the right time for you. And that's kind of where I am with cave diving. Like I'm open to it. I don't know if it's gonna be my thing, but like now that I have more experience, I don't feel like I'm lost in the world. I don't feel like I, I don't know. It seems like it's something that I could be comfortable with at some point with more experience.
Jay (45:50)
I love it. I love it. Yeah. And I mean, I think you bring out a really good point in the sense that
those plateaus aren't static, right? That you can be on a plateau where you come out of something feeling really good or comfortable, and then that can regress and you need to get back there. And navigation's a great example of that, right? Where, I mean, you could feel great about your navigation skills, and then you get, I remember us in Florida on a dive, and we,
You know, it was this easy open water ocean dive. Like it shouldn't be that hard, but there was the slight annoying current. Like slight enough where it wasn't pushing you, like you felt it a ton, but strong enough where you're, you know, the compass bearing just didn't matter anymore in terms of distance, right? You could take the right bearing, but distance you were completely off. And I remember we came up and I thought, you know, I was really focused on navigation on this particular dive because I'm like, no, we're-
Sarah (46:49)
Mm-hmm.
Jay (46:58)
we're gonna hit the ladder on the boat when we decide to surface. That's because I was diving the one, like we're doing it. I remember I'm like, I was so confident, here we are, we're here. And I was like, all right, we're going up. We pop up from this dive, you know, and we're like 50 yards from the boat or something. You know, it's like, are you kidding me? Like we're in the right direction, but I counted kicks, like you're kidding me. You know, like you're kidding.
Sarah (47:02)
Hehehehehehe
Jay (47:25)
And then he was, so we go back down. I'm like, okay, I got it now. Now I have a, you know, spatial understanding of how far we are. And I, and we're 20 yards past the boat. The next time it's like, my goodness. And, and those things are, are so interesting because again, you can have all confidence in all that, all that in the world. And then you throw in a different environment. You throw in a different teammate. You throw in a dry suit versus a wetsuit. You throw in a, you know, you dive in a wing now versus a jacket.
Sarah (47:34)
Hahaha!
Mm-hmm.
Jay (47:55)
Um, you know, these things kick us back into learning mode. And, and I literally asked, I was like, I asked a couple of, uh, instructors on the boat. I was like, how in the world did you navigate like that? Because I was spot on with the navigation completely off of the distance. And then I look, there's no shame in a little, in a little peek and duck.
Sarah (48:03)
Yeah.
Jay (48:20)
I was like, what's a peeking duck? Like take a little peek and duck back down under the water, you know, when no one's looking to make sure, you know, you're on the right track. I was like, ah, okay, now I know it. Ha ha ha.
Sarah (48:30)
Okay, so I, after the surface interval conversation with Itor, I had him do a TikTok with me, where we talked about some of our diving experience in Komodo, and I ended up sharing it on my YouTube channel, which normally I would make a big fancy vlog and spend.
hours and hours editing these things, whatever. I threw this thing together in like a few hours because it was Saturday night and I wanted to have something uploaded on Sunday. This was literally like a few days ago. Of course it's done great, you know? And we talked about, it's always those videos that you don't spend a lot of time on. You're like, this is crap, like I hate this, but here it is. And then everybody watches it and you're like, come on, you know, like watch.
Jay (49:19)
Yeah
Sarah (49:20)
Watch the one that I spent 20 hours on, like, come on. But we talked about periscoping. That's what we call it. Periscoping. And yeah, yeah. And somebody got on my case about it. They were like, that's really dangerous. I'm like, I understand. I understand that like going up and coming back down is not ideal, but.
Jay (49:24)
Right.
Periscoping that's good one. Yeah, that's the same same thing right peak peak in that
Sarah (49:46)
you know, sometimes it happens. Sometimes you need to do it. And like, if you've been diving conservatively, hopefully you're gonna be safe. You know, you're not pushing your DCS risk, but if you're not diving conservatively and you're not taking care of yourself, your physical health, you're dehydrated or whatever else, then yeah, it can be really dangerous. It's not like you don't go out with the goal of doing that. It's just like...
We messed up. We gotta get back to where we started, you know?
Jay (50:20)
Yeah, yeah. No, yeah, they call that the yo-yo diving or, you know, dip diving and those things. Yeah. Again, you can do that. You can do it, like you're saying, and minimize the risk of it, right? You obviously don't bolt to the surface and periscope out and bolt back down, right? Which is sometimes the assumption that people make of like that. No, you ascend safely and descend safely, slowly, under control.
Sarah (50:25)
Right. Yeah.
No, gosh. No, no, no, no, no.
Mm-hmm.
Jay (50:47)
making stops as needed to make that little peekaboo. But yeah, look, this is why it's so important to be what we call at least at UTD a thinking diver. What I would expand that to say is to be switched on when we're in the underwater environment, turn the brain on and not be a protocol diver. The protocol meaning you just do the same thing whatever you were taught because that's what you were taught, right?
Sarah (51:07)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Jay (51:16)
every single time because the environment is constantly changing. The same dive site, the same cave, the same open water, 20-foot dive that you take every Wednesday can change so dramatically from dive to dive, even within a day, right? Within the same day. And so being switched on, thinking it through, all of that stuff. And that's the thing, I think, when it comes to diving in general. And especially in…
Sarah (51:33)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Jay (51:45)
cave environments and things is the more that you are switched on, the more that you are engaged in that dive, that you're thinking through, that you're not letting things just pass. That's one of the things that I really like to try and do is when I come out of a cave is to come back to the map of that cave and trace exactly what we did and then make my own little... And this part of the cave would look like this.
Sarah (52:10)
Yeah.
Jay (52:14)
And even during the dive, I'll take out my wet notes and draw a little like, this is a really cool, remember that shelf I was talking about? I drew that and where I thought we were on the line and things. And then sometimes, you'll be surprised, like, oh wow, I felt like we were way further past this point. And then you start to add in there, okay, where are you in cardinal navigation? Under the cave, it doesn't really matter. The way in is the way out in a lot of ways.
Sarah (52:20)
Yeah, yeah.
Mmm.
Jay (52:44)
But do I think we're, which way am I facing? Am I facing north? Am I facing south? Like, okay, I remember the entrance of the cave was facing east and we went this way. So again, keeping your brain switched on and when you feel that laziness, maybe click on that comfortability of like, oh yeah, I got this, no big deal. It's that like, okay, remember where you are, how do I reengage in this in some way? Because I think a lot of the diving accidents that I read about, because they say,
You know, cave diving is amongst one of the five most dangerous sports in the world, which I kind of laugh at because they compare it to things like, you know, base jumping and high altitude climbing, which I think those guys are crazy. And it's funny, I was talking to a buddy of mine who is a base jumper and I just think he's nuts. Like, there's a big like base jumping to do. I don't think it's a competition. Maybe it is.
Sarah (53:16)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Jay (53:43)
in Kuala Lumpur and he was telling me about, he showed me some videos of this tower that I had been to Kuala Lumpur. I'm like, are you like literally they, they jump off the tower and basically you'll jump off of that, pop the parachute, land somewhere in the city. And there's an army of these guys on scooters that go and find the guy who jumped, he packs up his shoot, jumps on the back of the scooter, they drive them back to the tower and they do it again. I'm like, you guys are nuts. And he looks at me and says, you're a cave diver. You're nuts. Like, why would you ever do that?
I don't see it in that view. We don't see eye to eye. He thinks his training with base diving, base jumping, all that stuff is probably the same way I feel about cave diving. It's not necessarily a definitive fact that cave diving is the most dangerous sport in the world. I think where that becomes true is that cave diving without the proper respect, without the proper...
mental aspect, without the proper gear, without the proper training is extremely dangerous. But when you're able to mitigate a lot of those things, it's still dangerous. It's still a place where every time that you do it, no matter how many times you've been in that same cave, you are risking your life. It's a serious thing. You have to be aware of that. But all of that training, all that is meant to mitigate that risk to a point that you are comfortable taking it.
Sarah (54:46)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm, yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Jay (55:09)
And that's the same thing with Bay. I'm not comfortable jumping off a freaking tower in cool, Kuala Lumpur. No way. That's crazy. But I have zero training. I have zero mental capacity for what that feels like. I have zero desire to do it. So of course it's completely dangerous. If I go do what he does, I'm an idiot, right? I deserve to be part of the statistics. And the same is true on the other end. If you're a cave diver who, I don't need training. This sign with the.
Sarah (55:20)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, right.
Jay (55:38)
big grim reaper on it. That's just a funny joke. Or yeah, of course I'm, I'm a great diver. You know, I could dive in a cave. It doesn't look that hard. I watched all these YouTube videos on it. You know, Sarah, Sarah's YouTube video on our cave. Yeah, it looks awesome. I'm going to go do that tomorrow. If you don't have a healthy respect for it and you don't put in the work exactly, then yes, it's extremely dangerous, but you mitigate that danger with the level of preparedness that
Sarah (55:39)
Hahaha.
Mm-hmm.
Oh God, don't ever, don't do that.
Jay (56:07)
into it with and you accept the level that you can't control, the cave collapsing, the line snapping, gear going out and yes, you have backup gear, you know, all those things. The biggest thing I, again, and broken record, broken record, broken record, but that I say is like the thing that you protect not only for yourself, but the reason that you have your team there is protecting that brain and the way that you're thinking about it. That…
Sarah (56:33)
Mm-hmm.
Jay (56:36)
That's when you dig into the accident reports, when you dig into the fatalities and cave diving, and you dig into these things, you know, the data bears out that it is, it is almost always the, the, they call it diver error, which is, you know, translated to it was the brain that broke or the collection of brains that broke, not the regulator, not the line, not the, the light, not the, yeah, the light might have broke, but the brain went with it.
Sarah (57:03)
Well, it's interesting that you say that because I'm actually reading Under Pressure. Have you read that book? Oh gosh. By Gareth Locke.
Jay (57:12)
Yes.
Sarah (57:17)
It's, so it talks about that reasoning like, oh, it's human error. That's actually like a really poor description of what the problem really was, right? Like it's not a good way of describing what happened in an accident because it doesn't allow for dissecting the issues in the systems that people were using, right? In their training or their briefings or whatever.
So I think that's really interesting. And since you've read it, I would love to have a conversation on the podcast about the book and risks and things like that once I actually finish it, which is proving to be quite difficult because it's not a book that I can read before bed. So it means that I don't get a lot of time to read. But it's, yeah, it's, I do. No.
Jay (58:08)
That's true. It's not a good night read, that's true, or a pre-dive read either.
Sarah (58:14)
No, but I do like a little book club with my Patreon community. And this has been this was actually our January book and now we're ending February and I still haven't finished it. And I'm like, I'm telling my guys I'm like, I'm so sorry, it's taking me forever to read this book. But it's just like, it's a lot to get through, you know, it's not just like an easy read.
Jay (58:39)
No, I mean, last season, Gareth came on the show and we played a little fun mental game. We took a dive together and talked about all these, you know, what he's deemed or he hasn't deemed, but he's brought into the diving, you know, human factors. And you're absolutely right. There's a cascade of things, everything from just the mental approach to the dive, all the way back to the training, to the normalization of things that you were, you know, I've taken a hundred dives with...
you know, this gear bubbling a little bit and I've been fine. You know, that's the normalization of, of deviance, right. And all these sorts of things. And, and I think the big biggest point to take away from all of that is, is the diligence that goes into the mind and the collective, you know, shared mind of the team in diving and how important that is. And I love Garrett's work and it's, it's cool, you know, to be
Sarah (59:32)
Jay, are you there?
Jay (59:38)
part of, I think, an agency that's from day one incorporated a lot of that stuff, you know, just by nature of who we are. And I think it's important for divers to understand, you know, because diving is such a gear-intensive sport, we have to have the gear to do what we do as an activity. But sometimes we lose the function.
mechanism of the gear for the brain and super critical to keep that at the forefront of your training and keep it in the forefront of your dives and a book like Under Pressure from Gareth is a great book to read.
Well, good. I think this will wrap this episode up. It's been a good discussion off the cuff about cave diving. I hope it didn't come off to a preachy or anything like that, but.
We'll wrap this one up. If you enjoyed this episode, we really encourage you to subscribe so you get notified every time that new podcasts drop. You can also engage with us directly on our Facebook group or the community that's been building there, find it on Facebook, just search the dive table. You can also connect on our website, thedivetable.com, where you can get our library of episode transcripts, so on and so forth, all the things producer Daniel does.
So thank you so much for joining us on this episode and we hope to see you back on the next episode of The Dive Table.
Sarah (1:15:12)
fucking gun
I just wanted to cover something real quick on my platform because the mainstream media may not cover it. But rest in peace to Aaron Bushnell, active service member who yesterday in front of the Israel embassy lit himself on fire in protest, saying, free Palestine.
