 in Samoan. He actually worked with Mosketeer Indian divers in Honduras and he was teaching them to dive because these guys, they were doing the sort of shell diving and shellfish and stuff but they were getting, as it was getting depleted, they were end up going deeper and deeper and a lot of these, they weren't trained divers. So it's just coming out and spend ages on the wall and then just come out and they get really serious cases of decompression. And Bob was telling me some of these guys were quite seriously ill and some the bends can actually paralyze you, it can kill you. And he was sort of telling me how these guys would get up and they would have some shaman in that and say we know how to cure you and they're putting out cigarettes on his back and stuff. Griff, how are you brother? Oh good Chris, good to see you mate. Yes, it's wonderful to be in touch. I'm just trying to recall, I remember you emailed me but was it after seeing somebody on the podcast that you knew or you had an affiliation with? Yeah, I saw one of your podcasts, everyone of the guys that was, I think he was living in Thailand at the time. And he was explaining it, being the sort of the expat thing and I've been there, seen that and I've got the t-shirts all day. And that's where I was all the year, brought back some great memories and obviously some lots of great memories. But yeah, that was the what I got to touch. Yeah. And just to clarify Griff, where do you live now? Are you back in the UK? I'm back in the UK. I came back to, I actually was out, long story short, just a shy of 10 years in the army, I was an engineer, got out in 97 and wanted to do the backpacker thing, did that and ended up in Thailand. I stayed in Thailand for six years, first as a diving instructor and then I ended up working in healthcare, in the treating, dives that, bends and then also evacuating people that had been injured and hurt in the various island group around Koh Samuli in Thailand. And I got back to the UK and I carried on, I basically stayed doing the same job, I just did it in the UK for about another 15 years, working in chambers in healthcare in the UK. I got back in 2005. Yeah, got you. So just to lay my table out and for our friends watching, diving, I can imagine people see a podcast and it's about scuba diving, like let's just say essentially, I'm thinking, oh that's not my thing, I don't do that, I won't watch that, right? But the reason I'm fascinated to have this chat with you is diving is just so much more than diving. There's so many offshoots of that past time, I'm not going to call it a sport because there's obviously many different types of diving. It goes in obviously to the, it relates to the British forces on a R&R level, so a recreational level, but also on the professional, like the SPS, the engineers obviously, maybe clearance, ships, divers, all this kind of thing. Then of course, you've got the fascinating history of scuba diving itself with Jack Cousteau who invented, was it called the Aqua Lung? I think they called it. Yeah, he was the one that he invented scuba, that guy, he actually invented scuba. And the history, I find out there's a guy, there's actually a museum of diving in Portsmouth, I actually know the one of the curators of the Historical Diving Society and it is pretty impressive the way we go back to diving. We're saying the history of diving, it's one jab in the eye, I suppose, for the Matlows in the Navy is the first divers were not Navy divers, the first divers were the Royal Engineers and it's progressed through. And yeah, it's gone and then obviously in around the sort of 50s and 60s, it became a recreation and it's got bigger and bigger globally and we've now got organisations around the world, such as the British Sub-Aqua Club, the Professional Association of Diving Instructors, but it's now moved on and it's getting more and more sophisticated and we're seeing certain things that you never saw in the civilian life now being used in the civilian side. So things like rebreather diving, close-circuit rebreaters were the reserve of the military. We're now seeing that they're common as anything nowadays, a lot of people do like to do, rebreather diving. We're seeing extreme depths being reached on scuba. My personal opinion working in the nastiest side of it and working with diving accidents is I'm not sure that scuba diving or the scuba equipment is the right set of equipment to go to some of the depths that these people do, but people have gone a thousand feet down in scuba and sometimes it's gone quite seriously wrong and they've never come back. Others have got back and they've suffered very severe bends, decompression signals. But yeah, it's got bigger and bigger and I'm sure this COVID thing's probably given it a bit of a hit, but I was working as a diving instructor at the time of 9-11 and we took a hit from that, but it always bounces back. It is a sport that people, I say it's a sport, you're right, it's a pastime. It's no sort of racing or anything like that. But yeah, it's a fantastic pastime and you really can go from zero to hero. It's one of those things it is achievable and I, you know, I ended up as an instructor in one of the busiest diving training areas in the world probably. But yeah, it's great sport. Yeah, and the other two kind of offshoots I wanted to mention is the enormous number or certainly back in the 90s when the North Sea oil platforms relied on divers to go down and do the engineering. Now a lot of it's done by robots, right? Or these robots on ambilical cords, but there was a huge amount of marines would leave and become saturation divers. And the other area it goes into as well is obviously traveling. I'd imagine an enormous amount of people go backpacking and end up doing their first scuba dive and then getting into it and getting to dive master and then taking people out. Yeah, absolutely. I think it does. I think the big thing, like I'm saying, probably the key time in diving for offshore what we call commercial diving, which is a completely different training regime and everything. The probably heyday was probably the 80s going into the 90s. But back in the 70s it was an extremely hazardous profession to give you an idea. It was cheaper to ensure an astronaut than it was a North Sea diver. It was that hazardous. But it was one of these things that the amount of money that these guys could earn. And when we go back, I did my dive medics course with a bunch of guys that were working in satin offshore and a lot of them were ex-navy, a lot of them were ex-army, a lot of them family trade. And you can see the draw was the money. They could earn huge sums of money. I mean, back then a day per day in sat, they were on 700, 800 pounds a day. Huge sums of money. And there'll be the first to tell you the idea was for every day you're in saturation. And for those guys that don't know what that is, is basically you live in a chamber that's pressurized to the same depth as the sea is where you're working. You're going to another little chamber which takes you back to basically like a lift to and from the workplace. So you're not constantly decompressing. You're just that one pressure. And the idea is for every day like that you do 30 days of that. You don't need to do two minute MP a year, but what a lot of them would do, they would work in the British sector, have a logbook for the British sector, then they'd have another logbook for the Norwegian sector. Because for every day you were in saturation, you had to have a day off. So if you did 30 days, you can work for 30 days. I've had two logbooks, one for Norway, one for Britain. And a lot of them would obviously work in the Gulf was another place that a lot of them work for. I think they got paid a lot less for that. But we used to get a lot of them, a lot of them lived in Thailand. So we got to me quite a few of them. And funny enough, these are the guys that they didn't want to go recreation diving. Not for me. I do it for work. I don't really want to sort of do it for fun, but others I'm sure they do. There are one or two you do it. It's big for them. But I was always amazed that, and I could understand it, a lot of them were really interested in doing the recreational side of it, as we call it. But some went all the way and became instructors and been the commercial side and went, do you know what, I'm just doing that. Another couple of things that comes into my mind is I've actually met treasure hunters. You know, it's very, very big in Florida. I think they call it the Treasure Coast. Yep. All the sort of Spanish galleons that sunk there on their way back from the Spanish Maine. And I've also met several shell divers who died for clams because the price of a clam is so expensive. I've met them up in Norway. I've been in a pub with them and they've been shivering because it can make you cold for quite a long time, can't it? Yeah. Even in really what you'd say warm weather or tropical seas, I remember teaching one lad to dive. We had to get him out of the pool because he was so cold, you could see it. He was only like 14, but he was so keen to learn and he was just getting too cold. And we just said, let's get out, warm up, you'll feel better. And he went, are my lips blue? No. Can we wait until my lips are blue? That's probably a bad thing. So let's get out and just warm up for a bit and then we'll carry on. But yeah, you can get quite cold quite quickly. One of the guys we had working, great guy ex Vietnam, ex Air Force Vietnam veteran from the US guy called Bob Armington in Samoan. He actually worked with Mosketeer Indian divers in Honduras. And he was teaching them to dive because these guys, they were doing the sort of shell diving and shell fish and stuff, but they were getting, as it was getting depleted, they were end up going deeper and deeper. And a lot of these, they weren't trained divers. So just coming out, they'd spend ages on the wall and then just come out and they get really serious cases of decompression illness. And Bob was telling me, some of these guys were quite seriously ill. And some of them were, you know, the bends can actually paralyze you, it can kill you. And he was sort of telling me how, you know, these guys would get up and a lot of, you know, they would have some shaman in that and say, we know how to cure you. And they're putting out cigarettes on his back and such, like, and, you know, Bob Armington was telling me how he, you know, he put together a package just for these guys. And he said, we weren't teaching them to be the greatest divers. And we were just teaching them enough so they wouldn't come up and copper really bad bend. But yeah, it's, you know, the old shellfish stuff, you can see it. Yeah, I've dived off Honduras. I think Utila is off Honduras or Honduras. And one of the things I came across was local divers. Yeah, they had the umbilical air, you know, going up to the boat. Yeah, surface applied. Yeah, that's what it is. And you and I would learn all the paddy or be exact or whatever it is. Yeah. All these stringent regulations to keep us safe. Time on, you know, bottom time, decompression time, all this. Yeah, all that sort of stuff. These guys don't know any of that. They just go down. Come in, come up there. It's interesting sort of, and it's sad as well because you like it's just ignorance, isn't it? You know, but, you know, you, you know, it's like, so you meet these great guys and you know, I met Bob and he was explaining how he did this. He was a former commercial diver back in the day when it was all sand address and everything else. He's got some great photographs of that, but you know, he explains these stories and you sort of like, you know, wow, as you see this and you do the one thing I took away. Obviously I worked as a diamond instructor. It was extremely busy for the time I was there. You know, we would quite happily be doing, it was a full time job. Whereas a lot of time instructors say in the UK and that they're not, it's not full of them out, but it was a full time job, but it's not like they're teaching sort of 10 people at a time and that were in Samui and certainly in Kotao. It was called the open water farm because, you know, all their instructors were on the maximum limit, which is eight, and then you could have another two if you got a dive master with you. So it really was quite full on and you did start seeing a few people that were sort of pushing the rules a little bit, maybe probably shouldn't be diving either purely because it just wasn't in their mindset to do it and or you could see that, you know what, it's just outright, you know, medically you shouldn't be doing this, you know, and it can't go wrong. Yes, yes, it's interesting and there's also a noticeable difference between when you dive as a qualified diver and when you go out on a training dive. The training dive, you've got your dive instructor and your dive masters. So basically, you've kind of looked after as much as as much as possible, but I died once on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia and I'll tell you what, they couldn't throw us off that boat fast enough. It was quite clear they wanted us in the water, get out, let's go home. Yeah, that's horrible when you meet that. I found that in the Red Sea. I want to know, let me rephrase, certain boats you went on in the Red Sea, I really got the impression that, you know, that some of the instructors, and I think a lot of them, if I'm honest, they were sort of technical divers, which is a bit more, it's a one-up from your standard sort of diver, if you like, and they, you could see their heart wasn't in it and they just wanted to go home. They just wanted to get in the water, there you go, swim around, right, we're getting out. And I remember once diving off a place with Thomas Reef and I swear to God, it looked like the water was boiling, there was that many bubbles there and there were so many divers and in the end, I remember we come across and I'm just following the eyes of this guy, losing the will to live because it was just come along everyone, follow me sort of thing, underwater. And then another group come from the other side and I swear to God, all I could think of, it looks like thunderball. It was all these divers coming across each other and it was just, my God, you know, and sometimes I think there's a lot of people who pay some really big money for this and I understand it's a great, you know, if anyone ever wants to go dive, the Red Sea is fantastic. But sometimes you do think, you know what, sometimes the guys just put that little bit more effort in and look like you, you know, you enjoy it and people will enjoy it themselves. But on the flip side, I also met a couple of fantastic instructors out there, I really did, that really made it worthwhile and made the entire, you know, every dive was a joy and I think that's a, as part of the skill, I think, of being a recreational diving professional, whether you're a dive master or instructors, you've got to realize these, you know, the people that go there are not, you know, special forces, rebreather divers, they're not, we're not going to go and stick limpid minds on battleships, we're not going to go and drill for oil, we're just going to bum around and just have fun and enjoy it. And I think some of them do tend to forget that from time to time. But, you know, others don't and there's some great people in the industry that really are, you know, and they've all got experiences and such and you meet so many different people across the board. I mean, we had one of our instructors, Berge, she's from, and that's one of the things that you do, I did love about it. I mean, second to being in the Army, I'd say it was one of the best jobs we've ever had, being a dive instructor, working on the boats, absolutely loved it. And, you know, you literally, you know, people sort of say to me there, you know, said, where did you used to work? I was, well, have you seen the movie, The Beach? Yeah, there. That literally not the books are the real one, because it was over the other side where it was set. But you've got to meet so many different people from all over the world and all different walks of life. And I remember one of the guys, Berge, one of the instructors that we had over there, she was, she was cracking instructor, but she only did life half the year, the other half the year in the sort of winter months, she went back to Austria as a skiing instructor. And it's like, you know, when do you meet people like this? It's just fantastic, what a life to have, you know, six months teaching skiing, six months teaching diving. It's absolutely superb to me. Yeah, I met a surfer in Nicaragua, I think we're in Nicaragua. And we hitchhiked out to this surf beach and people were just like camping on the beach. I think there was one cabana there or, you know, like rustic backpackers. And this guy, he just, he washed dishes in Europe in the winter so he could just snowboard. He said, Chris, you rock up in the morning, you wash your dishes for an hour and a half, then you get the day off, you got to go back in the evening. He said, you all get a free, because you're staff in the resort, you all get a free lift price. And he snowboard all winter. And then he surf all summer. I mean, what's not to love about that? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's part of the old sort of lifestyle that you do get. It's one of those sorts of things that you'll always remember some of these characters that you bump into across the board. I always remember talking to things like that. We met a very good, good guy, came work when we were working in a chamber in Samui, a guy from Serbia, Carter, Luba, and he chats away and really well spoke and everything else. He said, well, you know, I'm learning to be a dynamist and hopefully I'll become a diving instructor so I can, you know, get a good job and earn good money. So what is it you did back in Europe? He said, I'm a doctor, a doctor of medicine. I was like, what earth are you doing? He was just saying, where I am, it's just not worth being a doctor. So he just bend it and went out to co-co-tow and did it there. And another, what a great guy, you know, took it upon himself to learn Thai and he learned Thai fluently in something like four months. And I was just blown away by how intelligent this guy and he was the loveliest fellow you'll ever meet. And, you know, and of course the thing was, he was a doctor so he was not an idiot. He was not thick. He was super bright, you know, but you couldn't help but go, wow, you just come to be a diving instructor sort of thing. Fantastic sort of stuff. Yeah, did love it. Yeah. Yeah. I'm very fortunate really. I think I've dived in many places around the world now. I'll tell you a funny story though. I first started scuba diving in the Marines. Yeah. One of the lucky things about the forces is they paid for it all. Yeah. We were trained by Navy divers and it was all done through BISAC. Yeah. I mean, it's that same way I do their engineers. I was junior leaders in Dover and my first diving proper diving was off the Island of Man. You know, we did an expert there. Great fun. Next we're up and, you know, we would have known that years later that I've got the opportunity to go away and become an instructor in it. You know, and I think it's a real eye open as you get to see some fantastic stuff. You know, and I always remember taking a guy, we took a student diving and I'll never forget this. First dive, I took this guy out, open water one, took him out and I said, right, the big thing about the first open water dive, doing the paddy system, the first open water dive is we just want you to go diving. You're not going to go really deep. You're not going to do any skills or anything. We just want you to go dive. We do skills with the other on the surface, but it's just, this is like an introductory dive. That's it. We took this guy, we jumped in the water and it was a place called sail rock. It was crystal clear. It was gin clear. You could see the bottom 40 meters down and we're sort of swimming around looking for bits and pieces. And then, lo and behold, the biggest whale sharks swim past. And of course, everyone tries to keep up with it and you're not going to do it. You know, you see these things, the nature programs and whatever else, it's all gliding along with a lovely slow towel. You try keeping up with that thing. That thing's motoring, I'll tell you. And this guy sort of swimming around and he was like, oh, what are you thinking of that? That was superb. And yeah, yeah, it was great. And all I could think of is, well, you first ever dive, you see probably his largest whale shark out there, pretty much all downhill from now, mate. You know, I mean, you've topped out early. But you know, it was one of the things that's the beauty of it. You never know really what you're going to come across when you're under water. I'll give you a hundred quid. If you can guess what the first animal I saw on my very first dive was. And we're talking underwater now. We're back on, we're back. We're above a sand implements. It's February. You can see something out there there. And we're in wet suits, right? Yeah. Although I will say back, back when you're young, these, they weren't even five mil, I think they were well thicker than that. They did the job. They have a proper rubber looking thing as well. Do you have a bug seal on the ABLJ? Like a Michelin man. But we went out, it was such murky conditions that, and I've never done this before. I'm not saying this is normal, but we were roped to the dive instructor. Me and another boot neck with the Matlow in the middle. And we were roped together just so no one got lost. And we sunk below the surface, started thinning out. And all three of us, I'm guessing everyone reacted, we just stopped because there's this animal swimming underwater towards us. I'll give you a hundred pounds if you can guess what it was. If you tell me it's a cat or something like that. Oh, you're very close. It's a rabbit. A rabbit. A rabbit, right? And so what obviously it had fallen off the cliff and drowned. But underwater, it was moving like this. Yeah, it looks like it's swimming. It's paws were going, and the three of us just, we went under, started thinning, and the three of us just went, we all just stood up again. And the dive master put his hand out and lifted it went, it's a rabbit. It's some great stuff. Things you find underwater. I remember the first one I, my old boss told me the story, Harry was swimming back to the boat, and he said, we're just going to swim along the bottom and he's swimming back to the boat. And then like he come across this, this, this little wreck of a boat. This is great. And it, hang on, it's done off look like our boat. The boat had sunk when it got out. Something had gone wrong and there was a fire on board and so it had gone out and the boat had just sunk. And he's gone, oh that was found in a new wreck. He's a real, he was on a boat. Griff, were you out there for the tsunami then? I actually got back, see that's just the interest of the, because I got back to the UK, because I was boxing day 04. And I was back in the UK for that time. I was actually in the UK at the time. But still obviously we had, you know, we still had a lot of friends in that. And I knew the guys at the hyperbaric chamber in Phuket. And we were speaking to them guy, we, you know, we run them up as soon as they happen, we run out, you guys okay. You know, and they said, and you could hear it in the back down, everyone's a bit sort of panicked and whatever else. And I remember they were saying, everyone is going to the beach there to try and see if they can help. And I don't know anything about tsunamis like most people did at the time, but then it just come on the BBC news that, you know, it said, you know what, it's literally just happened. And the worry is that, you know, you can have more is never just one is more of them. And this guy saying, you know, probably more. And I remember saying on the phone to this, this, this secretary at the time, I don't think that's a good idea. I think you should probably get away from the beach for a while. You know, because there's one thing I remember that happened. It was on the news incredibly quickly. Because we were, you know, quite late in the day. I can't remember what it was, but I remember it was actually up. And it came on the late news or something. And I remember sort of buddy, we're going to have to give them a call. No, they were all right. But interestingly enough, that that doctor who was talking about, he was over in in Calac at the time. And I said, So what was you doing? And he was saying that he just spent most of the day just picking bodies up. And he actually was the guy that resuscitated or attempted to resuscitate the King's, I think it's the King's grandson or something like that. Unfortunately, passed away. But he actually tried, he did end up doing CPR on him for that. And I know that a lot of the divers were brought in, just recreational divers to sort of recover bodies and things like that, which is, you know, it's one of these things where I know people can go, Yeah, we'll go and do this. But from my experience, you know, I've always said to them, you know, try to keep away from that, because it's not really what you do. You're a recreational diver. And you do get, people can get a bit over excited. We had a, there's a wreck off of Kotal called the unicorn. And at the time we, this is before then, you know, it was used for technical diving, because it's quite deep. So they'd go and do technical diving. And there was a guy that he just finished his, this is how he had just brought out their deep tech diver, and he just finished his course. So he arranged to go out and do a tech dive on the unicorn with a buddy. And apparently on the guy, a really great guy knows the area. Well, Gary Hawks, who was our DMC on the islands. And that's, you know, we, the guy's got him through a hole. We just say, just don't ever go in and he's gone in and he's got stuck. And his buddies had to come up and leave him there. And as he's coming up, he's seen his bubbles rise up through the ascent line. And until he stops, which, you know, you think, that's a horrible thing to think. You know, you literally the moment you may not see him, you know, the moment he was over. And after that happened, we, people get, because we were, by that time, we'd sorted out the engine diver evacuation service and everything else. So people were sort of, we were the first called people to ask us what we're going to do about it and whatever else. We just said, like, you know, we'll, we'll speak to the police, which we did. And they said, well, we can't do anything about it. It will be down to the Navy. And the Navy said, you know, generally speaking, we wouldn't look to do that, but I believe later on, they did. And when we reported back, a lot of guys on the islands on the hotel, the rockers, it's called, were saying, you know, maybe we'll go in and get him out. And it was, I remember McGarry was saying that a guy turned up at the, the DNC station, saying, you know, we've got a dive master here. He's quite small. We think he can get in there and pull this guy out. You're like, you're a dive master. You're not a, you know, you may have gone and done a rescue dive, of course, but this, this is something different. This is not what you're, you're trying to do. And the risk is enormous. And you could probably get in there and get stuck, even if you, if you do, you know, you're going to pull this guy out. That's a, it's one heck of a job to do in its own right. And it's not, you know, so we just said, we wouldn't advise it at all. It's, you know, I know you may think you can do it, but always remember, I think it's probably something, being ex-forces, you sort of saw the line, you saw where it was, because everyone that worked in that chamber on Samui, we really was an ex-forces lot. We, you know, we was, me, Rob, Rob Armit, he was a guy, Chris Espin, ex-Rimi, it was Dave Covey and Bobby Keenall, two ex-infantry guys. You know, so we sort of knew, we put that military way of thinking towards things. And, you know, the military way of thinking is, is you're, you're taught how to do something to the point where that is it. And then at that point, someone else will take over and do it because it's not your job. And, and I think, you know, the, the, the recreational guys, the, the dive masters at the time, I think they've, you know, it's a great title, dive master, maybe it makes me a little bit invincible. And it was just, right, isn't worth it. I know you've got your tech ticket and all this sort of stuff, but it's, it's not what you do. It's very highly specialized. And one of the guys that work with this, also Ben Remnants, really well-known cave diver as well, which is another very high-ended specialized type of diving. I must admit, not for me, but, but Ben was actually roped in to help out with the rescue of the scorpions. I was going to come on to that. Before we do, though, we, we had a situation down in Antarctica. I don't know if you might have heard me mention this and one of them, I have a podcast, but the, one of the girls in my dive team drowned on our, on our very first dive. And it was, it was like the other side of the coin. There was no communication, right? No. Just heard the, the Gemini revving its engine. So the distress signal, right? So you, you got a surface. We didn't have to decompress because it was only, we're only in like five meters. And I think we'd only been down like 10 or 15 minutes or something, right? And so I get up and hand my kit off to the guy in a boat that wasn't even like, really, like a, they're not really dive masters. They're like the tour guide, but they're, they're a diving instructor trained and the Gemini trained and all this kind of stuff, right? Anyway, so I hand my kit off, got in a boat, my dive partner, Ozzie Chat, Matt, hello, mate. Was already in the boat. I'm like, Matt, what, what, what's going on? I was just, there was no communication, right? And it was only then that he points at the Japanese chat and went, eat him. His partner's gone missing. And I was like, oh, nothing worse. Well, oh, mate. Yeah. So you should mention Antarctica. I had just seen this girl though, Griff, right? I mean, I was kissing up next to her on the boat. I saw her go in. I started to see them struggle, blah, blah, blah. But my point is they pulled all the divers out the water and we're only in five meters, took us all back to the expedition ship. Then we stood there on the, on the quarter deck thingamajig looking at the, you know, the, the Gemini, which is still one of the Gemini's was still out there and people are going, I hope she's all right. And you're like, she's not all right. She's, she's dead. She's been underwater like 20 minutes now, right? You know, sorry to break it to you, but this girl ain't coming back. And then it was like 50 minutes before they got the rescue diver in the Gemini to go back out there. And this, I mean, there's no disrespect at all. The rescue diver was like a 21 year old biology student, right? And no disrespect to her. I'm sure a diver was much better than mine, but you had me in a boat and I'm a rescue because I did bees that you do the rescue diver bit. You had one chap who was a cave diver. He's used to going down with all the, the special gases and air, squeezing through gaps like this. And that's what he did. The other guy, Lynn owned his own dive shop, right? Yeah, all this experience in the boat. And actually now they snorkel those kids. And rather than say, right, guys, just chuck your snorkels in and see if you can find her. You know, just get, just snorkel, right? And this is not, I'm not, I'm not criticising anyone. I'm just saying it for the sake, because we're having this conversation Griff. It's easy in hindsight, but it was a little bit like, oh, something serious has happened. Let's get the kids out the way. We'll, and it was like, no, we're listening to what you do. Yeah. I mean, it's very similar because first thing we're going to say on Antarctica, when I came back to the UK, we treated a diver in London and she had come from, um, um, as British Antarctic survey. And she was actually there when, I don't know if you heard about the, the, the young girl that was attacked and killed by a leopard seal. Yeah, I did. Yeah. And she was saying, she was actually drowned this thing. She said, she was sad. She was a great, great girl and everything. But she was quite small. And that's what I think. And this, this leopard seal grabbed her and took her down. And, uh, she said that, you know, they, they, they did get a bite. He did let it go by then, you know, see that. But apparently, I think, I think she had a dive computer on, but it, it's taking her down some, some depth. And I think it's, it's very natural when you go, you know, that critical thinking that he's needed in an emergency. And I, you know, I've worked with the ambulance service and all sorts since, since, since getting back from Thailand. It's not in most people. And I think you get, you'll get organizations that feel that because we're in charge of this, then we are the best people to deal with this. And because it doesn't happen, they don't really prepare that well. I mean, when, when we had the boats, uh, in Samui, one of the things, the first things we did, when I winded up being in charge of the boat master, one of the first things I did, I said, there's going to be a standby diver on the boat ready to go in at all times. And he, he doesn't go diving. And everyone thought I was nuts. We thought about it. He could have taken me down. So no, we'll split up into the groups, do whatever the instructor, but there'll be a tallyboard down. Uh, and this standby diver, he's the safety guy. He's in, he's ready to do it. He logs people in and he logs them out. And, and, you know, and I remember one of the great guy, uh, uh, Paddy Adam, uh, really good, good friend of one of these still lives out there. He had just passed his dive master course and he was about to start working. And we said, first day, you're going to be the standby diver because we trained him through, uh, you know, you're going to be in your kit, your kit's ready, your air's on, you're in your wetsuit, you got your master, your fins are on the back. If someone needs it, you know, you've got all the rescue kit, but ultimately you can get in the water very quickly. You know, and you, you've, you've not been diving. So if you need to go down to the bottom and pick someone up, you can. Uh, and that was, you know, I remember, you know, people sort of let, well, what you're doing this that, and I always remember his first day on that boat, he was in the water three times. First day, you know, pulled three people out of the water and it was not uncommon for us to, to pull people out, out in the water, especially, uh, bless their art. You get the, what they call the boat boys on the bigger boats and, and quite often they come from, you know, middle of Thailand, there is no sea, there's no water or nothing. And I always remember you, you get them on the boat and then the skipper has to be a halfway between sort of the island of coast and me and copangang and you start talking to each other. You knew what you were saying. Can you swim? And this, you know, they always do the same thing. They just go, that's it. Sort of half shake of the head. And, uh, the next thing, you know, the revs come off and he's like, oh my God, he's going to drown him. You know, and in the end it's like, hey, he's trying to tell him how to swim. And in the end, one of us has got to go and pull this guy out. He's forever grateful to you. But yeah, that, that happened more than once. But it's one of these things where people are very shocked. And I think you, you do get, when you look at, you know, there's the psychology of it, there is this moment of, you know, unless it's, it's trained around into you that you will have a shop where you won't do anything. Cognitive paralysis is the proper name for it. We're just going to sit there and you don't do it. I think a lot of people do. They just can't believe this guy's just been thrown in, you know, yet the dive officers are ready. Oh, he's done it again. In they go, sort of, you know, grab him. And of course they, they're actually violent. They're quite proficient at pulling soggy people out of the water sort of thing. You know, so, but it is one of those things where you do tend to see that people with all good intentions and all good ideas, but they don't really prepare for it. They don't practice for it. They're not mentally ready for it. They've just sort of like, well, you're in charge. So you're in charge of an emergency. And that, you know, just because you're in charge of that doesn't mean you're going to be any good at that. You know, and it was, you know, and I always remember that when they thought I was mad when I said, one of your dive masters stand on the boat and doesn't go in. No, that's the whole point of it. He is there to make sure everyone's in. And everyone, you know, but I think after a while a lot of the guys, you know, did start seeing the benefits of it. And they said, all right, we guess your army, barmy and whatever else. But it was, you know, they did start seeing when they saw the proof of the pudding when, you know, a few of us had gone in because we were ready to move very quickly and pull people out. I think they saw the benefits of doing it that way as it were and preparing, not just writing down a plan, so there you go, there's an emergency plan, but actually going, let's practice this thing. Let's actually think this through and put things in. I mean, we used to have a tally board where we would actually log people in and out. And we'd go right, what time you're going in, you're going in, and it's all the guy on the bed. It wasn't, you know, the first thing you'd say was how long you're going to be. And they go, you know, 45 minutes or whatever. And then you'd say, okay, we're going to give you an hour from the moment you step off the back deck and the time. And we used to say, just remember, after an hour, you're not late, you're missing. And it was little things like that that made people, okay, go and enjoy yourself. But remember that, you know, there's, because people do sort of worry about, because especially there's nothing worse than losing your student. It's, oh God, hard to go through the roof if you're bloody, your student goes missing. I remember taking a group down on off-co-town who's a group of four. God knows why I've got, it's getting a little bit choppy, but on a little ledge and I'm doing some skills with them. And I'm turning around to one. I remember we had to, we was practicing the seas at controlled emergency swimming ascent. And you've got a line, I've tied the line off and it only goes up five minutes. So I've got a hold of this guy and he starts to go up. And as he starts to go up, the corner of my eye, and as he went up, he choked on something, or he choked on something, couldn't remember what it was, but had to calm him down. And as I'm looking at him, just literally off the side of my mask, I just saw to the edge, because I went like that. And as I turned my head, I'm just seeing that I call this, the other student I had, just slowly turning over, rolling to one side, and then just swam off and followed another group. And I've got this guy there and I've got the other guy who just couldn't control his buoyancy. And I thought, I just don't believe this is happening to me. I've got a hold of two guys. And this, this third one just turned around and swam off. And oh, God, you know, it was one of the first times when quite a new, new instructor, a boy to dive. And then I had to go up to him and say, lost one of these students. Horrible, horrible, horrible feeling. Absolutely horrible. That must happen a lot, Greg. Because I've been down there, you know, doing sports diving. And when you get the two groups come together, there's a moment there where you don't realise it's two groups. You just think it's your group. And oh, yeah, that's exactly what happened. And suddenly if you look around and you can't see anyone from your group, but you can still see these people, it's kind of clamped in to be like, well, I don't want to be down here on my own. I'm going to fuck. Well, just, yeah, weird. It does happen. I think the key thing that happens quite a lot with, with trained divers, you know, as we said, really in the one in the Red Sea, the two groups of divers come past you end up following the one group. But speaking as an instructor, I just remember my heart was in my mouth. And I just, you know, do I let these guys up and then go and grab him? No, it's probably not a good idea. Because one of them is choking, you know, once all over the place. And, and, and you should have, oh my God, this is just the worst feeling in the world. Because don't forget, and, and I've had to explain this to diving doctors as well, when they sort of go to around and say, well, you know what, you shouldn't be diving with someone who's not trained. We're diving instructors. That's all we dive with. We dive with people that aren't trained. That's the whole point of it. But you have these people, they're not trained. I suddenly just swims off, you know, oh my God, you know, it's, it is a, it's a horrible feeling to have. It really is that it's just, and it's like, you know, and the guy just come back. Oh, yeah, great time. He thoroughly enjoyed it, you know, my God, I just want to go home and go to bed after this. It was, you know, it was worst feeling ever, you know, but it happens. And it's, you just take it as a learning thing. I mean, that was very early on as an instructor, you know, you take that head and you learn more, you get better and you take it as a learning curve. Can we, can we just go back and talk about the tsunami again? Yeah. Because there were dive boats out weren't there with divers down in the water when this big wave came in? From what I, yeah, from what I understand, yeah, there was from, I mean, I suppose a lot of it is, it's dependent on how far out you were and whatever it is. I did speak to one guy a few years later, who was out there. And he sort of said it was definitely, it was quite, he seriously knows, you know, because he was under water. He was like, you know, 10 meters, 20 meters, well 20 meters, 10 meters. And I kind of held it, that happened, you know, and it was what's gone on here. And they were a bit sort of that. So, but I think generally, I think it probably wasn't as bad as for divers, I think as a lot of people probably thought it would be. But, you know, again, you know, but it must have been, it must have been if they resurfaced and their dive boat had been smashed down, right? Oh, yeah. I think the key thing is there's a lot of these, you know, how far out, I know these things have to build up and they only become huge, don't they, when they're quite close to shore. That's my understanding of these things. So, from what I gathered from it, and, you know, I may be wrong, from what I understood of it, a lot of the dive boats were further out of sea, so they're in much deeper water. And it does, out of the two, I mean, one of the things, you know, you could say, thank God, he's Andaman side, the water is quite deep, right? So, you know, but on the Gulf of Thailand, so it's actually shallow, so like 60 meters deep. So, you know, you know, and I, that's what the guy who was talking about earlier, that broke the world record, since it's been broken for the deepest scuba dive, that's where he did it in the Andaman Sea. He got down a thousand feet there. But if you look at the Gulf side, it's deepest points about 60 meters, which is, you know, grand scheme of things, not a lot. But there were deeper bits there. I think you probably get, it would have been bigger on the Gulf side if you'd been on that side, as opposed to that. But, you know, again, I think it's one of those things where you end up, because you know people in that, you end up talking to them. So, it's almost like you're a bystander, and it's the best way to describe it. It's a horrible feeling, you know, you've got, you know, you know, I've literally just come over for Christmas and whatever else. And I was going back and then, you know, I knew, you know, my time was up, but I was literally just coming over for Christmas and then going back and sorting out my affairs and coming back. But it was a horrible feeling to be there when that happened. You know, you had your friends, but it was a really good community spirit pulled together there. You know, they all, they're all really pulled together from, from what I understand. And, you know, a lot of the guys living in, in Samui and whatever and Kota were planning to, to tend over supplies and whatever else to, to Thailand, to, to Phuket and, and look how lack and all that. Yeah. So just to clarify, um, Co Samui, are we saying that's the Pacific side of the peninsula? Yeah, if you look at it, it's, it's, it's, um, a Gulf of Thailand side is Samui. So, uh, you know, you, you, it's, it's South China Sea going up that side. So they were all sheltered from the tsunami then? Yeah, because that's on the other side. So they didn't, it didn't affect them. So because, you know, on the other side of the Andaman Sea, because, you know, he's in the ocean, you know, whereas the Gulf of Thailand on the other side, he's a very small isthmus, isn't it? Yeah. Very small itself. I mean, you can drive across in about three or four hours from one side of Thailand to the other on that thinnest part. Um, my understanding is from what Gary and the guys were saying on Kota, that they'd all club together and started raising money. And, and the biggest thing they needed apparently was water, fresh water. So they were sending, you know, crates and crates of bottled water, uh, across to the other side at the time of it. So, um, you know, but it's, you know, being as it were, you know, you're just hearing all your, about your friends that you want to know, you know, he signs, okay, he signs, okay. He was over there. Oh God. And they all, okay. And, uh, you know, I remember speaking to Lou with a doctor when he, his story was just incredible. He said, you know, he went on to cowlack and he just said, which is full of bodies. And I, I remember saying to him, I was just like, how, how, how are you doing with that? But he, how are you? Hey, that's not a nice thing to see in typical Louber. He said, remarkably well, actually, Griff. And I was like, you know, yeah, he's, he's great guy. And he just, he, he had the mindset that he could just function. Uh, and he, he did what was needed, uh, at the time, uh, over there. Um, great bunch of guys. I mean, that's, that's the key thing is, is, you know, when you're living over there, you do overseas, you can see the nastiest side of life. Uh, and the nastiest side of living, you know, idyllic tropical island. Um, can we talk about that then because, yeah, um, you know, I'm well aware they call Kotal the deaf island, don't they? And there's all these rumors that there's the local Kotal mafia that run the place. And yeah, I think that's everywhere. A kind of disproportionate amount of backpackers have died there, haven't they? Um, I mean, I would, the first thing I would say is, is probably, yes, that there are. No, obviously we had the murder a few years ago of a couple of backpackers there. I think to be honest, we did see a lot of people die. And one of the guys I worked with Dave Covey and I, we helped out, um, on a few bits and pieces and a few repats, as well, repatriations that have more remains. Most of it, though, is it's accidents. It really is. It's accidents or, or even illness, but most of it is not the nastiest side. Um, I mean, there, there have been incidents of it and stuff like that, but it's actually, most of it is, is, is, is accidents. People are very good friend, REF chap, um, uh, Bob Ward, we worked with him, he died in his truck, so they're awful, killed in a car crash. Um, you know, uh, and that was, you know, it's heartbreaking, but it's, it's what it is. You know, most people are, you know, it's accidents. And when, when we, we developed this injured dire evacuation service to serve the three islands and we set it up and we managed to get, um, two local boats on board, we kid them out, blue lights, everything. They said, look, there'll always be one ready, no matter what. So if you need to, and it was literally just outside, we had the docs, we had the DMTs, we could over we go. But we also got in quite well with the world-type police and we got access to the helicopter, the Suratani, and great bunch of guys, absolutely fantastic. And I, I always remember feeling a bit bad because you do live in these places, you think of, you know, corruption, everything else. And when they say, you know, you know, we can help you out, we can evacuate, right? How much do you want? What do you want? Nothing. It's, it's our job, don't be. And I felt a bit embarrassed, you know, that I've seen even sort of mentioned it, and these guys were fantastic. So we had the ability to, to evacuate and we set it up for, for divers. Um, and the reason we set up the helicopter was because he said, look, you know, we can, we can fly up at very low level when we can be there and back in sort of 30 minutes. And we were like, okay, we'll make use of that. And of course, because we could do that, most things are not diving related. So we used to end up evacuating a lot of people that were quite seriously ill or had had an accident. Can you give us some examples, Griff? My guests tend to skirt the gory stuff. And I think it's what people probably be interested to. Yeah, I'm guessing lots of motorcycle or scooter accidents. Yeah, that was the worst one we had actually was, was a motorcycle accident. And it's not just that it's not wearing helmets. And it's wearing things to give you a newfound understanding of why you have a helmet on. We evacuate one guy. I remember we got the shout and it's not something we normally do. And again, Louis was on the island with Gary. And we got the shout and they said, look, can you come over? It's a mercy mission, as we said. So we were not, we, we could, we had a funding place to sort of, we could go over there and not charge anything, you know, the hospitals do whatever they did. And basically, these guys, full on, he's driven his motorbike into a concrete well, face first into the concrete well. So we said, okay, and then we'll get the helicopter. Of course, we ring up and the guy said, it's being serviced right now. Oh, God. And I said, look, we'll crash out on the boat. That's the best thing we can do. So we got a team, crashed down the boat, you know, hour and 20 minutes down, something like that. We're on co-tel. And we got there. And then as, as we're there, you could see it was not well gully. He was quite seriously injured. He was some pretty horrific head injuries that he had. And as we got there, we, we, I got the phone call because, you know, you get that there's no phones reception, then you get to co-tel, there is phone reception. And that was when our secretary, we stood around and said, look, the helicopter is not ready, but the Air Force can come and get you. And the thing we had is the doc was there saying, look, you know what? We, if we put him on that boat on the way back, he was really worried. He was so rough. He said, you know, with that sort of head injuries, it could, it could kill him. And, and so we, we managed to get the helicopter to come over and pick us up. And it's, you know, and this really was a, you know, the Vietnam here up here, a Huey come in and we sort of packed him up. And then the guys, you know, kudos to these guys as well, because these guys are, you know, we can do it as an exercise will do it. And, you know, and they just came out, they came out with a team and they'd, they'd taken these two seats in it in the old bell two, one, two, it's not human. I remember the guy said, no, it's not Huey. It's a bell two, one, two, two sets of seats. What they did is they'd taken one set of sea out and they had the other set on this side. And there was three guys sat there. One of them was a photographer, because he wanted to take pictures of the first step and rescue these guys had done. So, you know, he's sort of taking pictures of the helicopter landing co-tel. These helicopters have never been to co-tel. So, he spent the time looking around, looking for the helipad. And there isn't one, it's just like a clearing. And there's me sort of like, you know, you know, trying to march them in. And we found as you get this guy in and we just loaded this guy up and flew him back. And on the way back, we contacted the hospital on Samui and the trauma surgeon there said, look, send him straight, go straight to the mainland and get him there. I remember we dropped him off, literally the helicopter went straight in. We got to the trauma center at Suratani. The docks took him straight in. I think he went straight into to have surgery. And we sort of left. But it was, you know, sadly, a few days later, he did die. But I always remember Gary, who, the diabetic on co-tel, who without doubt, probably ended up being one of the most experienced diabetics in the world working there. I think he did his DMT course in Plymouth. And then within the six months that he was there, he'd used every single skill that taught him on that course over for real. It was, you know, so very experienced guy, great guy. And he said that the family had spoken to him and they'd come over. And they came over and saw Gary, I spoke to him on phone. They said, you know, thanks for everything you've done, although we've lost him, you know, you gave us the chance to actually say goodbye because from what the doctor's saying, you should never have survived the accident at all. So, you know, you look at it like that and you think, oh, you know, there by the grace of God, go I on this sort of thing. But you're also looking and going, wear and help me, you know, stuff you just don't think of. And the other thing that you used to see as well is you forget that it's not free. Health care over there, you know, he's not free. And the amount of times we used to treat divers and they never had insurance, you know, oh my God. Or you get people with we evacuate a guy. You should one of these people just go home and go back to Sweden. I think he was wrong. Because we, he was in a motorbike accident and we, we evacuated him from the hotel, got him back and he was patched up in the hospital. We sent him back. And in about a month later, we get a call seriously, a dull mouth on the hotel, come and get him. So it went up and got this guy. And the doctor saying, you know, he's got some sort of infection, we don't know what it is. And of course they got back and the guy was tight that Singapore and our internal historians, he's got scrub typhus. How the hell does he get something like that? And it was just one of these things. And you were looking at, you know, you're like, how lucky is he that he had insurance? And so many others that you think about it, his mate didn't. And his mate was still both things happen. And you're like, well, what if it had been you? You know, you did see that, like say, the nastiest side of life over there. We did discuss that probably one of the saddest things we got involved with, it was by chance, it was quite a riffy chance. There was a young Irish lad when he was over there was murdered. He was actually murdered outside my front door. And I got the phone call from now my wife, she's my girlfriend, so I'm sure that can you, can you pop back some of the terrible's happened? There's a dead foreigner in her house. What do you mean in her house? Just come home. And I said, I said, probably an accident just outside on the road. And she seen something like that. And I got there and there's already the police van there. And, you know, it's not like you see over in the UK where it's sealed off for miles. Now I literally walked all the way up to my house and crying out loud. There's this poor guy laying on my step on the front step of my house. And I'm looking down at home and there's blood everywhere, clerical over the place. And you could see this guy, his throat been seriously cut. It was a horrific wound. And you could see he was gone. And we were there and the police are sort of there. And I'm like, this is surreal, you know, by rights, the police are going, should be on your bike, son, you know, with, you know, we're just that a murder. And I said, can I come see my wife? Yes, I just walked around this, this poor chap and gone out house to see her house. So let's get out the back. We got out of the back, walked around the front and then the pandemonium went, went crazy. And the guy that killed him walked out the jungle. And they said, that's the sort of police just grabbed him, put him in the back of the truck. And I could see he was a westerner. And I, you know, because we work with the embassies and whatever else, I thought, you know, we'll, we'll do that normal bit. And we work with Dave Covey. And we heard he would, you could hear in his voice, he was a Brit. And so I said, so what's your name? And I still remember his name. His name was Robert South. We said, where are you from? And he went South Indian Essex. And I thought, my God, he lives about eight miles from where I come from. And after that, they took him away. And it was just very bizarre. Of course, the guy that was killed, his two friends were there, just numb. And it was going back to this, you know, they're not coyote for this. But, you know, I said, you know, we'll sort you out. So I, you know, I, the police arranged for this chap to be taken to the, to the Natal Hospital and whatever else. And they're going, now what do we do? So we need a contact. So I ended up chasing down the embassy in that. And the thing was, is there was no Irish embassy in, there's no Irish embassy in Thailand. And I don't think there was one in Malaysia, but there was an honorary consul in Malaysia. I remember speaking to him. And then, because we deal with insurances, we spoke with, we managed to track down this guy's insurance and got his remains repatriated back to Ireland. And I remember just after doing it, I got a phone call. And it was his aunt just sort of thanking us for, for doing what we did, because the other two lads were completely, you know, numb. You're not going to, you know, fancy seeing that. It's going to sliver you for, you know, it lives with me to this day, because he's something horrific like that. God knows for all those things. Why did the lad kill him? Did you ever find out? Um, my understanding was, if I'm honest, if you, if you look it up, it's in, it's in the newspapers and whatever else, you know, historically. But it was over, I think it was over a girl. He'd had an argument over a girl. And this guy took a, obviously, a severe dislike, dislike into it. But it was literally like a bit of a lover's tiff. But it was, you know, to end like that was, was, was horrific. And you, and you sit there and do you, do you have any idea where you're going to be for the rest of what could be your short life? Because at the time, Thailand still, still has the death penalty, but at the time then the method of execution was firing squad. So people were sort of saying, you know, they might put them up against the wall and shoot it for this one. Um, and you kind of think, do you think of all the pain you have put everyone through your own family, you are going to suffer this poor guy, you, you've, you've murdered, and he did do it. The way he was, he did it. He knew he did it. He said he did it in the back of the truck. Um, wow, for, for what? You know, and there was no, you could not say that it was in any way, you looked at this guy, there's no way I could see it. It was self-defeated. It was, it was a proper kind of assassination. You just by the wound, one wound straight across his throat. Uh, and you can see how deep it was. Uh, horrific, you know, for what? You, you, you know, lunatic. And I, you know, I remember sitting in the back of the police truck sort of smirking and, and, you know, all the crowd are going around. I remember one of them, because he's handcuffed, one of these guys is sat around and sort of, you know, jokingly feeding, pouring coke down his face. And he's like, thanks a lot, mate. And all this, you know, like, Jesus, you have, you know, I don't, you know, I think he was in shock himself. You know, you realize what you've done, son. You know, it's all over for you. Right. Um, so, so, yeah, but we did that, that as a, the repack. Did you ever find out what happened to him? I mean, I've tried to find, I don't, I, I do believe, I don't think they did pass the death sentence on him or anything like that. I, what, you know, outside of that, I don't know. I know he got quite a significant prison sentence. But outside of that, I couldn't tell you. I wouldn't know. Going back to the, the decompression chamber. Yeah. So I guess we should do two things. We should explain to people that are listening what, what the bends is and why it's so dangerous and how you get it. And then could you expand upon like how many people like say a month you deal with and, and how did they get into that situation? Yeah. Um, well, first of all, for those that don't understand what decompression sickness or decompression illness or the bends is, um, it is the buildup of bubbles in the blood and tissues that actually cause damage by being blocking blood flow and damaging, uh, nerves and whatever else and dependent where these bubbles get trapped is dependent on how severe it is. The best way to describe what it is from a physics perspective is if you open up a bottle of Coke or something like that, you see all the bubbles that that's basically what decompression is sickness is doing to yourself. The key thing that we say is, is that believe it or not, most divers that come up will have bubbles, but we call them silent bubbles because they don't actually do any harm. Um, but every now and again, you know, some people, the bubbles will get stuck and that's when you get symptoms. And if I'm honest, the vast, vast majority of the divers we saw, their symptoms were relatively mild. But because we had quite over there, we, Phuket did about 60 per year. Um, we did about 50 the year at the time, which was actually quite high for a lot of places. But not only that, we had some of the worst cases of decompression. We would quite happen. We, I remember the two worst we'd treated was in the space of one week. And we ended up with doctors all over the world wanting to know how we, we did this because that they'd both come to the serve. They basically done the worst thing in diving that you can do, held their breath, came straight up. And due to the physics, the lungs expanded, they got a pulmonary baritrauma as it's called blood. These gas bubbles were forced into arterial blood and they basically got an air bubble in their brain. And that happened twice in one week. And both people arrested. And, you know, we got, one of the guys, I remember he was brought back on the boat by one of the diamond instructors, I know, he lives in Plymouth now, brought him back, you know, healing hands Allen. Yeah, he, he, he said, did he CPR and managed to bring him back. And, and we got these guys in the chamber. And I remember sitting in that chamber for six and a half hours, bagging this guy, we'd rigged up the, an Ambu bag, the old bag you see him when they were starting to take a bit, rigged up that with, with oxygen going in through our chamber system. And, and I'm pointing on to what's known as an endotracheal tube. And between myself and the doctor, we bagged him for six and a half hours, seven hours, I think extended to table six. But yeah, we bagged him for, for that long. And he got quite a few treatments. But that's the worst case. Most are sort of numb, tingly things, but you also get the cases that's in between where they come up and they can't walk, they can't move or they can't feel. They say statistically, they say it's around one, one in 7,000. And yeah, I'd say it's probably around what, but again, you know, how accurate is that? Who knows. So are these people that, for whatever reason, have not done the correct decompression stops on their way back up? No. Do you know what most of them did wrong? Nothing. Most people you find that actually do get decompression sickness, we saw. A lot of it was factors more akin to dehydrated and they've gone diving, which is a common, we used to actually see when you had the full moon party on coprain game, we used to see an influx the next day, because they go and do the full moon party, then go diving, and then come and see us. But no, most of the people that got decompression sickness, there was, they didn't do what we call the traditional violations. They did not come up too quick. They didn't hold their breath. They didn't go beyond limits or anything like that. It just, you know, and, you know, met some great doctors, and I always remember a doctor, a fantastic doctor, a real mentor for us. They're chapped by the name of Klaus Torp from the US Doctor Klaus Torp. And I always remember, he's put it to singly, he says, there's only two ways you can guarantee navigating decompression illness or the bends. The first one is don't go diving. The second one is if you do go diving, don't ever come up. Because that's pretty much out. You don't get it when you're down. You get it on the way up for the vast majority of reasons. But yeah, I'd say majority of people that got it, it wasn't because they did anything wrong. And that even went over when I came up over, again, did it in the UK for many years afterwards in London. And I think that was pretty, pretty similar as well. Most people didn't actually do anything wrong per se. You know, it was more probably been a bit too much drinking or something like that. But in the UK, a lot of it as well was they maybe got on a flight a bit too quick and flew home, which doesn't do you any good. Yeah, yeah. I was going to say the alcohol thing, because it's a funny thing, isn't it? That it's a sport where you'd think drinking drugs should be like a long way away from it. And it should be, you know, let's be honest. But because of the party lifestyle where these dive resorts are, I went down with a guy in South Africa. I think it was actually Mozambique, somewhere around Maputo. And I saw his dive shop on the beach and said, oh, can we go out? And he's like, yeah, you know, what experience have you got? I said, I'm BZAC level one. And I dived anywhere else in the world at that stage. Don't don't think I had. But anyway, and I remember him just like he puts his beer down, he's like, right, come on. Yeah, yeah. No doubt he sat on that beach all day drinking beer. And I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, you know, judging it, I reckon you probably get so used to that lifestyle that taking a tourist out diving is nothing. But yeah, I think that's some of the thing is we used to say, and I remember sometimes you get, I think the problem we had sometimes was, you know, and I empathize with them as an instructor, if your student got bent, it was awful. And you know, I was like, my students never get bent. But you know, you spent a lot of time just saying, look, this is not your fault. Just because he got bent doesn't mean you did something wrong. You know, and a lot of times, you know, we turn around and the other thing that did happen, you turn around, of course, when they go and do this diving, I mean, when you and I learn to dive, right, when they learn to dive, great, diving medical officer for medical, you know, that was what it was. But when, you know, when you learn to dive through, through Paddy, and it's, I know, I know the Puritans and all Paddy put another dollar in this and I'll be honest with you, it is a good system. It is a good system to learn. And it teaches you what you need to know. And it doesn't worry about the stuff you don't need to know. You can learn that later on. It really is a good system. I really know how to teach you. I mean, my instructor development course, one of the best courses I've ever done, I learned so much on how to teach, you know. So it is a good system. And because it's a good system, when your student or one of your divers gets paid, you do feel this severe guilt that, oh, God, what have I done here? Have I done something wrong? And it goes back to you don't have to do anything wrong. And a lot of it is to do with the guys themselves, you know, they're on holiday, they've just got here, they're party up the night before, you know, and some of them literally, you know, finish drinking. Back when I was there, when I first got over to Thailand, the bars were 24 hours or you could find 24 hours a drink. But, you know, so they go out and drink and literally put the beer down, go on the boat, which is it's not a problem to a degree, but it's when you start coming in with a hangover because you're dehydrated. If you're dehydrated, that's not a good thing. That's beyond anything else that was the main reason people got hit quite bad. But, you know, one of the worst we had that wasn't fatal, which is a paralysis, was a Canadian guy who was diving off Kotel, you know, he's advanced course, and he'd just finished the deep dive, which is it's not hugely deep. It's 30 meters, 100 feet, but he literally goes down, he looks at some cards, here's a balloon, we're going to let it go, his color changes and whatever else. He came up and he said, you know, my fingers are tingling, they feel a bit odd. And, you know, by the time they got into shore, all my legs are now numb and tingling. By the time Gary saw him, he said he's, you know, he's starting to lose it on his legs, he's losing power on his legs. And this is the way we test the power in your legs and the strength in your legs as a method of how, you know, if you become paralyzed. By the time we got him to move, he couldn't move from the chest down. And, you know, you're sitting there, he's going 25, 26, and he's saying, okay, get a little, and I remember his words, I'm getting a little concerned now. I mean, am I ever going to walk again? And he said, horrible thing when someone asks you that and you're like, oh, well, you know, and you think, I can't ask the doc because the doc will just, he won't break it too easy at all. So I remember just saying, well, give us a chance, we haven't treated you yet. But the other thing as well, the fantastic thing when you do treat these people is how quickly they can get better. And he was quite lucky because I think we did, you know, by the time he left us and we, he did get a lot of treatments with him, with us every day for about, I don't know, week to week, something like that. By the time he finished, he was walking again. And I think he had a bit of a walking stick, but for a few, for a while afterwards, he kept sending us sort of thanks notes and letters and that. And it was really nice to, he said, this is me skiing. You know, you've done something, right? If the guys got back to skiing, he said, oh, limp's gone, I jog in the morning and everything else. And it was like, you know, he's good. He's good, which is the good thing of it. But yeah, you can see that the nastiest side of it. And the downside as well is when you're working with diving doctors, of course, a diving doctor, the only time they see a diver is one that's got the bends. So as far as it is, it's the most dangerous sport out there. And you're like, you've got to realize, you've got to put it in a context, you know, for everyone you see this about, you know, he's nearly 10,000 out there. Nothing's happened to, you know, so yeah. Good to finish up our chat. Did you have any connection to the cave rescue, the children that got stuck in the cave? No, not certainly. The only, I can say what we did do when it did happen. I mean, I think everyone in these dogs was wanted to get on. Elon Musk wanted to send his special chamber thing out there. And I remember, I know the guys, there's a company called SOS HyperLite, and they actually build a portable hyperbaric chamber. And it's designed, you literally, it's inflatable. It comes in a couple of boxes and some backpacks, and it's usually scuba tanks to fill out. And I remember speaking to Paul Selby, the owner of the company, I said, you know, it might be worthwhile seeing if you guys could ship something out there. And I think he might have sort of tried to see it. But I think by then, every man in his dog was trying to help out, I think, on that job. And in reality, what they needed was what they had already out there was some really high-end experience cave divers. And I know one of the guys who worked with us in Bouquet really experienced technical and cave diver Ben Remlans. I know he went out there and helped out with it. And I think it was more, the support we were sort of looking at, it was more to do with, if something went wrong and you needed to treat someone, if you had that facility there, you could start treating it. Because you can actually, the thing is designed, you can put someone in it and pick it up like a stretcher. It's actually called a hyperbaric stretcher. You know, that's... It's bordering on miraculous that they got them all. I mean, they lost at a Thai specialist. A diver was killed. A diver died as part of that. But again, it's one of these things that, you know, you had a, yeah, there is the only people that can do that, whether people that did it. These high-end cave diver now, it's a real, it's one of these things I personally would do cave diving. It's not my thing, but I have the utmost respect for them because it's, you know, you literally are squeezing into little holes, extremely deep depth. And the sort of things that you've got to do all decompression for, I think it's probably the most hazardous form of diving I can think of. You know, if I'm honest with you, I would say it's probably, you're in more danger cave diving than you are clearance diving. And that's getting rid of unexploded bombs now. I really do think that. I think it's probably more dangerous, but absolute respect to them. It was, you know, a real unbelievable story. And my understanding is that they're looking to make a movie when I suppose it's only natural. I suppose they're going to do that. But I remember seeing one news clip and a doctor had prescribed them all a think of Valiant tablet for the, you know, for their, I think, yeah. I mean, it was interesting because obviously we were, you know, at the time it all happened and you're looking at it. And I, I literally, I just finished working at the chairman. I still knew Paul and I still knew a few doctors in the game. And I think a few of them were saying, it really is. It's uncharted. Whatever, whatever they did, I think there was very few people that could really turn around and go, look, you know, it was the wrong thing to do. You know, you would never in a million years dream of sedating someone that you think about what they're doing. You're sedating a child. You're then going to put them in breathing apparatus they've never used before to do some of the hazardous type of diving that there ever is. Oh, by the way, we're going to make you also dated to your half asleep. You just, it's just an insane concept. But, you know, these guys and the doctor that was over there was not just a diving doctor, he was a cave diver himself and a very experienced one from my understanding. So the key thing with things like that was, you know, it was a, it was a calculated risk that at the end of the day, they had to do it. They couldn't live there forever. And it was one that paid off. A lot of unsung heroes. And it's, I think it's, it really was a community that came together to pull that off. And there is, you know, obviously, the two guys actually got there. But, you know, they didn't get there on their own. It was a huge support element. I believe the US Air Force sent power rescue teams there. The cave diving community, I think they descended sort of on mass. It's not a huge community, but they're all up there doing their bit. And I think it was, it really was a team effort. When you've got that, that sort of experience, I think that's probably what made people, you know, if anyone's going to do it, we can, you know, with the, there was no point in, in sort of, shall we get this guy, they got, they were already there. The right people were already there at the time to do it. Gosh, the sense of relief just must have been, God, yeah. Oh my God, because the other side of the fence doesn't bear thinking about, does it? Yeah, yeah. It's kind of similar in a way to, do you remember the miners in Chile? He sort of had sort of that sort of vibe about it, didn't it, sort of thing. But I just always remember it from the fact that, you know, it's just sad it got a bit political in a way with, I know Elon Musk sent over, you know, or he was going to send over something. I think sounded like wires got crossed for whatever reason. And, you know, someone's taken offense to the fact that they didn't want their kit and whatever else. But, you know, it was one of these things that, you know, it was an amazing achievement. It really was, you know, unbelievable. And Griff, I should ask you what do you do now? What are you doing in the UK? When I got back from Thailand, I actually got back into doing the hyperbarics and I worked in the hyperbaric chair in London for a few years. And I ended up doing quite a few bits there and I ended up diversifying out of not just decompression. I ended up working with things like carbon monoxide poisoning. And I worked with the fantastic and unbelievably professional group of people. And when I say, well, I mean, in the loosest term, I sort of did a couple of lessons for them, lectures for them. The hazardous area response team for the ambulance service. Fantastic bunch of guys. And these are the guys that they were set up after the 7-7 bombings to be able to go into what's known as the hot zone. So any hazardous area, they're all trained to do it to an incredibly high level. One of the things they were doing was they were dealing with carbon monoxide poisoning. So we ended up working with those for a bit. That was all with the chamber. And then part of my juice is in the chamber through diving. And what I'd done there, I got into safety. And now I'm a safety consultant. So yeah, do various bits and pieces, still do the diving and still consulting in diving and diving safety and whatever. It's just purely on the safety side now. You want to give any sort of contact details or is, I mean, are you looking for like business or is that not, are we just here for a chat, is what I'm saying? Yeah, which is here for a chat mate, you know, you know, couple of x-squaddies and booties just to, you know, pull up a sandbag, swing a lantern and, you know, that's all it's about, isn't it? Well, you could have written a quick book in the last week since we spoke and then... Done it, mate, believe you or not. We could promote your book now. Done it already. Have you written one? It was an itch that I had to describe. I wrote it years ago, you can probably find it, it's called a Stimple Guide to Decompression Illness. I've read a couple other books for hyperbaric training man, it was and stuff like that. But I just, when I was in Thailand, I always remember this, too many people didn't know about this. Even at the higher end, they thought they did. And I, you know, some of you got quite sort of hairy when, you know, you were treating a guy and the instructor comes up and he wants to knock your lights out. How dare you say that my diver's been? It is. He's got, he's got the bends. He's, don't worry about it, we're going to treat him to be fine. And they took it really personally. It was like, how could he? Look at his dive computer, he's not done anything wrong and you're, oh, here we go, I've got to do this lesson now. So I just, you know what, I really want to do it. And I just put together a bit of a book and I got it reviewed by a couple of really great guys. One is the head of something called the Divers Alert Network in Australia, a guy called John Lipman and a doctor called Klaus Taub, the American guy I spoke to before. They basically went through it. Yeah, it's pretty good. And I got back to the UK approach to publisher and he said, yeah, we'll publish it. So it was more an itch that needed to be scratched because I remember saying to him, I said, look, you know what, whatever money you make of it, give it a help for heroes or something like that. It's not Harry Potter. I'm not going to be a millionaire out of it. So, yeah. Griff, listen, this has been a fascinating chart. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Yeah, all good, mate, all good. Yeah, thanks for, yeah, giving us your story. And yeah, well, you know, it's always, always good to chat to a fellow ex-serviceman. So, yeah, always great. Definitely, definitely. And to everybody at home, much love to you all. Please look after yourselves. If you can like and subscribe, that would really help the channel. And see you next time.