In this episode, I talk to a man who left his law degree in Montreal to become a spearfishing guide and guide. He talks about how he went from being a lawyer to being a guide, why he left his job and why he decided to pursue his passion for fishing. He also talks about why he quit his job as a lawyer and how he got to where he is now, working as a guide and spearfisher in London, England. I hope you enjoy this episode and that it inspires you to go out and do the things you love to do in life and travel the world. I know I did and I'm so excited to have him on the show! Thank you so much to Valentina for being on the podcast and for sharing her story with us. I really appreciate it and I hope that you do too. If you like what you hear, please leave a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts. I'd love to hear from you and tell me what you thought of the episode. I'll be looking out for you in the next episode! Timestamps: 3:00 - What do you think of this episode? 4:30 - What was your favourite part of the podcast? 5:20 - What is your favourite thing about Valentina's story? 6:40 - How did you feel about the episode so far? 7: What would you like to see me do in the future episodes? 8:35 - What are you looking forward to the next one? 9:15 - How do you plan on spending the rest of your life in 2020? 10:00 11:00- What is the most important thing that you're going to do next? 12:30- What's your biggest takeaway from this week? 13:00 What are your biggest challenge? 15:00 Is there something you're most excited about? 16:00 Do you have a dream for the future? 17:00 Are you planning on doing the most exciting thing you re going to be doing in the most challenging part of your career in your life right now? 18:00 Who do you want to do for your life? 19:00 Can you have the most interesting thing you're excited about the most authentic experience? 21:00 Would you like me to come back to Canada next year? 22:00 How much money you d like to travel more?
00:00:26.000So your name is, you would introduce yourself as Valentine, but your mom calls you Valentin?
00:00:36.000Well, when I introduce myself to English-speaking people, I say I'm Valentine, but then when I speak to somebody that speaks French, I say Valentin.
00:02:52.000I actually made a career switch when I moved to London in 2010. So I started working in finance, so I worked for hedge funds, and I basically decided on quitting law.
00:03:02.000I didn't like the part of law where I was stuck in one place.
00:03:06.000So, you know, when you study law, let's say in Canada, even in Canada, it's even worse because I was studying in Quebec, which is civil law, and then I was stuck in Quebec for the rest of my life.
00:03:16.000And I just got like, oh, that's not going to happen.
00:03:19.000So meaning that, okay, so like if you pass the bar in California, you would also have to pass the bar in New York if you wanted to work in New York?
00:05:37.000So he said, okay, well, now that you know how to free dive, in three months, we're going to this very big spearfishing trip on Ascension Island.
00:05:44.000Ascension Island is literally one of the biggest, most elite spearfishing destinations in the world.
00:09:10.000And yeah, and then my friend was like, well, you're not done, you know, you have to grab, like, the fish, you have to drag it all the way to the boat, and I was like, alright, I'll grab the fish, I have waves in my face, and then I get, it was kind of a big fish, it was a big, it was a good, um...
00:12:42.000What I always tell people is that when you live in a big city, when I've never experienced that before, I've never felt that I was part of the ecosystem whatsoever.
00:13:10.000And I think as a person you have to experience that.
00:13:13.000You have to put yourself out of your comfort zone to understand that you need to respect what's around you.
00:13:21.000You cannot tell me 10 years ago, oh, you have to eat that fish because it's bad for DRM. And I'd be like, yeah, yeah, sure, buddy.
00:13:27.000And then you see in a plane, you're like, ooh, that looks good and it's fine and this.
00:13:30.000But then when you're in the water and you see what's going on and you see that a spot you've been diving for five years all of a sudden is empty, then it makes you understand that, you know, we actually have a very strong impact.
00:13:41.000And it's our job to understand and respect it.
00:13:59.000When you're, you know, first experiencing this your first time, in this feeling of connectedness and freedom and just being a part of the ecosystem, did you imagine that somehow or another this could be your life and your job?
00:15:13.000And I have like maybe two suitcases of stuff for the past three years.
00:15:19.000I was reading somewhere where they were going to do an interview on you and they decided not to.
00:15:26.000They were going to feature you in something, but they decided not to because of concerns for the depletion of fish in the ocean.
00:15:33.000And I said, that is one of the dumbest fucking things I've ever heard because the impact of someone like you, what you're doing for your own personal consumption, taking a fish a day or whatever you're getting for your own personal consumption, Is negligible in comparison to all these people that are probably writing these articles that are going to buy sushi from commercial fishermen.
00:15:53.000They're buying fish from the store that's wrapped in saran wrap.
00:17:19.000She's like, well, one of our sponsors said that if you speak at a conference, they're going to watch their participation in the conference.
00:18:43.000And if they go there, and people love to get outraged about something.
00:18:47.000If they go there, and then they go to your Instagram and they find pictures of you with fish, they're like, well, this girl's cleaning out the ocean all by herself.
00:19:05.000Jamie, see if you could pull off the horrific effects of commercial net fishing.
00:19:12.000Because if you find a video, we could watch a clip of the video.
00:19:16.000It's crazy when you see the sheer volume of fish that they pull out of the ocean and when you realize there's countless numbers of these boats and essentially pretty much unregulated.
00:21:44.000Because you can actually see what you're catching?
00:21:45.000Yeah, so basically we're the cheaters because we can see the fish.
00:21:49.000And I'm like, how can you be in your camping chairs on your boat, drinking beers all day, telling me that I'm the cheater when I'm working my ass off, diving at like 60 feet to catch my fish?
00:22:47.000Like recreational fishing, you allow a certain amount of red snapper and then the season closes.
00:22:54.000And when the season closes, as an individual, my license to fish is gone.
00:23:00.000And then they give it away to the commercial fishermen.
00:23:04.000And I'm like, whoa, so basically you're telling me that I'm not allowed to catch that fish for a few months because the population is too bad.
00:23:13.000But then you're giving my quota to the commercial boats that are catching hundreds a day.
00:25:22.000I mean, I guess that was a very successive thing to say because I'm seeing catch food, but I just don't see why a human being genetically would have to go underwater.
00:25:31.000Are you aware of the aquatic ape theory?
00:26:12.000Fossil Remains shows dolphins and whales were four-footed land animals about 50 million years ago and share the same common ancestors as hippos and deer.
00:26:50.000I don't know enough about this to really speak on it, but that has never stopped me in the past.
00:26:56.000But this theory is one of the reasons why they think humans have so much fat on us when we're babies, is that we float easier, and that if you take a human baby and you chuck them in the water...
00:27:30.000It purports that some humans, notably children under five, may also use this reflex to survive prolonged submersion.
00:27:34.000The mammalian dive reflex theory was developed in 1960 as an explanation for well-publicized survival of exceptional submersion times of some near-drowning victims.
00:27:45.000But see if there's anything, like an actual article, that makes sense on the aquatic ape theory.
00:28:13.000Supposedly accounts for our hairless bodies, which made us more streamlined for swimming and diving, our upright two-legged walking, which made wading easier, and our layers of subcutaneous fat, which made us better insulated in water, think whale blubber.
00:28:26.000The theory even links an aquatic existence to the extinction of human speech, evolution, rather, of human speech.
00:28:33.000The hypothesis was met with much criticism, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:28:39.0002009, Richard Rangham of Harvard University and colleagues suggested in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology that shallow aquatic habitats allowed hominids to thrive in savannas, enabling our ancestors to move from tropical forests to open grasslands.
00:28:57.000So from 2.5 million to 1.4 million years ago, Africa became drier during certain seasons.
00:29:05.000Already, dry savannas became even more arid, making it difficult for hominids to find adequate food.
00:29:10.000But Wrangham's team suggested that even in this inhospitable environment, there were oasises, wetlands, and lake shores, and these aquatic habitats, water lilies, cattails, blah, [...
00:29:23.000The theory is that We, like, you know, obviously there's a bunch of different kinds of primates, and some of them are still in trees today, those fucking losers.
00:31:44.000So they want to make sure that the oxygen goes exactly where it needs to be and make sure that you need as less effort to do anything as possible when you're actually underwater.
00:31:54.000Now, when you first tried holding your breath, how long did you do it for?
00:32:52.000So I do mostly, especially when I'm in the water, I do a very short inhale, so about five seconds, and then I do a long inhale, maybe 10 to 15 seconds.
00:33:02.000And then when you exhale, you're focusing on everything getting relaxed.
00:33:20.000You use your tongue to control the air coming out.
00:33:23.000And then when you do that, you get as relaxed as possible.
00:33:26.000And then the more relaxed you are, that along with your mammal diving reflex, which is your heart being slowed down naturally, your blood shifting from extremities to your final organs.
00:33:52.000That the pressure would be so great there that your body would be completely crushed.
00:33:56.000But then again, with that dive reflex, what it does is that that overflow of blood is going around your alveolies and your lungs, which prevent them from crushing.
00:34:06.000Your body is actually a design machine to go underwater.
00:35:47.000And then we were there for about five weeks, five or six weeks, and then the living conditions were really bad.
00:35:54.000And there was no grocery stores around, and we had to catch our own food, and it was really a self-sufficient type of trip.
00:36:00.000And the first week, I remember, the only thing I could focus on was, oh god, this is terrible, we don't have a shower, there's no hot water, the bathroom is disgusting, I'm starving, there's nothing around,
00:36:16.000and then all you can think is how your comfort's gone.
00:36:24.000The focus changed on the good things that we're seeing around us.
00:36:28.000And by having nothing all of a sudden, then I was like, oh, I actually now, for the first time in my life, can take the time to realize what's good around me.
00:36:39.000And then how we were having fires with the neighbors and then how we were offering them fish and we were thinking, oh, you know, if I give this guy two fish, he's going to eat one today and then one tomorrow.
00:36:49.000But no, they're inviting new neighbors to share and they make sure that there's like a whole community sense to all of it.
00:36:55.000And I was like, wow, I've been living in London for six years.
00:36:57.000I don't even know the name of my neighbor.
00:37:34.000I do believe that a human being, to be happy, you need to have this sense of community, which is why, you know, when you go on the subway and you see, like, somebody singing, everybody's laughing, and you see those videos on YouTube, and it makes you all warm and happy inside, it's because that's what we're meant to be,
00:37:50.000And we're meant to live with other people, we're meant to socialize, we're meant to have this...
00:37:56.000This strong feeling of, I don't know how to say that in English, to be part of something, to be part of a group and people like that.
00:38:05.000And I do think it's a necessity for human beings to be actually happy.
00:38:10.000I think so too, and I think it's probably one of the reasons why so many people are so grossly unhappy and so depressed and so disconnected and they feel alienated even though they live in these giant cities.
00:38:21.000People feel extremely lonely, even though there's a lot of people around.
00:38:25.000I mean, one of the weirder things about New York City, you know, I have friends who live in New York City and one of the things they say they love is how many people are there.
00:39:00.000But the idea is that you don't know anybody around you, but you're stacked around all these people and then you go out you're walking around these people, but you're not really talking to them and you have a few people that your friends with maybe that you work with and you interact with them, but then you're constantly surrounded by all these other people that you don't even know.
00:39:20.000Whereas The way you were living, the way you were describing this with these people and they're all sharing fish and everyone's taking care of everybody and giving some to their neighbors and sharing.
00:39:33.000That's how people have been living forever.
00:39:35.000I think there's certain human reward systems that are built into who we are as a being, as a species, that just aren't being met.
00:39:46.000And that's why I'm so fascinated by your choice to go from being a lawyer to living this very interesting life of spearfishing.
00:39:56.000But it's also, it's not always easy in the sense that I still haven't found a place where I want to live because the society isn't designed for this.
00:40:09.000My lifestyle is very hard to adapt with modern society.
00:41:51.000And she says, because we're partnered with WWF and our marketing department said that you raised a red flag because you're spitfish for a living.
00:42:48.000So basically, yeah, they said like, oh, because we really want to keep our eco-friendly partners.
00:42:54.000Meanwhile, their fucking boat's filled with roast beef and chicken and all sorts of other shit.
00:42:58.000Meanwhile, when they cross, they're allowed, I think it's about when you're two miles away from the coast, you're allowed to dump your garbage in the ocean.
00:45:11.000There's an interesting place in Seattle where you can go and watch the salmon swim upriver.
00:45:18.000There's like a bridge and you go underneath the bridge and they have this setup where there's thick glass walls where you can actually look into the ocean and watch the salmon go up the salmon ladder.
00:45:30.000But one of the guys who was there who was a guide was explaining how How when they were doing construction and doing various things and they're building Seattle, they'd shut down one of the rivers and these salmon would just get to the mouth of the river where they thought they were supposed to go and fucking die.
00:45:53.000It's pretty weird how they die too, they like rot.
00:45:56.000I went diving in the Salmon River in BC and I was underwater with my girlfriend and I could see they had like big stains of like rot on their body.
00:46:07.000So they live like they fall alive in the ocean and they came to breed one last time, which I guess is a good last choice when you think about it.
00:46:44.000But again, you know, the Wall Street Journal and their Instagram page when they're promoting a recipe for shrimp that are probably coming from Thailand or salmon that is farmed and very bad for the environment.
00:46:56.000But then they think that, I don't know, there's something ridiculously taboo about catching food.
00:48:51.000There's like a trend now for people who catch their own food and people are starting slowly because there's so many of big people, special celebrities.
00:49:02.000No, they're voicing themselves when it comes to food sourcing and now people are starting to realize that hunting or spearfishing is actually not as bad.
00:52:11.000They check you out and things like that.
00:52:13.000But the young ones, they want it a little bit crazy.
00:52:15.000So they're going to go more towards you and they're going to go try to do, like, curious bites, which is what happens most of the time with shark bites.
00:52:51.000He keeps circling and he keeps coming in for me.
00:52:54.000And at some point I'm like, okay, like something – I'm going to have to shoot it hoping that I'm not going to miss because if I miss, then it's the only thing between me and the shark.
00:54:04.000So when I was alone with the shark, I was screaming in the water, and I was like calling my friends for help, and then nobody could hear me.
00:55:34.000He caught a 154 pound thresher shark and everybody freaked the fuck out.
00:55:39.000It's when they realized that the Asians were catching millions a day to make shark fin soup.
00:55:46.000Yeah, so it became, instead of it being something that was just another fish, then it became something that's protected and people with a very shallow understanding of what a shark is were freaking out about it.
00:56:35.000Because the seal population became really high, and then because, you know, the great white shark population takes more time to grow, now we're at a stage where there's shit tons of lionfish, and now there's a lot of great whites too.
00:56:48.000But great whites are protected, right?
00:57:04.000I went to Pivishing in New York about a couple months ago and a guy was like cutting a mako on a dog and nobody seemed to be offended by it.
00:57:13.000Well, people that are on the water, people that are fisher people, they wouldn't be offended.
00:57:18.000It's the casual person on the outside that gets offended.
00:57:41.000We're saying when a surfer gets bitten by a shark, they're like, oh, it's his fault, it was in his territory, like, you shouldn't have, like, done anything to the shark.
00:57:48.000I'm like, put your mother in that cage with that gorilla.
00:57:52.000Then tell me which one you're going to shoot.
01:00:01.000It's just we've made them into movie characters and TV show characters and people have this idea of what they are based on Just this sort of image that gets portrayed in the public and we accept this narrative.
01:00:16.000And I think that's happening right now with sharks.
01:00:19.000You know, no one wants sharks to go extinct.
01:00:25.000And if there's a lot of them, I've seen people catch mako sharks.
01:00:30.000Off of the coast of California and and cut them up and make shark steaks up and eat them and it used to be normal No one cared until I feel like within the last decade Something happened in the last decade that people became incredibly outraged when someone kills a shark I Actually think that people became outraged when you kill anything But they're so hypocritical because they're killing things left and right with their pocketbook.
01:02:18.000But the ocean's pretty fucking far from here.
01:02:21.000I mean, you have to drive to get to the ocean, you know, and they're not going to the ocean and pulling these fish out themselves.
01:02:27.000It's all coming from a giant commercial boat that distributes it all throughout Southern California, all throughout Northern California, all throughout.
01:02:35.000Then you get into the middle of the country.
01:03:27.000And in our lifetime, the population has decreased radically.
01:03:31.000And there's no better example than that than the Tokyo fish markets.
01:03:34.000You know, the Tokyo fish markets, you interview those guys, and they talk about what it used to be like when they just, the amount of tuna that they used to deal with, and the amount they deal with now, it's a significant dip.
01:03:59.000People want to have access to everything now.
01:04:04.000If we would put regulations on everybody's fish, it's like, okay, look everybody, I know you want your salmon, but it's going to be close of January to May.
01:04:13.000I know you want your halibut, but you can't eat it this year.
01:04:18.000If we would be willing to live with just...
01:04:20.000I mean, I think people would survive it, that's for sure, because I don't think people would get used to pretty much anything.
01:04:25.000But then the industry is worth so much money that they're not willing to do that.
01:04:30.000It's not just the industry is worth so much money, it's that there's certain people in certain countries in particular where that is all they have.
01:04:37.000I mean, there's certain people out there where they they're dependent upon the ocean and its bounty for their survival.
01:04:43.000And if they can't sell fish and they can't buy fish, and we're talking about individual fisher people that have boats and, you know, are doing it on their own small scale commercial fishermen.
01:04:53.000There's not a lot of room for error there.
01:05:03.000I mean, when you see those guys bring in, you know, like the guy in the video earlier, yeah, he's catching a big net, he's catching quite a bit of fish.
01:05:12.000The reality of things are ships, foreign ships, raiding the entire ocean with nets that are like kilometers long.
01:06:30.000Is there any discussion about regulating the amount of fish these gigantic boats can pull out?
01:06:36.000Well, again, the U.S. is trying to regulate that, and they actually made efforts that proved to increase the amount of fish, so it's good.
01:06:46.000They're actually working in the right direction.
01:06:48.000But the problem is that still to this day, I'm not sure exactly how many Nautical Mali have to be, but a Russian or a Chinese foreigner trawler is allowed to fish from the coast of the United States.
01:07:04.000And international water to just raid everything.
01:07:46.000There's still some wild herds that exist in Mexico, and there were some of them that exist in the United States, and now they brought them back.
01:07:52.000But to this day, the majority of buffalo that live in North America are all on private land, the majority of them.
01:08:00.000But at one point in time, there's millions and millions of them all throughout the country.
01:08:13.000There's some animals that have thrived like white-tailed deer because they live primarily in farmlands and farmlands have gotten so huge that they were essentially like farm animals now.
01:08:37.000Yeah, caribou are these migrating deer that live in Canada primarily and in Alaska.
01:08:44.000And they migrate for hundreds and hundreds of miles in these massive herds.
01:08:48.000They're very different in that, you know, unlike deer, you'll see them, like hundreds of them, moving together in one group, in one line across the tundra.
01:08:59.000But these animals that were in North America, not Alaska, but the lower 48, they were wiped out almost to nothing.
01:09:09.000Antelope, deer, elk, buffalo, they were almost all wiped out by market hunting because this is back when we didn't have refrigerators.
01:09:17.000So people would shoot these things and bring them to market and people would go to market and buy that meat and they would bring it in on trucks.
01:09:24.000I mean, I guess they just have blocks of ice and these trains and trucks and they would bring in this meat and they killed almost everything.
01:09:31.000In a short amount of time, like less than 100 years, there was almost nothing left.
01:09:35.000And then they instituted these laws where it was illegal to sell wild game.
01:09:39.000So if you buy elk, like say in this country, if you buy elk meat, you're buying it from New Zealand.
01:09:46.000Oh, so it's actually in force right now still?
01:09:54.000I think you can sell commercially raised deer and elk in America, but if you go to a restaurant, most of what you're getting, you're actually getting from New Zealand.
01:10:15.000It's something that has to, you have to have a tag for it, you have to pay for the tag, and then it has to be for your own personal consumption or you can give it away to your friends, but you can't sell it.
01:10:24.000Okay, which is not much of a bad thing.
01:10:44.000What it is, is it takes 10% of all of the proceeds from hunting supplies and gear and puts it to wildlife conservation, which is an enormous amount of money, billions and billions of dollars.
01:10:56.000So it goes to preserve habitat and wetlands.
01:10:59.000It goes to reintroduce species into places where they had been decimated, like elk are now in viable numbers in places where they were completely extinct, like in Virginia, and I think Tennessee has them now as well.
01:11:48.000When you're talking about the ocean, It would be really difficult to get other countries to agree to that kind of strict management that brought back wildlife in North America to do that to the ocean.
01:12:00.000But if they did do that to the ocean, maybe everything could bounce back.
01:12:05.000I mean, a few states, Florida is definitely one of them, where they're looking very closely to what's going on, and then they have close seasons and things like that.
01:12:14.000And it actually makes a really nice and big difference.
01:12:16.000But again, I think the problem is not coming from that.
01:12:19.000The problem is coming from, again, like deep trawling and commercial, foreign commercial fishing.
01:12:27.000Florida sport fishing is a giant industry.
01:12:30.000People go there every year to grouper fish and fish for tarpon.
01:12:34.000There's a lot of fishing in Florida, and it's probably a pretty significant part of their economy.
01:12:41.000Yeah, I think I read somewhere that actually the number of jobs in recreational fishing was higher than in commercial fishing in the States.
01:13:08.000Also, I mean, the biggest problem with commercial fishing is I went to...
01:13:12.000I actually went to Taiwan last year, and I was helping them finding government and giving them a proposal on how they can change the law to make the fisheries better.
01:13:23.000And they explained it to me, like, they have those ships, and they hired people from the Philippines or from Indonesia, and then they put them on a ship for six months.
01:13:32.000They take their passport, and they're getting paid like...
01:14:23.000And have you noticed a difference in three years?
01:14:27.000Depends where, but yeah, some places definitely.
01:14:31.000When I've been traveling, there's some places where I've been, and the third time or fourth time I was coming back, I could see there was even less and less fish.
01:14:45.000And it's, again, that's another example where it's just been overfished for so many years.
01:14:50.000They don't allow spearfishing there, but a commercial fishing boat is allowed to catch as many tuna as they want.
01:14:57.000For tuna, I mean, spearfishing is legal.
01:15:00.000Yeah, Anthony Dordain did something in Italy, and there were so little fish that they were actually throwing frozen fish into the water, like frozen octopus into the water, and they wanted him to pretend to catch these frozen octopus.
01:15:15.000Instead, he made a mockery of it and showed the guy throwing the frozen fish into the water, frozen octopus into the water.
01:16:48.000You just have to be really careful because, again, if they leak into the ocean, then it contaminates other fish, and then if some of them escape, it creates problems.
01:17:14.000There were some stories about some really bad fish farms that are feeding them with pig stuff.
01:17:21.000Again, it's all about being responsible.
01:17:24.000We did a podcast recently about CWD. Quantic Wasting Disease is a disease that's spreading amongst deer in this country.
01:17:32.000And they think a lot of it is coming, or some of it at least, is coming from deer farms.
01:17:37.000They have these deer farms, and all these animals are eating off the same food, then they escape, and then they spread it, and then there's an incubation period.
01:17:45.000I mean, it exists in the wild, and it exists in deer farms, so it's very complicated.
01:17:51.000So they have a similar issue with fish then.
01:19:33.000But then there's trichinosis that comes from animals that's in the northern territories, in Canada in particular, like bears, Alaska, and that stuff.
01:21:51.000Actually, my lake, when my parents have a country house, they do that too and it works.
01:21:56.000The only problem I would see with that for like an ocean fish would be, I'm thinking because they never had predators in captivity, that that may be, it might have a survival problem after that.
01:23:32.00030 years ago, his father used a racial slur.
01:23:37.000And because of that, this guy, who wasn't even alive when this happened, or maybe he was alive, maybe he was seven years old or some shit, He lost a sponsor.
01:23:52.000I mean, it's one of the Companies are such cowards like they're so terrified because of social media because people are so willing to protest and There's a bunch of fuckheads out there that just get a thrill off of getting people fired and of getting things canceled and of like Exercising action and seeing a result all they're doing is pushing buttons It's not that they've thought about this and like hey is this guy really responsible should we really?
01:24:20.000Blame him for something his father did 30 years ago.
01:24:27.000I mean, unless this guy is like some sort of white supremacist or some racist himself, and he's not.
01:24:34.000We should just do nothing, but that's not that doesn't that's not fun.
01:24:38.000What's fun is Getting a rush a power trip out of action Like clearly there should like if you find a real racist something someone who's doing something actively to harm other people Simply based on their ethnic origin or the color of their skin.
01:24:54.000Yeah, that's terrible You should talk out about that.
01:24:56.000That should be eliminated from our society real real racism But that's not what this is.
01:25:02.000What this is is people deciding that they're going to take action and then NASCAR being a pussy about it or this company being a pussy about it.
01:25:11.000And that's the same thing that's happening with you.
01:25:48.000So with the Wall Street Journal or the Washington Post or whatever paper it is, what they're worried about, they're worried that someone's going to come along and say, the Wall Street Journal supports...
01:27:11.000And Starbucks had this whole thing about, you know, a big sign about how, you know, we're doing our part for the environment, we're eliminating straws, and then on the tweet it said, okay, so you're just putting plastic lids on your coffee cups?
01:28:18.000I think it's the way that people are handling the fact that they're being told that everything is wrong, that they're trying to be like, no, I made my effort.
01:28:26.000I made a Facebook post this morning saying that I wasn't getting straw, so I'm green.
01:28:32.000California seeks to be the first state to limit plastic straws.
01:29:12.000Someone has invented this cover that's like a filter that as the water's going through, it catches all the stuff that would ordinarily be washed out to sea.
01:29:23.000And so it basically, over these storm drainage pipes, these enormous pipes, is this huge net.
01:29:28.000So the water can still go through it, but it just shows you this insane amount of water.
01:29:34.000Debris and garbage that would have ordinarily just been washed out to sea, and they're catching it in these nets.
01:29:40.000It's not everything, but it's a start.
01:29:42.000It's not going to make up for the fucking cruise ship that's dumping things just right offshore.
01:30:32.000You're in that area where you should have your career in order, you should think about settling down, having a family, you should start your 401k, and you should have all this stuff in line, and you're out there...
01:30:52.000I'm just saying that in the path from graduating high school to going to college to becoming a person that's 31 years old, I mean, a lot of people compare themselves In a very sort of foolish way, they compare themselves with other people like how much stuff have these people accumulated?
01:31:11.000How much have I? But for me it was a crucial step of my life to be able to take a step back.
01:31:17.000I want to take a step back of all of that and be like, okay, whoa, whoa, whoa.
01:31:21.000I've been telling The same thing since I'm born about what I should want, about what I should do, about what was expected of me.
01:31:32.000When I was seven years old, I look at my mom and I said, you know, mom, when I grow up, I'd rather have a job that I don't like when I make a shit ton of money than a job I love when I make nothing.
01:32:20.000I'm figuring out what's important for me and what my real values are.
01:32:23.000And I don't think you can discover the person you really are by staying in your 9 to 5, by not knowing anything and being unhappy and not being able to go outside of your comfort zone.
01:32:51.000I'm like, well, when I first quit my job, I lived in my freaking car for a while because I didn't have a place to stay and neither no money to sustain myself.
01:33:57.000Like you're saying I want to live my life with passion and I want to follow my interests and I don't mind living in my car and showering at the beach.
01:34:10.000Most people would be insecure and they would be scared of the future and they would want some sort of stability and that's what's courageous about your decision because One of the things that, like, I was talking to people about you before I did this podcast,
01:34:26.000and the question from everybody is like, how does she make a living?
01:35:05.000To a job that I think is going to be, you know, I started giving conferences around and I think that's something that really, really interests me.
01:35:22.000And I'm sure, look, people love a story about someone who's following their passion because there's so many people out there that really desperately want to do that.
01:35:32.000They just don't know how to do it or how to get the courage to do it.
01:35:34.000Or they get stuck with a mortgage or maybe they have a family and responsibilities or maybe they have loved ones that are taken care of and they can't.
01:35:43.000And so when they hear about someone who's going for it, Either they're jealous of you and they hate on it and they say, that's stupid, that girl's a fool, blah, blah, blah.
01:35:51.000Or they go, God, I wish I could do that.
01:35:53.000Those are the two, depending upon the mindset of the person that's watching you, that's going to be their reaction.
01:36:31.000I know it seems like it, like I'm free-spirited and I travel around, but I'm still a very ambitious person and I do want to achieve things that are going to make me proud.
01:36:42.000It's not always, you know, it's not...
01:36:44.000I didn't quit everything to become a hippie and live on the beach and wear no shoes the rest of my life.
01:36:49.000No, I just, I quit my job to live and build my life and my career the way I wanted to and in a way that was making me proud and happy.
01:36:59.000So this is pretty much what I'm doing right now.
01:38:02.000No, even like in this life, you know, especially when, you know, filming a documentary in Africa or in different places.
01:38:10.000Well, you know, you have no food and you, like, have a table with people and we're sharing, like, a can of tuna between four people and you're like, like, yeah, let's share.
01:39:04.000But then you spend your month there and then you spend a month in New York City and you forget everything.
01:39:09.000It takes literally a week to forget everything.
01:39:12.000You know, another hard thing would be if you tried to relay your experiences on a television show, it would be edited down to, even if it's a one-hour show, with commercials, it becomes 44 minutes.
01:39:25.000And you're just not going to be able to get all that.
01:39:32.000I told them that I was not interested in doing anything scripted, and I told them If I want to do a TV show, if I'm puking, I want it there.
01:41:46.000It's hard to get close enough to shoot one.
01:41:49.000You have to be able to execute when the moment is there.
01:41:52.000It's very difficult to shoot an animal with a bow and arrow, especially long distance.
01:41:57.000I mean, you have to have an extreme amount of proficiency before you can ever pull that off under high-stress situations.
01:42:03.000So part of me wants to relay that there's a misconception about what people see.
01:42:07.000When they think of hunting, they think of cruelty, and they think of someone who doesn't respect nature, and they think of this...
01:42:20.000Abusive relationship that humans have with animals instead of the way I look at it Which is you have this deep understanding of the food chain and this food chain exists whether you're there or not this food chain exists with Bears and wolves and mountain lions and deer and elk and all these animals are struggling for survival and all you do is Is interject.
01:42:44.000You step in for a little bit and you take your part in the food chain and in turn you also give out all this money that goes to conservation.
01:42:54.000This money that goes to conservation ensures that this opportunity be there for other hunters in the future and ensures that the populations of these animals will stay healthy and it ensures that they'll be monitored By the proper fish and game and wildlife biologists and all these different people that are going to ensure that this environment and this experience is preserved.
01:43:15.000And the wild habitat that these animals enjoy will be preserved.
01:43:20.000And for people, it's very conflicting.
01:43:24.000For people, it seems almost hypocritical that you could say that you love these animals, but you also want to eat them.
01:43:31.000Yeah, but that's that's not what's what's what's what's the hybrid thing to do is to say that you love them and then buy them for grocery store not caring how they got there.
01:43:41.000Yeah, that's when you're being ridiculous.
01:43:44.000What's the problem is that's been available for so long.
01:44:12.000And in this day and age, it's very easy.
01:44:15.000I had a picture I put up the other day of a Target that I have in my backyard with some arrows in it, and all these vegans are attacking me.
01:44:59.000I got a bunch of vegans following me now because I took the time to respond to their concerns and now they actually got it.
01:45:05.000But how can we make improvements when you have on one side an angry bunch of people that all they want to do is scream scandal or everything they see and then on the other side the people that matter that have a strong voice are scared to talk about everything because they're scared of that first group.
01:45:22.000And then by doing that we're doing nothing.
01:45:24.000I've been toning down a lot on my Instagram.
01:45:27.000I stopped posting fish with blood on it or things like that because people just don't want to see it.
01:45:33.000And I don't have a choice to do that because, again...
01:45:37.000But what percentage don't want to see it?
01:45:40.000I mean, if someone eats fish, if they like sushi, and they get upset when they go to your Instagram page and you've got a spear through a tuna...
01:45:52.000You're educating them in a lot of ways.
01:45:55.000And the people that do get upset, even though you hear their voices, it's a loud minority.
01:46:01.000How many followers do you have on Instagram?
01:49:58.000You live your whole life in the water, and then all of a sudden someone pulls you out of it, and you look into the air, and you're like, what is this?
01:51:09.000If you go line fishing or even commercial fishing, what they do is they just throw it in a boat and then it dies of asphyxiation for hours.
01:51:57.000And fish, you have to do it straight away, almost in the water, if there's not too many sharks around, because the blood coagulates very, very, very quickly.
01:52:06.000And then it changes the flavor of the fish.
01:52:08.000Yeah, because when you fill it, you cut it on the side, and then when you flip it, there's just blood everywhere, and then it's tainting to me, and then it creates a taste that is not that good.
01:52:17.000And I think that's one of the reasons why they soak fish in milk.
01:52:21.000It changes the flavor, because I think, if I remember this correctly, there's enzymes in milk that destroy the harmful bacteria that causes fish to taste fishy.
01:52:34.000And I think they said that this works also with meat and with chicken.
01:52:38.000That there's a certain smell to chicken in particular that when you get it, like it might smell a little funky.
01:52:45.000What that is is this certain bacteria that's on the surface of the skin.
01:52:49.000And then if you soak it in milk, see if you can find that.
01:58:30.000And then we managed to, the Coast Guard came and they tried to tow the boat and they started telling the Coast Guard to like, go screw themselves because, because I don't want to pay for this, you're a bunch of assholes.
01:58:40.000I'm like, can you stop talking right now?
02:00:36.000So basically what happens is that you dive down and then When you come to the surface, if you stay too long, your lungs on your way to the surface are going to expand back.
02:00:46.000And then your residual volume of air that you have left in your lungs becomes really, really small.
02:00:52.000So then the percentage becomes too low and then you pass out.
02:01:15.000But then that's what happens with people is that when it comes back up, if your buddy is not watching you, and that's why spin fishing is a team sport, if they're not watching you, if you pass out in the water...
02:01:44.000The guy that was diving with me lost his brother a few years before to a blackout, so he was looking at me very, very closely, and I was beyond grateful to see his face at the surface.
02:01:57.000I knew it, and I knew he was going to blackout.
02:01:59.000How did you know you were going to blackout?
02:03:10.000Which is why it's called a shallow water blackout.
02:03:13.000Because even if you're in deeper water, most of the time it happens at the surface.
02:03:17.000So when you got to the surface, what did he have to do to wake you up?
02:03:21.000You have to take the mask off, you have to keep the head off the water, and then you have to blow on the ice because you have a high concentration of nerves, you slap a little bit, not too hard.
02:03:31.000Call the person's name, and then you normally wake up pretty fast, unless you inhale water.
02:03:57.000But, yeah, I missed out in a few minutes, and I just wasn't sure what was going on, and then you're just done for the day when it happens, but...
02:05:38.000It operates on your opiate receptors in some sort of strange way, which is one of the reasons why they're making the argument that it should be illegal, but if...
02:06:01.000It seems to operate in a completely different way than any other opiate.
02:06:04.000And like I said, even though I was definitely high, like I was definitely under the influence of something, nobody, I don't think anybody knew.
02:06:12.000I mean, I could have conversations with people, but in the back of my head, I was like, I'm so high!
02:06:51.000Because once you get high off the morphine, you're in the hospital, you're like, this is great!
02:06:55.000Keep pressing the button, and the pain of the knee is...
02:06:58.000Also, my knee was on this motion machine.
02:07:01.000Right after the surgery was done, they put me on this machine that extends and contracts your knee, brings it back and forth, and that's not comfortable.
02:07:10.000But when you hit that morphine pad, bang!
02:08:42.000I wish more people would chase their dreams and live their lives in a way that they want to, rather than just jump into the fucking rat race.
02:08:51.000I'm definitely not regretting any second of it, so I'm happy I did that.
02:08:55.000Thank you so much for having me here, and it's crazy how you came up.
02:09:00.000I was asking a friend of mine for a podcast to listen, and he talked to me about yours.
02:09:05.000I was sitting at a beach in the Bahamas, and my friend Arunas that went to law school with me was like, oh, you should listen to this Royal Oregon podcast.