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The Grey NATO - 147 - Designing The Garmin Descent With Patrick Danko

Published on Thu, 10 Jun 2021 06:00:33 -0400

Synopsis

This podcast episode features a discussion with Patrick Danko, head of dive products at Garmin, about the development of Garmin's Descent dive computer series. They talk about Patrick's background, the challenges of designing a dive computer, and the unique features of the Descent line like air integration using sonar technology. The hosts also discuss ocean-themed content recommendations like a VEAR short film on urchin diving and a Rolex documentary on ocean conservation efforts.

Transcript

Speaker
James Stacey Hello, and welcome to another episode of The Great NATO. It's a loose discussion of travel, diving, driving gear, and most certainly watches. This is episode 147, and I'm joined, as always, by my co-host, Jason Heaton. We both thank you so much for listening. Jason, how you doing, man?
Jason Heaton Good, good. Back-to-back weeks. Here we are on our weekly episodes. Yeah, we did a call like a few minutes ago. Yeah, that's true. And we talked more than once today, yeah. But here we go on the weekly episodes starting in June, which is exciting stuff. Got some good feedback from folks that are also excited about it.
James Stacey And yeah, before we get too deep into the show, we have a really exciting show. I hope you ascertained a little bit of that from the title, but there's some fun stuff. I have a really dumb story to tell you in a moment. Me being dumb, the story I think is kind of funny, but I do want to say a big thank you to listener Andrew, who is the fellow who was kind enough to point out that literally none of the show notes, the links were working. Basically, everything that I had copy and pasted from SoundCloud was broken. I just wanted to apologize first for not being smart enough to think of that being an issue in the first place. And on top of that, just thank everyone for their patience. Every link should be working now. If you come across a link that's really important that you can't find otherwise, that is for whatever reason dead, whether you get this SC gate error or something else, just drop me a line, leave a comment on that episode and I'll fix it. And of course, for those of you who missed last week's episode, This is all kind of a downstream issue from us launching notes.thegrenado.com or thegrenado.substack.com, whichever you prefer, which is our brand new notes and commenting and subscription newsletter platform. So please, I'm sure we'll bring it up every episode, but the notes are now live. The system's ready to go. All the links are there. And oh, one more thing, Jason, that occurred to me is if you subscribe, That makes all of the notes after you subscribe, so kind of moving forward from now or maybe last week. But if you subscribe and let's say you use Gmail, that means that all of the notes are now searchable in your Gmail. So you could just search for the topic that we're talking about and Gmail will find it. So that's another decent reason to subscribe, even if you don't intend on reading the notes every time. If you want to go back a year later and search for it by topic, Gmail search is Google based, so it'll pick up on all the words and everything. So small pro tip there. We were able to figure it out. We would love it if you would sign up. We got more than I expected so far. We got a decent group of people subscribing and lots of comments saying people would like to support the show through that system. So we'll work our way towards that. But right now, enjoy the notes and leave a comment. Drop your questions in there if you got them. And of course, if you want a question on our upcoming Q&A, uh, record into your voice memo on your phone and then just send us the file. That would be perfect. Now that, now that I've already rambled a bunch, uh, what, what else is on the list, Jason?
Jason Heaton Well, I mean, we can't, uh, we can't overlook a second week in a row, uh, our cool new logo that got refreshed. So we forgot to mention that and all the excitement about our sub stack launch last week that, um, we have finally after, you know, what, 145 episodes, I guess, updated the, the TGN logo. We had the same one forever and, you know, served us well. We had some stickers made and some patches years ago. And, um, it was time, you know, uh, it had some, some slightly outdated, uh, GPS coordinates on it. And, uh, it was just, I was getting a little tired. So we asked a designer friend, Matt Ludvigson, who is local here, and I've worked with him before on some of the sub mechanophilia, uh, stickers and products that, that we sold. He's a real talented designer and he, he helped us refresh the TGN logo. So I, I mean, I think it looks, it looks incredible and you'll see that populating the Instagram feed and, uh, on Substack as well, as well as, uh, you know, spoiler alert, uh, some, hopefully some, some fun merchandise, uh, or products coming up in the not so distant future.
James Stacey Like we kind of said, Hey, just kind of tune this up a little bit. Yeah. And he came back and I think he went further than tuning it up. He really made it his own, but kept the spirit of it all. And, uh, I'm really happy with it. I can't wait to see it on, um, on some other items. So stay tuned to that. It should be, uh, it should be pretty fun.
Jason Heaton Yeah. Yeah. Um, it's in other news, I mean, it's hot here, you know, our, our, our weekly weather, it's, it's been like a blast furnace for the, for like a week straight. So I'm, I'm alternating, you know, hovering by the air conditioner to kind of lower my body temp and like going outside at dawn and dusk to keep the garden from shriveling up and trying to get a little exercise in the meantime. But, uh, Yeah. It's, it's well over 90 degrees every day. And today it's a little more humid, so it's fairly miserable, but you know, Hey, it's summer and that's not a bad thing.
James Stacey Yeah. We're into that sort of like hyper humid range. And I got a chuckle. I sent you a photo this morning. Uh, it's, it's something like the neighborhood knows when you and I would normally be recording a podcast because, uh, the city of Toronto decided to replace a fire hydrant across the street for me today. And I like to even all the times I talk to you about how loud it can be around here. The house is vibrating for the last two days as they dug out a fire hydrant. My, you know, my kids thought it was fantastic watching them do all this.
Unknown Yeah.
James Stacey Um, and then, uh, luckily they left just before we recorded the main sequence. And then now we're doing a really rare evening recording. It's about 6 PM and, uh, and yeah, it's also a world ocean day, which is awesome. So we're excited to have a very dive-focused topic for the main topic and the show and everything. Yeah, very exciting. But speaking of it being hot, I would like to start a new segment. Something tells me, knowing myself well enough, there'll be plenty of options for more of this in the future, but something I'd like to call, you know, there's no reason to be dumb when you're this clever with James Stacy. Today, I went to pick up, do like, you know, the curbside pickup for an IKEA order.
Unknown Yeah.
James Stacey Just some stuff for the cottage, a hot plate and some carpets, that sort of thing. I went to pick it up and as I've been doing recently, you know, they want to check ID and I just tucked it into the weather seal on my window, on the inside of my car. And then I stopped and it was like 32 or 33 degrees, crazy humidity here, right? So we're like in the high 90s. And without thinking, I rolled the window down and sent my driver's license into the metal crevice of a Jeep door. And a Jeep door is a kind of sealed unit, if you know what you're up against. So I briefly considered like, well, what would really be involved in just ordering another license? And then we were waiting at Ikea and I realized like, well, I have all the tools in the back, let's at least take the door apart. So I stripped the door, everything down to the motor. Yeah. Um, and then we were able to peel back the skin that, that seals the interior of the door where the glass would go and, uh, and, and squeeze a hand into this crevice and just barely pinch the ID and pull it out. So I'll, I'll, I'll, uh, I took a couple of pictures for posterity. I'll try and put them in the show notes. If you want to get a laugh at what the, uh, uh, a partially dismantled, uh, Jeep door and door card looks like in an Ikea parking lot. But, You know, word to the wise, don't just don't be like me.
Jason Heaton Oh my gosh. So, you know, when you said you had a funny Ikea story and you had to dismantle part of the Jeep, I, in my mind, I was picturing you buying something that was too big to fit in it and you had to remove the roof and the parking lot. Oh my gosh. Okay. All right.
James Stacey That's my, that's your, your first installment of why bother being dumb when you can, when you could be this clever with James Stacy.
Jason Heaton So I've got one, one little item to mention. Um, In addition to my talented designer friend, Matt here, who helped us with the logo, I've got another, it seems to be a lot of talent in this, in the radius of my house here. A good friend of mine, Tom, who started kind of a small home-based business called Hassler Instruments. And Tom is an interesting sort of Renaissance man. He went to college up at Michigan Tech doing some hydrographic surveying work out in Lake Superior. He's, I think he was involved with, What is it called? Geo? Uh, I can't remember what it's called. Anyway, he used to work for the County doing like, um, you know, GPS lat long kind of stuff. And then he retired and now he, he's a bit of a Jack of all trades. And he's, uh, he started a small business making these really cool spring bar tools. So, you know, as, as odd as this sounds, uh, I, I've got one from him and he's calling it the Hassler instruments, bolt action, spring bar tool, Mark one. Anyway, I'll try to describe this. Uh, it's this, um, beautiful piece of machined stainless steel that has, uh, it kind of looks, you know, at first glance, just like a pen. It has a little, little clip that you could like ride in your pocket, hold it in your pocket. Um, but then it has this bolt action, uh, little, um, bolt head that you can slide forward and it locks in place and out pops a little spring bar fork tool, um, that you can use obviously to change straps on your watch and then, uh, nestled in the, in the other end of it, in the cap, you unthread it. And then there's the little pusher for sizing bracelets or, uh, you know, drilled through lugs and that sort of thing. Um, and as its name suggests, it's a, it's a bolt action tool. So when you're done, you just flick back the bolt and it, and it springs back, you know, so it's closed and the, and the spring or sorry, and the fork retracts into the case. Um, He makes all of this by hand in his home. He actually machines all the parts by himself. He told me it takes eight hours just to machine all the parts for each one. So fairly labor intensive, really, really nice quality. He's got some like little Easter eggs. Like he engraves the serial number of each one on the inside of the, of the pocket clip. Um, and I don't know, it's, it's, it's pretty wonderful. It's a bit of an extravagance. So this is, it's $125, which if you break down, you know, according to the amount of time he's putting into each of these, it's actually a bit of a bargain. But for most of us that are changing straps on our watches, we might not, you know, choose to spend that much. But I think if you just want something unique that feels really good in the hand, uh, it's, it's quite a, quite a thing to behold. And I've, I've used it for the past couple of weeks and changed a number of straps with it. And there is something about having, um, a bit of extra leverage almost. I can like hold it like a pen. and kind of get it in between the strap and the and the case on the on the end of the spring bar and it it works really well and and the fork that he uses it's the only piece that he outsources it's a bergeron or bergeron whatever the however they pronounce it the swiss brand of uh of spring bar fork um so it's replaceable if you happen to wear it out but uh just thought i'd give tom a shout out and if if you're interested in one of these he's making them almost to order um because they're so uh labor intensive and you can check him out on Instagram at hassler instruments. And he's got some photos of this gadget up and, um, you can certainly contact him there for, uh, for ordering or, or hassler instruments at gmail.com. So, um, give him a look, give, give the guy some love. I think it's a, it's a really cool thing that he's doing.
James Stacey Yeah. Check out the show notes for that. I know, uh, last year I remember I, Jason, I sent you a picture, but he made so few that I didn't end up sharing it. Cause he wasn't making it a product, but, uh, Terry at Utenados or UTE, if that's easier to understand. He had made these anodized aluminum spring bar tools, and they're long. They're six or seven inches long. They have the same Bergeron tip, and they have a really beautifully milled, almost when it's screwed tight, you almost can't see the seam, cap at the end that holds the other tool tips. And it was expensive too. I like to support Terry. I want to say it was 85 bucks. I can't quite remember. And honestly, I think at the time I thought, why did I spend $85 on this? I got lots of spring bar tools, right? Yeah. Um, I love this. This is the only thing I use now. It's big enough for my hand. I can get like perfect. I don't scratch anything now. I didn't realize there was, I was using these little tiny ones that were like, you know, giveaways at Basel world five years ago. And you just, there's, you can't really get the leverage, especially with really fine spring bars. Yeah. Yeah. And, and this, these are lovely. So I definitely, definitely check out Hassler instruments. Uh, And if Terry ends up making another run of these, I'll be sure to share it in some metric, but I'm not against the idea, especially if it's a handcraft, you know, somebody kind of putting their own time and effort into making it. It's a good idea. Yeah. Very cool. Yeah. Well, not wanting to delay the main event, which is a fantastic interview that we're excited for, Jason, you want to jump into wrist check?
Jason Heaton Yeah, mine's pretty quick and easy. You know, when we did our last collection inspection, the watch that I talked about was the Seiko 7002 from the late eighties and then I'm still wearing it. I've, I've kind of had it on for pretty much a week straight. I just don't, I don't take it off. It's a, it's, it's just utterly no nonsense. My only quibble with it is it's a, this was a generation of Seiko that used a Promethium for, for its luminescent material. It was before Seiko switched to Lumibrite, which is as everybody knows is fantastic. So it's, it's already pretty well faded away. And so, you know, it kind of fails the sleep test, even though I do sleep with it on, Um, if I do happen to wake up in the wee hours, it's a little tough to, to tell the time, but you know, this time of year, we're far enough North that it's light at five o'clock and light until 10 o'clock at night. So yeah, I don't loom isn't quite as important, um, this time of year, but it's, uh, it's a great summer watch. So that's, that's what I've got on. I've just got it on a, on a Matt supreme NATO. So works really well.
James Stacey Yeah. How about you? Yeah. I, uh, you know, the, the most recent volume eight magazine for Hodinkee just came out and in it, I wrote a story about the kind of a reference points about the Rolex Explorer two, you know, my, probably my favorite modern or mostly modern Rolex. And people have been sending me images of theirs on their wrist. And I finally was like, I got to dig mine out. And, uh, I hadn't worn it in a little while. It's not that I'm, I'm precious or anything. It's just, if I'm not traveling, it's not the one that jumps to mind. And I've got it on the, on the, original oyster and I'm just loving it. Every now and then I catch a glimpse of it in a reflection or, or, uh, or, you know, look down and check the time and you, Oh man, yeah, this is good. It just kind of works.
Unknown So yeah.
James Stacey What a great watch. I like it a lot. I mean, this is one that much like with your 7002, I talk about with some frequency even recently, so we don't have to go too deep into it, but yeah, just a watch that I very much like. And, and in many ways I look at as, as being kind of, I happened to thread the needle of Rolex once. Yeah. Uh, before things got too expensive for, uh, for fellas like you, like myself, I suppose. And yeah, so I've been wearing that. I, I, it probably needs to go on a NATO. The bracelet does feel pretty heavy to me most of the time. Um, but I do really like the way the bracelet looks.
Jason Heaton So, yeah, it's tough to beat a Rolex on an oyster. I mean, you know, I've tried subs on, on different straps. Um, never quite works on rubber works well on NATO. Um, but I don't know. I mean, they got it right with the oyster and I think I think yours in particular with that polar dial, the white dial just looks so fantastic on steel.
James Stacey Speaking of the rubber, now that you mentioned, I realized I have that Everest, the blue Everest strap, and that's a pretty excellent, so that may be the move. I've been wearing a lot of blue recently, so let's maybe go that way. A killer strap, Everest rubber strap.
Jason Heaton Yeah. So, you know, without delay, I think it's time to move into our main topic, which is very apropos for world oceans day. Um, today it's very exciting. It's been in the works for a while. We've got, uh, a chat with, uh, Patrick Danko, who is, uh, works for Garmin. He's their, um, champion of dive products or head of dive products. He wears a number of hats at Garmin, but he's a very experienced diver. Um, going back to, you know, the early two thousands, um, does some tech diving, some close circuit rebreather diving. And, uh, you know, I first was made aware of him when they, they launched the, the descent mark to, uh, dive computer that, that Garmin has. And he was on the video featured very prominently kind of discussing that the features of this incredible dive computer. And we just thought it'd be great to have Patrick on to, to discuss, you know, not only his own history of diving and with Garmin, but, but also, you know, what it takes to build a dive computer from scratch and kind of build it on the platform. You know, without further ado, let's jump into the interview with Patrick Danko. Well, great. Today, you know, it's World Oceans Day and we're really excited to have a guest on the Graynado today. It is Patrick Danko, who is, I believe Patrick, your role is as head of dive products at Garmin. Is that correct?
Patrick Danko Yeah, that's right. Dive product manager, dive champion here at Garmin.
Jason Heaton Correct. Those who listen to the Graynado are aware that James and I are big Garmin fans, and I've been using the Descent for, whenever it first came out, I started using the Descent and really loved the product. And then I saw your video presentation about the Mark II release and I thought, you know, it's a fascinating product and I'd love to talk more about how Garmin came to develop this dive computer. But before we jump into that, maybe you can give a little bit of background about your role at Garmin and kind of your history with the company, if you don't mind.
Patrick Danko Yeah, absolutely. I've been at Garmin since late 2005. So over over 15 years now, it sounds a little crazy to say. My background is a bit varied. I'm an IT guy by trade, so have spent most of my professional career in the IT world. When we got into, call it, I don't know, well, 2010, 11, 12, we started getting more and more into wearables at Garmin, the Phoenix product line started coming out. And at that point I had gotten really into diving. And so through some of the connections that I had built in Garmin in the many years prior to that, I started to formulate a bit of a strategy of how to get diving as a potential product category. And that really led to a second job for me at Garmin. And since we came out with the Descent line, I've acted as product manager for that and really have two jobs now. I continue to work in various IT capacities at Garmin, but I also spend a significant portion of my time helping to lead the dive segment, the dive sub-segment. And we've built an awesome team here to do that. So it's been awesome to to have a passion of mine, uh, turn into, uh, a part of my career. And so that's, that's continued on to, to today where I continue to help. We've added, uh, luckily is this has been a successful thing for us. We've added more and more help for me. So it's, it's not a, not a, um, you know, a small thing anymore, but it's, it's such a satisfying part of my job to be able to, to again, turn something that I've been such a passionate participant in, into part of my career.
Jason Heaton So, so Garmin came before the diving, um, and then the two sort of merged at some point. That's, that's fascinating. I, I wasn't sure, you know, before we. Talk today. I didn't really know much about your background and I assumed, you know, either you were a longtime champion of diving products at Garmin or you were a diver that was brought in to help develop the, the descent line. So it's interesting to hear that, that you've been there for quite a while and then, uh, kind of championed its creation. That's, that's pretty amazing.
Patrick Danko Yeah, I'd actually gotten into diving in probably 2008, 2009. Um, I, my wife actually got me into it, which I think she kind of regrets now, but she, uh, she had, uh, had been traveling to Florida quite often had gotten certified and we had, I have a million other hobbies, million other interests and always found it interesting, but never really, um, you never was really as passionate. I've got to go get into scuba diving. We went on a, Uh, resort, uh, dive, uh, off of a cruise that we were on in Nassau and a shallow thing, 20, 25 feet, you know, typical discover scuba type set up and got in the water and just instantly it clicked and just the peace and the tranquility and the scenery and the, uh, you know, everything just clicked with me. And from that point on, like many things that I get interested in, when I get interested, I get really interested. And, uh, so I, you know, really from that point forward have accumulated really as much knowledge as I possibly can from the certifications. I'm a dive master, technical diver, rebreather diver. The diving physiology and the technology have all been sort of passionate study projects for me. And then as Garmin really turned the corner with our wearables technology, and we really started to put the building blocks in place for being able to build some really compelling dive products, I sort of took it upon myself to to turn that passion and into garment and try to be an advocate for building a, you know, a dive presence inside the company and, and how to do a lot of education on the way. And we're, we're based out of Kansas city, suburb of Kansas city in Olathe, Kansas. And it's certainly not the diving Mecca of, of, of the country. So a lot of that a lot of that passion and education and knowledge that I've been accumulating, I had to really turn around and, and help educate the folks here at Garmin, the leaders who are helping to green light explorations and evaluations of new places the company could go, really help to educate folks here around who divers are and what they care about. What's the why Garmin? What could Garmin bring to the table? It would be a compelling product. So yeah, definitely Garmin came first, then came diving, and now the two have merged.
James Stacey I'm curious because I think a lot of our audience, you know, would have a pretty strong understanding of Garmin's, the wearable line at this point, especially if they've been listening to the show for a little while, but you know, we have a growing kind of new people coming in each week. And is it fair to call the descent kind of a Phoenix plus a dive computer?
Patrick Danko Yeah, I think on the surface, it's a really fair analogy to drive. Um, you know, the, the initial descent concept was really. an offshoot of, you know, Phoenix. I remember sitting in a product strategy session with some of our global leaders and the Phoenix concept being introduced internally to the company. And that was the light switch moment for me of, Hey, look, this, the building blocks are here. And as we evolve the dissent concept the Phoenix platform became a really natural home for building on top of now. That being said, while the, you know, the, the heart of it is, is very Phoenix based in many, many, many ways. There is also, uh, quite a lot of unique, uh, engineering that was done for the scent to make it both, uh, on the software side, capable of doing what we need and also on the physical side to make sure that the mechanical and design aspects of the, the product will, you know, perform in the diving role and withstand the, the, uh, really significant rigors that you guys are well aware you encounter in the diving and marine environment. So it is a phoenix in its sort of heart, but there's quite a lot of evolution that's been put on top of that, that really make it kind of its own unique product in many ways.
James Stacey When you got into diving, I assume that that's when you first started to interact with dive computers?
Patrick Danko Yeah, certainly. So I remember, you know, I have a whole bin full of dive computers from my first early days of you know, large, you know, black and white segmented display, just, you know, basic things all the way up to some of the latest, greatest modern stuff from major manufacturers. And a couple of things struck me as I had those experiences with, with dive computers from other makers is, um, in many cases, not all, but in many cases, it was really apparent that, you know, some of these major companies who have built just amazing products with regulators, mass snorkels, fins, BCs, you know, all this equipment, uh, electronics was not a comfort zone for them, right? It was, uh, okay, we know we need to have a dive computer. Let's put something together. Um, let's find, let's buy a company, let's try to build something. But it was, you know, the very oftentimes a little bit unintuitive, a little bit crude. They would get a little bit better over time, but the speed of evolution of the dive computer space was a little bit glacial compared to what I had seen within, uh, within Garmin and a lot of other modern, uh, consumer electronics areas. Uh, and then you did have some companies who were doing really amazing things who were really focused on, on dive computers. Um, but even those guys were really, you know, tended to be, um, uh, slow with the, the innovation cycle. And for me, as, as someone who started to accumulate more and more gear, I found boy, more and more of this gear is perhaps really, really useful every day or in, uh, in, in diving scenarios, but then I'd put it in my, put it in the bin and, and, you know, I'd see it again. The next time I went diving, it really wasn't crossing over into my everyday life. And the Garmin features that we were building in our smartwatches and our outdoor wearables were things that really I saw as an opportunity for us to get in and build a really amazing, like truly top-notch dive computer, but combined with, with surface, you know, surface functionality, everyday functionality, the things that Garmin wearables users have really come to to know and appreciate. And the opportunity to merge those two things together, uh, was, was a really exciting concept for me. And that's really the seed of where descent has, has evolved from.
Jason Heaton Yeah. I, I was struck when I first got the descent, um, before I was even able to take it somewhere diving. Um, it was, I think it was in the winter and I'm a big cross country skier and I remember putting it on and putting it in cross country ski mode and doing some laps with it, you know, with, with the heart rate monitor and everything. And then, um, you know, uploading it right to the app, uh, the Garmin app that I have and just being struck by the fact that, you know, this is a dive computer that I'm, that I'm taking cross country skiing and I can dig at Alpine skiing the next weekend and cycling in the summer. And I mean, in theory, if I was the type that wasn't so attached to mechanical watches, traditional watches, I'd, I'd wear it 24 seven because it does everything in my life that I like it to do. I guess the, you know, the, the question that always came to mind, you know, from that very first dive with the descent was, this idea that, you know, what a, what a daunting task to approach an industry or, or a genre of, of wearable, I guess, if you call it that, um, that's established by so many other brands and other brands have footholds there and have spent decades building these things. And then you come into this obviously with, with Garmin's might and experience building, uh, you know, smartwatches and activity sensors and that sort of thing. But, you know, dive computers are, legitimate life support systems. And I'm assuming there's some, I don't know if there's liability involved, but you know, there's just a lot of serious stuff going on in there and, and to build one of those from scratch and to do it so well from the start had to be just a huge lift for you guys. How long did the development take?
Patrick Danko Uh, it was a long process. Um, and I think both in, in technology design, but also in philosophical design. So, You're absolutely right. I mean, this is, uh, as you guys are well aware, dive computers are, they're not just a, um, you know, it's not just a watch. It's something that's literally your dashboard. It's a, it's an essential part of the situational awareness that you have to maintain as a diver. That's, that's a part of keeping you safe. And, um, the, the weight of that is, uh, was present in every decision that we made along the way. Um, and, and we had to have really clear prioritization. around cost and time to market and features, quality. And the philosophy that we took really from the start is quality has to be first. We have to build a solid watch. The time that it takes, the ending price point have to follow that. We have to build something that is bomb-proof, is reliable. As you guys well know, the diving market is unforgiving. You build something and it doesn't live up to the huge rigors of the sport, and you're done. And that's something we knew we had to come in with a serious product that really took all of the best engineering that we could muster, the most rigorous testing that we could put together, and make something that was truly a top-notch world-class competitor from a dive computer space. Um, things that, um, meant that meant for us a lot of tooling up. We, we needed new test fixtures. We needed pressure chambers. We needed really deep understanding of the test standards and, and, um, you know, EN 13319, EN 250. How do we, how do we make sure that we're complying with those and getting external verification? So things that are, um, you know, we're unique to diving. Um, but it was also things that in many ways Garmin had had background with, you know, we build avionics. builds mission-critical marine equipment. So the philosophy of building an essential piece of equipment for the user is something that's in Garmin's DNA. And the advantage of Garmin in really bringing the Dive products into conversation were that we have this breadth of engineering experience and a depth of knowledge of how to build highly reliable products. And so we were able to leverage a lot of that ground already trodden as we built the plans for descent. And as we looked at philosophically how we wanted to approach this, you know, how do we want to handle the algorithm? How open do we want to be? How much do we want to keep, you know, kind of secret to ourselves? Ultimately, you know, the philosophy was a big part of that safety consideration. ZHL 16C algorithm. It's a well known, published, you can go look at how it works. We're not tinkering and messing with it. If you want to know how our dive computer works, it's right there. We need to make sure it works correctly every time. But we want to make sure that it's, you know, if we're going to build credibility, we want to do it with well understood, well accepted, well researched standards, things like our algorithm. We spent a lot of time talking, doing research around the latest philosophies of, you know, deep stops and decompression procedures and, you know, things that are like any, I think any market you have communities who are debating techniques on a regular basis. And, you know, we have to continuously follow those and decide how to weave the latest greatest thought processes into our, our product philosophy, but the, the by and large, the overarching theme for us is keeping things open, keeping it transparent, not baking in so much secret sauce that the end user doesn't understand what we've done with it and therefore may have trouble really trusting it.
James Stacey So that was going to be kind of my next main question was you were talking about having all of these backgrounds, which in that Garmin has very, very much proven in several markets, But with you, with you coming to diving after Garmin, I assume you hadn't, you know, designed a dive watch before. Um, and, and I know in, in learning more about really the, when I, when I first got into the instinct and the Phoenix and these things that had better and better heart rate monitoring, I started to read about some of the logic and the companies that support this logic, the, the base logic of calculations and, and, and, and what you can do with the numbers and what these numbers probably mean dependent over time and that kind of thing. that must've been a huge hurdle to try and figure out how to incorporate all of the basic, not even basics, but the, the, the, the lowest level of logic that makes a dive computer actually calculate everything as it goes. Is that something where you partner with a known entity like this standard that you spoke about and then, and then try and integrate it into your own systems?
Patrick Danko Yeah. So Garmin's, you know, we have a, a strong culture of vertical integration. We, we tend to, to really like to build and do things in-house as much as possible. So as we approached diving, one of the things that was essential about this is really to get a small team, the team that's going to be really taking this from idea all the way to product and really steep everybody in the knowledge necessary to get that done. So for the dive algorithms, for example, we spent a bunch of time looking across the industry, what are the options? What are the reasons that you might go one way or the other? How are other companies approaching that? And most importantly, what do the divers want and need? And then we just decompose it. Most of the things like the Buhlmann algorithm, it's an open algorithm. You can download it, you can unpack it, you can see what's going on in there. And that made it, I'm not going to say easy because it's not easy, but it made it very, clear how we needed to go about that implementation. Things are the EN 13319 and EN 250 standards are there that sort of clearly line out the testing and certification requirements for dive instruments. And that was really, really helpful. But it also, we fell back a lot on Garmin. We have testing standards, software development standards, um, that we're able to apply in these situations. They may not have been developed for diving, but there are things that we've developed through our evolution of other products and, and, uh, able to fall back on a really, really solid set of engineering practices to, and manufacturing practices to get, uh, to get a product built. So it was a lot of learning by your team. So as we went through, um, looking at each and every design decision along the way, what struck me when,
Jason Heaton when I started using the descent as well was, was the, uh, a handful of features that I hadn't seen on, on some of the other dive computers that I'd used. And, you know, I haven't tried them all by any means, but you know, um, and I'm sure some other brands do have a few of these features, but I really particularly liked the, the wrist based heart rate monitor while diving, which I thought was both, both really, um, fascinating, but also slightly distracting to the point where I turned it off at some point, cause it was like, I found I was just looking at my wrist and like, Oh, if I kick a little harder, my heart rate goes up. I mean, it's, it's fascinating stuff, but also the, the, the compass is really intuitive, very legible works really well. And then I love the, that it drops a GPS flag when you descend and then come up. Like if you were scouting a new rack or a new dive site, the ability to do that. And I realized we've gotten, Oh, I don't know how many minutes into this. And we haven't really talked about the descent itself. We've, we've kind of jumped right into, into the design of a dive computer in general. And I'm just wondering if, you know, you might give a quick overview of what makes the descent unique or special versus other dive computers. You know, what, what would you say are the primary features of the descent?
Patrick Danko Yeah, certainly. So, um, you know, a little bit building off of the Phoenix heritage, I think it is fair to say that, you know, uh, if you pick up a descent as a potentially a Phoenix owner, you're going to see a lot of, of carry over. And that means, really the, the, the core features, the sensor package. So you've got, um, as you mentioned, risk-based heart rate, and that's something we do allow you to use and dive. You can see, uh, pretty easily. Wow. Uh, I just punched through that thermocline and it's cold and my heart's racing, or I'm kicking really hard and my heart's racing. And then being able to correlate that to gas consumption can be really interesting, but you've got heart rate. Uh, the, the MK2 has a pulse oximeter. Uh, we have not enabled that yet. yet for dive. But on the surface, you can get your your blood oxygen content through that same optical sensor on the back. We've got a three axis digital compass, we spent a lot of time tuning that compass experience, I think for for any of you who are divers, you understand the critical nature that that a compass, a critical role that the compass provides. And that had to we that had to be top notch. And so that was something we spent a lot of time on design and tuning on, uh, GPS and glow now. So yeah, the, the descent will automatically mark your entry and exit points, um, uh, for your dive. And that's something that, uh, is, is unique. It allows you to, uh, post dive, look at your dive log and the Garmin dive app and, and be able to see those entry and exit points. You can save those out as waypoints. So if you wanted to navigate yourself back over the top of a, a particular point you can do that.
Jason Heaton Can I ask a quick question here about GPS? I had, I was describing the descent to a friend a year or so ago and, and you know, he was like, Oh, you know, does the GPS work underwater? And my understanding is that because GPS requires the view of the sky and a satellite and you're underwater, that would be impossible. But is there any technology either current or looking ahead to the future that would allow any type of, if we call it GPS or whatever, breadcrumb navigation underwater that you see happening?
Patrick Danko Yeah. So you're, you're absolutely, you're absolutely right. GPS signals don't penetrate the water more than just, just fractions of an inch. And so not usable for divers. Um, I can't comment too much on what we're looking at, but I can tell you that location and navigation is in a, you know, sort of a core part of Garmin's, uh, uh, you know, product feature set. And, uh, and it is something we are certainly thinking about. Fascinating.
James Stacey I haven't had the good fortune of diving with a Descent, maybe sometime in the future. I've used a digital compass once underwater and it worked beautifully. And it almost feels like a cheat code. Right. If you're used to using a normal wrist mount that, you know, you have to hold at a certain level, especially in cold and dark water. And you're looking for a bit of a pinpoint wreck. And the digital one made all the difference. That's a huge feature. And if you can nail it, especially the three axis, which means you can orient, I assume, in a lot of different wrist positions.
Patrick Danko Absolutely. You can, you can have your wrist sort of straight out in front of you. Uh, you could have it sort of pair parallel with the ground. And then we've put a lot of, uh, cheat cheat type features into it. You mark your heading and it will automatically, uh, calculate and show on that compass tape, your reciprocal. So, um, it's easy to find your way back. And then if in the menus, uh, set up there, you can switch automatically to a, like a 90 degree left, 90 degree, right. So if you're, if you're running a search pattern, it's really easy to, kind of quickly set your heading to an expanding box or, you know, something. So it's, it is, uh, we tried to try to build in as many useful features as possible into that compass.
James Stacey As a guy who's been saved, uh, on, you know, maybe more than two or three occasions by the track back feature on, uh, on the Phoenix in, in, uh, BC's back country. Uh, I think that would be even more handy when you, you just can't see the next 50 feet that you need, uh, in some cold or dark water. That's, uh, that's fascinating.
Jason Heaton And then, Patrick, I think what, um, stood out for the mark two, um, and I would say is probably, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, it's kind of crowning new feature is this, uh, sonar based tank pairing technology, which. Um, just to get a little background, you know, I've other dive computer brands or previous dive computers have had tank pairing, but it's, it's done with a different, I think it's radio frequency and it hasn't always been reliable and it sucks through batteries and that sort of thing. And I think what. Stood out for the Mark two descent is that it uses sonar technology for tank pairing. And then you can connect up to, I don't remember some large number of, of other tanks so that you could be a dive master and keep track of all of your, um, or followers or students or whatever, um, their tank pressures. Um, how much a crazy piece of tech, how difficult was that? Or can you explain that in layman's terms? Like what, what that involved?
Patrick Danko Yeah, you bet. As we as we started to literally from the moment we launched mark one, and this is something we the descent mark one is we we fully anticipated the first question we would get would be, awesome, when are you gonna have air integration? And sure, sure enough, I remember being at the DEMA show, you know, during announcement, and, and that was far and away the predictably most frequent question. And we looked, we started looking early on around, well, okay, what's the right way that that Garmin could bring air integration to the table. And you're absolutely right. The traditional way that, that, uh, that other makers use is, uh, is radio frequency and you typically get a, you know, a two meter range, give or take, um, reliability is hit and miss. Um, and this was an opportunity for Garmin to really, again, go back and look across, all of our different product categories that we make, our expertise that we've built up over time, and really look at different ways of potentially solving the problem. And we struck upon the idea of using sonar as a communication channel. Just the advantages of that being reliability can be better, certainly range can be better. And that was something, as we look at expanding from the traditional two or three meters of distance between the transmitter and the watch now being able to span a 10 meters or more, um, all of a sudden now being able to monitor not only my own tank pressure, but my dive buddies, or if I, if I'm a dive master, my, my students that I'm guiding around, um, and being able to get alerts of their tank pressure on my, on my descent, it, it really fill it. It just fundamentally changes the way that you can approach diving. I, you know, I don't have to, um, you know, swim alongside my wife and constantly tap her on the shoulder. Hey, uh, what's your, where are you at tank pressure? I literally just can look down and I can manage the dive with that knowledge of where everybody's airs at without having to harass them. Um, it's, it, it, it adds a level of safety, honestly, that, um, as a, as a dive master, having to keep tabs on lots of students in the water, it is, You know, it's one of those things that, well, how can we solve this problem? How can we put all that information on tap on that, that a person's risk to really improve, improve safety.
Jason Heaton Um, I've got a bit of a two part follow-up question to that. And there's, you know, what I know about divers is, um, ironically, you know, given how expensive the sport is, a lot of them tend to be cheapskates and, and. And also a lot of them happen to be, happen to be very brand loyal. And, you know, for, for a brand, you know, even a well-established brand like Garmin to come out with, you know, this incredible new dive computer, I'm guessing there was some early, I don't want to say skepticism, but maybe hesitancy among industry professionals and divers to adopt a brand new line of, of dive computers. And I guess I'm curious, the two part question here is. how was initial feedback to the descent and adoption rates for the descent, but also is your, has the, the, the primary market for the descent lines been, you know, existing Garmin devotees or is it, are you going after, you know, new divers or just divers that don't know anything about Garmin?
Patrick Danko Yeah, that's a great question. So the response, the response was amazing. You know, I, I've, I've, had the privilege of attending the last, we didn't have one last year, but the last couple of DEMA shows where we've launched, you know, the, the MK1 and then since the MK2 and it's, it's been amazing. Certainly, absolutely. The diving, the diving group, rightfully so, is, is one that really, this is a safety of life product. These things need to, need to perform and any newbie coming to the table is going to get treated with a healthy amount of scrutiny. I think that's absolutely appropriate. Um, we knew going into that, that we were going to have to pay our dues. We're going to have to prove ourselves and that, that adoption was going to be earned over time through a track record of, of people really having good experiences with the product. And so we took that measured approach going in. This was not a, for us, a, this is not a, Flash in the pan situation. We know we need to get in, build a beachhead, establish a track record of loyal customers and good experiences. And then from that, we can evolve. And that's been how we've approached Dive philosophically. This is a long game for us. We need to drive innovation. That's our I think our key element we can bring to the table things that other companies maybe have chosen not to or are unable due to Garmin's breadth of capabilities, breadth of experience, manufacturing capability and pace. We can do things that others can't, but we still have to base that off of a satisfied and happy customer base that's really only earned through experience of divers using the product. When we launched MK1, we had lots of great feedback. I think people reacting to, oh, I can have a dive watch that's an amazing dive computer, but also something I can get my text notifications and track my runs. And I don't have to put it in a bin for the, you know, 90% of the time I'm not in the water. Those early adopters really led the way. but over time the experiences that those users have shared with their dive buddies of like, Oh no, this thing is really good. It really works well. It's reliable. I remember having lots of conversations with skeptical divers who understandably again, sort of treated their dive computer like this precious artifact, this fragile thing that, that, um, you know, we don't want it, you know, it couldn't possibly work as an everyday wearable item. It's it'll get damaged and destroyed and we have to be really careful with this. But, you know, the dichotomy is then you're taking this thing into one of the harshest environments you can imagine and diving. And, you know, I think most all of us who are divers, you end up kind of beating the crud out of your gear. So the realization is, you know, everyday wear isn't really all that different of a situation of, or that much harsher of a situation than, then what we're putting things through in diving and the reality is you can have something that's, that's, that serves both roles. So since then, we've had a, we've had a great, a slow build of passionate Garmin fans. I think we, you know, every, the fact that we're, we've launched a Mark II, the T1, and more recently the MK2S, the smaller dive computer. We've, I think we're in this for the long game. And I think the, the, the folks who may have been originally skeptical are now starting to see a bit of a track record from customers who've come to really love their garments. It's helping to help them to evolve the market for us.
James Stacey And so for people who are listening, the current descent mark two comes in two sizes. This is obviously very important to just general watch nerdery is 43 millimeters is the new s the standard one, which does the air integration, etc is a 52 millimeter Patrick, in wanting to be respectful of your time and everything, I'm interested to hear what you think as someone who's gone considerably deeper into diving than say I have myself with closed circuit and the tech diving and even obviously going as far as to create your own dive computer. For the people who know dive computers in our audience, what do you think the killer features are that separate the Mark II from all of the other great dive computers that are admittedly out there?
Patrick Danko Yeah, that's a great question. I'll just kind of rattle through things. I think first and foremost is the dive computer experience. It's really easy to maybe dismiss Descent as something, well, it's a, it's got all these surface things, but is it a good dive computer? And this was built from the start with a philosophy of this has to be the best dive computer you've ever used first. And then we have the opportunity to bolt on all of these other surface use features. So it's a great dive computer. We have, we support uh, single gas, multi gas, um, uh, CCR gauge mode and two free diving modes. And, um, use, uh, for each of those diving, um, modes, you can have a separate gas load out with, uh, with all the gases you would need as a technical diver, um, up to a hundred percent or two. The apnea features are top-notch. We allow you to do both vibration and audible alerts. So for our spear fishers. They love that. You can go down and get alerts, dive alerts on depth and time that are vibrations. So you're not scaring away the fish with audible alerts. It's a product that's had a lot of focus put in on a diving from a diving standpoint. So inductive buttons. So on the MK2, we've launched industry first inductive button technology. And with MK1, we spent a lot of time figuring out how to waterproof the thing to a 10 ATM rating. A lot of time on O-ring design, how do we seal the pushers, the buttons to make sure they're going to withstand a lifetime of diving abuse. With MK2, we went through and replaced those with inductive buttons so there's no holes through the case to fail.
James Stacey Just to cut in, an inductive button, that's essentially the button is hitting a sensor on the inside, almost like a touchscreen.
Patrick Danko Even sort of, so the button, the button is going close to a sensor that's actually on the other side of the case. So there's actually no, there's nothing protruding through the case at all. There's an inductive sensor on the other side of the case. So it's detecting those button presses without the need for any seals. So it's, it's a really, it's a leak proof button design, which is, which is unique for Garmin. We have a sunlight readable, it's a transflective, MIP display, and that's something that I do think sets us apart. With the MK2, we've gone from a 1.2 to a 1.4-inch screen, so about a third bigger. The overall case size, though, only increased by a millimeter from the MK1 to the MK2, so we were able to keep it fairly compact and everyday wearable. But that display is sunlight-readable, so you can take that out on a bright boat deck. right in the middle of the sun, and you're not going to have the screen washout that you can get with other display techs. Obviously, SubWave, which is our branding for the sonar-based underwater data communication protocol that we built here to support the T1, is a big part of MK2. That's something that we'll be able to build on in the future. That underwater data communication network is something that has a lot of potential, I think, to continue to have features added to it, uh, that, that will be compelling for divers in the future. There's also just some little things. Uh, honestly, one of the things that I thought was the most interesting as we launched descent, um, was our quick fit band system. I can't tell you how many divers come up and are just super excited about the quick fit band system. So we, uh, it makes it really easy to change out for me being a cold water diver, frequently going from an every, you know, wearing a titanium DLC coated bracelet, which I typically wear it on and then swapping out for the extra long silicone dive band set to wrap around my dry suit. Clip, clip, done. It makes it so easy.
James Stacey Yeah. I hadn't even thought of that. Like that's, I like that feature. Cause if I'm, if my Phoenix get really sweaty, it's super easy to rinse out and know that I'm getting everywhere or if I get water in it or whatever, but yeah, I hadn't even considered that you could just put on an extra long, yeah. For my, for a dry suit. That's, that's clever. Yeah.
Jason Heaton Yeah. I just keep, I just keep my long, my long tail. end of the strap in my mask case and then I just swap it out if I need to. That's, yeah, that's a good one. Um, Patrick, I, you know, as we kind of maybe circle back and bring this chat, uh, to a close, I, I I'd love to know a little bit about your own, uh, diving a little bit. Like if you have any favorite places, places you go back regularly, um, any particularly memorable dives that you want to talk about and maybe some dives that you, you know, you, you've used Yeah, sure.
Patrick Danko Um, for, for me, I, uh, I love history. And so typically my favorite dive sites are, I love wrecks or something. It's got some history attached to it. I'll don't get me wrong. I love beautiful reefs and, and, uh, and ocean life for sure. But I tend to gravitate towards something where there's a history element to me. Um, I remember doing a, a reef dive, uh, some of my first wreck diving on the Outer Banks off North Carolina, and going down and seeing U-352 there, or some of the cargo ships that were on the bottom during World War II. And it just struck me as there's an underwater museum here that so few people get to experience. There's a history behind things that is both kind of awe-inspiring and yet slowly disintegrating. You know, those shipwrecks will not be there forever and the ability to dive these wrecks and learn about the history and see something that most people don't have the privilege to do and things that will not be there forever, I think, are the most compelling. So Great Lakes, I love diving the Great Lakes wrecks. They're amazing. Outer Banks, I've had the privilege of being able to dive in in Europe in the Adriatic. There's some amazing shipwrecks that I've dove there. The Holy Grail sites for me right now truck like I think most divers have on their list. That's something that I'm trying to build some plans for now and then scapa flow up north in Scotland to see some of the World War Two ships that were scuttled there. So there's to me, it's all about the wrecks. I love shipwrecks. And it's something that as a Midwesterner, you know, I get a lot of opportunity to dive in springs and mines and lakes and quarries. Um, so there is some interesting diving here. Um, but yeah, yeah, it's typically for me, where, where's the next wreck dive going to be?
Jason Heaton Yeah. You're just a few hours, a few hours South of, of me here in Minneapolis. Uh, I, I make it up to Lake Superior fairly often for, for wreck diving and also over to Lake Michigan. And, uh, you'll have to make a road trip up and let me know when we can.
Patrick Danko Absolutely. Yeah. Lake Michigan and Milwaukee. We've done a bit of diving there and there's just, yeah, the, the wrecks out of the great lakes are just amazing time capsules. The pro and the con of some of the zebra mussel infestation there, they, you know, it's covers everything, but the water is, is, uh, you know, it's clear and it's able to preserve those, those wrecks due to low oxygen contents. You just find some amazing stuff down there for sure.
James Stacey Yeah, and I'm probably speaking not out of turn, but to someone who's preaching to the choir to a certain extent. But if you haven't read Shadow Divers or Daniel Lenihan's book about the creation of the submerged cultural underwater heritage unit, Jason, I'd be happy to send you either as a thank you for this chat. Both are just a great history lesson and some adventure for sure.
Patrick Danko Shadow Divers is one of my favorites. That's just a classic. I've also just finished reading Jill Heiner's new book, if you haven't read that. She's such an amazing inspiration to me as a scuba diver. Her recent book that she's come out with has been another reading item that I would highly recommend.
James Stacey I don't know what's it called. We'll be sure to put it in the show notes. It's a great recommendation.
Patrick Danko Now I'm having one of these brain moments here. Into the Planet. Into the Planet. Fantastic.
James Stacey That's the name of the book. Thank you so much for the recommendation.
Jason Heaton Well, uh, I, I think, uh, you know, this is, this has been a great chat. I mean, we really appreciate your taking the time to, to talk to us and, um, you know, thanks for all your hard work at, at Garmin. I think it's, uh, it's just so exciting, especially, um, to hear about, you know, beyond the work you're doing, just to, to talk to somebody who has taken. His passion and made it his work as well, which is always inspiring to anybody. Um, so with, with that in mind, Patrick, uh, you know, thanks so much for, for joining us on the gray NATO and, uh, And we look forward to catching up with you in the future, maybe with the, the, uh, the MK3, uh, descent.
Patrick Danko Very much appreciated. It's been a pleasure to be here at being a, uh, a poor watch enthusiast of traditional watches too. It's been exciting to be able to connect with the both of you and, and, uh, sort of play a part in that, that, uh, community as well. So yeah, I really, really appreciate the opportunity.
James Stacey So there you have it. Our chat with Patrick Danko, a huge thank you to Patrick for that. Uh, What a wonderful thing. And he actually emailed us a little while later to say like, Hey, I know we, we only had a certain amount of time, but I'm also like into watches. I have a Zen, I have a handful of other dive watches. Uh, I think we definitely need to have him on again in the future. Um, a really lovely guy obviously knows a lot about the product and just even an under his understanding of, of dive computers is something I would love to spend even more time digging into. I'm kind of fascinated by the technical hurdles of, of making something that's doing all those calculations all the time. Yeah. Um, and the tech is really neat. Uh, it's definitely worth checking out. As I mentioned in the, um, in the interview, if you want to check out more, um, obviously visit Garmin. This isn't an ad or anything. Jason actually reached out to Garmin just based on curiosity. If Patrick was available, we thought he'd make it an amazing guest. And he certainly did follow them along Garmin outdoor. They have a Garmin Marine. You know, if you go to, um, if you go to Garmin's. Instagram and then scroll down, you'll see they have a series of related accounts. So maybe just jump into the show notes, that's, you know, notes.thegrenado.com and kind of pick one and follow along. But they've got some great stuff. And I'm really excited to possibly get a chance to play around with a Descent Mark II in the future, you know, and maybe do some free diving at the cottage or get my get my reg service and give, uh, give Lake Ontario a try sometime this summer. So, uh, really cool. And it's just nice that you can send an email and then have that kind of a conversation. Cause it's just, I, there's, I have like, uh, it didn't help my curiosity that much. It may, it just made me more curious about that and, and, and that kind of product design and stuff, but, uh, really cool to have Patrick on and hopefully we can have them on again sometime in the future, maybe with a new product launch or, or after a great adventure. Yeah.
Jason Heaton So how about some final notes? Yeah. Let's jump into a final notes here. Um, I can go first. So world oceans day, I really wanted to put up something that was a sort of diving or ocean related and lo and behold, uh, kind of a cool one came across my Instagram feed from a watch brand that some people might be familiar with, which is a VAR, V A E R. They're kind of a micro brand. I believe they're California based. They do a lot of assembly in the U S um, they make some kind of neat watches, but, uh, this, this was kind of interesting. They produced a short film, It's about six minutes long and it's called the urchin diver and it's on their YouTube channel. And it's, uh, you know, very short form sort of documentary style with a, with a voiceover about a young guy who's following in his father's footsteps as a, as an urchin diver in the kelp beds around the channel islands off of the California coast. And, you know, the script is a little simplistic and there, I don't necessarily know that you you know, learn that much about urchin diving or about the channel islands, but it's a very personal story about this guy told by this guy. And, um, more than anything, I just think it's, uh, it's some beautiful dive footage. This, um, this guy, Connor, who's the, the, um, the subject of the, of the video, he, um, as the name suggests, he dives for, for sea urchins to, to sell at markets, seafood markets and whatnot. And he does that, you know, with surface supplied air. So he's down there on a long umbilical. Um, but then he also does some, some free diving for some spearfishing as well. And, you know, having, having dived on Catalina Island a couple of times in those kelp beds, it's, uh, it's very eerie. It's, it's very otherworldly and very beautiful. And I thought the cinematography was fantastic. And I also appreciated that even though Ver was. The producer of this and they're a small brand and had every right to kind of really push their product other than, you know, just showing the guy strap the watch on every now and then, um, there wasn't any heavy handed, you know, product push. as part of the video. So hats off to VEAR for putting that out there. I thought it was really impressive. So check that out.
James Stacey Absolutely. Yeah, I skimmed just a click of it before we started recording. And yeah, looks really cool. It's exciting to see more inventive things coming from the microbrand space.
Unknown Yeah.
James Stacey And I've seen VEAR mostly by Instagram and stuff like that. And their stuff looks really good. So I'm glad to see them kind of doing some neat stuff. Urchin diving is cool. You know, Jason, have you ever done surface supplied air? Is that weird? Or you just don't even notice it being different than a regulator?
Jason Heaton I haven't. I mean, it's a, it's a, it's a standard regulator with just a really long hose. And I guess I, you know, other than, I guess kind of having your, your head sort of tugged in one direction or kind of maybe getting it a bit fouled up or something, I suppose it's not that much different. Plus you don't have a tank on your back. You're just wearing a weight belt and fins and then with this long hose.
James Stacey I wonder how you, I wonder how you wait for that. Yeah, me too. That'd be cool.
Jason Heaton Yeah, I guess just wait for your wetsuit.
James Stacey I suppose so, yeah.
Jason Heaton Yeah, yeah, it'd be pretty cool.
James Stacey So mine is also within the spirit of World Ocean Day, pretty exciting. And this is a rare treat because if you commonly follow or if you're subscribed to Rolex's YouTube channel, you'll know that they do a lot of one, two and a half minute, three and a half minute videos, which, which are fine, but like not, I, I love, I love a long video. I like long podcasts. I like, I like, you know, I would, I w every time I watch one of their videos, it's about this great testimony or, or a cool project. And it's three minutes long and they go like, well, where's the 40 minute version. Yeah. Right. And, and of course the answer is the 40 minute version would cost an unbelievable amount of money. Um, but thank, thanks to their Rolex's kind of connection with Nat Geo for the perpetual planet program. They actually have just released again for world oceans day. Um, what's called perpetual planet heroes of the ocean. And it's a 52 minute, I think in my world, at least that counts as feature length for a documentary. You're really scraping up on an hour there. And my guess is that means that this will be aired in some scenarios, probably airplanes, stuff like that. I wrote a piece about it for Hodinkee because I got so excited to see Rolex doing a legit documentary. If you've seen Dr. Sylvia Earle's movie Mission Blue, this is exactly in that same vein. It's just following various projects that Rolex and Nat Geo are supporting around the world. And I haven't had the pleasure to watch the entire thing yet. I'm going to do that this evening. But the bits that I skimmed, I've maybe seen a third of it. It's fantastic. really beautifully shot, super high production value. Dr. Earl is the main personality throughout. So you, you get her voiceover and her amazing way of looking at the world. I mean, she's just the greatest, right? Jason, you got a chance to hang out with her. Is she the same in person? She is.
Jason Heaton She has, is it intimidating? You know, you think you'd think it would be, but she just completely disarms you with her personality. And then she has that wonderful voice, which I think lends itself well to narrating a movie like this. It's just a very calm presence that she has. So.
James Stacey Yeah, she's an absolute hero. Maybe someday we'll get her on the show. We might have to do a thousand episodes, so stay tuned. Really, really get our teeth sunk into the media world. But I really love this. It's got everything from, you know, growing coral to tracking whale sharks to submersible technologies, ROVs, habitats, all of it. It's all really cool. It's so easy to get excited about stuff like this, especially when We haven't been traveling. I haven't been diving in so long, um, to see this, it, it really kind of sparked something, uh, that makes me want to, uh, you know, find a decent dive shop here in Toronto, have them tune up my regs and, uh, and, and, and get it, get back into the water. You know, it's, it's been long enough that I'm going to have to do a little bit of service, but that's not a big deal. Um, but yeah, so this is perpetual planet heroes of the ocean. It's on Rolex's YouTube channel at this point, it only has like 2,400 views, which is a crime. I really hope they put this on Netflix and they get it. They kind of get it out there a little bit. I would have loved a 4k version. Maybe that's my only, my only, my only like soft feedback that isn't glowing is, uh, you can tell that, that, that they shot this with big cameras and, uh, a 4k would be great whether it comes via Netflix or YouTube or whatever, but please check that out. Um, and, and my other ask is I, I would like Rolex to do more stuff like this. I'm sure this, Video costs an absolutely insane amount of money. They're all over the world. It's like watching a planet earth.
Unknown Yeah.
James Stacey I'm sure it was obscenely expensive, but I think if enough people commented and said like the long form is the way to go, let's get more long form stuff on the channel. Maybe we'd see more. Cause it doesn't have to be underwater stuff. They do stuff all over the world for all different sorts of passions and activities and adventuring and sporting and the rest of it. And I think some of it would be great even if it was like, instead of one or two minutes, it was eight minutes or 10 minutes.
Unknown Yeah.
Jason Heaton Yeah. We don't, we don't, we don't need 52 minutes every time, but you know, give us a 10, 10, 15 minute video every now and then. Yeah, you're right. It's funny. You know, you were just talking, I think an episode or two ago about, um, lamenting the fact that all of Rolex's videos are so short and then lo and behold today, they come out with this long one, which I thought was great too.
James Stacey I love it. I can't, yeah, I can't, I'm going to put it on the projector tonight with a, with a good meal and, uh, and really, really enjoy it. I'm, I'm, uh, I'm pumped. Yeah. Awesome. So shout out to Rolex Nat Geo. And, uh, Dr. Sylvia Earle, the, uh, the best. Uh, let's, uh, let's keep it going. This is very cool.
Jason Heaton Yeah. Well, a very ocean themed episode. Yeah. I guess it's world oceans week, so you can keep celebrating even after this episode. Perfect. And as always, thanks so much for listening. Hit the show notes via notes.thegrenado.com or the feed for more details. You can follow us on Instagram at Jason Heaton at J E Stacey and follow the show at the Grenado. If you have any questions for us, please write the Grenado at gmail.com. You can comment on the Substack notes as well. And please do keep sending those voice memos in for our next Q&A. Please subscribe and review wherever you find your podcast. In addition to subscribing to Substack, if you feel so inclined. And music throughout a siesta.
James Stacey Too much Substack pushing. It's so many subscriptions now. Sub where you want, maybe tell a friend. That'd be great, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Let me start that over.
Jason Heaton All right. Let's just leave it. Go. Okay. All right.
James Stacey And we leave you with this quote from the wonderful Werner Herzog, who said, and I promise I won't try an impersonation. What would an ocean be without a monster lurking in the dark? It would be like sleep without dreams.