The Grey NATO - 147 - Designing The Garmin Descent With Patrick Danko¶
Published on Thu, 10 Jun 2021 06:00:33 -0400
Synopsis¶
This is episode 147 of The Graynato podcast, hosted by James Stacy and Jason Heaton. The hosts begin by discussing their new Substack newsletter platform (notes.thegraynato.com) and an updated logo designed by Matt Ludvigson. James shares a humorous story about dropping his driver's license into his Jeep door panel at an IKEA parking lot and having to disassemble the door to retrieve it.
The main segment features an extensive interview with Patrick Danko, Garmin's dive product manager and champion. Danko discusses his journey from IT professional at Garmin to helping develop their Descent line of dive computers, starting around 2012. He explains how he became passionate about diving in 2008-2009 and eventually merged this interest with his work at Garmin. The conversation covers the development philosophy behind the Descent dive computers, including their use of the Bühlmann ZHL-16C algorithm, innovative features like sonar-based tank pairing (SubWave technology), GPS entry/exit marking, and inductive buttons. Danko emphasizes Garmin's commitment to quality and transparency in dive computer design, treating it as life-support equipment while incorporating smartwatch features. The episode concludes with final notes celebrating World Oceans Day, including a short film about urchin diving from VAER watches and a new 52-minute Rolex documentary titled "Perpetual Planet: Heroes of the Ocean" featuring Dr. Sylvia Earle.
Links¶
Transcript¶
| Speaker | |
|---|---|
| James Stacy | 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 one forty seven 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? Good, good. Back to back weeks. Here we are on our weekly. Yeah, we did a call a few minutes ago. Yeah, a couple hours. And we talked uh more |
| Jason Heaton | than once today, yeah. But uh here we go on the weekly episodes starting in June, which is uh exciting stuff. Got some good feedback from fol |
| James Stacy | ks that are also excited about it. And yeah, uh before 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 t tell you in a moment. Uh 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. Um basically everything that I had copied and pasted from SoundCloud was broken. I I just wanted to apologize first for not being uh smart enough to think of that being an issue in the first place. And on top of that, uh 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, uh 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, uh this is all kind of a downstream issue from us launching uh notes.the grainado.com or thegrainado.substack.com, whichever you prefer, which is our brand new notes and commenting and subscription newsletter platform. So uh please uh we'll we'll I'm sure we'll bring it up every episode. But uh the notes are now live, the the system's ready to go, all the links are there. And oh one more uh thing Jason that occurred to me is if you subscribe, that makes all of the notes um 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 you're that we're talking about. Yeah. 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. Yeah. If you want to go back a year later and search for it by topic, yeah, Gmail search is Google based so it'll pick up on all the words and everything. So small pro tip there. Uh we were able to figure it out. We we would love it if you would sign up. We got uh more than I expected so far. We got a decent group of people subscribing and and lots of comments saying people would like to support the show through through that system. So we'll we'll work our way uh towards that. Uh but right now enjoy the notes and uh leave a comment. Uh drop your questions in there if you got 'em and of course if you want a question on our upcoming QA, uh record into your voice memo on your phone and then just send us the file. That would be uh perfect. Now that now that I've already rambled a bunch, uh what what else is on the list, J |
| Jason Heaton | as Well, I mean we can't uh we can't overlook a second week in a row, uh our cool new logo that that got refreshed. So we forgot to mention that and all the excitement about our substack 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 for forever and you know served us well. We had uh some stickers made uh and some patches years ago. And um it was time, you know. Uh it had some slightly outdated uh GPS coordinates on it, and uh I was just I was getting a little tired. So we asked uh a designer friend uh Matt Ludvigson who is local here and I've worked with him before on some of the submechanophilia uh stickers and products that that we sold. Uh 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 Stacy | . Like we 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 should be pretty fun. Ye |
| Jason Heaton | ah. 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 and trying to get a little exercise in the meantime. But uh yeah, it's it's well over ninety 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 uh not a bad th |
| James Stacy | ing. Yeah, we're into that sort of like hyper humid range and I 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 from me today. And I like to even all the times I talked 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 my you know my kids thought it was fantastic watching them do all this. Yeah. 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 it's about six PM and uh and yeah, it's also uh World Ocean Day, which is uh awesome. Uh 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 I would like to start a new segment. Something tells me um knowing myself well enough, there'll be plenty of options for more of this in the future. But something I'd like to call there, you know, there's no reason to be dumb when you're this clever with uh James Stacy. Uh today I went to pick up uh do like, you know, the curbside pickup for an IKEA order. Yeah. Just some stuff for the cottage, a hot plate and and some carpets, that sort of thing. I went to p to pick it up and and as it as I've been doing recently, you know, they want to check ID and I I just tucked it into the the weather seal on my window. Um on the inside of my car. Yeah. And then I stopped and it's it's it was like thirty-two or thirty-three degrees crazy humidity here, right? So we're like in the high nineties. Yeah. 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 sea a r a kind of sealed unit, if you if you know what you're up against. Yeah. Um, so I you know, I briefly considered like, well, you know, what's what would really be involved in just ordering another license. Yeah. Um and then we were waiting at IKEA and and I realized like, well, let's I have all the tools in the back, let's at least take the door apart. Uh so strip the door, um, everything down to the um to the the motor. Yeah. Um and then we're able to peel back the skin that that seals the interior of the door where the glass would go. Yeah. And uh and and squeeze a hand into this crevice and just barely pinch the ID and pull it out. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. So I'll I'll I'll I'll uh I took a couple 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. Oh my gosh |
| Jason Heaton | . So I you know, w 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 |
| James Stacy | . Oh my gosh. Okay. All right. That's my that's your your first installment of w why bother being dumb when you k when you could be this clever uh with James Stacy. |
| Jason Heaton | So I've got one one little item to 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 uh in the radius of my house here. Um a good friend of mine, Tom, who uh started a kind of a small home-based business called Hassler Instruments. And uh Tom is um an interesting sort of renaissance man. He uh went to college up at Michigan Tech um doing some hydrographic surveying work out in in Lake Superior. He's uh I think he was involved with um 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 a small business making these really cool uh spring bar tools so you know as as odd as this sounds uh I I I 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 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 you know slide forward and it locks in place and out pops a little spring bar fork tool um that you can use obviously to chain straps in your watch and then uh nestled in the in the other end of it in the cap it uh 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 bolt action tool. So when you're done, you just flick back the 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. 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 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 you can 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 Berger 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 them out on Instagram at Hassler Instruments. And uh he's got some photos of this gadget up and um you can certainly contact him there for uh for ordering or or hasslerinstruments at gmail.com. So um give him a look give. Give the guy some love. I think it's uh it's a really cool thing that he's doing |
| James Stacy | . Yeah, check out the show notes for that. I know uh last year, I remember Jason, I sent you a picture, but he made so few that I didn't end up sharing it because he wasn't making it a product. But uh Terry at Uta Nato's or UTE, if that's easier to understand. Um, he made here he had made these anodized aluminum spring bar tools. Oh and they're they're long, you know, they're six or seven inches long, they have the same Bergeron tip. Yeah. And they have a really beautifully milled, almost when it's screwed tight, you almost can't see the seam. Sure. Um cap at the end that holds the other tool tips. Yeah. Uh and it was it was expensive too. You know, I I like to support Terry. I want to say it was eighty-five bucks. I can't quite remember. Um and honestly I I I I think at the time I thought why did I spend eighty five dollars on a 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 d I don't scratch anything now. I 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. Good good for travel. And you just there's you can't really get the leverage especi,ally with really fine spring bars. Yeah. Yeah. And and this these are lovely. So uh uh definitely definitely check out Hassler instruments uh uh and and if Terry ends up making another run of these I'll be sure to share it in some metric but uh I I'm I'm not against the idea, especially if it's a handcraft, uh, 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. Uh Jason, you want to jump into wrist check? |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah, mine's mine's pretty quick and easy. You know, uh when we did our last collection inspection, um the watch that I talked about was um this Seiko seven thousand and two from the late eighties and um 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 uh it's it's just utterly no nonsense. The the my only quibble with it is it's uh th this was a generation of Seiko that used uh Prometheum for for its luminescent material. It was before Seiko switched to Lumibrate, 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 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 ten 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 uh on a Matt Supreme NATO. So works really well. Yeah. How about you? |
| James Stacy | Yeah. I uh you know, the the most recent volume eight magazine for Hodinki just came out and in it I wrote a story about the kind of uh a reference points about the uh Rolex Explorer 2, 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 gotta 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. Yeah. And I've got it on the on the original oyster and I'm just loving it. Every now and then I I catch a glimpse of it in a reflection or or uh or you know look down and to check the time and you go oh man yeah this is good it it just kind of works so yeah what a what a great watch i 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 a watch that I very much like and and in many ways I look at as as being kind of I happen to thread the needle of Rolex once. Yeah uh before things got too expensive. Yeah. That's uh for uh for f fellas like you uh, like myself, I suppose. And yeah, so I've been wearing that. I I I it probably needs to go on a NATO, the bracelet does feel pretty heavy to me most of the time. Yeah. Um but I love I 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, uh, you know, I've tried m 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 |
| James Stacy | on the speaking of the rubber, now now that you mentioned I realize I have that Everest, the blue Everest strap. So I that that maybe that may be the move. I've been wearing a lot of blue recently, so let's let's maybe go that way. Yeah, right. Uh a kill killer strap, Everest uh |
| Jason Heaton | rubber strap. So yeah. 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 he wears a number of hats at Garmin, but he's a very experienced diver. Um, going back to you know the early 2000s, um, does some tech diving, some closed circuit rebreather diving. And uh, you know, I first was made aware of him when they they launched the the Descent Mark II uh dive computer that that Garmin has. And he was on the video featured very prominently kind of discussing the the features of this uh incredible dive computer. And we just thought it' bed great to have Patrick on 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. Uh today, you know, it's World Oceans Day and we're really excited to have uh a guest on the Grey NATO today. It is Patrick Danko, who is, I believe Patrick, your role is uh as head of dive products uh at Garmin, is that correct? Yeah, that's right. Uh dive product manager, um dive uh champion here at Garmin, correct. Those uh who listen to the Green NATO are aware that that James and I are big Garmin fans and I I've been using uh the Descent for I whenever it first came out, I I started using the Descent and and really loved the product and and then I saw your video presentation about the the Mark II release and I thought uh you know it's it's a fascinating product and I'd love to um talk more about how um Garmin came to develop this dive computer. But before we jump into that, maybe you can um give a little bit of background about your role at Garmin and kind of your history with the company uh if you don't mind |
| Patrick Danko | yeah absolutely I've been at uh Garmin since uh late two thousand five so uh over over fifteen years now, which sounds a little crazy to say. My background is a bit varied. I've uh I'm and I'm an IT guy by trade, so have spent most of my professional career in the IT, um IT world. When we got into um call it uh I don't know 2012, 2010, 11, 12, we started getting more and more uh into wearables at Garmin, the Phoenix product line started coming out. And at that point, I had gotten really into diving. And so through um some of the connections that I had built in Garmin uh in the many years prior to that, I started to uh formulate a bit of a a strategy of how to get uh diving as a potential product uh category. And that really led to a second job for me at Garmin. And since we came out with the descent line, I've uh 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 uh helping to lead the dive segment, the dive subsegment. And um we've built an awesome team here to do that. So So it's it's been awesome to to have a passion of mine uh turn into uh uh a part of my career. And so that's yeah, that's continued on to today. We're a 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 uh it's such a a satisfying part of my job to be able to again turn something that I've been such a passionate participant in into part of my care |
| Jason Heaton | er. So so Garmin came before the the diving um and then the the two sort of merged at at some point. That's that's fascinating. I I wasn't sure, you know, before we talked today, I didn't really know much about your background. And I I assumed, you know, either you were a longtime champion of diving products of 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, uh my 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 uh 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 this passion. 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 setup 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 um really as much knowledge as I possibly can from the certifications um I'm a dive master, technical diver, rebreather diver, the diving physiology and the technology have all been 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 for being able to build some really compelling dive products. I sort of took it upon myself to to turn that passion in into Garmin and try to be an advocate for building a uh you know a dive presence inside the company and and had to do a lot of education on the way. We are we're based out of uh Kansas City, suburb of Kansas City in Olathe, Kansas, and it's certainly not the diving Mecca of of of of of the country. So a lot of that um a lot of that passion and education and knowledge that I've been accumulating, I had to really turn around and and help uh and help educate the the folks here, Garmin, the leaders who are helping to green light explorations and evaluations of new places that come to get go really helped educate folks here around who divers are and what they care about. Um, you know, what what what's the why Garmin? W couldhat Garmin bring to the table? It would be a compelling uh a compelling product. So yeah, it it definitely Garmin came first, then came diving, and now the two |
| James Stacy | have merged. I'm I I'm curious because I 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 uh growing kind of new people coming in each week and and uh it 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 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 uh evolved the descent concept uh the phoenix platform became a really natural home for uh 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 Descent 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 and design aspects of the the product will you know perform in the diving role and withstand the the uh really significant rigors that uh you guys are well aware you you encounter in the the diving and marine environment. So it is it is a phoenix in its uh sort of heart, but there's quite a lot of evolution that's been put on top of that that really make it kind |
| James Stacy | of its own unique product in many ways. 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 uh, you know, uh I have a whole bin full of dive computers uh 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 of regulators, masks, snorkels, fins, VCs, you know, all this equipment, uh, electronics was not a comfort zone for them, right? It was, 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, at least 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. 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 smart watches 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 um with surface, you know, surface functionality, everyday functionality, the things that uh Garmin uh wearables users have really come to know and appreciate, and the opportunity to merge those two things together And that's really the the seed of where des |
| Jason Heaton | cent has has evolved from. Yeah, I 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 and doing some laps with it, you know, with the with the heart rate monitor and everything, and then uh, you know, uploading it right to the app, uh the Garmin app that I have and and just being struck by the fact that, you know, this is a dive computer, then 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 in theory if I was the type that that wasn't so attached to mechanical watches, traditional watches, I'd I'd wear it 24-7 because it does everything in my life that I I like it to do. I I guess the the the 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 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 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. Uh how long did the development take |
| Patrick Danko | ? Uh it was a long process. Um, and I I think both in in technology design, but also in philosophical uh 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 it'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 part of a 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, you know, cost and uh time to market and features, uh, 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 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 can you know market is unforgiving. You know, you you build something and it doesn't live up to uh you know the the huge rigors of of the sport um and you're done. And that's something we knew we had to come in with a serious product that was um you know really took all of the the the best engineering that we could muster, the most rigorous test uh testing that we could put together and and make something that was you know, truly a top-notch world-class competitor from a from a dive computer space. And 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 EN 13319, EN250. How do we how do we make sure that we're complying with those and getting uh external verification? So things that are, you know, were unique to diving. Um, but it was also things that in many ways Garmin had had background with. You know, we build avionics, uh, we build mission critical marine equipment. So the the philosophy of building an essential piece of equipment for the user is something that's in Garmin's DNA. And uh the advantage of how of Garmin in really bringing the dive, 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 as we built the uh the plans for descent and as we looked at uh philosophically how we wanted to approach this. Um, you know, how do we want to handle the algorithm how open do we want to be how how much do we want to keep you know kind of secret to ourselves ultimately you know the philosophy was a was a big part of that safety consideration the buellman 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, uh, we want to do it with well-understood, well-accepted, well-researched um standards, things like our algorithm. Uh, we spent a lot of time talking uh uh doing research around the latest philosophies of you know deep stops and decompression procedures and you know things that are uh like any i think any market you have communities who are debating uh 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 the the overarching theme for us is keeping things open, keeping it transparent, not um baking in so much uh secret sauce that the the end user doesn't understand what we've done with it and therefore may |
| James Stacy | have trouble really trusting it. So that was gonna be kind of my my next main question was you were talking about having all of these backgrounds, which uh and that Garmin has, you know, 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 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 have been a huge hurdle to try and figure out how to incorporate all of the basic not even basics, but the the the the the lowest level of logic that makes a dive computer actually calculate everything as it goes, is that something where you 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? Yeah. So Garmin's, you |
| Patrick Danko | know, we have a uh a strong culture of vertical integration. We we tend to to really like to build and and do things in-house as much as possible. And 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, steep everybody in the knowledge necessary to get that done. So for 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 the things like the Buellman algorithm. It's an open uh it's an open algorithm. can You you can download it, you can unpack it, you can see what's going on in there. And that made it um, I'm not gonna say easy because it's not easy, but it made it very clear um how we needed to go about that implementation. Things are uh the EN13319 and EN250 standards are there that sort of clearly line out the testing um and uh certification requirements for um for dive instruments. And that was really, really helpful. But it also we fell back a lot on Garmin. You know, we we have uh testing standards, software development standards that we're able to apply in these situations. They may not have been developed for diving, but they're 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 as to and manufacturing practices to get to get uh a product built. So it was a lot of learning by her team. So as we went through um looking at each and every design decision along the |
| Jason Heaton | way. What what struck me when w s when I started using the Descent as well was was the uh a 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 s some other brands do have a few of these features, but I I really particularly liked the the wrist-based heart rate monitor while diving, which I thought was uh both both really um fascinating but also slightly um distracting to the point where I 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 it's it's fascinating stuff. But also the the c the compass is really intuitive, very um 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 new dive site, the ability to do that. And I realize 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 the 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 the primary features of the descent? Ye |
| Patrick Danko | ah, certainly. So um, you know, a a little bit building off of the Phoenix heritage, I think it is fair to say that, you know, uh uh if you pick up a descent as a potentially a Phoenix owner, you're gonna see a lot of of carryover, and that means really the the the core features, the sensor package. So you've got um, as you mentioned, wrist space heart rate. And that's uh something we do allow you to use in 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 MK2 has a pulse oximeter. Uh, we have not enabled that yet yet for dive, but on the surface, you can get your um 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 uh tuning that compass experience i think for for any of you who are divers you you understand the uh the the critical uh nature that that a compass um 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. GPS and GlowNAS. 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 in the the garmin dive app and and be able to see those entry and accept points you, can save those out as waypoints. So if you wanted to navigate yourself back over the top of a particular point, you can |
| Jason Heaton | do that. Can I ask a quick question here about GPS? Yeah. 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 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 or whatever breadcrumb uh navigation underwater that you see happening? Yeah. |
| Patrick Danko | So you're you're absolutely 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. We'll |
| James Stacy | put it that way. Fascinating. I haven't had the good fortune of diving with a descent. Uh uh maybe sometime in the future. I've used a digital compass once underwater and it and it worked beautifully in it. It almost feels like a cheat code. Right. If you're used to using um a normal wrist mount that you know you have to hold at a certain level, especially in cold and dark water and you're you're looking for a bit of a pinpoint rack and and the the the digital one made all the difference. That's a huge feature to in and if you can nail it, especially the three axis, which means you can orient, I assume, in a lot of different wrist positions. Yeah, absolut |
| Patrick Danko | ely. You can you can have your wrist sort of straight out in front of you. Uh you could have it sort of par 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 menu uh setup 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 to try build in as many useful features as possible into that comp |
| James Stacy | ass. Um as a guy who's been saved uh on you know maybe more than two or three occasions by the trackback feature on uh on the Phoenix in in uh BC's backcountry uh I think that would be even more handy when you you just can't see the next fifty feet that you need uh in some cold or dark water. That's uh that's fascinating |
| Jason Heaton | . And then Patrick, I uh I think what um stood out for the Mark II, 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 uh 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 II 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 other tanks so that you could be a dive master and keep track of all of your um your followers or students or whatever um their tank pressures. Um how such 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 you bet. As we as we started to approach it's a literally from the moment we launched Mark One, and this is something we the descent mark one, as we we fully anticipated, the first question we would get would be, awesome, when are you going to have air integration? And sure enough, I remember being at the DEMA show uh you know during announcement and and uh that was far and away the 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 uh 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 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 uh we struck upon the idea of using uh sonar as a uh communication channel. Um just the advantages of that being uh 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. All of a sudden now being able to monitor not only my own tank pressure, but my dive buddies, or if I yeah, if I'm a dive master, my my students that I'm guiding around and being able to get alerts of their tank pressure on my on my descent. It it really fills 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 rise. 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. 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 uh person's wrist to really impro |
| Jason Heaton | ve improve safety? Um I've got a bit of a two-part follow-up question to that. And there's w 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 hap 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 dive computers. And I guess I'm curious, the the two-part question here is how how was initial feedback to the descent and and adoption rates uh 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 or just divers that don't know anything about Garmin |
| Patrick Danko | ? Yeah that's a great question. So the response uh the response was amazing. Yeah. I I I've I've had the privilege of attending the last uh we didn't have one last year, but the last couple of DEMA shows uh where we've launched uh you know the the MK1 and then since the MK2 and it it's's been amazing. Uh certainly, absolutely. The diving, the diving group, rightfully so, is is one that really uh 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 a healthy amount of scrutiny. And I think that's absolutely appropriate. 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 uh for us a this is not a flash in the pan situation we know we need to get in build a build a beachhead you know establish um a track record of of of uh of loyal customers and good experiences and and uh then from that we can evolve and that's been been how we've we've approached dive uh philosophically this is a this is a long game for us we need to drive uh innovation i that's that's our our i think our key element we can bring to the table things that other companies uh maybe have chosen not to or are unable uh due to to to garmin's breadth of capabilities, breadth of experience, uh manufacturing capability and pace, we can do things that others can't, but we still have to base that off of a satisfied and um happy customer base that's really own only owned earned through experience of divers using the product. When when we launched MK1, we had lots of of great feedback. I think people reacting to oh I can have a dive watch that that''ss 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. Really works well. It's reliable. I 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 in diving. And you know, I think most all of us uh who are divers, you end up kind of beating the crud out of your gear. So the realization is, you know, everyday where isn't um really all that different of a situation of or that much harsher of a situation than than what we're putting things through in diving. And the reality is you can have something that's that's that served both roles. So since then we've had a we've had a a great uh slow build of passionate uh garmin fans i think we you know every the fact that we're we've launched a a mark iI the T1 and more recently the MK2S the smaller uh dive computer, we've I think we're we're we're in this for the long game, and I think the the uh the folks who may have been originally skeptical are now starting to see a bit of a track record from uh from customers who've who've uh come to really love their garments. It's helping to help |
| James Stacy | ing to evolve the market for us. And and so for people who are listening, uh the current Descent Mark II comes in two sizes. This is obviously very important to just general watch nerdery, is 43 millimeters is the new Hear what you think, as someone who's gone uh considerably deeper into diving than say I have myself, with closed circuit and um and and the tech diving and and 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 dive computers that are admittedly out there |
| Patrick Danko | ? Yeah, that's uh great question. I'll just kind of rattle through things. I think first and 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 uh for each of those diving um modes you can have a separate gas loadout with uh with the all the gases you would need as a technical diver um up to 100 02. The apnea features are uh top notch we allow you to do uh both vibration and audible alerts. So for our spearfishers, they love that. You can go down and get alerts, uh dive alerts on depth and time that are vibrations. So you're not scaring away the fish with audible alerts. It's a project that's had a lot of focus put in on a diving from a diving standpoint. So uh inductive button. So on the MK2, we've launched industry first inductive button technology. Um 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 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 |
| James Stacy | to fail. And so just to cut in an inductive button, that's essentially uh the button is hitting a sensor on the inside almost like a touch screen. Uh e even |
| Patrick Danko | uh s 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 um there's nothing protruding through the case at all. There's an inductive sensor on the 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 uh which is unique for Garmin. We have uh a sunlight readable, it's a transflective uh MIP display, and that's something that I do think sets us sets us apart. Uh 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, fairly compact and everyday wearable. But that display is sunlight readable. So you can take that out on a bright, bright boat deck right in the middle of the sun. And you're not going to have the the screen washout that you can get with other uh other display techs. Um, obviously, Subwave, which is our branding for the um the sonar-based underwater data communication protocol that we built uh 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 uh is something that has a lot of potential, I think, to continue to have features added to it that will be compelling for divers in the future. There's also just some little things. Honestly, one of the things that I thought was the most interesting as we launched Descent 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. Yeah 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 silicon dive band set to wrap around my dry suit. Yeah clip clip done. It makes it so easy |
| James Stacy | . I hadn't even thought of that. Like that's I I like that feature because 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 uh swap it out if I need to. That's yeah, that's a good one. Um Patrick, I you know, as we kind of uh maybe circle back and and bring this chat uh to a close, I I I'd love to know a little bit about your own uh diving uh 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 the the descent, either the the mark one or the mark two in in a particularly useful way |
| Patrick Danko | . Yeah, sure. Um, for for me, I uh I love history. And so typically my favorite dive sites are I love wrecks or something that'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 uh some of my first rec diving on the outer banks off North Carolina and going down and seeing uh U three five two there or some of the cargo ships that were were uh you know on the bottom during the during you know sunk during World War II and I it just struck me as there's a an underwater museum here that so few people get to experience. There's there's a history behind things that um is both kind of awe-inspiring and yet slowly disintegrating. You know, those those shipwrecks will not be there forever. And uh the ability to dive these wrecks and learn about the history and see something that most people don't have the the the the privilege to do and and things that will not be there forever, I think uh are are the most compelling. So uh Great Lakes, I s uh I love diving the Great Lakes, wrecks there are amazing, uh outer banks. I've had the 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 uh in Scotland to see some of the World War II ships that were scuttled there. So there's to me, I uh it's all about the wrecks. I love I love shipwrecks. And it's something that as a Mwidesterner, you know, I I get a lot of opportunity to dive in springs and mines and lakes and quarries. Um there is some interesting diving here. Um, but yeah, yeah, it's typically for me, where where's the next rec dive |
| Jason Heaton | gonna be. Yeah. You're just a few hours uh a few hours south of of me here in Minneapolis. Uh I I make it up to Lake Superior fairly often for for rec diving and also over to Lake Michigan. And uh you you'll have to make a road trip up and let me know and we can absolutely ye |
| Patrick Danko | ah uh some wrecks Lake Michigan and you know Milwaukee uh we've 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 muscle infestation there. They, you know, it's covers everything, but the water is is uh you know clear and it's able to preserve those those wrecks due to low oxygen content. So you just the some find some amazing stuff |
| James Stacy | Yeah, and and I've I'm probably uh probably speaking not not out of turn, but uh to someone who's preaching to the choir to a certain extent. But if you haven't read uh Shadow Divers or um Oh yeah Daniel Lenahan's book about the creation of the submerged cultural underwater heritage unit. Uh we uh Jason I'd be happy to send you either as uh as a thank you for this chat. Uh both are uh both are just uh yeah, a great h a great history lesson and and some adventure for sure. |
| Patrick Danko | Shadow Divers is one of my favorites. That's uh just a classic. Um I've also just finished reading Jill Heinereth's new book, if you haven't read that. Um uh that's an she's such an amazing inspiration to me as a scuba eye. Her her recent book that she's come out uh come out with has been uh another reading item that I would highly recommend. I I don't know what's it called. We'll we'll be sure to put it in the show notes. It's a great recommendation. Um now I'm having one of these brain brain moments here. Uh in into the planet. Into the planet. |
| Jason Heaton | Thank you so much for the recommendation. 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 the work you're doing, just to to talk to somebody who has taken his passion and and made it his work as well, which is always inspiring to anybody. So with with that in mind, Patrick, uh, you know, thanks so much for for joining us on the Green NATO and uh and we love Very much appreciated. It's been a pleasure to be here. I be |
| Patrick Danko | ing a a a poor watch enthusiast of traditional watches too. It's been exciting to be able to uh connect with the both of you and and uh sort of play a part in that that uh community as well. So yeah, really, really appreciate the opportunity |
| James Stacy | . So there you have it, our chat with Patrick Danko. A huge thank you to Patrick for that. Uh 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 Zinn. 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 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 the technical hurdles of making something that's doing all those calculations all the time. Yeah. And the tech is really neat. It's definitely worth checking out. As I mentioned in the interview, if you want to check out more,, um obviously visit Garmin. This isn't ad or anything. Jason actually reached out to Garmin just based on curiosity. If Patrick was available, we thought he'd make an an a 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 a series of related accounts. So maybe just jump into um the show notes. That's a you know notes.the gray nato dot com uh and and kind of pick one and follow along but they've they've got some great stuff and I'm really excited to to possibly get a chance to play around with uh with a descent mark two in the future, you know, I'm maybe maybe do some free diving at the cottage or uh or get my uh get my reg serviced and and give uh give Lake Ontario a try sometime this summer. So yeah, that's a uh really cool and and it's just nice that you can send an email and then have that kind of a conversation because it's just I there's I have like uh it didn't help my curiosity that much. It made 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 him on again sometime in the future, maybe with a a new product launch or or after a great adventure. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. So how about some final notes? Yeah, let's jump into uh final notes here. Um I can go first. So World Oceans Day, I really wanted to put up something that was uh sort of diving or ocean related and lo and behold uh a kind of a cool one came across my Instagram feed from a watch brand that some people might be familiar with, which is uh 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 uh 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 the kelp beds around the Channel Islands off of the California coast. And, you know, the script is a little simplistic and and there I don't necessarily know that you you know learn that much about urchin diving or about the Channel Islands, but uh it 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 at 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 and I thought the the cinematography was fantastic. And I also appreciated that even though Vare 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 uh as as part of the video. So you know hats off to Vare for for putting that out there. I thought it was really impressive. So check that out. |
| James Stacy | Absolutely. Yeah, I I I skimmed uh uh just a click of it um before we started recording and yeah, looks really cool. I you know, I it's exciting to see more um inventive things coming from the micro brand space. Yeah. And I I've seen Vayer mostly by by Instagram and and and stuff like that. And then their their stuff looks really good. So I'm I'm glad to see them kind of doing some neat stuff. And urchin diving's cool. Jason, have you ever done surface supplied air? Is that weird? Or do 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 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 uh a bit fouled up or something, I suppose it's not that much different. I wonder how you I wonder how you wait |
| James Stacy | for that. Yeah, me too. That'd be cool. I guess just wait for your wetsuit. I suppose so, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It'd be pretty cool. Mm-hmm. Uh so mine is also it w you know within the within the the spirit of World Ocean Day. Pretty exciting. And and this is a a rare treat because uh if you're 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 like I love a long video. I like long podcasts. I like I like, you know, I would I would uh 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 you thanks to their Rolex's kind of connection with Nat Geo for the Perpetual Planet program, they actually have just released uh 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 I I wrote a piece about it for Hodinky because I got so excited to see Rolex doing a legit documentary like if you've seen Dr. Sylvia Earl's um movie Mission Blue, this is exactly in that 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 |
| Jason Heaton | Just completely disarms you with her personality. And then she has that wonderful voice, which I think lends herself well to narrating a movie like this. It's just |
| James Stacy | a very calm presence that she has. So 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 the media world. But uh I I really love this. It's got everything from, you know, growing coral to tracking uh whale sharks to uh submersible technologies, ROVs, um 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 it really kind of sparks 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 but get back into the water. You know, it's it's been long enough that I I'm gonna 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 twenty four hundred views, which is a crime. I really hope they put this on Netflix and and they get it they kind of get it out there a little bit. I I would have loved a four K version. Maybe that's my only my only my only like soft feedback that isn't glowing is uh I you can tell that that that they shot this with big cameras. Yeah. And uh a four K 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 I' Im'm sure this video costs an an absolutely insane amount of money. They're all over the world. It's like watching a planet Earth. Yeah. 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 maybe we'd see more. Because 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 ten minutes. Ye |
| Jason Heaton | ah. Yeah. We don't we don't we don't need fifty two minutes every time, but you know, give us a ten, ten, fifteen minute video every now and then. Yeah, you're right. It's funny, you know, you were just talking I think a 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 thoug |
| James Stacy | ht was great too. I love it. I can't yeah, I can't I'm gonna put it on the projector tonight with uh 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 Earl the uh the best yeah uh let's uh let's keep it going. is This very cool. Ye |
| Jason Heaton | ah, 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.the Grenado.com or the feed for more details. You can follow us on Instagram at Jason Heaton at JE Stacy and follow the show at the Greenado. If you have any questions for us, please write the Grenado at gmail.com. You can comment on the Substack uh notes as well and please do keep sending those voice memos in for our next QA. Please subscribe and review wherever you find your podcast in addition to subscribing to Substack if you feel so inclined. And music throughout a CS too much sub |
| James Stacy | stack pushing. It's so it's so many subscriptions now. Sub where you want, maybe tell a friend. That'd be great, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Let me |
| Jason Heaton | start that over. All right, let's just leave it.. Go Okay, alright. And music throughout a siesta by Jazzar via the free music archive. |
| James Stacy | And we leave you with this quote from the wonderful Werner Herzog who said, and 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. |