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#368 - Cave Diver on “Ice Age” Girl Discovery, Diving Pyramids & Thai Cave Rescue | Gus Gonzalez
03:01:05
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- [00:01]
Gus Gonzalez
Kraft Mac and Cheese is better than 90s hip hop. We'll remind you of your childhood without making you feel incredibly old. Kraft Mac and Cheese. Best thing ever. Cave diving is not for superhumans. It's just super dangerous. My favorite exploration was in Cozumel called El Diablo. You pop into the cave, the entrance is complete, zero visibility. And every rock is like blades of tons. Touch something, you get caught. But then the water has this thing called hydrogen sulfide. It was used as a weapon in like World War I, which is like acid. I mean, the whole cave is trying to kill you. And I remember I was really close to probably dying. Like, it was. It was. It was bad. I was underwater and I was tied with line somewhere in my tanks that I couldn't reach. Like I was a fish caught in a net. But if nobody would have helped me, I would have potentially eventually drowned.
- [00:50]
Joe Rogan
Oh, my.
- [00:50]
Gus Gonzalez
And we trained for this. There was a discovery in one of these Mexican caves where they found the body of a girl next to like a giant sloth, like woolly mammoth. Cybertruck tooth tiger. Yeah. Unbelievable. There's a bunch of divers on the Blue Hole of Dahab in Egypt. People die all the time there. That's why it's called diver cemetery.
- [01:07]
Joe Rogan
What makes this one so dangerous?
- [01:09]
Gus Gonzalez
At the bottom there's.
- [01:11]
Joe Rogan
Whoa. You never had anything like that.
- [01:12]
Gus Gonzalez
I found.
- [01:14]
Joe Rogan
Hey, guys, if you're not following me on Spotify, please hit that follow button and leave a five star review. They're both a huge, huge help.
- [01:21]
Gus Gonzalez
Thank.
- [01:32]
Joe Rogan
So you got into cave diving back in 2018. This wasn't something you did growing up and everything and then you just went like full force into it?
- [01:42]
Gus Gonzalez
No. In 2018, I learned how to dive. I didn't get. In general. Yeah, yeah. I didn't get into cave diving until 2020 because cave diving is. It's a. There's a progression. I equal it to martial arts. It's like you don't. If you. If you say the cave diving is like the black belt of diving, then you don't start a black belt. Right. You have to start a white belt and then blue belt and so on. And you. You grow from there. So in 2018 is when I became a diver, just a regular diver.
- [02:13]
Joe Rogan
How'd that happen?
- [02:14]
Gus Gonzalez
So we were going on vacation to Iceland and I looked up things to do in Iceland, and scuba diving was number one. So I'm like, okay, I'm going to go get certified now. I thought I grew up competitive swimming. I play water polo. So I was always in the water and then so diving was always in my mind. Like I wanted to learn how to dive. And back in 2016, I started this thing just for me that I pick up a skill and I learn every year a new skill. Some of them have stuck, some of them have not. But diving was the skill for 2018. So I just went and got certified to be able to dive in Iceland and it just stuck. Like, I just loved it.
- [02:51]
Joe Rogan
Diving in Iceland also seems like a hell of a place to start diving. It's fucking cold up there and. Yeah, I've seen. I've never been, but it looks amazing. And there's all kinds of crevices and everything. So like where, where were you specifically diving?
- [03:03]
Gus Gonzalez
There? Yeah. So Iceland has this crevice called Silfra, which is in a lot of divers bucket list. The reason for that is the North American and the Eurasian tectonic plates come together in Iceland at this place called Silfra. They come like six feet apart, five feet apart, very, very close together. And that crevice is filled with the clearest water on earth to dive. And during the dive you get to put your hand, your hands on both continents. North America and Eurasia. Yeah, there you go. That's silver. Yep, yep. It's super clear water. And to me, actually the most special part of that dive was how clear the water is. It's not so much the fact that you get to touch both continents. I mean, that's pretty cool. You get to touch two continents at the same time and. But the clarity of the water is the most mind blowing thing. Like when you're just floating there and you look down and you can see like your fins, like they're suspended in the air. That was the most mind blowing part.
- [04:02]
Joe Rogan
I wouldn't expect that, like up in Iceland. Not to say it's not beautiful up there. Again, pictures I've seen are insane.
- [04:08]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah.
- [04:08]
Joe Rogan
Like in my amateur head with this shit, we always think of like the clearest water is by the equator or like where it's warm or the Mediterranean. And then the farther north you get on the seaboard, like it's dark. You think like Black Sea or like the Atlantic if you're up in Jersey, you know, I put my hand in two feet, I can't see it.
- [04:25]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah.
- [04:26]
Joe Rogan
Why is it so clear up there?
- [04:27]
Gus Gonzalez
I don't know exactly the whole story behind it, but from what I remember is something like the water inside this Crevice takes like 100 years to be filtered through volcanic rock. Like just this porous rock. Imagine like a Filter. And it takes decades, if I remember correctly, to make it there. So by the time it fills this crevice, it's just super clear. And you can drink it. It's super clean. Absolutely, yeah. All the Iceland, like, the. The water in Iceland, like, from just the river is cleaner than tap water in, like, most countries. I mean. Right.
- [05:02]
Joe Rogan
So the river is fresh, though. But then if you're dealing with the ocean water, it'd be salt water.
- [05:06]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, of course. This is. This is. This is fresh water, and it's. It's super clean, and it's awesome. I mean, Iceland is my favorite country in the world, like, besides the US to visit. I've been to, I think, 53 countries at this point, and Iceland is by far my favorite. Like, I could go to Iceland every month if I could, just because of the diver. No, no, no. Just Iceland. The country is just gorgeous. Like, we could do a whole episode on Iceland. Like, Iceland. Iceland. You're looking at stuff, and you're looking at it with your own eyes, and it looks photoshopped. I mean, it's just insane. It's like a waterfall falling on a volcano with ponies jumping over. It's just crazy. It's, like, mind blowing. You should definitely go to Iceland. I think everyone should go to Iceland. It's just the. The best place. I mean, it's awesome.
- [05:49]
Joe Rogan
I want to say. And Dave, check me if I'm wrong here, but, like, the scenes of training in Batman Begins that look nuts. Back in O5, Christopher Nolan filmed that in Iceland. I know I'm right about that one. The other one I think they filmed. There was some of that crazy shit in Interstellar.
- [06:06]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah.
- [06:06]
Joe Rogan
You know, where it just, like. You know, it's supposed to look like another planet, and it actually does.
- [06:10]
Gus Gonzalez
I know that Game of Thrones was filmed in Iceland, and the park where Silfra is is where they film the Game of Thrones zines. Because it's like, you know, national park or whatever where that is. I can't remember the name. All the names are in Icelandic, so it's. But yeah, I mean, Iceland is just a great place.
- [06:32]
Joe Rogan
And was that your first time going in 2018?
- [06:35]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, it was my first time going. I've been there once after that. I think it was 2022 I went back, or 2023, something like that, and I would love to go back. I mean, it's just. It's just a great place.
- [06:47]
Joe Rogan
Now, what month of the year were you there?
- [06:49]
Gus Gonzalez
October 18th. October.
- [06:50]
Joe Rogan
So October.
- [06:52]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah.
- [06:53]
Joe Rogan
I mean, what kind of temperatures are you dealing with in water like that?
- [06:56]
Gus Gonzalez
Well, the water is cold all year round. I think it was 33. Yeah, 33 degrees when I dove there. And we were supposed to do two dives. They tell you like we're do dive one and if everybody is cool after that, we'll do a second dive. And we dive with a dry suit. So when you go scuba diving, if you don't know, typically, I mean, if the water is really warm, you can just wear a swimsuit and a rash guard or whatever. Like people, people dive like that. I try to use a wetsuit every time, no matter how warm the water is. It's a 3 millimeter thick wetsuit. But in Iceland, we dive with a dry suit. The difference between a wet and a dry suit is that when you wear a wetsuit, the wetsuit is designed to trap water between your skin and the actual suit. So your skin will warm the water up. And that's what provides you with warmth, the water inside the suit. Now, throughout the dive, that water comes in and out and you heat it up constantly. The dry suit is designed to keep you dry. It's not designed to give you protection from the cold the way the wetsuit does by heating the water. It's designed to keep you dry. So underneath the dry suit, you get to wear clothes that you would wear as if you were at 40 degrees, 50, whatever it is out on the surface. So for Iceland, for example, you're diving in 33 degree water, you wear multiple layers. Like if you were outdoors in 33 degree weather, you will wear a jacket, you will wear all this stuff, and basically we wear it called undergarments under, we put undergarments on and I had like, I don't know, three or four layers underneath it, but you're dry under it. So that's what makes you warm, is that you get to wear regular clothes. So imagine wearing whatever you like for warmth under this suit and then you go diving.
- [08:42]
Joe Rogan
Can we get a picture of a dry suit? Yeah, I don't know that I've really. There's gonna be a lot of uncharted territory.
- [08:49]
Gus Gonzalez
We're gonna learn a lot today before.
- [08:51]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, that sounds really cool.
- [08:53]
Gus Gonzalez
And in order to learn how to dive on a dry suit, you have to be a regular diver. Although I think that in a lot of places in the world, if you' learning how to dive in cold water, you will learn both dry suit diving and regular diving all at once.
- [09:06]
Joe Rogan
But how does it make diving different behaviorally?
- [09:09]
Gus Gonzalez
So when you go diving, the one, one of the biggest misconceptions of diving, I think for most people that are not divers, is that there's pressure that you go underwater and there's all this pressure crushing your bones or whatever. And that just doesn't happen. The water pressure only affects gases. And our bodies are made of bones and blood and muscles and stuff like that that are not gases. So if I, if I took you underwater and you equalize, which is the way we equalize the gases inside our bodies, which are in our sinuses and our ears and stuff, you will not tell the difference between being a 10ft deep or 100ft deep or 200ft deep. You will not tell the difference. Now, if you breathe gas like regular air, the air because is affected by the compression. Only gases are affected by the compression. This is called Boyle's law. Then you will feel a difference on the breathing, by the breathing. Feeling thicker, you would be like, okay, I think I'm a little deep here. I'm at 100 and something feet. Probably like with experience, you'll be able to tell by the way you breathe that you are deeper than shallower. Okay. Also, narcosis can cause effect, starts at about 100ft. So you can feel a little narcked and you can be like, okay, I am deeper than 100ft. Narcosis, yeah, nitrogen narcosis is called. We'll get into that. But the point is, for the human body, you don't feel the difference in pressure whether you're at 10ft or 110ft or 210ft. You just doesn't, it doesn't affect your bones and your arms or you don't feel weight of the water. It only affects gases and gases are affected the based on the depth. So every 10 meters or 33ft, the pressure of the atmospheres doubles or it increases by one. So the first 33ft, when we're here on the surface, we are under one atmosphere of pressure. So the, the atmosphere is putting pressure on us. It's 14.7 psi. So 15 psi. When you go to 33ft now you're at 30 psi, so it doubles. Then when you go to 66, then you add 15 more psi and so on. So is one atmosphere every 33ft. And based on that, gas compresses. So if you take a balloon underwater, the balloon will be this size. When you're at 33ft will be half the size. When you're at 66, it will be 1/3 of the size. When you're at 100ft is 1/4 of the size, and it keeps compressing because the gas compresses the deeper that you go. But it's only gases, liquids, and bones and things like that are not affected by this pressure. So the reason why dry suit diving is dangerous, more dangerous than wetsuit diving, is the wetsuit has water between you, between your body, your skin, and the suit. The dry suit has air, which is affected by pressure. So as you go deeper, literally, you're constricted by the suit, and you have to add gas. You have a button which is typically in the middle of your chest or somewhere in your chest, although some people add it in their legs and other places for other reasons, but typically in your chest. So, like the Ironman thing, you know that they have you just press it and you add gas as you go deeper, but that gas will then expand when you're going shallower. So as we go up, the gas starts to expand, and you become a balloon, which then can take you all the way to the surface and literally kill you. So because of that, we need to air the suit out, which we have a vent on the arm, and you just lift your arm and you let the air out. So you have to learn how to use a dry suit. You can't just throw one on and go and dive. It's not that simple.
- [12:47]
Joe Rogan
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- [15:13]
Gus Gonzalez
No, no, not so much. I mean that could happen. That could happen. So what happens is. So this is where. Where the concept of the bends or decompression sickness comes in play. So when we're breathing, our bodies are. The air that we breathe is made mostly of nitrogen, which is useless to us. Our bodies don't use nitrogen. So 79%, 78 and almost 79% of the air that we breathe is made of nitrogen. We only use the oxygen, which is only 21% and we don't even get to use all of that. We only use about 5% of the 21% that we breathe and our body just breathes out 16%. This is why. Or 17. This is why mouth to mouth works because you can breathe out and you're still breathing oxygen into the victim. If you use all the oxygen, then mouth to mouth wouldn't work. It just the victim would never like wake up. Basically so what happens is when you're at depth, the air that we're breathing, based on your depth has double the amount of molecules, triple the amount of quadruple, like, depending on how deep you go. So those become bubbles in your blood, and if you ascend too fast, those bubbles will expand. Right. So typically those bubbles affect us in the parts of our bodies that bend, like your elbows and your knees and stuff like that. That's typically what, where it affects you. And the decompression sickness that you feel is typically not severe. It's itchy, you will notice because your elbows and your knees just itch. Those are bubbles that are caught that you either came too fast or you didn't do a safety stop or decompression stop, depending on the type of diving that you're doing for too long. So you start itching. But those bubbles can lodge in your heart, they can lodge in your spine, they can get lodged in your brain, so you can die if one of those bubbles is lodged in the wrong place, which you have no idea where it's going to be. It's a total gamble. So because of that, we follow safety to off gas, it's called. So you get rid of the nitrogen that you have in your blood by going up slowly, 30ft per minute. And if you don't know how to use a dry suit and he skyrockets you to the surface from 100ft deep, those bubbles that you had in your blood will be four times the size. And you hope for the best that they didn't blow up to four times the size in the wrong place. But there are. So anyway, you get certified to dive a dry suit, so that doesn't happen. You know how to handle all of that?
- [17:55]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, I hope so.
- [17:56]
Gus Gonzalez
And, and there are other things that we do to make sure that you don't get affected by decompression sickness. Like you don't fly after you dive. We. Depending on the dive that you do, you spend a certain amount of time before you fly. Typically recommended 24 hours. But if it's a shallow dive, but it could be 18, it could be 12, depending on the type of dive that you did. You don't go on mountains like, you know, you're at a resort in Costa Rica or whatever, and you just want to go up into the mountains in the jungle. No, you can get decompression sickness by going up. And those bubbles will continue to expand just like underwater going to the surface. If you go from the surface to the top of the mountain, those bubbles can continue to expand. So there's a lot that you learn in scuba diving to prevent you from getting sick.
- [18:41]
Joe Rogan
There is so much in, in your line of work that can go wrong. Like the smallest little thing and like, well, you're dead. That bubble. No scary in the shit.
- [18:50]
Gus Gonzalez
That, that is scary. But I think that is one of the biggest misconceptions about diving. Especially cave diving, especially cave diving. People think that, oh, the thing will go wrong and you're dead. It doesn't work like that. Is safer than you think. Way, way, way safer.
- [19:04]
Joe Rogan
You scared the shit out of everyone for the last five minutes. So please explain how it's way, way safer.
- [19:09]
Gus Gonzalez
Again, this is all with training, right? The training that you do and the diving that you do to get better at it prevents you from running into these issues. I mean, there's people out there that have tens of thousands of dives and they have no issues. Right? But decompression sickness is a, is a diving injury. And I think that there's a big stigma in our industry and just in diving in general, that if you get bent, which is how we call it, you know, being under decompression sickness, that if you get bent, you're a bad diver. That's just not the case. It's just like, if a basketball player injures their ankle or their knee or whatever, they're not seen as a bad basketball player. An injury that you get from playing basketball being bent is an injury that you can get from being a diver. It's just the way it works. But there's a lot of things that we do in place, like planning our dives to make sure that that doesn't happen.
- [20:01]
Joe Rogan
So when you take me back to this first dive, though, in 2018, because this, this was like, as you said, you were a lifelong swimmer, obviously love the water. You're clearly an adventurer, someone that always wants to learn stuff. There's some gene in there where, you know, I'm not saying you don't have fear, but you jump into things obviously. No pun intended. So you have all that going for you, but you're going to Iceland to dive in 33 degree water.
- [20:24]
Gus Gonzalez
I know.
- [20:24]
Joe Rogan
For like the first time ever. Were you even doing this with at the time? Like, did they have. What was it? I. I assume it's like a professional place that's helping you do it. But, like, what kind of training do they have ahead of time? Like, how did this go down?
- [20:37]
Gus Gonzalez
So the, the only thing that's required is that you're a certified dry Suit diver. So you have to become a diver first. I think I got certified in June of 2018 and then I did some diving and then I took my dry suit class when I had like, I don't know, maybe 20 dives in or whatever. And then I got certified as a dry suit. And then I did a couple of those and then I went to Iceland. So you don't go to Iceland to dive as your very first dive. You need at least four dives in order to get certified.
- [21:05]
Joe Rogan
Okay, so you trained ahead.
- [21:07]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, so I trained ahead. Now, I wasn't an experienced diver. I've been diving for like three months at that point or two months at that point. So I was very, very new when I did Iceland. But the company that I use when I was in Iceland is called Dive is, I believe, Dive Iceland. And, and basically all they require is that you are a drysuit certified drysuit diver. If you are certified to dive a dry suit, you can rent it from them and then. And you can bring your own too. And you just go and dive in. In Silfra. Silfa is not a challenging dive. It's, it's. It's the easiest diving that you can do. What makes it easy, it's shallow, crystal clear water. You cannot silt it out. There's no current, there's no waves. It's just like being on a swimming pool that is 33 degrees cold. Like, literally the only challenge of Silfra is how cold the water is. Right. Everything else is super easy, is as easy as it gets.
- [22:02]
Joe Rogan
And it wasn't. They didn't have an option that you're going to use a wetsuit in that scenario.
- [22:06]
Gus Gonzalez
No, you would die. No, no, no, you would. You would die.
- [22:08]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, because it's way too cold.
- [22:09]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah. It would be hypothermic immediately. Like, yeah, 33 degree water is terrible. Like, I don't know the numbers, like how long you can be on that kind of water without having something like a dry suit. But I assume it's minutes. Yeah, you know, like five minutes in and you're hypothermic. Like, I don't know if they can bring you back type of thing. I don't know.
- [22:28]
Joe Rogan
When you did your training, you were doing that back in America, right?
- [22:31]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah.
- [22:32]
Joe Rogan
So what, where were you diving then?
- [22:34]
Gus Gonzalez
I was in Georgia. I was diving in Georgia and, you know, mainly like quarries and stuff like that. We don't have a whole lot of places in, in the Atlanta metro area that we can dive, so I was doing a lot of Cool. Quarry diving. I was diving every weekend. So, like, just to give you an example, on my first year of diving, I did 250 dives. So that's like five dives a weekend.
- [22:55]
Joe Rogan
Whoa.
- [22:56]
Gus Gonzalez
Non stop. Yeah.
- [22:57]
Joe Rogan
And of course, how long is each dive on average?
- [23:00]
Gus Gonzalez
I would say 30 minutes, 40 minutes. That's a lot though. Yeah, just to start. And so I was diving every weekend and I also went on trips where it would be like an all inclusive resort where you can dive every day, three times a day, or you can go on a liveaboard where you dive four times a day. So like in a week you can do 15 to 20 dives and then every weekend after that. So I just fell in love with it. I was just obsessed with it. And for everybody who says, like, oh, I wanted to learn how to dive, but like, snorkeling is so hard, diving is easier than snorkeling. I mean, it's. Snorkeling is hard. I think compared with diving, diving is super easy. And of course people watching this or listening to this would feel that, well, I don't want to do it because what he's talking about is dangerous or gnarly or whatever. Like, this is something that you work up to if you want to. Like most people don't become cave divers. Like, that's just not a thing. Like, I, I think there's over 20 million certified divers in the world. 22 million, 25 million, something like that. And maybe 10, 000 cave divers, something like that. 25 million? Yeah, yeah. There's not a whole lot of them. I mean, there's no central database that would tell you exactly. Like, some people say there's like 4,000, some people say there's like 20,000, but it's maybe in the tens of thousands out of millions and millions and millions of divers.
- [24:22]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, like from the outside. Someone who doesn't do this. When you talk about, like cave diving and what those guys will do, forget whether it's clear water or dark water, I don't care. I don't care if it's out on the outskirts of like an ocean or if it's back in some fucking lake or wherever it may be. That's a whole. I mean, you're, you are inserting not only the unknown, but massive, you know, crevices and claustrophobic type things that you're not getting, I would imagine, in regular dives. So we're going to talk about that today because that's a whole different level. But either way, like, you know, you talk about it like going 100ft down or 200ft down or whatever it may be. There's a. There's so many things you do have to know in order to do that. But I see what you're saying that, like, once you have repeated it a bunch with professionals doing bit by bit more. Bit by bit more, it becomes kind of like. No pun intended. No pun intended. Like breathing, you know?
- [25:14]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah.
- [25:14]
Joe Rogan
Second nature in a lot of ways.
- [25:15]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah. And a lot of things in diving are a progress. Right. You have to do. You have to do something, do it a lot, and then you can progress to the next level. And I think dive agencies do a good job gatekeeping that. You can't just be like a brand new diver and decide, I'm on a cave dive. Like, that's not a thing. There's no way to do that, like through an agency. Realistic. Now, can you grab a tank and go in a cave and potentially get lost and die? Yeah. Like, it's happened to a lot of people. And I think that's what people see cave diving as one of the most dangerous things you can do is because a lot of deaths have happened. Because especially instructors who think that, oh, I'm an open water instructor, I can do anything, then they go in a cave and get lost and drown. So the agencies do a good job gatekeeping that and making it. So it's a progression where you have to have certain level of experience before you can even do the training.
- [26:09]
Joe Rogan
Right.
- [26:09]
Gus Gonzalez
So even to do the training, you have to show all this experience and all these skills or else they won't even let you take the training. Right. And when you get to technical diving, which is what most people don't do, they do recreational diving. In technical diving, people fail classes all the time. I failed training before, whereas with recreational diving, very, very rare that you would fail.
- [26:29]
Joe Rogan
What do you mean, technical diving? Like, what would that consist of?
- [26:32]
Gus Gonzalez
So recreational diving is the diving that you do where it's just open water. Right. You're not. You're not penetrating wrecks, you're not going into anything like that. You're staying on the open water, you're staying shallow. Shallow is 130ft or less. But typically it's recommended to not go over 66ft. Then with experience, you can go to 100, then 132. And there's training for this called deep diving. 132ft. But overall, decades ago, we basically took a bunch of studs in the Navy and we bent them out of shape. Like we tested like, what are the limits of the human body, basically, on these Navy divers? And we learn a lot about it. One of the things that we learned was the no decompression limits, which is basically, how much time can you spend a certain depths that is safe for you to go all the way to the surface without stopping if you have to. Right? So the limits change depending on depth. So let's say you want to dive to 132ft. I believe the limit is five to six minutes that you can spend at that depth without having to stop. Mandatory decompression stop. Anytime you have a mandatory stop. We call that a ceiling. The ceiling can be a legit ceiling, like in a cave, or it can be a artificial ceiling, which is a decompression stop. You have to stop or you run the risk of getting bent.
- [27:59]
Joe Rogan
So the. The dry suit example you gave a few minutes ago that I suit, still.
- [28:03]
Gus Gonzalez
Recreational because you can go to the surface, right?
- [28:05]
Joe Rogan
But I'm saying when you're talking about the. When you were talking about the bubbles that blow up because you go down to a certain level, that all made sense to me because you're within a suit and everything. But when you're talking about a diver could go down to 132ft, regardless of what suit it is, and they could spend five to six minutes before decompression sets in. Like, what is that? Why does it take five to six minutes for it to set?
- [28:26]
Gus Gonzalez
Because we bent a bunch of Navy divers and realized that, okay, if you spend more than that time for the average person, it just slowly happens, you have a way higher risk of getting bent, getting decompression sickness. So we have these tables that we use, which now nobody uses tables. We use dive computers that tells you based on your depth, how long can you stay here without having to go.
- [28:50]
Joe Rogan
Into decompression with a table versus a dive computer? What's a table?
- [28:54]
Gus Gonzalez
So the table, the dive tables basically tell you in, like, 10 or 5ft increments, how long can you stay at that depth?
- [29:02]
Joe Rogan
Oh, like, you're looking, like, analog.
- [29:04]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It just tells you, like, at 100ft, you can be for this many minutes. At 60ft, you can be, you know, whatever, 66. It just tells you which depth. The problem with diving tables is that with diving tables, when you plan it, you say, okay, I'm going to go to 80ft. The dive table will tell you at 80ft you can be for this time, but you don't magically show up at 80ft. You have to Go down to get there. The computer knows exactly how a death you are at all times. And it can calculate in real time how much time you can stay based on where you are in the water column. So how deep you are.
- [29:35]
Joe Rogan
Do you have the computer? I mean, like, are you able to, like, look at it on a device as you're going down? Is that how it works?
- [29:42]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah. This is a dive computer. This is a Garmin descent mark 3.
- [29:45]
Joe Rogan
You hold that up a little bit.
- [29:46]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah. So this is just an example of a computer. I actually don't use this computer that much. I tend to use the ones that are bigger. There's different kinds of form factors for computers, but this one is just convenient because not only does the diving, but he does all my activities. Like I play pickleball every day. I track all my stuff.
- [30:06]
Joe Rogan
You know, pickleball guy.
- [30:08]
Gus Gonzalez
I try to play every day. You know, it's good exercise. I'm not out there doing tournaments or anything just for fun. But anyway, so this is just an example of a dive computer. Just looks like a watch, but then some of them are bigger and a lot easier to read. Let's just say, especially when you're doing bigger, more technical dives and you have multiple gases and things like that, it's good to have a bigger screen.
- [30:29]
Joe Rogan
Right.
- [30:31]
Gus Gonzalez
But anyway, recreational diving is when you stay within your no decompression limit. You don't go into decompression and you could, if you wanted, go to the surface at any time without having to stop. That's what a recreational dive is. Anytime you change those things, we call that technical diving.
- [30:50]
Joe Rogan
And that you got to get a.
- [30:51]
Gus Gonzalez
Whole separate certification for different training. Yeah, different depending on what you're trying to do. So like diving with more than one tank, we consider that technical diving because it's not common. Now you have two tanks to deal with. Right. How do you deal with problems depending on the tank? What are they? Two different gases? If you have two different gases. Different gases, yeah, yeah. So when you do decompression dives, it's common to bring different gases because what you. What you're trying to do is breathe the. A gas that is safe for the depth that you are, which again, have to get into safety for the depth that you are. So like a common thing would be you have a deep gas, which is where you're going to breathe when you're deep, deepest in the dive, and then you switch to a shallower gas, which is higher in oxygen. So one common mix is 50% oxygen. Remember, the air we breathe is 21. So we bring 50% oxygen. That. That is safe to breathe at 70ft or shallower. So as you go up at 70ft, we switch to our 50% mix.
- [31:54]
Joe Rogan
Got it? Yeah, I was thinking of that too. Literally in my head for a minute.
- [31:57]
Gus Gonzalez
100% oxygen is safe to breathe from 20ft and shallower. We still don't know why. There's theories, but we still don't know why oxygen is toxic to breathe deeper than 20ft. Pure oxygen. So, like, oxygen is great to treat ailments. Like, you know, you have a problem, they put you in oxygen, like whatever it is on the surface. Yeah, but you breathe that. Let's say at 100ft, you have a seizure and drown.
- [32:25]
Joe Rogan
And we don't have any science to.
- [32:27]
Gus Gonzalez
We don't know why. We don't. We just know it happens, huh? Because we bent a bunch of Navy divers to find this out.
- [32:34]
Joe Rogan
Maybe that's why all the aliens are down below the sea.
- [32:38]
Gus Gonzalez
So we. All we know is that it happens, but we don't know why it happens. And so, yeah, so as humans, when we breathe, we. We can breathe a spectrum called the partial pressure of oxygen. And the oxygen that we breathe on the surface is zero to one is the partial pressure of oxygen. So 21%. But as humans are regular, like a normal person can breathe anywhere between 0.16 and 1.6. So that is the range. The only way you can get more than one is to go deep because the air is compressed and then you can see more than that. But if you breathe 100 oxygen, it's 1.0 is the partial pressure of oxygen. So this is way too technical, I think, for. For this. But the. The point is, there's a lot to learn as you move up to technical diving, cave diving, wreck diving, all these different things. And then there's the whole commercial diving. That's a whole different animal. Like those guys.
- [33:36]
Joe Rogan
Like when you guys that go down to, you know, get the golf balls from the bottom of a lake. The people. No, no, those kind of stuff.
- [33:42]
Gus Gonzalez
Those are recreational. No, I'm talking about the people that work are like oil rigs and they're like, oh, down there doing welding at 300ft like that. Those guys. Gnarly.
- [33:50]
Joe Rogan
Oh, okay. I totally misunderstood that. So. So they're. That's a separate training to be able to do anything.
- [33:57]
Gus Gonzalez
Completely separate wing of diving. That's. You can make a career out of that very dangerous profession. I don't envy them. We get that question all the time. Like you know, will you want to do hard hat, you know, commercial diving? I'm not interested at all. Like, because in order for you to do dives like that, you have to get fully saturated. It's called get getting fully saturated. So those guys spend weeks at depth. Like, they, they sleep under pressure. Like if they were at 300ft, they're in a pressure chamber. Yeah, yeah. And they work and sleep, whatever, for weeks at a time. So at some point, the human body gets fully saturated of nitrogen. You cannot take anymore, and so you can stay at death. So those guys, the commercial divers are gone for a month. Like, it's.
- [34:42]
Joe Rogan
Whoa.
- [34:43]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it takes.
- [34:44]
Joe Rogan
They gotta be paid pretty good, right?
- [34:45]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, yeah, they make good money, but it still is super, super dangerous. I mean, a lot of people have died.
- [34:50]
Joe Rogan
I'll bet. Yeah, that's the thing. Like your body you're talking about. Oh, you're five, six minutes at 130ft, and you gotta watch it. And then, you know, you're like, all right, I'm gonna put myself through this kind of thing for a month and just keep my environment the same at all times. There's got to be some sort of price to pay at the end of that.
- [35:07]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, yeah, it's, it's tough, but, yeah, people are doing that. I mean, it's, it's. It's one of those things that I've never been super interested to do.
- [35:15]
Joe Rogan
So if you're like a highly trained dive specialist with the Navy SEALs, where, you know, they're all on the swimming side already, but then you're like a dive specialist there, that doesn't necessarily mean that you're automatically qualified to go do like a commercial dive or something like that.
- [35:30]
Gus Gonzalez
No.
- [35:31]
Joe Rogan
Total separate training.
- [35:31]
Gus Gonzalez
No, no, no. That's a complete different animal. The same with cave diving. Like, you put a Navy SEAL in a cave, they'll die too. I mean, it's, they are not, they don't train for that. It's a completely different wing of, of of training. Like Navy seals dive rebreathers, which is what I dive in caves. But the rebreathers they dive are oxygen only rebreathers, and they only go super shallow, like 20, 30ft max type of thing. I think that again, I'm not a Navy SEAL or I've ever trained, you know, like that, but they can do dips to go a little bit deeper because they are better than the average human. They can, they can hold, you know, levels, let's just say that are better than an average human. And this is the kind of conversation I have with students. Sometimes all these tables are theoretical based on the average human. What is that? What's the average human? How tall is the average human? Do they smoke? Do they. Are they vegetarian? Like there. It's impossible to say that you're an average person. Like an average person goes up and down. So because of that, I think seals can do certain things that are beyond average, but they don't have the. Know how to do something like a cave dive, for example. I'm sure there's. Navy SEALs are cave divers, but that's not what they learn because you're not fighting wars in underwater caves. Yeah, that's just not a thing.
- [36:45]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, I know. I know what you mean. What about like if there's something. I'm just thinking on this commercial, and I hadn't really thought about that before, but if you have something like the BP oil spill, right? Which just goes for miles and miles and spreads out all over the place completely. I mean, it's oil, you can't really like swim through it. I would imagine though, they had to send down commercial divers eventually to fix it.
- [37:10]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, yeah, probably.
- [37:11]
Joe Rogan
So they're like going, they're basically going through like oil infested water.
- [37:15]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah. But I think the oil is probably just floating on the surface, right? I. I don't know.
- [37:20]
Joe Rogan
Is it. What's the. Because it, it spreads so much, I'm pretty sure. Obviously, like oil does float, but it's so thick that there's got to be like some sedimentation going down.
- [37:30]
Gus Gonzalez
I don't know. There's a lot of things about water that, I don't know.
- [37:34]
Joe Rogan
Interesting.
- [37:35]
Gus Gonzalez
Like how come when a lightning hits the water, the fish don't die? Isn't lightning like.
- [37:39]
Joe Rogan
Dude, I think about that all the time.
- [37:40]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah. What's up with that?
- [37:42]
Joe Rogan
I don't know. I guess they're just like. Maybe they're born with like a little lightning pressure in their veins.
- [37:47]
Gus Gonzalez
No idea. This is when I say leave a comment below and answer because I don't know.
- [37:51]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, let's chat. GPT that one. Why don't fish die with lightning strikes?
- [37:55]
Gus Gonzalez
Right.
- [37:55]
Joe Rogan
Are we getting anything on that, Joe? On the bp? It's kind of like a really exact question with the oil.
- [38:01]
Gus Gonzalez
But yeah, I mean, I assume they used a combination of rovers, you know, like vehicles, whatever, submersibles, and commercial divers.
- [38:11]
Joe Rogan
Hopefully not by the Titanic, guys.
- [38:13]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, exactly.
- [38:14]
Joe Rogan
All right, so here's what Google AI is telling us. No, the BP oil spill did not just sit on the surface A significant portion of the oil sank to the ocean floor, formed underwater plumes and was dispersed throughout the water column.
- [38:27]
Gus Gonzalez
Yikes.
- [38:27]
Joe Rogan
With some. While some oil was visible on the surface, a large amount remained submerged, clinging to sinking particles like marine snow and impacting deep sea ecosystem. That's what I would think. Like all the seaweeds catching it and then it, you know, binds to it and whatever that's.
- [38:43]
Gus Gonzalez
And then the ducks and you have, you have to wash them with a Dawn soap. You know, like the commercials.
- [38:47]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, exactly.
- [38:50]
Gus Gonzalez
All right.
- [38:51]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, that's. That would not be a job for me for sure. That's, that's, that's a whole different beast. Yeah, but when you were back to, when you were doing the training before going to Iceland, you said you're diving in quaries and stuff. Yeah, around Atlanta.
- [39:02]
Gus Gonzalez
In. In the ocean, when I had a chance and all that.
- [39:04]
Joe Rogan
Yeah. What was the deepest you went during that time?
- [39:07]
Gus Gonzalez
I mean, I stay within the recreational limit, so like 120, 130ft.
- [39:11]
Joe Rogan
So you are pushing the limit, but not obviously not going.
- [39:13]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, Staying recreational, right? Yeah, yeah. 2019. Late in 2019 is what I became when I started my rebreather training. So with rebreathers, that's when you get into technical diving. We're going to be doing decompression. You can be doing deeper dives, although, like martial arts, with rebreathers you start shallow and then later on you keep on building and getting, you know, more experience and more trained with it. So like my first level, when I learned how to dive a rebreather and got certified on it, I could only go again to 132. And I'll talk about what a rebreather is in a second. But then after, I think you have to do something like 50 dives or put in 50 hours, I don't remember, then you can take the training to go deeper. So the next level after that is 200ft. So I got certified on that. And then after, I don't remember how many hours or dives, then I was able to qualify to do the training and learn and get certified up to 330ft, which is the deepest certification that technical diving offers.
- [40:10]
Joe Rogan
When you're doing that.
- [40:12]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah.
- [40:12]
Joe Rogan
In the actual training, not after you're obviously qualified. Every dive you do are you hand in hand, like with an instructor who's going with you every single foot. They're never behind you.
- [40:23]
Gus Gonzalez
It's called direct supervision. They're right next to you the whole time. And, and I, I've had great instructors and mentors throughout the years that I've learned from. So it's. I've been really, really fortunate in that, in that regard.
- [40:38]
Joe Rogan
Now, is there any way, like to. Based on, you know, the, the equipment you're wearing, is there any way ever to talk on a radio down there?
- [40:48]
Gus Gonzalez
There is. We typically stay away from that. If you dive a full face mask or a hard hat, you do have comms, communications, and with a rebreather, you can kind of talk underwater. Because the thing in our mouth called the DSV is it's like a. Like an air chamber and you can actually talk to each other and kind of understand. But we use wet notes. We write to each other, but most of notes. Yeah, yeah. Most of the communication that we do is with hand signals, and there's a lot that we can communicate with hand signals.
- [41:20]
Joe Rogan
So you can write. How does that work? Writing you just use.
- [41:23]
Gus Gonzalez
Right? I mean, it's with a pencil. It's pretty straightforward.
- [41:26]
Joe Rogan
And it works like under water.
- [41:28]
Gus Gonzalez
Oh, yeah. 100. We use wet notes all the time.
- [41:31]
Joe Rogan
What? Yeah, that, like, doesn't. I mean, I've never tried to do anything like.
- [41:35]
Gus Gonzalez
I wish.
- [41:36]
Joe Rogan
That doesn't. That doesn't compute to me. So you're using a pencil, obviously, and like, you can get enough pressure and not break the paper or anything as well.
- [41:44]
Gus Gonzalez
Oh, no. It's a special paper that you can write on the water and it can get wet and it's. Yeah, it's awesome. Yeah, I use all the time. We use it all the time. It's very, very common.
- [41:54]
Joe Rogan
How long, like, what's the analog signaling there? Like, how long would it take to write one sentence of like 10 words?
- [42:00]
Gus Gonzalez
I mean, the same it takes on the surface. It's really no difference. Yeah.
- [42:03]
Joe Rogan
So you get that used to it to where you could write, like.
- [42:06]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, it's like riding on a pad. Yeah, yeah.
- [42:09]
Joe Rogan
Now, what about when. When you first go into the training, because again, you're at this time you're prepping for Iceland, where the water is going to be cold, but it's going to be beautiful and clear and everything.
- [42:17]
Gus Gonzalez
Right.
- [42:17]
Joe Rogan
But now you're diving in some quarries sometimes around Atlanta. It's black.
- [42:21]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah.
- [42:21]
Joe Rogan
Like how you dive in something. Does it. Does it feel like you're just in like a deep, dark sleep black hole? Like when you're diving in water that you can't even of your face?
- [42:31]
Gus Gonzalez
Not always. I mean, obviously it all depends on the. On the water and the visibility where you are and a quarry is simple because the quarry visibility is. Starts, you know, so. So visibility not great. And then if you get close to the bottom, depending on how good you are with finning, with kicking, you can steer it up and then it goes to, like, it just goes really, really bad visibility at some point. But if you stay off the bottom, you can, you can see, I don't know, like 10, 20ft in front of you. It's not. It's not terrible. Yeah. God.
- [43:05]
Joe Rogan
I jump in the bay in Ocean City, New Jersey, I can't.
- [43:07]
Gus Gonzalez
I put people in dive. I know. I don't know how people can dive in. In places like that. Like in Georgia, there's lakes, but it's like that is. I mean, you have one foot of visibility. What's the point? You're just going on the water for the sake of going on the water.
- [43:19]
Joe Rogan
That's what I'm saying.
- [43:20]
Gus Gonzalez
Like, is that it's nothing to enjoy. No.
- [43:22]
Joe Rogan
Right.
- [43:23]
Gus Gonzalez
No. Do it for fun. Yeah, yeah. But earlier I mentioned rebreathers. So rebreathers are a very, very special piece of equipment that I love. I absolutely love diving rebreathers. I. I wish more people dove rebreathers. But with a rebreather, basically what you do is you can rebreathe your same breath over and over and over and over again. So earlier I mentioned that when you bring a tank, you typically have 30 to 40 minutes. And as you get better with breathing and with your trim underwater, like, the level of effort that it takes you to dive is directly related to your air consumption. So as you get better at swimming and moving through the water, you can extend that into an hour, an hour plus. But with rebreathers, we can do six hour dives, eight hour dives, 12 hour dives, like, depending on the unit, depending on what you're trying to do, because you recycle the breath over and over and over again, which is pretty awesome.
- [44:19]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, that's amazing.
- [44:20]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah.
- [44:21]
Joe Rogan
But how long has that science been out?
- [44:23]
Gus Gonzalez
It's older than scuba. That's how submarines work. You're basically, you. You have a little submarine on your back.
- [44:30]
Joe Rogan
That makes sense. Yeah, that makes sense.
- [44:32]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah. Rebreathers were invented before scuba, before regular scuba.
- [44:35]
Joe Rogan
And what is the science that that is essentially able to recycle it so that when you breathe out, it turns back into.
- [44:42]
Gus Gonzalez
So we have this chemical called softenoline that basically binds to the carbon dioxide that you exhale. So when you breathe in, you're breathing in 100% of a breath. Okay. When you breathe out 95% of that breath is the same breath that you breathe that you took in. Right. 5% of that was oxygen that your body used and converted to carbon dioxide. Right. And then that is bound by this chemical, and he lets the other 95% go through. It just let. Lets the other 95% go through. And on the rebreather, we have a small oxygen tank is pure oxygen that just replaces that 5% that your body used. So you rebreath 95% of it. The. The little tank that we have on the Rebreather injects the 5, and then you breathe out again. 95. It injects the 5. So with this little tank is just giving you 5, 5, 5. But you're reusing 95% of the same breath over and over and over and over and over again. So you can go for hours and hours and hours. My longest dive is for hour and 10 minutes, and theoretically, I could go for much longer than that.
- [45:56]
Joe Rogan
Why don't people always use that?
- [45:58]
Gus Gonzalez
Because it's more complicated, more expensive.
- [46:01]
Joe Rogan
So the money.
- [46:01]
Gus Gonzalez
Right, it's more expensive. Obviously, it's a special piece of equipment, and you have to get certified. The training for it takes longer, and everything is more expensive. But once you have it, it's not expensive to dive it. And there's a level of safety, in my opinion, because we bring open circuit gear in case the rebreather fails.
- [46:21]
Joe Rogan
Yeah.
- [46:22]
Gus Gonzalez
So if my rebreather stops working completely, I go into what I was doing before, which is a regular tank or two tanks or whatever it is that I was doing, and that will be my, you know, break in case of emergency. You know, it's open circuit diving. Wow. Yeah.
- [46:37]
Joe Rogan
Did you ever have any, like, fears growing up? Because you're. You're talking about doing a job here that is. There's a lot of things you can run into. We're gonna get to it.
- [46:46]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah.
- [46:46]
Joe Rogan
Yeah.
- [46:47]
Gus Gonzalez
I mean, I think a lot of the things that I do in diving are things that I either never thought I was gonna do, or I flat out said I would, I was never gonna do, and now I do them. And that's because the nature of diving is that everything is by progression. You get so used to doing the thing. It's like it pushes you out of your comfort zone. And again, there's no progress in the comfort zone. I mean, you can continue to do all Those dives at 20ft and looking at pretty fish forever and be okay and just be that. That diver. There's nothing wrong with that. But for Me, I feel like with anything that I love doing, I feel like I need to overdo it. And the way to make progress is you push yourself out of the comfort zone a little bit, and then once that becomes comfortable, you push yourself a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more. So everything has been building over time. It was never just out of the blue. I'm going to be a cave diver. My wife says it all the time, is that you always say you were never going to do it. I'm like, I know, I know. We are little by little now.
- [47:41]
Joe Rogan
You're literally like, you know, a huge YouTube channel, even talking about. You do everything with it. But, like, where does that come from, that design, that inner will to push the limits and boundaries of things that you seem to have on everything you do.
- [47:54]
Gus Gonzalez
Man, I don't know. I feel like growing up, I was always very competitive. I still am very competitive.
- [48:01]
Joe Rogan
Do you have siblings?
- [48:02]
Gus Gonzalez
I do. I have one. One younger brother. He's three years younger than me. But yeah, I, like, I. I am. I think part of it is being super competitive. And then there's another side of it, which is I want to be competent and I want to be an asset to my team. Diving is a team sport. Even though that team may be two of us, like me and Woody, my co host on Dive Talk, I want to be an asset to him. I know that in a lot of ways his life could be depending on me and my skills and what I can do, and he feels the same way. And every time I dive with my team, I want to feel the same about everybody. Like, I got you, you got me. Like, we trust in each other. So I think that drives me to get better and better and better.
- [48:41]
Joe Rogan
Like leadership in a way.
- [48:42]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, I mean, I think. I think some of it is leadership and some of it is I know that not every diver is like that, but some of it is I just want to be an asset to my team. That, to me is. Is important.
- [48:53]
Joe Rogan
How did you and Woody meet? Like, how long ago?
- [48:55]
Gus Gonzalez
He was my instructor at some point. So I became a diver in 2018. I think in. So in diving, there's these levels, so you become an open water diver, then there's an advanced open water diver. So when you're an open water diver, all you want to do is be an advanced diver. And then once you're an advanced diver, there's a next level, which is called master diver. Master diver is the highest you can go as a recreational diver before you become a Professional, like an instructor, for example. So in order for me to become a master diver, I had to become a rescue diver, like do CPR and be able to pull unconscious people from the bottom of the ocean and stuff like that. And when I signed up for my rescue class, Woody was my instructor. He. He had been an instructor for, like, I don't know, 10 years or something like that at that point, and we just connected, you know, he likes doing all this stuff that I enjoy. He believes in overdoing things, you know, so he was a rebreather diver. I don't know if when we met, he was already doing cave diving. I think that came later. But he. He just wanted to progress, just like me.
- [49:54]
Joe Rogan
Yeah.
- [49:54]
Gus Gonzalez
And we just clicked. And so he talked me into becoming a pro. Going pro. So becoming an instructor. First you become a dive guide, like a dive master, like, help taking divers on dives, but you're not teaching them anything. You're just responsible for their safety. Right. So I did that, and then I became an assistant instructor, and then ultimately an instructor.
- [50:13]
Joe Rogan
But your progression is insane, man.
- [50:15]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, but this was. This was overtime, right?
- [50:17]
Joe Rogan
I know, but still, we're not talking about, like 20 years here or something. You know what I mean?
- [50:21]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah. And I think. I think a lot of people are critical, I think of. Of dive talking. Me especially, because they say, like, you just went through it super fast. But what they don't understand is that I was diving every weekend. Like, even. Even the numbers, like the minimum number, just to give you an example to become an instructor is 100 dives. So you have to do 100 dives and do some training in order to qualify to become an instructor. I had like 300 dives when I became an instructor. So I had, in my opinion, enough experience to teach somebody how to do the basic diving, which is open water diving. That doesn't require a whole lot of skills. You just need to know how to teach people. And I was already an instructor. I work in it, so I was already teaching people how to use computer systems and stuff. So teaching for me was natural. This was just something that I'm passionate about, just like computer stuff. And it was easy for me to become an instructor. It was the easy progression for me. So Woody talked me into that. I chose him as my mentor. We started teaching classes together. It was just for fun. And I was already doing a podcast for my computer stuff. And I told him, I said, dude, I have all this equipment. We're doing all this driving to Florida or whatever, just talking about diving. Why don't we just record? Yeah, let's just talk about diving, and we'll see. We see people want to listen about, you know, listen to us talk about diving, and little by little, it just grew.
- [51:42]
Joe Rogan
You know what, though? It's also like, you're in the arena because you're talking about it niched in the space as well. And so people nitpick. People from the space who aren't online are going to nitpick every part of the story. It's like, you know what you do? You know how much you fucking dive. You know how long you took. Not even, like, how long you took, but how much work went into getting to each level. So, yeah, I think on the Internet, people have a lot to say. They get upset when people are doing the things that maybe they want to be doing, too.
- [52:09]
Gus Gonzalez
Right?
- [52:09]
Joe Rogan
And I think. I think it's fucking awesome that I think progress like this.
- [52:13]
Gus Gonzalez
What happened to us was when we. When dive talk became a thing and started growing, I feel like a lot of channels and people that are out there that are divers are adverse to showing any mistakes they made or places where they failed, where we don't care. The way we see dive talk is this is like, if we're at a bar having a beer or something, we're talking to each other. Like, we don't edit anything. Like, we just hit record and post it out there. There, whatever the conversation was. Like, we don't have a script. This is. This is what it looks like. Kind of like this. We don't have a script. We're just talking, and people really enjoy the fact that we're willing to admit when we messed up. You know, I have videos on our channel where I describe a situation where I was really close to probably dying. Like, it was. It was. It was bad.
- [52:59]
Joe Rogan
Like, what was one of them?
- [53:00]
Gus Gonzalez
Well, I won. I was in a cave in Missouri called Roaring river, and I. I was breathing the wrong gas.
- [53:07]
Joe Rogan
Were you alone or were you.
- [53:08]
Gus Gonzalez
It wasn't. It wasn't dangerous, but it was stupid. And what I mean by that is breathing air is safe to breathe down to 218ft. That's what we call an mod, or maximum operating depth. The maximum operating depth of air is 218ft. While I was breathing at 208, which is pretty close to 218. Now. The challenge is now that it was unsafe to breathe, it's that you're heavily narc, which I was. And I talk about it on the show. And I know that looks bad because I'm supposed To be this professional YouTuber or whatever, diver. But I messed up. I made a mistake. And I, you know, if you want to ridicule me and say, like, I would have never done that, okay, you're a better dive than me, that's okay. I'm okay saying that. But I want people to learn from what happened to me. And so I talk about it in detail. I was so narcissistic. So nitrogen narcosis, the when you have too much nitrogen in your blood because you're so deep, that is compressed to four times the amount, five times the amount, with every breath you take, it starts having an effect on you. That effect is called nitrogen narcosis. And people talk about it as. This is like if you're drunk. And it's not that it's like, if you're drunk because it goes away when you go shallow, it goes away immediately. But the effect that it has on you is that if everything is going great, then it's. It has no effect on you. It's no problem. But if things go bad, the ability for you to respond to the problem and respond properly, like, out of all the options that I have, this is the best one to deal with this issue kind of go out the window. You can't go out the window. You can't think straight. Right? So it has different effects on different people. And I remember, like, I think I talked about on the episode, like, having this, like, out of body experience. Like, I wonder if my body can see how good my trim is. Like, I'm having this conversation in my head, not realizing that I'm just knocked out of my mind. Like, I. And then I looked at my computer and it says 208. And I'm like, whoa. Like, oh, I'm in the wrong gas. Let me start going up. And I started alone, or were you? I was alone at that point. Yeah, I had a buddy. But at roaring river, around 150ft, 160ft, something like that. There's like this crevice that is super tight to go through, and it's a cave. And when I went through this crevice, I was first and my buddy, his name is Mike, he was behind me. He didn't see that. The visibility is not great. A roaring river, it's like 10 to 20ft visibility. And when he got to the crevice, when he got to the crevice, he didn't see it disturbed. So in his head, he was like, well, there's no way Gus made it through here, because he would have silted out. He would have silted out this whole crevice when he went through it. So he decided that, well, he must have gone somewhere else. Let me go back up, because he's probably up there. Where, in fact, I made it through the crevice. I just didn't disturb the silt. I made it through it, and I got all the way down to 208ft, and then I turn around, and I'm alone, and I'm breathing the wrong gas, and I'm knocked out of my mind. Okay, what do I have to do? I need to go up. Nitrogen narcosis goes away when you go shallow. So I just started going up little by little by little. And when I got to, I don't know, 100ft or whatever, the symptoms were gone. But that was sketchy.
- [56:24]
Joe Rogan
Do you. So when trying to think where to start here, because the cave diving thing is a whole different animal. Well, let's go back for a minute because we can come back to this story, too. That's. I'm getting secondhand goosebumps in the wrong ways hearing that. But, you know, you. You go through, like a year or so of diving, year and a half of diving, then you make the decision, like, okay, now I want to train for cave diving as well.
- [56:48]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah.
- [56:49]
Joe Rogan
You know, how do you even train for that? Do they have a lot of these caves mapped out ahead of time?
- [56:55]
Gus Gonzalez
I'll tell you.
- [56:56]
Joe Rogan
What does it look like?
- [56:57]
Gus Gonzalez
So I always said I was never going to be a cave diver. And the reason for that is the misconception that cave diving is always super tight. People squeezing through it, fighting their way through stuff. That is not like cave diving is some. Is. There's some caves that are like that.
- [57:14]
Joe Rogan
I heard about that Thai cave rescue man.
- [57:16]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, but the majority of caves are big. Like, you can drive a bus through them. They're big, big, big caves. So I always said I'm not. I'm not attracted to overhead environments. Like, anything that has a roof over my head. Like, I'm not attracted to it. And when I started diving rebreathers in 2019, a lot of rebreather divers are cave divers. They go into cave diving. So a lot of my buddies were diving caves, and they're like, dude, you should. You should join us. You should do, you know, you should become a cave diver. And I'm like, I'm not interested. And then they said, kind of the magic works, which is, well, you don't start as a cave diver. You start as a cavern Diver So this big caverns that you can dive. But to become a cavern diver, you learn all the skills of cave diving without going into caves. So I'm like, okay, that sounds cool. I will love to. I love learning. So that sounds cool. Like I would love to learn all those cave diving techniques without going into a cave. That sounds awesome. So I took the class, I got certified as a cavern diver. You have to have I think 25 hours or 25 dives, rebreather dives to qualify even for the training. So then I became a cavern diver and I started diving caverns and I'm like this is pretty awesome. And I fell in love with the techniques. Like to me, my attraction to cave diving is not the caves. Some caves are very attractive. Like there's some caves in Abaco that are made of crystal. It's like the Fortress of Solitude from Superman. You go in there, it's just white walls with crystal. Is unbelievable in the Bahamas. So some caves are attracted attractive. But what attracts me to cave diving is the process. The preparing your gear, the briefing and looking at a map, planning your route. Like that process is what I love about cave diving. And the fact that you get to dive with other people that are more competent than you like, it's it. That's what I like about cave diving. So anyway, I do my cavern diving, I do a bunch of that. And then they were like, well, why don't you do Intro to Cave? So the next level to become a cave diver is called Intro to cave and Intro to Cave. You go into caves but you don't navigate away from the main guideline. So in caves we have guidelines and they're in Florida specifically. We call it the goal line. The line looks like this. I brought you a prop. So this is, this is cave line. This is orange. But in in caves is gold. In in Florida caves is gold. And you can see how strong it is. So this is the main line of a cave. And so for enter the cave, you stay on the main line, you don't do any navigational decisions, you don't go in any side tunnels, side quests or anything like that. We basically dive the guideline. You go into a cave for a few hundred feet, you come out of the cave, you don't go anywhere. And you do that a bunch of times. And then you can do your full cave training. And full cave training is when you can start going out in this side passages and others.
- [60:07]
Joe Rogan
Do they even have that mapped out though?
- [60:09]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah.
- [60:09]
Joe Rogan
So they know any cave you're Going into, they know ahead of time, oh.
- [60:12]
Gus Gonzalez
There'S a two, not any three feet, not any cave. But the caves in Florida where you do dive training, they're all mapped out in great detail. Yeah, yeah. So, so you, before you even go on the dive, like the instructor pulls out the map and says, we're gonna go in here, we're gonna go here, we're gonna go here. Like, you plot the whole thing because based on where you're going, you have to bring as many spools with you. Like there's, there's a lot to it. But the guideline is what we used to not get lost in caves. We follow the guidelines, we have cave diving rules and we follow the guideline. And the guideline has these objects called arrows. So these arrows tell us where the exit is. This is a cave diving arrow.
- [60:51]
Joe Rogan
This reminds me a little bit of like, it's different but with like boating, where they got the green and the red to stay.
- [60:58]
Gus Gonzalez
Right. So on the lines. And I'm not going to tie it properly. I'm just going to do a quick tie up. But this is what the line will look like in a cave. And that tells me that the exit is that way.
- [61:09]
Joe Rogan
Right, Right.
- [61:10]
Gus Gonzalez
So even if you're completely blind because the cave is dark, but you know your lights broke and we bring at least three lights is another thing that you learn in cave diving. But let's say all your three lights work and your body's three lights. Sorry, all your three lights broke and your body's three lights broke. You still can hold the line, feel the arrow with your hand and be like, okay, the exit is that way. It's pretty straightforward. And then if the cave has flow, so there's flow. Like in Florida, a lot of caves have flows like a river under, under the ground. Then you just go with the flow. The flow is typically going out. It's called a spring. So we dive in against the flow and then with the flow on the way out.
- [61:47]
Joe Rogan
Where's the typical place you're diving in Florida? Like what towns are close to?
- [61:52]
Gus Gonzalez
Gainesville will be the closest town. Gainesville, Florida. So that area of Florida is called cave country.
- [61:57]
Joe Rogan
So most diverse caves by Gainesville.
- [62:00]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, just, we'll see some pictures. Just look up. Up. Devil's Cave system is the most popular cave perhaps in, in Florida. And that's where I did my first inland cave diving. Yeah, it's. Yeah, it's called the Devil's cave system. Yeah. So it looks like that.
- [62:18]
Joe Rogan
Wow.
- [62:19]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, it's crystal clear water. As well. But you can see the map. So that one right there still clear? Yeah, that's. That's the map. The partial map of Genie Springs is the, The. The place where you can go in and dive it. No, that's a different cave. So that is.
- [62:36]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, the other one wasn't coming up.
- [62:37]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah. This is Devil's Day.
- [62:39]
Joe Rogan
Like an example right here.
- [62:42]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, the. Just an example of the, of the clarity of the water. But, yeah, these caves are mad. But, like, the Devil's cave system is the most popular cave in Florida, I would think. They. There's a lot of people that dive that cave, and they still haven't found the end. So they've mapped, like, I think, reassuring, I think, like 18, 000ft of caves. And it. They still just keeps going. And it keeps going. And it keeps going. Yeah. So this is what the cave map looks like.
- [63:08]
Joe Rogan
Holy.
- [63:08]
Gus Gonzalez
This. This is just a partial, you know, view of the map. The map, if we lay it on this table, it will cover the whole table. I mean, now, how gigantic?
- [63:16]
Joe Rogan
Just looking right here on the map. Right, so it's really wide right here.
- [63:20]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah.
- [63:21]
Joe Rogan
How wide is it when it gets thin like this? Are we still talking, you know, 10 yards across? 10ft. 10ft across, yeah.
- [63:30]
Gus Gonzalez
So. So I know that people can't hear you because they're on the microphone, but you're asking depending how to turn.
- [63:35]
Joe Rogan
Joe was on it.
- [63:36]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, yeah. So. So, yeah, so the. The big ones that you were pointing at are really, really big. Like, I would say you can drive a school bus through those, but I've been in little, little ones. Like, if you see some of those, they look like a. Like a single line, like really tiny ones that is like the. The. The width of a person. So, like, you can swim through it but not scraping through it. You're not scraping through it. You're swimming through it. It's just. You can't swim side by side with somebody. There's not enough room.
- [64:02]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, but if you swim through it and then you get to one spot that hasn't been mapped before and it gets a little too tight, you get stuck and be dead.
- [64:09]
Gus Gonzalez
No, this whole place is mapped out. I don't think you can find a place that it hasn't been mapped out that you can keep going in. And if you do, you should. You should definitely lay your line and map it. But then, so the progression after cave diving, so after doing that for a couple years, I think I've done at that point, like 120 cave dives or something.
- [64:27]
Joe Rogan
And how long would those ones be? You said the other ones would be maybe a half hour.
- [64:31]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, most. Most of my cave dives are two hours plus. Yeah. So after, after I did that, I got invited on my first expedition. The expeditions is when you go to caves that have not been mapped that no human has ever been. So the first one I went was Roaring river, which is where I had that issue. And I wasn't an explorer on that. I was a safety diver on that, on that team. And then I was invited to do cave exploration in Mexico, where I was actually exploring the first one. I was looking for leads. So somebody else was laying line into Virgin Cave. Again, no human has ever been in there before. And the second person in the team is looking for leads, meaning looking for tunnels and places you can go, which is way harder than he looks.
- [65:14]
Joe Rogan
You find any fucking blow down there?
- [65:16]
Gus Gonzalez
And I don't think so, but there's some interesting things. Sometimes you're deep inside a cave and you find a mattress. Like, how is. How is there a mattress in here? Something. Something's happening going on.
- [65:28]
Joe Rogan
Something's going on.
- [65:29]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah. Or shoes or whatever. It's just weird.
- [65:32]
Joe Rogan
Yeah.
- [65:33]
Gus Gonzalez
But. Yeah, but I've been in caves that nobody has ever been. I think I've been at this point in three or four expeditions.
- [65:41]
Joe Rogan
You're not afraid of that at all.
- [65:43]
Gus Gonzalez
When you go to now.
- [65:44]
Joe Rogan
So you're about to go underwater into a cave that's never been mapped before.
- [65:49]
Gus Gonzalez
It's awesome.
- [65:50]
Joe Rogan
It's awesome.
- [65:50]
Gus Gonzalez
Can't get enough of it. I wish I was doing that right now. Like, it's, it's the best. But again, you work your way to. That you work your way to, you know, what is it that we know? Well, what we know is that this cave has an entrance here. And, you know, the type of entrance dictates what kind of gear you can wear and all that stuff. So, like, if the entrance is too tight, then we wear side mount stuff, which is nothing in our back, nothing in our chest so we can squeeze through stuff. If the entrance is big, you can wear stuff on your back. Like, it depends.
- [66:22]
Joe Rogan
Right.
- [66:22]
Gus Gonzalez
But yeah, I mean, I've been to I don't know how many caves now that people have never been to. I think I've laid at this point like 4,000ft of line in virgin caves. Yeah.
- [66:33]
Joe Rogan
So. All right, so how long is this? Like two and a half feet, something like that. Two feet?
- [66:37]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah. Now this is. This is the thickness. Yeah, this is. This is like two feet. Maybe this is the thickness of Main explore cave line. When we do cave exploration, it's a thinner line. Thinner than this, but it still holds, like a thousand pounds. Like, it's super strong, but, like, half the size of this. Half. Half the.
- [66:54]
Joe Rogan
How do you lay it? Are you, like. Yeah, you have.
- [66:57]
Gus Gonzalez
You have a spool, and you just run, like, with a spool and you're tying it in different places. Is. I mean, out of the. Out of the one week of training to become a cave diver, like, three or four days of those is line work. Like, you'll learn how to run line.
- [67:09]
Joe Rogan
So they're teaching everyone how to do that?
- [67:10]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, you have to do it.
- [67:12]
Joe Rogan
That's so cool, man. Yeah, I mean, it's cool. I don't ever want to fucking do it, but it's cool. Talk about it. What was the one in Mexico? The first one in Mexico you did?
- [67:21]
Gus Gonzalez
The first one in Mexico was at a cenote in Cozumel that basically had been explored, I think, in the 70s or 80s or something like that. And they found some Mayan ruins or something in there. So they shut it down, like, nobody can dive. And then the government of Cozumel wanted to continue that exploration, so they invited a team to come. And I was lucky to be invited to be part of that team. So, yeah, we went to this cenote called Chunha in Cozumel, and we laid a bunch of line in there.
- [67:58]
Joe Rogan
So the Mayans were diving.
- [68:00]
Gus Gonzalez
No, they had to be like, Mayan pottery, stuff like that, like. Because cenotes are basically like a sinkhole. So this used to be.
- [68:07]
Joe Rogan
Right.
- [68:08]
Gus Gonzalez
Oh. And then it just collapsed, and now there's water down there. Okay. And they found some Mayan pottery. Now they took that out and they saw a museum somewhere or whatever that. That pottery wasn't there when we went. But the cenote exploration had stopped decades ago, and they invited us to go back.
- [68:24]
Joe Rogan
Yeah.
- [68:24]
Gus Gonzalez
So I think until this point, Chunha is the only cave or cenote that has my name on it. That, like, there's an area of the cave that I found that they named. They put my name on that because I found it. And it's not my proudest moment because it's called Gus's Labyrinth. There's literally line everywhere he went in all directions. So it's so confusing. I found so many rooms and leads that when you look at it on the map, it looks like a labyrinth. So they name it at Gossip Labyrinth.
- [68:50]
Joe Rogan
That's kind of cool, though.
- [68:51]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah.
- [68:52]
Joe Rogan
No one's ever done it. I mean. Whoa. Yeah, we're looking at it right now, which. That's near. That's Cozumel.
- [69:00]
Gus Gonzalez
You said Cozumel is the island in Mexico. There's so many cenotes out there.
- [69:07]
Joe Rogan
Got it. Okay. How long ago was that?
- [69:11]
Gus Gonzalez
So the first time I went there was, I think, 20, 22, 2023, something like that. I've been there twice after that. I think the. The. My favorite exploration was another place in Mexico in Cozumel called El Diablo.
- [69:28]
Joe Rogan
The devil.
- [69:28]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, the Devil's cave. And that one is still to this day the sketchiest cave I've ever been. I mean, the whole cave is trying to kill you. It's like, there's nothing good about that cave.
- [69:40]
Joe Rogan
Why?
- [69:40]
Gus Gonzalez
I mean, the entrance is complete. Zero visibility for, like, the first hundred feet. You are in mud and rock chest and back. So you're literally like dragging yourself through mud in zero visibility. And then at some point, you pop into the cave. And every rock in the cave is, like, jagged. It's like. It's like blades. So every time you touch something, you put your hand, you get cuts. But then the water has this thing called hydrogen sulfide, which is like acid that you can smell through your mask. Underwater, you can smell it. And it's like. It's terrible. Like, it was used as a weapon in, like, World War I. It's, like, terrible. So you're swimming in this. You come out of the water after your dive, and anything that was metal that you have is black. So you went in and it was like silver color. And you come out and it's black. Tanks that we leave in this water bubble, Like. Like the water is eating the aluminum in the tank. It's like toxic water, seawater, sea level. It's not deep.
- [70:42]
Joe Rogan
It's.
- [70:42]
Gus Gonzalez
I would say, I don't know, 40ft or something. It's not deep. The cave is not deep, but it's just like the whole cave is. It's like, dangerous. It's really dangerous. And I love it. Like, it's my favorite cave. It's just my favorite.
- [70:56]
Joe Rogan
How many times have you done it?
- [70:58]
Gus Gonzalez
I think I've done like 10 dives at El Diablo. Yeah.
- [71:01]
Joe Rogan
For two to four hours a piece.
- [71:03]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah. Well, my longest one was 4 hours and 10 minutes it was there.
- [71:07]
Joe Rogan
So you have zero visibility for up to 100ft.
- [71:10]
Gus Gonzalez
Like the first hundred feet of the cave? Yeah, first five minutes.
- [71:13]
Joe Rogan
What's going through your mind when you're going into something for the first time that maybe not the third time you did it because you knew what to expect, but you're going into Something and you cannot see and it's EST. Did you know it was going to be like 100ft or.
- [71:26]
Gus Gonzalez
I mean, the people that discover it, they. They told me about it.
- [71:30]
Joe Rogan
And you can't see anything. Anywhere you may touch could be basically like stab you like a knife. Like, like, is your heart rate jacked?
- [71:38]
Gus Gonzalez
While I love it, I love every second of it. I don't know where to tell you. It's the best. I literally cannot wait to go back.
- [71:47]
Joe Rogan
Where'd you ever grow up? Like, where are you from? I feel like you were getting into shit when you were like seven.
- [71:52]
Gus Gonzalez
No, no, no, no. It's, it's, it's just, it's so good. I love it. Yeah. It's just part of, part of what makes it special is all those dangers and the fact that you have trained so much to get to a point where you can do it safe, safely. Yeah, yeah.
- [72:08]
Joe Rogan
What does your wife think all this?
- [72:09]
Gus Gonzalez
She hates it. I was gonna say she hates all of it, but she's not even a diver. She doesn't dive at all.
- [72:14]
Joe Rogan
Oh, that's how I see. This is your golf.
- [72:16]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, but she knows.
- [72:17]
Joe Rogan
Out of the house.
- [72:18]
Gus Gonzalez
She knows that. That she's not gonna talk me out of it. I mean, I just. I just love it. It's just what I do. And she knows that if something happened, I just died doing what I love. I just love it. I mean, I love everything about it.
- [72:32]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, I mean, that's very clear. It's just like, you know, people, like activities that you don't have to think about 7,000 things before you go in there or, you know, risk death.
- [72:42]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, well, I mean, again, I feel like we're talking about the absolutely most dangerous type of diving that you can do, which is cave exploration in super tight caves filled with acid water. Like. Yeah. That it doesn't get more dangerous than that. And I don't want people watching this to think, like, well, if I get into diving, that's what I'm going to do. Like, no, no. Like, you don't have to. To do any, anything like that. And even with cave diving in big caves, I tell people you don't have to cave dive. That's just. I just happen to land on that and love it. But just like, I love it. There's a chance that I wouldn't have loved it, you know? But yeah, cave diving is a whole animal. And you were talking about the cave rescue, the Thai cave rescue. That was gnarly.
- [73:23]
Joe Rogan
So actually, that's 2018, right. When you did that. So that's the year you're learning how to dive?
- [73:28]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, I think it was, I think it was after that because I feel like when the rescue happened I was already a cave diver. I think like I was already certified.
- [73:37]
Joe Rogan
So for people that don't remember this story, it was 2018, it was an international story. It was a, it was a soccer team. I think they were like between ages 11 and 16. All these kids, their assistant coach decided to celebrate. I don't remember what they were celebrating, but they were celebrating something after practice and decided to go into a cave. I don't know why. One of the kids or a few of them maybe didn't go. So that's how they knew that the team went to the cave and they didn't return from the cave. So people went and found their outside the cave and then realized they were stuck in it. And I forget, but this lasted a while. They were in there a while and there was incoming monsoon season, meaning that there was a water table rising in different parts of the cave and they got stuck.
- [74:20]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah. So this cave, I'm not an expert in this cave or anything, I've never been but, but I believe this cave floods like a few months of the year. Whenever it's the rainy season, the cave floods and then when the rainy season goes away, it goes empty again. So these kids went in and there was some freak rain like once in a hundred year type of rain that flooded the cave. Once they were deep inside the cave and of course they, they thought they were all dead and they called cave divers to go and find them.
- [74:53]
Joe Rogan
Is this, in that kind of situation, are they always going to call like military dudes or.
- [74:58]
Gus Gonzalez
Military dudes don't train for cave diving. And I think that's the problem. I think first they try with the Thai Navy seals which by the way, I believe, I think, I believe Thai Navy Seals go through the US Navy SEAL training in Coronado. Like they come here and go through the, go through the training in Coronado. They don't do the training in Thailand but anyway they're badasses. Like, you know, the Thai Navy Seals are legit dudes they call them, but they are like, we're not cave divers. And I think they brave it. They try to go in and they couldn't figure out because cave diving is not for superhumans, it's just people that learn the techniques that are needed to be safe in a cave. And these are regular average people. Like I've met a couple of the people that rescue those Kids in Thailand and they're just like normal dudes, you know, they're not superhumans. They're not like Navy SEAL guys or whatever. No, like I, I met name. So I met Richard Harris, who was the doctor who sedated the kids. He's an Australian.
- [75:55]
Joe Rogan
Oh yeah, that's right. Because they had to, they couldn't panic down there. That's a big thing. You can't panic.
- [76:00]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, that, that. And you would have absolutely panicked immediately if, if they didn't sedate those kids. So that was definitely the right call, the only way to get them out. So Richard Harris, I met him in person and he is an amazing diver. He's doing gnarly like to 800ft that like he's, he's. He's breathing like hydrogen or something. Like it's. He's doing stuff that I'll never do. Like that guy is a whole. Next level Richard Harris and then Rick Stanton. I met him in person. I spent a whole week with him earlier this year, which was super interesting. And he not only showed us what the rescue was like, but he allowed us to do it. So he brought, he brought the same stuff that they put on the kits and then he told us how to do it. So I actually.
- [76:46]
Joe Rogan
How did they do it? Can you break it down?
- [76:48]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah. So I actually took Woody, my co host on Dive Talk, and I. I bound him, hands behind the back and legs and everything. Put all the stuff, the face mask and everything. And then I blinded myself because they couldn't see anything. The rescuers couldn't see anything. And then I did this mock rescue.
- [77:06]
Joe Rogan
Of him in a real cave?
- [77:08]
Gus Gonzalez
No, it wasn't a real cave. We did it in a pool. But the pool, there was some navigation in the pool, so I had to like swim around and the pool had like a grotto. So like we surface in the grotto. It was, it was super interesting. We recorded this whole thing on Dive Talk and then we let other people do it. And some people made it, some people didn't make it. We were lucky that me and Woody both made it. So spoiler alert. Meaning like I was able to rescue him blind and then I was a victim and he was able to rescue me.
- [77:35]
Joe Rogan
One actually sedate each other.
- [77:37]
Gus Gonzalez
Other. No, no, but. But we didn't move. And that's another thing. Can you be underwater and not move? Tied with hands behind your back and let bounding your legs and just like be cool. I thought it was the most relaxing experience. It was awesome.
- [77:50]
Joe Rogan
So how did that. Because I don't remember the specifics of the story, like, exactly what the process was. You're going through some of it right now, but let's break it all down.
- [78:00]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah.
- [78:00]
Joe Rogan
So they sent a doctor down there who was also a diver.
- [78:04]
Gus Gonzalez
Well, so let's back out for a second. So. So they call these cave divers to come in and, can you help us find the bodies? Like, they thought it was going to be a body recovery, not a rescue. And they go in, and as they start exploring the cave and going deeper, they find these workers from, like, a cable company or a gas company. You, like, electric. It was, like, a utility company inside the cave. Nobody knew they were there. Adults, like. Like some workers that were, like, laying cable inside the cave or something. And then they go in and they find these guys, and they're like, oh, my God, I'm so glad you found. I'm like, they didn't even know they were looking for kids. And they run into these adults.
- [78:41]
Joe Rogan
Oh, my God.
- [78:42]
Gus Gonzalez
Like, imagine you go into a cave like that, looking for kids, and then it's like three AT&T workers in there. Like, what's the news? What is going on? And, like, nobody knew they were in the cave. So then they. They rescue those guys without sedation. Okay. They rescue those guys without sedation. And it was like a brawl on the. As soon as they put him underwater, they started fist fighting the rescuers. Like, they panic. I mean, wait, so they rescued.
- [79:08]
Joe Rogan
The guys were down there and. Oh, they were stuck, too.
- [79:10]
Gus Gonzalez
They were stuck in an air chamber. In an air pocket. Yeah, yeah, got it.
- [79:13]
Joe Rogan
So the guys panic.
- [79:14]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah. So he's like, okay, I'll get you out of here. So breathe this thing. Put this mask on, whatever. As soon as you're on the water, you can't see anything. And you're in. In a cave, dude. Like, they lost it. And, like, they came out there, like, with bruises and bleeding. So that's how they learned that we can't do this to kids. We can do it. So when they found the kids ultimately, and they thought they were gonna again run into a bunch of bodies and the kids were alive, then they started thinking about, well, how do we get them out of here?
- [79:40]
Joe Rogan
And they had to, like, get them fed for a while because this took days, right?
- [79:44]
Gus Gonzalez
They were in there for 18 days or something.
- [79:45]
Joe Rogan
So they got food down, too? Yeah, they basically dove food in or something.
- [79:49]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, they brought food. They fed them. I think they brought a couple of the Navy SEAL guys, you know, to stay with the kids. I mean, I don't know the entire process of it, the whole story of it. We got it directly from Rick Stanton, which was the lead rescuer in that whole operation. And it was great to see a lot of like behind the scenes pictures and videos and stuff. That was cool. But anyway, eventually they realized that the only way to do is to date in this kid.
- [80:15]
Joe Rogan
So that. So when you say sedating them, they're completely under.
- [80:19]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah.
- [80:19]
Joe Rogan
Meaning like they're.
- [80:20]
Gus Gonzalez
They're asleep. They're not like, you know, the only.
- [80:22]
Joe Rogan
Way so is the only way they get them asleep, they put a full mask on them and everything. And their body can.
- [80:27]
Gus Gonzalez
Face mask.
- [80:28]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, Their body's breathing.
- [80:30]
Gus Gonzalez
Breathing normal. Yeah.
- [80:31]
Joe Rogan
And then they tie them.
- [80:33]
Gus Gonzalez
They tie them hands behind the back.
- [80:34]
Joe Rogan
They were to wake up.
- [80:35]
Gus Gonzalez
If they wake up. Yeah. And then every rescuer carry like a syringe to re inject. Like they start moving like they're waking up. Just hammer him on the leg and put him back to sleep again. It was gnarly. Dude. It's not.
- [80:49]
Joe Rogan
And they're doing one at a time.
- [80:50]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, one. One kid at a time. Yeah. And it was, it was unbelievable.
- [80:54]
Joe Rogan
Like, can we google that, Joe? How long it took once they started the rescue?
- [80:58]
Gus Gonzalez
It was like three days, I think, Something like that.
- [81:00]
Joe Rogan
But how, like, how far was the dive itself to get to where?
- [81:04]
Gus Gonzalez
I think it was two hours, two and a half hours. Carrying a kid. Yeah.
- [81:08]
Joe Rogan
So that's the thing. Hold on a second. Yes. You're in water, so like, you know, you have like a. There's a buoyancy mechanism there, but yeah, you're carrying a kid diving and moving forward with equipment on.
- [81:21]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah.
- [81:22]
Joe Rogan
For two or two and a half hours. Like, I see you, you're in great shape. You got to be in insane shape to do that and do that. There were two divers total doing this over three days across, like 12 kids or 15 kids or something.
- [81:34]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, yeah, it was. It was three or four of them. I think it was Jumbalantha, Rick Stanton, Richard Harris. I'm trying to remember some of the other people there, but yeah, I mean, they, they did a great job. I mean, the stuff they did, I. I wouldn't even imagine back to the. Being in that position. Yeah, no, they, they did a great job. Those guys are heroes. And that's one of the things that I, I just didn't understand. Like, Elon Musk was like, oh, I'll just build a submarine and we'll just go get him. It's like, you have no idea what you're talking about. Like, Zero clue. Like, whatever you're thinking is, it's just forget about it. Like, I have nothing against Elon Musk. I'm not an Elon hater or whatever. But, like, when he said that, I'm like, you have no clue what you're.
- [82:17]
Joe Rogan
Talking about and go through this.
- [82:19]
Gus Gonzalez
So stupid. It's the dumbest thing. It's like, oh, don't worry, I'll prove it to you. I'm gonna build a Tesla sub that will make it shut up.
- [82:27]
Joe Rogan
All right, this is actually a great image right here that we have on the screen. Joe, let's pull this up just because. So people can see this.
- [82:33]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah.
- [82:33]
Joe Rogan
So one kilometer into the cave, it's one kilo.
- [82:37]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah. So that's over half a mile inside.
- [82:39]
Joe Rogan
Wait, hold on. It's 1 km from below the ground.
- [82:43]
Gus Gonzalez
But the entrance.
- [82:44]
Joe Rogan
From 5.
- [82:45]
Gus Gonzalez
Oh, 5 km. Yeah, from the entrance, 1 km. So this is. This map is good to illustrate that they couldn't just dig a hole and get him out through the hole.
- [82:54]
Joe Rogan
And it's showing what a combination it is of both diving and then climbing.
- [83:00]
Gus Gonzalez
Over rocks on land without sump diving, which is very popular in England. And that's why I think the British divers that came in through rescue these kids were. Jason Mallison was the other name I was thinking of. They were better prepared to deal with this.
- [83:14]
Joe Rogan
So he's like, I'm looking at the picture there. You see the big mound at the beginning of the entrance when he get on the way out. Let's just focus on that part. When he's on the way out with a kid who's sedated, you know, it's not a 20 year old, but you're talking 11, 14, 15 year. I mean, they weigh something. Yeah, he's carrying them up those rocks.
- [83:33]
Gus Gonzalez
Well, they had other divers set up to help with that. Hell with the transport. So in every one of those air pockets that you see in the cave map, they had other teammates. So because of the narrow passage, only one diver could carry one kid. But once it opened up into an air pocket or whatever, into a sump.
- [83:49]
Joe Rogan
It'S like an assembly line.
- [83:51]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah. Then somebody else could help, you know.
- [83:53]
Joe Rogan
Carry them and then. So would it be the same diver, though? Meaning if Rick went back there to where the boys were and he starts and he gets through that first area with the water and gets up to the assembly line, is he walking past the guys on the assembly line and getting.
- [84:08]
Gus Gonzalez
Continuing and continuing? Yeah, those. Those guys carry them all the way.
- [84:11]
Joe Rogan
To the relay race where there was One at each?
- [84:13]
Gus Gonzalez
No, I don't think so. Wow. Yeah. No, it was. It was unbelievable.
- [84:18]
Joe Rogan
On the podcast.
- [84:19]
Gus Gonzalez
Holy Rick is awesome, dude. It's like one of my favorite people on earth. And he's the first one who tells you, like, I'm not a certified cave diver. Like, he learned by. I know. These guys are another.
- [84:30]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, yeah, let's. Let's go there. He's not a certified cave diver and he pulled off the ground.
- [84:36]
Gus Gonzalez
I don't think Rick Stanton is a certified diver, period, like, open water diver at all. Was he doing.
- [84:41]
Joe Rogan
Did he sleep at a Holiday Inn Express last night?
- [84:43]
Gus Gonzalez
You learned by doing. He learned by doing. And he's. He's. Rick forgot about cave diving more than I know about cave diving. Like, the guy is a legend.
- [84:50]
Joe Rogan
Why was he called in to do this if he's not certain?
- [84:53]
Gus Gonzalez
Because he's one of the best in the world. One of the best wives, sump divers, rescue divers, you know, he's one of the best cave divers in the world. Rick Stanton is a legend in cave diving. Before the Thai cave rescue, he was a legend.
- [85:05]
Joe Rogan
But you just said he didn't know how to do.
- [85:07]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, but most of the, like the grandfather, whatever. The godfathers of cave diving were not cave. There wasn't cave diving training. These guys learned by doing.
- [85:15]
Joe Rogan
Oh, I see. Okay, I misunderstood you. So he learned by doing. He didn't have like your resources when he was learning. He said self taught, you're saying.
- [85:23]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, like, the rules of cave diving that I learn and that I follow in every dive I go are because.
- [85:28]
Joe Rogan
Of guys like him.
- [85:29]
Gus Gonzalez
Are because of people like that. The guy who wrote the rules of cave diving, Sheck Exley, he was. He was, you know, an American, like math teacher that became an absolute legend in cave diving. And he wrote the rules. Sheck almost died, I don't know how many times. And he ended up diving in like the deepest cenote in Mexico or something at 800ft or something. He died. But yeah, those rules were written in blood. I mean, they were people that died because they didn't follow those rules. They weren't even rules at that point. But we learned from their deaths, and now we have rules that we follow.
- [86:04]
Joe Rogan
Is that. Is that the most amazing rescue you ever heard of?
- [86:08]
Gus Gonzalez
I mean, there's a bunch. Yeah, check. Actually, his. His awesome. He died in Mexico.
- [86:15]
Joe Rogan
Oh, my die.
- [86:17]
Gus Gonzalez
He was. He was on a super deep cave dive. Super deep dive. Yeah. But he died at like 800ft deep or something like that. Yeah, yeah. It would be like saying like, oh, he, he was, he was a, a race car driver. And, and he died, you know, on, on a, on a car accident or whatever. Yeah, but it would be the equivalent of like, like setting the land speed record. Like he was doing a super gnarly dive.
- [86:45]
Joe Rogan
How old was he? Can we go back?
- [86:47]
Gus Gonzalez
I don't know. He was in his 40s, maybe 50, something like that.
- [86:50]
Joe Rogan
All right, let's hit his Wikipedia. So he's 45.
- [86:53]
Gus Gonzalez
49.
- [86:53]
Joe Rogan
94.
- [86:54]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, 49 to 94, Joe.
- [86:57]
Joe Rogan
Down to his death.
- [86:58]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, he was 45 when he died.
- [86:59]
Joe Rogan
All right, so Exley died, age 45 on April 6, 1994, while attempting to descend to a depth of over a thousand feet.
- [87:06]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah.
- [87:07]
Joe Rogan
In a freshwater cenote or sinkhole called Zakatone in the state of Tamulipas, Mexico. He made the dive as part of a dual dive with Jim Bowden, but Bowden aborted his descent early when his gas supply ran low. So actually was alone.
- [87:20]
Gus Gonzalez
No, these guys were doing insane stuff. Like if you look at the dive profile of this dive, it's like it makes no sense for the knowledge that we have now because of people. I check, right, like these guys were breathing air past 300ft. Like, like I said, the maximum operating depth of air is 218. These guys were breathing air to like 400ft or something. It was like they were doing stuff that was crazy. I think checks physiology was better than most.
- [87:47]
Joe Rogan
Oh, for sure.
- [87:47]
Gus Gonzalez
When it came to.
- [87:48]
Joe Rogan
Gotta be above average.
- [87:49]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah. When, when he came to people. Not as an athlete. I just think as a diver, he was, he was made for diving, but.
- [87:55]
Joe Rogan
He'S definitely in shape too. Exley's body was recovered when his support crew hauled up his unused decompression tanks. It was found that he had looped into the descent line, perhaps to sort out G issues. His wrist mounted dive computer read a maximum depth of 906ft.
- [88:12]
Gus Gonzalez
Insane.
- [88:12]
Joe Rogan
The cause of Exley's death could not be determined. Team members concluded the causes could include stress of HPNs, exacerbated by the narcotic effects of nitrogen at that depth. The line was also wrapped deliberately around Exley's tank valves. Bowden and other experts have theorized that actually might have done this in anticipation.
- [88:32]
Gus Gonzalez
Of his own just going to die.
- [88:34]
Joe Rogan
To prevent any dangerous body recovery operations. Holy shit. Imagine. So imagine knowing you're gonna die.
- [88:41]
Gus Gonzalez
Imagine.
- [88:42]
Joe Rogan
Let me prep the people. They're gonna fight.
- [88:43]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, imagine that. You are so conscious to know that, okay, this is it. I'm gonna make it easy for people to Recover my body rather than just drifting and letting them seek for my body in thousands of feet of water or whatever. So, like, I'm gonna wrap myself to the line so when they pull it up, my body will come with it. Yeah.
- [89:01]
Joe Rogan
You mentioned that you had that dangerous dive in Missouri where you knocked a little bit, but again, that's also like where you're loopy and your. Your brain's fucked with a little bit, so you're out of it.
- [89:11]
Gus Gonzalez
I was a little out of it. These guys.
- [89:13]
Joe Rogan
Have you ever had a moment where in a dive anywhere where you're fully aware and you say to yourself, there's a chance I'm not going to make this back, and you prepare yourself for death?
- [89:24]
Gus Gonzalez
No, I've never prepared myself for death, but I've been in situations where if it wasn't for my dive buddy Woody, in this case, I think I would have probably died.
- [89:33]
Joe Rogan
Give me one of those.
- [89:35]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, like at El Diablo, the cave we were talking about earlier. That entrance, the zero visibility entrance is so tight and the line is not laid in the best way. So I got wrapped around line in that portion, so I couldn't see anything. I was underwater and I was tied with line somewhere in my tanks that I couldn't reach. And I was just there. Like I was a fish caught in a net, basically. Now, obviously we're on rebreathers, which means we can last there for hours. But if. If nobody would have helped me, I would have potentially eventually drowned. But luckily I'm diving with a buddy. And unlike what you hear from other people telling stories, like Donald Cerrone when he told his story where he said, if I'm with my buddy and they run into issues, I'm saving myself. No, that's the complete opposite of reality. My body. Woody came behind me and he found me completely entangled in line. And we trained for this during cave diving training.
- [90:32]
Joe Rogan
What was the visibility like when he.0.
- [90:35]
Gus Gonzalez
So he just run into me and I was there stuck on the line and I'm like, help.
- [90:41]
Joe Rogan
Did you have a. Was this one of the situations where you had a radio kind of thing?
- [90:45]
Gus Gonzalez
No.
- [90:45]
Joe Rogan
So you just hit him or something?
- [90:47]
Gus Gonzalez
We're just talking on the water because with a rebreather you can kind of yell and make up work.
- [90:51]
Joe Rogan
Oh, you can?
- [90:51]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, yeah. So like, if I tell you, go, like you would understand. Yeah, yeah. Help.
- [90:57]
Joe Rogan
You can hear it. God, it's so hard for me to think about.
- [90:59]
Gus Gonzalez
He's like, okay, okay, okay. I can. I can tell. And again, wearing zero vis. So he's feeling me and. And then he feels the line. And then we start, you know, we spend like 10 minutes untangling me from this mess in zero this. So I would say that's probably the closest. Gus.
- [91:15]
Joe Rogan
Gus. When I like double tie my shoe, like double knot my shoe at the gym and then come home because I wear Everlast boxing shoes. So they're like, like on my ankles and everything. Right all the way up, very tight. I'll have moments where I come home and I can't get the knot undone and my brain starts.
- [91:33]
Gus Gonzalez
Claus, you start panicking out and I.
- [91:34]
Joe Rogan
Gotta go sit down. It's okay. Catch your breath. I'm gonna get this. And it takes a few minutes and I get it.
- [91:41]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah.
- [91:41]
Joe Rogan
Now imagine no visibility. You're under water, you're breathing in a tank. You can't say things out loud. You can't see around you. It's a cave. And now you got line tangled that you can't see to untangle. Holy shit.
- [91:54]
Gus Gonzalez
I know, I know. And I. So during cave diving training, you learn how to deal with that if you get tangled. So you're taught what to do to minimize the chances of entanglement. But if you get entangled, here's how you're going to handle that. And if you have to cut the line, this is how you fix the line. So, like all of this is part of cave diving training. Like all of it. And again, I'm thankful for that. I didn't just magically come up with this. So anyway, Woody was good enough to figure out where the entanglement was. Untangle me. Let's go back to the surface and talk about this. So we went back to the surface and I was like, okay, well, that was, that was sketchy. And let's go back. Yeah, so we, we went back right away and did like a two and a half hour dive after that.
- [92:40]
Joe Rogan
Maggie's untangling you.
- [92:44]
Gus Gonzalez
On your neck. Yeah, no, it was. It was all over my tank. I mean, at some point, obviously you contemplate cutting it, but there was another team inside the cave already at that time.
- [92:52]
Joe Rogan
Oh, there was.
- [92:53]
Gus Gonzalez
So I would have had to repair the line for them or else they would have come out and have no line to the surface. And you can find it. I mean, it's complete pitch black. There's no way you know where the exit is unless you have a guideline. So we had to. We would have had to fix it for them. So we would have spent the next hour fixing the line for those guys. Luckily, he was able to get me off of it without breaking the line. I mean, this line, you can see, it's not hard to break, but we can cut it if we have to. I mean, if I'm entangled underwater, I.
- [93:18]
Joe Rogan
Mean, it's sturdy, but. Yeah, I see. We're saying you cut it if you have to.
- [93:21]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah.
- [93:22]
Joe Rogan
Do you like, in your training and all the time you train for this before you ever do something like this, do they go through mental exercises with you about how to handle situations? Like, I've Talked with Navy SEALs before, for example, not. Not related to diving, but just like, situations where they have to do, you know, some techniques where they can reduce their anxiety, you know, whether it's a mental technique or what it might be. Intel guys have to do that as well. Like, is there any training like that for, hey, you get in this situation, you have to tell yourself you're okay. Here's how you do it.
- [94:00]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, I mean, I think part of training is you have to stop, breathe, and think about what the problem is and how to solve it. So they do train you with that. My cave diving instructor, his name is Doug, Doug Eversole. He told me that, look, out of all people, there's like 25% of people that will never panic no matter what you do. They're just born without the panic gene. They just don't care that's you. They can be. No, I don't think that's me, but they can be being shot at like Navy seals, and they'll just like, smiling like, they just don't panic. There's people that are mentally like that. They didn't train for it. They were just born that way. And then there's people that, no matter what you teach them and what techniques you tell them and how to handle whatever, they will panic no matter what. When they're facing a situation like that, they're going to panic and shut down. But the vast majority of people can deal with panic. And the way we deal with it is we stop what we're doing, we look at the problem, think of the solution for this specific problem, and then take care of it. Right. Prioritize and execute. Okay, what do I have to do now? And I think you can keep breaking that down into the simplest form, which is the next move that I'm going to make needs to be forward, needs to be trying to get me out of here. And there's a point where there's no move to make. At El Diablo, when I was in tangle, I tried to untangle Myself. And I realized I can do it. So the only thing I can do at that point is make it worse by pulling hard, losing the line from whatever is tied up, making it impossible for Woody to find me and help me. So I just lay there, literally underwater in the darkness, just like. There's nothing to do. So why panic? Yeah, why panic? Just breathe normal. Like, I can't move. I'm entangled. I get it. Just wait. Woody's gonna come at some point. And if not. And I remember. I remember thinking about this. I'm like, if Woody can't find me, then the guys that are inside the cave, at some point, they'll run into me, and then they'll help me. So worst case scenario, I'm just gonna have to lay here for three hours until they come out, out, and then they'll help me. Like, that's. I remember thinking that. But luckily, again, Woody came, like, five minutes later, running to me, helped me out of it, and. And we were good to go.
- [96:07]
Joe Rogan
I just thought of this random question. Like, let's say you're sitting there for three hours. You just, like, piss through your wetsuit.
- [96:13]
Gus Gonzalez
If you have to. Yeah.
- [96:15]
Joe Rogan
Is that what you do on a dive? You just.
- [96:16]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, most. Most people pee on their wetsuits. Like, it's not a big deal. I try not to, but I don't want Woody, a bunch of.
- [96:22]
Joe Rogan
Catching the draft. Right.
- [96:24]
Gus Gonzalez
Well, with the water, El Diablo, I don't think that's just toxic water. I think I would have enhanced it if I peed on it, so.
- [96:31]
Joe Rogan
Jesus Christ. Yeah, I'm getting. All day. I've been getting. I'm getting claustrophobia just thinking about some of this. Yeah, this would not. That's why this would not be for me. I don't like being in, like, really, really tight spaces. I don't mind small spaces. Like, I don't. Elevators are perfectly cool like that. But, like, the idea when I'll see imagery of, like, someone shimmying through a cave or something like that.
- [96:51]
Gus Gonzalez
But that's what most people think cave diving is like. But most cave diving is not like that. Most cave diving is big. Big. You know, caves. I mean, there's like, the Mount Everest of cave diving is in Florida. It's called Eagle's Nest. And at Eagle's Nest, you can fit, I don't know, maybe like an aircraft carrier inside. That thing is that big. The cave is that big. You cannot see. You cannot see the other wall. It's like that big. It's huge. And Eagle's Nest is a good example of what a cave looks like. They're humongous passages.
- [97:22]
Joe Rogan
Oh, yeah, we got it deep scotted up here.
- [97:24]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah.
- [97:24]
Joe Rogan
You know what? I do have to say this. All the imagery we've been looking at today of, like, beautiful cave dives. The places you are beautiful.
- [97:32]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, yeah. You haven't even seen the Abaco Caves. The Abaco Caves with the older crystal are just breathtaking.
- [97:39]
Joe Rogan
Where's that?
- [97:39]
Gus Gonzalez
There's an Abaco. It's an. It's an island of the Bahamas.
- [97:43]
Joe Rogan
And have you.
- [97:44]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah.
- [97:44]
Joe Rogan
Dived in these?
- [97:45]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, I've been four times maybe to Abaco. And it's just gorgeous. Just look at you.
- [97:52]
Joe Rogan
Really?
- [97:52]
Gus Gonzalez
Glass Factory. Look at Glass Factory. Abaco. And you'll see what I mean. So I think the one over here on the left, it's an example of that. But, yeah, Glass Factory is a good example. So.
- [98:08]
Joe Rogan
Whoa.
- [98:09]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah. So when you go in inside the cave, it looks like you're diving inside a chandelier. I mean, it's just glass everywhere.
- [98:16]
Joe Rogan
All right, if you guys are listening to this and not watching, if you're on like Apple or something like that, go over to Spotify or YouTube for a minute and look at this Div. Can we get that big right there? Blow up that one of them. That looks beautiful. So we're like an hour 35 into the podcast right now. So with the ads, and they were probably like at the 138 mark or something, but yeah. Whoa. That doesn't look real.
- [98:44]
Gus Gonzalez
I know. How.
- [98:46]
Joe Rogan
Wide is that right there? Where that with. Because the. The depth perception is a little off. Okay. So he's got like, looks like maybe 4ft of room right there to go. Go through that top. Top to bottom.
- [98:59]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah. I would say 4ft is about right. The whole ceiling is decorated with crystals, so you don't want to hit the ceiling. You crawl on your stomach.
- [99:08]
Joe Rogan
Can they stab you in here?
- [99:10]
Gus Gonzalez
I mean, the crystal is. It's heavy. Like, if it hits you in the head, it would hurt. But the diver that you see in here with a yellow helmet, his name is Brian Kock. Brian Kock is perhaps the greatest diver that ever lived. Like, Brian Keiko is amazing.
- [99:24]
Joe Rogan
What. What. What has he done?
- [99:27]
Gus Gonzalez
He was a diver in the Navy, and then he became a cave diver, like, decades ago. And he lives in Abaco. He. He is. He's your guide when you go diving in Abaco. And Brian Caycock is just. Yeah, he's. He's spotless. His technique diving, he's just unbelievable.
- [99:45]
Joe Rogan
What what about his technique? That's, it's like, so good.
- [99:48]
Gus Gonzalez
He just looks like a submarine. He's just perfect underwater. He can move in any direction he knows. I think the most perhaps underrated skill that Brian has, in my opinion, is his awareness of his gear and his body. Like he can rotate in the middle of crystal and not hit anything. Whereas for most people, it's hard to know where, like, where my fins end or whatever, because these are extensions of your body. He just knows his size so well.
- [100:16]
Joe Rogan
He's like a cat.
- [100:18]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, he's amazing. So Brian, I love Brian diving with Brian because it just makes it effortless.
- [100:24]
Joe Rogan
Oh, so you've gotten to do it with him as well.
- [100:26]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, Brian. Brian was my instructor also in one of the rebreathers that I'm certified, because when you learn how to dive rebreathers, you have to get certified on every unit. Every unit is different. And I'm certified in four different rebreathers. He was my instructor for one of the four, and he's just amazing.
- [100:43]
Joe Rogan
You're unbelievably well traveled with this stuff.
- [100:47]
Gus Gonzalez
I mean, I, I enjoy it, man.
- [100:50]
Joe Rogan
Like it. Again, I, I, I said something like this earlier, but now that you've been like, spelling out pieces of your career with this throughout, you're talking about doing stuff with cave diving in the last five and a half years or whatever. With diving in general. The last seven and a half.
- [101:05]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah.
- [101:05]
Joe Rogan
And it sounds like you've packed like 30 years into that. You're doing caves in all these different countries.
- [101:10]
Gus Gonzalez
Well, you have to, you, you don't have to go to other countries, but I think for cave diving, because cave diving is so skill intensive, if you stop doing it for months, you just lose the skills.
- [101:21]
Joe Rogan
Right?
- [101:21]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, yeah. So you have to keep going. It's a, it's a lifelong commitment, in my opinion.
- [101:25]
Joe Rogan
Yeah. Now, you, you sent me this clip over the weekend when we were talking of Cowboy Donald Cerrone.
- [101:32]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah.
- [101:33]
Joe Rogan
Talking about cave, I guess, like cave diving. So he obviously long, he was a longtime UFC fighter, really famous guy, but he's apparent, I really, I was unfamiliar with this. He's apparently, you know, certified in cave diving and does a bunch of that. And so he was talking with Joe Rogan seven or eight years ago or something, going through some story where he almost died. And you were telling me, like, everything he was saying, it just doesn't make sense.
- [102:02]
Gus Gonzalez
There's so much to unpack on that. And I, you know, Donald Cerrone is one of those people that I would Love to have on dive talk or even go diving with them. Because I'm trying to understand, like, why, like, why do you do what you claim on that video that you did?
- [102:17]
Joe Rogan
All right, so for people who haven't seen the video, we can't play it because of copyright issues. I told you. Sometimes that'll happen with. With some of these videos of other podcasts and stuff. But, like, what exactly? The story was gnarly. Like, I don't know anything about cave diving, so I'm watching it. Like, yeah, but what exactly. Where was he. What was he doing, and how did he explain it going down?
- [102:35]
Gus Gonzalez
So. So, okay, so there's two things. Number one, the stuff that he's talking about on the video maybe happened to him. Maybe. But the thing is, everything that he said that happened to him. Let's just believe that everything happened, he would have avoided if he just followed the rules of cave diving. Like, he would have. None of that would have happened, literally, if he just followed the rules that you learn when you become a certified cave diver. So, like, for example, at the beginning of the video, he says he's talking to his wife, and he's like, I'm coming home. Like, he's making it sound like cave diving is this, like, Russian roulette. Like, you know, there's a huge chance you're gonna die if you go cave diving. No, if you're a certified cave diver, you know, 99.99999% of cave dives are go without issues, right? Because you know what you're doing and you. You follow the rules. You train for it, Right? So at the beginning, he makes it sound like it's way more dangerous than what it is. So I already have a problem with that. Now I don't have a problem saying cave diving is dangerous, and it's one of the most dangerous activities you can do, especially if you are not a certified cave diver. A lot of people have died in caves because they're not certified cave divers. They don't have the right equipment, the skills, and they go and they get lost and drown and die. But he is allegedly a certified cave diver. I believe that he is, because some of the things he said on the video make sense. He explained, you know, how cookies and arrows are used and things like that. But. But one of the things that bothered me immediately was the fact that he said, well, in cave diving, one of the unspoken facts about cave diving is that you just care about yourself. What are you talking about? Like, you're part of a team, even if that team is two people, you're going in together because you have each other's back. So the story starts if you, you know, whoever's watching this, if you watch the video, the story starts because the dive body that he went with with got tangled in line. And in the process of being tangled in line, he disturbed the silt and visibility went to zero in the cave. And Donald Cerrone, all of a sudden, he doesn't know what to do because he's like, you know, one of the main unspoken rules of cave diving is that if you get into trouble, I'm leaving. Like, I'm going out. It's better for one of us to die than both of us to die. Like, immediately watching that, I'm like, what are you talking about? Now, for most people that are not cave divers are like, it makes sense. You know, somebody gets panicked and whatever, in trouble, save yourself. That's not how cave diving works at all. I'm not saying other people haven't done in the past, but no, you help your teammate. Just like Woody helped me out El Diablo when I got entangled. Oh, this guy got entangled. Hey, let me help you out. And then multiple times he's like, I found the main line and I just let go of it and started crawling in the ceiling. Why? The guideline takes you to the exit and we have arrows in the line that tell you where the exit is.
- [105:28]
Joe Rogan
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- [106:28]
Gus Gonzalez
So several times, I think at least twice or three times in that story, he's like, I found the line, but I let go because I remember a crack in the ceiling, and that crack in the ceiling would take me to the exit. The guideline takes you to the exit. Like, why would you let go of the line? Like, at some point he's like, you know, I'm thinking I'm gonna die. So I'm thinking about writing a note. And we joked on the show that you should have written like, I let go of the line. Like, it's like it's number one. Like, having a line to the exit is paramount. Follow the line. You can follow it in 0 this. Like, one of the exercises is 0 this navigation on the line. You okay the line, you put your hand around it and follow it all the way to the exit.
- [107:10]
Joe Rogan
So even though it's a bright colored.
- [107:11]
Gus Gonzalez
Line that's like, no, you can't see it.
- [107:13]
Joe Rogan
You can't see it.
- [107:13]
Gus Gonzalez
No. Know, and that's another thing that people are like, well, the line should be like fluorescent glow in the dark. Now when it's zero this, you cannot see it. It's literally a wall. You can't see anything.
- [107:24]
Joe Rogan
They don't have science for that. Now for the lines we're laying, it doesn't matter.
- [107:27]
Gus Gonzalez
You can, you can make it out of like, you know, Wonder Woman's lasso. Like, full on, full on light. It doesn't matter. You won't be able to see it. Yeah, like, my flashlight that I use for cave diving is a 4000 Lumen Orcatorch D630. And I can face it to my eyes and can't see it. Like it's, it's. It doesn't matter. It's like super powerful lights. One cut through it.
- [107:47]
Joe Rogan
Do you carry that in a hand like this or do you have a helmet or anything?
- [107:51]
Gus Gonzalez
You can have it in your helmet, but the one I wear is on my hand. It's called a Goodman handle. It's a handle that we have on the hand for. For cave diving. And then I have. I carry three extra lights on top of that for backup. But the point is, several times he makes these claims that just don't make any sense. Like if you find the guideline, stay on the guideline, even if you have to go and help your body. And they are on a side passage without line or whatever, which they have line because he got entangled in that. You can attach your own line to the main line and swim to your Body with your line. So always finding a way to go back to your guideline. All of this is basic training. I'm not talking about, like, well, Gus, that's you, because you're a cave explorer and you know what you're doing. No, no. This is week one of cave diving training. They teach you how to do this lost line procedures. They teach you how to find the line again and make sure you don't lose it again. He lost it multiple times. They teach you lost body procedures if you lose your body, how to find your body, get him back on the line and out of there. All right. This is an exercise that you have to do in cave diving training. I assume Donald Cerrone did all of this because if you don't do it, you cannot get certified. Right. So why on this story? He's making it sound like he did none of the things that he learned in cave diving. So he's either lying about it or demonstrating that all the things that happened to him, he could have avoided by following the simple rules of cave diving and what he learned in training.
- [109:19]
Joe Rogan
Right, yeah.
- [109:20]
Gus Gonzalez
So this is one thing that I would always love to have him on the show. The way Joe Rogan interviewed him, I would have just bombarded him with questions. Like, the first time he said, so I let go of the line. I would have been like, why? Why would you let go of the line? Doesn't make any sense. It just doesn't. It would be like I jumped out of the parachute and I activated my main parachute and it worked, and then I just cut it off because I wanted to use my backup. Like, huh?
- [109:46]
Joe Rogan
Was there a lot?
- [109:46]
Gus Gonzalez
Doesn't make any sense.
- [109:47]
Joe Rogan
Was there a lot of backlash from, like, the diving community online when this story came out where they were talking about a lot of the same things you are, like, what the fuck?
- [109:55]
Gus Gonzalez
No, I think. I think when we started recording reactions, there wasn't anything out there that was talking about this stuff. Yeah, no, I think that's interesting. I think some of the comments in that video were from legit divers that were like, this is not making any sense. But they are drowned by the thousands of other comments of people are like, whoa, you're barely alive. Like, you're lucky to be alive. And all this other stuff where for me, it's like, bro, if you just. If you just follow the simple rules of cave, I mean, none of that would have happened happen. He's like, oh, you know, when I went in the cave, I took a reading with my compass just so I know where the Exit is like, what are you talking about? Like that makes no sense whatsoever. Why? Because caves are like a maze and it's not even a three dimensional maze. Like on a regular maze caves go up and down and sideways and in all directions. So it would be like if you went into a 10 story building, walked in the lobby of the building, took a compass reading to the exit and then went to the eighth floor to a corner and then try to use that reading to find the exit it of the building. Like it's impossible, it's completely nonsensical to take a compass reading. Like he said that he did. So that would have been another question. It's like, why would you take a compass reading? It is useless once you're in the cave.
- [111:09]
Joe Rogan
Was this a largely unexplored cave he was in or one that did have.
- [111:13]
Gus Gonzalez
Well, I don't know. He didn't say the name of the cave, but he did say where it was. He said it was Cozumel.
- [111:18]
Joe Rogan
Okay.
- [111:19]
Gus Gonzalez
In that, in that story and the only Cenote that I'm aware of that non explorers with a permit by the government, kind of the way that we went can dive is called Aerolito. But I've dived at Cenote and I don't remember crevices in the ceiling or anything like that. He also makes it sound like it was, it wasn't a freshwater cave, like it was an ocean cave. I've seen some caves in Cozumel that are ocean caves. But again you're not supposed to dive those. Maybe that's why he didn't say the name, because he went into them.
- [111:51]
Joe Rogan
Why aren't you supposed to dive those?
- [111:53]
Gus Gonzalez
Because they're dangerous or the line, you know, like I remember diving a cave in Mexico called Dos Coronas that is a ocean cave and the salt water deteriorated the, the guideline to the point that you would just touch it and it breaks. So there's a huge danger that you can go deep inside a cave and then get completely lost and the line is broken and you can't find your way out.
- [112:17]
Joe Rogan
So outside of the saltwater effect, what are the biggest differences between like an ocean cave and you know, freshwater?
- [112:24]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, the, the other problem with an ocean cave is tides. So tides can affect the way the water works in the cave. So when we go into ocean, into any cave really, you want to go into caves that have either no current or there are a spring. A spring means that the water is exiting the cave cave. It's like a river that is coming out of the cave. That means that you're going in against flow, but then if you have to get out, the flow is pushing you out. What you don't want to do is dive a siphon. So a siphon is water is rushing into the cave. So going in is easy because you're going with the flow. But if you have an emergency or something, now you're swimming against the flow to get out of the cave. That's what you're trying to avoid. Diving siphons is extremely dangerous. So ocean caves can switch based on tides from being a spring to a siphon. They can behave in different ways depending on the time of the day and the tides and all of that. So they're just. They're just more dangerous. But again, you approach them with a safety brief and decide at what time you're going and all of that. But I don't think he was in an ocean cave. I think that he was probably doing aerolito, which is the most common cenote in Cozumel. Every cave diver that goes to Cozumel dives that place. It's awesome, by the way. It has its own, like, ecosystem. There's animals in there that you cannot find anywhere else.
- [113:39]
Joe Rogan
Wait, what?
- [113:40]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah.
- [113:41]
Joe Rogan
What kind of animals we talking?
- [113:42]
Gus Gonzalez
Like, I mean, I don't know the scientific name or whatever, but they're like sea stars or whatever that they. You can only find in that.
- [113:49]
Joe Rogan
Not that eats you.
- [113:50]
Gus Gonzalez
No, no, no. Okay. No, no, you don't.
- [113:53]
Joe Rogan
They got like sharks swim through these caves?
- [113:55]
Gus Gonzalez
No, not really.
- [113:57]
Joe Rogan
Imagine that you're in like low vis water and then.
- [113:59]
Gus Gonzalez
No, most of the animals, most of the animals that you find in caves are tiny translucent bugs. Basically. They. You can see through them. Like if you shine them with your light, you can see their heart beating inside their bodies and stuff. They're pretty cool. They're completely blind and they're translucent because they grow up in no light. So they have no pigmentation.
- [114:19]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, it's like bane. You merely adopted. I was born in it.
- [114:26]
Gus Gonzalez
Wow. Yeah.
- [114:26]
Joe Rogan
Now, you obviously do this for the love of diving. And, you know, you've mentioned how you'll go map places to have haven't been mapped. But you also mentioned one of them where there was the rumor that there had been, like, Mayan pottery. They're not the rumor. Like, there literally had been pottery that had been found down there and stuff. Do you. Have you ever gone to a cave where there's an expectation like, oh, we might find like, some treasure here or something?
- [114:50]
Gus Gonzalez
No. I think every cave in Mexico that we Go into. We hope to find something.
- [114:55]
Joe Rogan
You are hoping.
- [114:56]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, yeah, I. I am hoping. Now, I know I can't keep it or anything like that, but I think the.
- [115:00]
Joe Rogan
You can't.
- [115:01]
Gus Gonzalez
No, that's all depending on the country. Like, the. Like, I think here in the U.S. if you find, like a wreck and it has, like, gold, you know, stuff in it or whatever, you can keep it or I think you get. You get to claim it and then you can harvest it. I've never done that. I've never done, you know, diving for treasure or whatever. Allegedly, I've never done it. Listen.
- [115:20]
Joe Rogan
No one's listening.
- [115:21]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, Nobody's watching. No, I've done a ton of gold. No, I'm kidding. But in Mexican caves, anything they find in a cave is. The government owns it, some cartels on it, the cartel owns it, and then they get to. No. So anyway, it goes into museums and stuff. If you do find something.
- [115:38]
Joe Rogan
Museums.
- [115:39]
Gus Gonzalez
I found bones, like, a lot, especially from animals. Like, I found an entire horse basically in bones. I guess this horse fell in the hole and drowned and who knows how many years ago. So you go down there and it's like a full skeleton of a horse.
- [115:56]
Joe Rogan
That's kind of. I mean, I feel bad for the horse. That's kind of fucking cool, though.
- [115:59]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah. There was a. There was a discovery in one of these Mexican caves a few years ago where they found the body of a girl right next to, like a. Like a cyber tooth or a saber tooth tiger right next to, like an engine. Like, it was literally the cast of Ice Age. It was like. Like a giant sloth with a saber tooth tiger with a mammoth, like, woolly mammoth and a girl. Like. Like the body's, like, in the same place inside of a cave. It was unbelievable. Yeah. You can look this up. This is all legit.
- [116:28]
Joe Rogan
So they didn't. They all fell and they started working together. So they didn't meet the girl. I guess they're like, well, we all gotta get out. I don't know.
- [116:34]
Gus Gonzalez
But they. Yeah, they. They found.
- [116:36]
Joe Rogan
They found her intact.
- [116:37]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah. I feel like her name is, like, Lucy or something like that. They even named the girl.
- [116:40]
Joe Rogan
Here it is. Girl skeleton found. Can I just. Girl skeleton found in cave sheds light on origins of First Americans. Oh, this is interesting. Michael was talking about some stuff the other day. I wonder if this was. We had Michael Button in here, who's an ancient civs expert, and he was talking about the history of humans in the Americas. And he was going through different things we found that can date it I wonder if this was also one of those things. DNA recovered from 12,000-year-old skeleton helps to dispel claims that first Americans came from Australia, Asia or Europe. The remains of a small, delicate teenage girl who fell to her death in an underground cave system in Mexico 12,000 years ago have thrown fresh light on the origins of the first Americans. Cave divers chance upon the girl's skeleton along with the bones of saber toothed cats, giant ground sloths and cave bears in a vast water filled cavern they discovered while exploring a submerged network of tunnels reached from a sinkhole in the Yucatan jungle.
- [117:34]
Gus Gonzalez
It's awesome.
- [117:35]
Joe Rogan
Research is pretty, dude.
- [117:36]
Gus Gonzalez
Imagine going down there in a cave and finding like a saber tooth tiger's entire skeleton.
- [117:41]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, I might go to the cartel and try to sell that. Researchers believe the girl, whom they have named Naya, died after brain breaking her pelvis when she fell into the cave, which would have been dry at the time, apart from a small occasional pool at the bottom. Like the animals around her, she may have met her death after venturing into the cave system to look for drinking water. It's a tough way to go. Yeah, that. Imagine. Yeah, you're right though. Coming upon that, you're like, whoa, body, whoa. Saber tooth, whoa.
- [118:10]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, I know. Crazy, crazy. Yeah.
- [118:12]
Joe Rogan
You never had anything like that?
- [118:14]
Gus Gonzalez
No, no, I found bones. You keep going the way you're going.
- [118:18]
Joe Rogan
Probably, you're probably gonna find something.
- [118:20]
Gus Gonzalez
No, like we know, for example, next year we're doing a dive, depending on when you're watching this, in 2026, we're doing a dive to the bottom of the Blue Hole of Belize. And we know there's dead divers down there.
- [118:30]
Joe Rogan
Dead divers?
- [118:31]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, we know there's at least three bodies down there that they haven't recovered. And the last expedition there was in a rover. It wasn't diverse, 400ft deep, it was a rover and they ran into the body, so they're still down there.
- [118:44]
Joe Rogan
Oh, so they know where the bodies are?
- [118:46]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah.
- [118:46]
Joe Rogan
So you, you're gonna know on the map.
- [118:48]
Gus Gonzalez
Pretty sure we're gonna run into them. Them. Yeah.
- [118:50]
Joe Rogan
What are you going to do when you run it?
- [118:51]
Gus Gonzalez
You just leave them?
- [118:52]
Joe Rogan
You're going to leave them?
- [118:53]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah.
- [118:53]
Joe Rogan
It's like Mount Everest when they just leave a body there.
- [118:55]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, yeah.
- [118:58]
Joe Rogan
The bottom of the heavy though. That could have been you.
- [119:01]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, yeah, I, I mean, I don't know how these divers died, but the, their bodies are still down there.
- [119:06]
Joe Rogan
But you're what, so they're just leaving the bodies? They're not trying to recover that. For their families?
- [119:11]
Gus Gonzalez
I guess not. Yeah. There's a bunch of divers also in the Blue Hole of Dahab in Egypt. The. Their Blue Hole is nicknamed Diver Cemetery.
- [119:22]
Joe Rogan
The Blue Hole of Dahab.
- [119:24]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah.
- [119:24]
Joe Rogan
Can we pull this up, Joe?
- [119:25]
Gus Gonzalez
Oh, this. That one is. I mean, the Blue Hole in Belize is impressive. The one in Dahab is also impressive.
- [119:31]
Joe Rogan
We'll come back to believes. I. I just. I. I wasn't even familiar. There's something like that. And there's everything in Egypt, bro.
- [119:38]
Gus Gonzalez
Egypt has everything. Yeah.
- [119:40]
Joe Rogan
Whoa. That's it.
- [119:41]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, the Blue Hole in the Hub.
- [119:44]
Joe Rogan
What. They call it divers. What. What?
- [119:45]
Gus Gonzalez
Diver cemetery. Yeah, there's a lot of people that have died there, and there's still bodies down there still. Like, we. We made a video reaction on some of the bodies and people that filmed them, and we show them and everything in them, but we have no interest in filming that or showing that or anything. But we're pretty sure we'll run into them when we go next year.
- [120:05]
Joe Rogan
Right. So what. What makes this one in Dahab so dangerous?
- [120:12]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah. So if you open the second picture. So the hole is connected to the ocean by this kind of tunnel. Okay. And what happens is people. People will go down and then try to take the tunnel all the way back to the ocean. And the. The tunnel is deeper than people think. So when they go down there and they start swimming in the tunnel that connects the hole to the ocean, they run out of air and die. Die. So they miss. They miss. You know, they underestimate how deep it is. And by the time you're halfway through the tunnel, literally a tunnel, you run out of air and you die of.
- [120:50]
Joe Rogan
Of asphyxiation.
- [120:51]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, yeah. So it goes down to, like 200ft, I believe, 60 meters. And. Yeah, if you don't. If you underestimate it, people. People die all the time there. That's why it's called Diver Cemetery.
- [121:05]
Joe Rogan
And the bodies are just left.
- [121:07]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, some of them.
- [121:08]
Joe Rogan
This is a thin.
- [121:10]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, because if you. If you fall. So the tunnel is at like 200ft or whatever it is. I think it starts at like 150, and it's a big tunnel. It goes to, like, 200. But I think the hole, the hab itself, is like 600ft deep or whatever. Like, the tunnel starts in kind of the middle, but at the bottom, there's bodies. And the. There's a guy, Achmet Gabber, I believe is his name. He recovers them. Them, but not all of them have been recovered.
- [121:33]
Joe Rogan
Oh. So they do try to get some of them out.
- [121:34]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, they do.
- [121:36]
Joe Rogan
That's awful.
- [121:37]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah.
- [121:38]
Joe Rogan
And that's how. That's minus 32 meters.
- [121:41]
Gus Gonzalez
No, this is all the way at the bottom. This is a picture of the canyon. This is around the hub. But it's not. It's not the. The blue hole in the hub. There's a lot of blue holes in the world. I think this. This may be numerical Mexico. Oh, this is. Yeah.
- [121:57]
Joe Rogan
This is on the left.
- [121:59]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah.
- [122:00]
Joe Rogan
So you see the cave system though, right?
- [122:02]
Gus Gonzalez
So you see says the hole goes to 110 meters. Yeah, 110 meters is almost 400ft, something like that. I've never been to Egypt, but this will be one place that I would love to dive.
- [122:14]
Joe Rogan
You do want to die?
- [122:15]
Gus Gonzalez
Oh, yeah.
- [122:15]
Joe Rogan
The cemetery.
- [122:16]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, Diver cemetery will be awesome because. Because I would do it on a rebreather where I have six hours or whatever.
- [122:21]
Joe Rogan
Right. That was going to be my question.
- [122:22]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah.
- [122:23]
Joe Rogan
So these people, they're going to down there on just a regular.
- [122:26]
Gus Gonzalez
They go on a single tank and they just run out of air. Yeah.
- [122:30]
Joe Rogan
That feels a little bit like Darwinism. You know, you taking a single tank down there, one way in, one way out. In the ancient land of Egypt.
- [122:42]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, People die.
- [122:43]
Joe Rogan
What. What is on the other side where it says El Bells? Is that coming up on land? I guess.
- [122:48]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, I guess so. I guess that is the land again. I've never been there, so it would be. It would be a cool dive.
- [122:56]
Joe Rogan
All right, so there's one in Belize. Are you. You said there's bodies down there. You're probably gonna pass them.
- [123:01]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah.
- [123:03]
Joe Rogan
Are you trying to map some of it that hasn't been mapped, or are you just diving it for sport in general?
- [123:08]
Gus Gonzalez
No, I just. I just think it would be awesome to be at the bottom of the Blue Hole because it's such a memorable sight. This is Jack Cousto's favorite dive site or one of his favorite dive sites. And you know, there's. There's an attraction to that. Jacques Cousteau, the creator of the aqualung, scuba diving. And it would just be awesome to be at the bottom. Very, very few people. I mean, I don't know how many people have been to the bottom of the Blue Hole, but I would think less than 100 maybe.
- [123:36]
Joe Rogan
Less than 100?
- [123:37]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, probably. I mean, I don't know exactly, but I've been to places. Of course, you know, outside of cave exploration, which is like I've been. And me and my body would be the only people that have been there. I've been to caves in places where less than 50 people have ever been, you know?
- [123:51]
Joe Rogan
You know, it's crazy.
- [123:52]
Gus Gonzalez
You.
- [123:52]
Joe Rogan
You told me there's like around 10, 000 certified cave divers in the world.
- [123:56]
Gus Gonzalez
It's hard to know, but let's just say, yeah, give or take. Yeah.
- [123:59]
Joe Rogan
With all the cave diving you do and all that, you're hitting just the place we talked about. Like, you're hitting all kinds of serious spots around the world that a bunch of these cave divers have never hit in their life.
- [124:10]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, but there's so many I haven't been to that. I would love to.
- [124:13]
Joe Rogan
I understand that. But, like, has it hit you that. That you're legit one of the best in the world at what you do?
- [124:19]
Gus Gonzalez
No, no, no, no. I'm not even close. I'm just a kid.
- [124:22]
Joe Rogan
I think that's you being humble, but you're serious.
- [124:25]
Gus Gonzalez
No, that's me being a realist. Like, no, the people that are really good at it are. They're just at a whole new level. I mean, a level of their own. I'm just a cave diver. Like, the stuff that I do, I think most, if not all cave divers can do. Like, I'm not doing anything, Anything crazy. I would never call myself one of the best or whatever. Like, not even close. Not even. No, no, no. There's people that are a whole new level. Like, I think if you, if you talk to Ed Sorenson, for example, who is. Until the Thai cave rescue, he held the record for the most body recoveries and rescues in caves. He lives in Florida, so he's called.
- [125:00]
Joe Rogan
In like a spec ops kind of guy when this goes down somewhere.
- [125:03]
Gus Gonzalez
Well, a funny, funny story. One of the guys in the cave rescue came to the US and got lost in a cave and they call Ed to go rescue that guy.
- [125:11]
Joe Rogan
Guy.
- [125:12]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, yeah. There's. There's rescues that he has done or recoveries, body recoveries that he has done, where they were like, we're going to seal the cave because it's impossible to get those bodies out of there. They're so wedged and so impossible to get them out that we're just going to close the cave for forever and. All right, before we do that, let's call Ed. And then Ed goes and gets him.
- [125:33]
Joe Rogan
Out and gets it.
- [125:33]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, this guy is like, I'm not 10% of the diver. Ed is.
- [125:38]
Joe Rogan
These guys are so great. You were talking about the other guy in the behind. I forget his name. He just knows his movements.
- [125:44]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think what makes him so special Is a combination of the mental side of it that I don't think I have and the, just the vast amount of experience. Like Ed cave dives every day. He has over 12,000 cave dives. I have 163 or whatever this guy.
- [126:02]
Joe Rogan
12,000 cave dives.
- [126:03]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, yeah.
- [126:04]
Joe Rogan
And when you say the mental side of it that you don't have, what do you mean by that?
- [126:07]
Gus Gonzalez
Like, I don't think I, I'll be okay if I risk, if I, if I recover a body. Like, I think especially like those bodies that he re. Re recovered in Dominican Republic that they said they were impossible to get out. I think they've been dead for 18 days underwater. Like you can't be on a bathtub for two hours and not look bad. Like, imagine 18 days dead in a.
- [126:27]
Joe Rogan
Cave and you're about to pass some in Belize. Have you thought about that?
- [126:32]
Gus Gonzalez
I mean, it is what it is. But I feel like, you know, Ed goes in people like Ed. He's not the only one. You know, Rick Stanton and John Volanthum. This did that with the Thai kids and they were, they were, they were going to find dead kids. Like I don't think mentally I would be able to recover. I don't know. I feel like I would see that image in my head of a dead body in a cave. Now I would do it, you know, if I had to. We recently had these rains in Texas that, that like a river ran over like a girls summer camp or something like that. I don't know all the details. And they called us to come and help recover some of these buddies because we're in Georgia, we're super far away. I said, I think that you guys will be better off finding people in Texas because this is in Texas. And again, we're not these super duper divers. Like you can find more people that are local that can be there tomorrow. We have this amazing van that we use for scuba diving that is literally a dive shop on wheels. We can fill tanks. We can do everything with this van. I offer to drive the van there and support the teams. So if we're called to do it and I am in if and I am in a position to do it, I would do it. But I don't seek it. I am not like, I wouldn't throw my name in the hat like, hey, call me first. Like, no, you should call Ed. You should call other people like Ed. But yeah, I think a lot of cave divers would do it if it had to be done.
- [127:57]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, yeah, that's, that's Hard to, I mean, it's one thing to recover a body, doing anything, but when you're doing it in an enclosed kind of place like that underwater, different environment, like you said someone, you'd mentioned one there where they're dead for 18 days, and then you got to bring them up. Takes an hour and a half to bring them up. It's.
- [128:19]
Gus Gonzalez
It's awful.
- [128:20]
Joe Rogan
I mean, I remember they were recovering a body just out here, like in the Hudson or someone, someone fell.
- [128:24]
Gus Gonzalez
Dude, I have, I have the utmost respect. Like, the stuff that I do is child's play compared to some of these rescue divers that go in there to, you know, gather bodies of people who drown, like kids and stuff. Like, I, I don't envy that at all. Like, I don't feel for a second that that I'm capable or, or that I am at that level. Like, those guys are total studs, you know, men and women that can do that. I have no intention of ever getting into that.
- [128:54]
Joe Rogan
I, well, I'm, I'm actually thinking about that in my head now, right now. Because the Hudson is like, you literally can't see this far.
- [128:59]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah.
- [129:00]
Joe Rogan
In front of your face.
- [129:00]
Gus Gonzalez
I mean, just think about it being in zero this.
- [129:02]
Joe Rogan
Yeah.
- [129:03]
Gus Gonzalez
Just doing a grid pattern. Every branch that you touch. Do you think it's a hand or a leg? It's like, dude, I, I can't even imagine, like, I would do it if I had to, but I hope I never have to do it. Yeah.
- [129:16]
Joe Rogan
What do you, you know, with, with modern technology, like lidar scanning and stuff, is that helping us be, be able to, like, map a bunch of places to dive?
- [129:25]
Gus Gonzalez
No, I don't think so. I, I, you need humans for caves. I think that if you send a robot inside a cave, it would just get tangled within five minutes, and you have to send a diver to go get the robot. I mean, it's, it's one of those things. I think there's technology that is used by diversity. There's some devices that you can run through caves, and they would be taking pictures of the cave and doing the map. Like, there is that kind of technology. But I think the idea of sending, like, a Roomba type of, you know, robot inside to map caves is just not based in reality. I think it would just, you would just lose the money. Like, it would just go, go to waste, and the robot will be unrecoverable. Or you would have to send divers to recover.
- [130:08]
Joe Rogan
Yeah. Well, what about the process here? I keep thinking about that. So let's use the Belize One as an example. Because you're going to go do that.
- [130:16]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah.
- [130:17]
Joe Rogan
So you're familiar with the cave, you decide you're going to do this cave. I'm sure you've already reviewed the map of it yourself at home right. Now, fast forward to a month from now when you go there on the ground and actually do it. When you get to the site, what is the process you and Woody do? You go through the map, exactly what you're going to do. Talk out step by step, how does it go down?
- [130:41]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah. So I, for this particular cave or for this particular blue hole dive, we are actually letting a world class diver, an expert German guy named Ackam, he is going to be leading that whole dive. So we're just literally going to follow his plan. This guy has dived to 600ft. Like he, he's done recoveries of wrecks in Europe that no diver has ever been to. Like, he's, he's going down there 600ft to a wreck and recovering the bell, you know, of the wreck and what, I mean, the stuff that he does, he's at a whole nother class. So we actually will be using him to, you know, plan execute everything the dive. I think that that's one of the best parts about those kinds of divings, those kinds of dives is that we have a plan and you're so focused on making sure you don't miss anything, following checklists, making sure that everything is done that you don't have time to worry about it. You don't have time to be like nervous about it. It's like, okay, what do I have to do? What's the process? Which gases are we taking? Understand what is it that we're taking? So even though he's planning it, I need to understand it, you know, what am I doing? When and where, what's expected, how many people are in the team, what positions are we in, how are we doing this thing? And then we're just execute the plan. Yeah.
- [132:03]
Joe Rogan
Now have you done like we were talking about pressure systems earlier and what levels you can go to and then what you do once you go past like just recreational diving and actually go to professional diving, how much deeper they take you? When we're talking an ocean though, you got into the Atlantic, you know, there's no diver that's diving down four miles or something like that.
- [132:23]
Gus Gonzalez
Right.
- [132:23]
Joe Rogan
Obviously, right. But like deep ocean dives, dives, have you done any of that? Whatever it is, and what does that look like?
- [132:32]
Gus Gonzalez
So a deep ocean dive. So for recreational divers, A deep dive is 130ft right in the ocean. The deepest that most people go is 330ft or 100 meters, but there's people that go deeper than that. The deepest I've been in the ocean is 248ft Feet. That's the deepest I've been in the ocean. It was a wreck site in Florida, Gold Coast. It's. It's near, like, West Palm beach or Pompano Beach. That area.
- [133:03]
Joe Rogan
Yeah.
- [133:03]
Gus Gonzalez
There's a wreck called the RBJ there, which is funny because I. I think I remember the story of the RBJ is I thought it was named, like, after a president or something. And apparently it's like they found this wreck and they did a contest on the radio to name it, and some guy named rbj1 and I. I feel like that's kind of how. How the story went, but is this is two wrecks, and they are. They are an X. Like, they. One was dumped this way, and the other one was dump on top. And it's 250ft deep. So I went to. Yeah, there it is. So it's the one on the right.
- [133:34]
Joe Rogan
What's this wreck? This wreck from?
- [133:36]
Gus Gonzalez
I have no idea. A lot of wrecks in Florida were drug boats that they got sunk or whatever. Typically, there's a. There's a dive in Florida that I really like called Governors. Where's the Governor's Run? Or whatever. But anyway, they. It's four wrecks that they found with drugs, and then they basically floated them out in the ocean, and they asked the Navy to sink him and say, hey, you guys want to do some target practice? We have legit boats out there. Go at it. And the Navy said, oh, yeah, absolutely. And they just shot him all down and they fell. So you can do all four wrecks in one dive. You can dive from one to the next to the next. And it's pretty cool. Cool.
- [134:11]
Joe Rogan
You might find a little white powder or something.
- [134:13]
Gus Gonzalez
But those are. But those are not super deep. This one, the RBJ, is at 250ft deep. So that was my deepest ocean dive, but the deepest.
- [134:25]
Joe Rogan
Feel like down there. 250.
- [134:27]
Gus Gonzalez
It feels like 100 or 20 or whatever because we're. We're breathing something called Trimix, which is gas that has helium in it to minimize the amount of nitrogen that you're breathing. So when you're breathing at those depths, because of the amount of helium in the tank, it feels like you were super shallow. It's awesome. Trimix is awesome. All commercial divers use Trimix for Example. So the deepest dive that I've ever done is at Eagle's Nest, and that was 295ft. That's the deepest I've ever been and is inside a cave, but in the ocean was 248. And I've done a bunch of dives that are over 200. Just never deeper than 248. Actually, no, I think I did in Roatan this year. I went past 248. That's true. I think I went 255, 260, something around there. It's still not my deepest. My deepest was inside Eagle's Nest, which is the Mount Everest of cave diving, which is in Florida.
- [135:25]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, Mount Everest of cave diving.
- [135:27]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah. That cave goes to 320ft deep or something. I did. I did 295 dive on that.
- [135:34]
Joe Rogan
Oh, light work. Now, when. When you're doing this dive, though, to the wreck, are you swimming inside the. Inside the cabin there? Are you staying totally outside the boat?
- [135:44]
Gus Gonzalez
You can penetrate the dive that I did to this, I did not. I just swim below the. The wreck because they. They are sitting on top of each other like an X. So you can swim under it. It's like an arch and I was able to do that. So we didn't do any penetration on that one one. But yeah, now that I think of it, the dive in Roatan that I did earlier this year, was it a wreck, a deep wreck there? That one went past 250 for sure. It was like 260, something like that. But again, my deepest is at Eagle's Nest.
- [136:16]
Joe Rogan
Now if you had found something down there, though, that was legal, you in. In America, you'd be able to keep it.
- [136:21]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, in the U.S. i think you can keep it. Yeah. I don't know what the process is, like, whether you have to pay taxes or not. Like, I don't know how that works, but I think you. You get to keep it.
- [136:31]
Joe Rogan
What's that one right there de. The YouTube one diving the Okanawa wreck. It says Pompano Beach.
- [136:38]
Gus Gonzalez
Oh, there's so many.
- [136:40]
Joe Rogan
Why does it say Okanawa wreck? Because that's the RBJ technical driving rbj Cory and Chris wreck Pompano Beach.
- [136:49]
Gus Gonzalez
So RBJ and Corey and Chris are the two wrecks that are on top of each other.
- [136:52]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, but that would be the Okinawa wreck. Like Okinawa was a battle in. In the Pacific and.
- [136:58]
Gus Gonzalez
Right, right. No, there's. I think there's a wreck out there. There's so many wrecks, man, in South Florida. It's like hundreds of them. And I think the Okinawa may be one of those.
- [137:06]
Joe Rogan
I had Colin Woodard in here. I think that was episode 212. He's like the golden age of pirates historian, like the guy on that and you know, talks about all these wrecks that would happen off the coast of Florida or off the coast of Cuba and stuff during that whole time in the, the early 18th century, late 17th century. There's. And that's why they call like apparently if I remember correctly, the Gold coast in Florida. That. Because there's all kinds of like shipwrecks there.
- [137:35]
Gus Gonzalez
Wow. They're still finding. And I mean there's people that do this like almost for a living. They just wreck searching. They're trying to find these wrecks all over Florida.
- [137:44]
Joe Rogan
Now when you're swimming though, in the ocean especially and you're diving in Florida, you got to think about sharks.
- [137:51]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, sharks are awesome. Sharks are not dangerous to divers at all.
- [137:54]
Joe Rogan
At all.
- [137:55]
Gus Gonzalez
At all.
- [137:56]
Joe Rogan
All breeds of them.
- [137:57]
Gus Gonzalez
All of them. Yeah. They're not like.
- [137:59]
Joe Rogan
You don't get scared of that at all.
- [138:00]
Gus Gonzalez
No, no. I hope for them. I look forward to it. Yeah, yeah. No, for divers is, it's, it's. They're, they're just not dangerous to divers now. Have they're being attacked in the past?
- [138:11]
Joe Rogan
Sure.
- [138:11]
Gus Gonzalez
Have their people been killed by, by sharks? Yes, but they're just not dangerous at all. Like I think, think. I don't know. You get like five deaths per year by sharks and out of the five, four and a half are non divers or like surfers snorkel. Right.
- [138:29]
Joe Rogan
So they attack that. So you're not worried about being attacked when you're diving?
- [138:32]
Gus Gonzalez
No. Not even a little bit? No.
- [138:35]
Joe Rogan
That's so interesting.
- [138:36]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah. Like, like to give you an example, like the diving that they do in South Africa with like cages and stuff, when you watch the videos, there's people outside the cage filming the cage. Like they're outside with the sharks. There's tons of videos online of people diving with great whites and whatever. They don't do anything to divers on.
- [138:54]
Joe Rogan
The videos you see. What about the don't see?
- [138:57]
Gus Gonzalez
No, exactly. This is funny because one. Another fun fact about animals in the ocean is orcas or killer whales as they're known. They. There has never been a fatality by a killer whale or an orca for humans ever recorded. Ever. I've heard that in the wild they have never attacked humans, kill humans. They just don't care about humans. They're interested. Like you can, you can find people Swimming videos of people swimming with orcas and stuff. And they're awesome. They're just great. They've never attacked humans. They have killed humans in captivity, like at Sea World or whatever. They have kill a trainer or whatever, but they've never, in the wild they've never killed a human. Sharks are very, very rare. We kill hundreds of millions of sharks every year.
- [139:47]
Joe Rogan
Oh yeah, that's a huge problem. Yeah.
- [139:49]
Gus Gonzalez
But when it comes to humans, I mean, I don't know, if I had to guess, it's something like four divers every five years or something. It's like less than one diver a year. Think of how many divers are out there in the ocean. How many people are in the ocean, like at the beach or whatever, just swimming in boats and whatever. Tens of millions. And there's maybe, I don't know, 10 deaths worldwide by sharks. Yeah, they're just not, they're just you.
- [140:13]
Joe Rogan
That video in Egypt a couple years.
- [140:14]
Gus Gonzalez
Ago, again, it does happen, but they're just a non issue. Like it's. I tell people, you know, like the story of that Uruguayan rugby team that crash landed in the Andes and they had to like eat each other. Yeah, eat each other to survive. Yeah. If you, you ask, are humans cannibal? No, they're not. Has it happened in the past? Sure there's been incidents where that has happened. Maybe a tribe out there that still does it or whatever. But overall humans are not cannibal. That's just the way it works. And overall sharks are just not dangerous to divers.
- [140:49]
Joe Rogan
They're just so you, so when you've been diving in the ocean you encounter.
- [140:53]
Gus Gonzalez
Them and it's oh so many.
- [140:54]
Joe Rogan
Do you ever touch them?
- [140:55]
Gus Gonzalez
No, they don't. You don't get close to them? They don't, they don't, they don't let you, they don't let you touch them. Them. So you're not worried you shouldn't touch marine life to begin with, but they don't. They're curious. Like they swim near you, they check you out or whatever, but then they swim away. Yeah, I mean there's even like, I think Mark Rover did this whole experiment about like blood in the water. Like what if there was blood around you? Like what if I, I think he dumped like gallons of cow blood and the sharks couldn't care less. They just couldn't care about the blood. Couldn't care less.
- [141:26]
Joe Rogan
Does it depend on the species though? Like if it's a bull shark or tiger shark.
- [141:30]
Gus Gonzalez
No, he was in the Bahamas with all kinds of sharks and they Couldn't care less. When they, when he dropped fish blood, they were all over that Fish blood. They were all over that.
- [141:42]
Joe Rogan
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- [142:11]
Gus Gonzalez
Like mammals, blood, cow, whatever. Couldn't care less. Yeah yeah, they didn't, I guess they didn't know what it was. They, it's like that's not food. Like they just didn't care. Care.
- [142:20]
Joe Rogan
Well, it's also I, you know, I've been thinking about this all day with you talking. But you know, we use the common parlance of the fact that when you look at our oceans around the world, like 95% of our of our depths are completely unexplored. Now these are oceans, it's not so much freshwater caves or something like that. But it's kind of crazy that we have all the advancements. We do. We've been on Earth as many as people debate that, but we've been on Earth a long time.
- [142:46]
Gus Gonzalez
Right.
- [142:46]
Joe Rogan
And yet the most common resource around us outside of land, which is the water that surrounds it, you know, we have so much left unexplored. Would you have you had thoughts and aspirations of, you know, getting involved with projects that are looking to, you know, not even necessarily just diving, but you know, using submarines and stuff like that, that, that are looking to map out the ocean?
- [143:08]
Gus Gonzalez
That would be super cool, I think be on, on a submarine and do, you know, like go to bottom of the Mariana, stuff like that. That would be, that would be super cool. I'm not something that I'm passionate about. That would be awesome to do. But yeah, you're right about the mystery of the oceans. Like we find new species that we didn't even know existed like every day, all the time. I've been in expeditions in Mexico where we found critters in caves that they are brand new, brand new species. So we are still discovering the fact that we don't know like 95% of the ocean floors. Basically. It's super interesting but, but at the same time it's super costly and super dangerous to do that. And I don't know if there's a value on that. Like let's say you map the entire Gulf of Mexico or Gulf of America or whatever. What's the Value on that? I'm not sure. Unless you're willing to drill the oil out of it. I'm not sure.
- [144:02]
Joe Rogan
When you look at pictures, though, where we do have places mapped and you just look at it, like on a scan.
- [144:08]
Gus Gonzalez
Right.
- [144:09]
Joe Rogan
Where, you know, you remove the fact that there's water where you can't see stuff.
- [144:12]
Gus Gonzalez
Stuff.
- [144:12]
Joe Rogan
It looks exactly like land, like mountains and valleys, of course, peaks and everything. It's like there's a whole world down there. So there has, you know, the resources is one thing to think about, like, oh, could you find oil and stuff like that? Of course people are always going to think that, but there has to be some sort of value in that. I mean, it's. It's a whole. No pun intended. It's a whole different world.
- [144:31]
Gus Gonzalez
No, I think. I think the more that we learn is good for us, for humanity as a whole. I. I appreciate the people that are willing to do that. There's some billionaires out there that are just exploring this deep spots in the ocean out there and, you know, putting up the money to do that. I just don't think, like, governments are interested in. Right. The people that really could afford something like that are just. I don't think there's interest on that.
- [144:53]
Joe Rogan
Right. Did you see that documentary on Netflix about the Titanic sub?
- [144:59]
Gus Gonzalez
Yes, absolutely.
- [145:00]
Joe Rogan
You, like. I keep thinking about today, obviously it's different than what you do completely. But, yeah, you know, they're diving. It's. It's a different kind of a dive. But you talk about, like, safety precautions and all the things that you've emphasized today about the process and the training and what you got to do and what you got to consider every time to try to avoid something. It is unbelievable to me that a company like a United States.
- [145:26]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah.
- [145:26]
Joe Rogan
Would just completely, openly, basically break every possible rule.
- [145:34]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah. They're like, well, I know everyone uses metal, but we're going to use carbon fiber fiber. And then the. When they were testing at a depth, it's just like the carbon fiber cracking. Like they have all these microphones and they just cracking. And I. I mean, I can only imagine just waiting for one of those cracks to blow up and then you're dead. But to. To his credit, I mean, the guy who created it, he's the one solo diving this thing, like thousands of feet, you know, to test and.
- [145:59]
Joe Rogan
Yeah.
- [145:59]
Gus Gonzalez
Putting his name and his safety on the line. And he ultimately died.
- [146:02]
Joe Rogan
And then. But then he did it with. With other people. That's.
- [146:05]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, he did it with other people, but this is not A theoretical, like, I'm just gonna put passengers and in theory should work is I'm. I'm gonna go do it right. You know. But yeah, they found all these issues and he just kept doing.
- [146:16]
Joe Rogan
Oh, it's so sinister when you look at the tests on, on the, on the track. And it's just every time it's like a piece of fiber breaking. But the, the most sinister part was the video on the. The cat, the selfie camera on the boat with his wife, and then two other members of the team when it actually blew up. And you see his wife, like, kind of in denial that what she might have just heard. She's like, what was that? And you see the other guy go.
- [146:49]
Gus Gonzalez
What do you think?
- [146:50]
Joe Rogan
And then just walk out of the room. And he knew, like, you know, that guy knew, like, oh, they all just.
- [146:57]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah. Nah. Yeah, they were instantly dead, but. Yeah, I mean, those guys didn't feel anything. I mean, they were blown up before.
- [147:05]
Joe Rogan
They'Re blown up, but they're dead.
- [147:07]
Gus Gonzalez
They're feeling. Yeah, before they could even feel anything. But I feel bad for like, the dad and the son and all that stuff. It was just.
- [147:14]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, I feel bad for all involved. It's. It's a bad situation. But you gotta, you know, regulations can be annoying on some things for sure. And sometimes, you know, you'll see a regulation made because it's. One idiot did one thing one time and now everyone gets triply punished for it. Which is going to happen with this now, with other things that aren't carbon fiber, I'm sure. Yeah, but like, there's other things where it's like, this is the science. Like carbon fiber breaks if it goes below this level or, you know, fails, whatever you want to say, like, that's what it is. Like you're not. God.
- [147:47]
Gus Gonzalez
God.
- [147:48]
Joe Rogan
You know what I mean? And that guy, I think had a. What was his name? Salman or I forget his name. But Rush. Something Rush. But, you know, obviously he, he just had a huge ego. Stockton Rush. That's it.
- [148:02]
Gus Gonzalez
Stockton Rush. Yeah.
- [148:03]
Joe Rogan
Yeah. Hate to see it.
- [148:04]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah. But I, I think, yeah, several things. It's like there's some organization that is supposed to test the safety and because he knew he was going to fail, he decided to test it with someone else. Like stuff like he was just getting around it. But a lot of this stuff is in hindsight, right. It's easy to criticize once something happens. And we do this a lot in diving too. Every time there's a fatality or something, it's easy to Go back and be like, well, you know, this happened because of this or because of that. When you're going through the process, you don't know, you know, like, if something were to happen to me tomorrow, I'm sure people will be like, well, what do you expect? You only started diving seven years ago. Like, of course, like, people will always find a way to. To justify what happened. But instead of learning from what happened, and hopefully, you know, a lot of people learn from that Ocean Gate incident.
- [148:50]
Joe Rogan
Are there any mysterious, known, like, very uncharted territory, caves in the world that you'd like to dive in?
- [148:59]
Gus Gonzalez
I mean, there's. For me, I don't know if it's mysterious, but, like, I would love to dive under Budapest. So the whole capital of Hungary, Budapest, is built on top of miles of caves.
- [149:09]
Joe Rogan
Can we get a map of this?
- [149:11]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, you can get pictures of it for sure. I would love to go there and dive that. I would love to dive Wookie Hole, which is the cave in England where cave diving was born. So the very first cave dive was ever done in Wookie Hole.
- [149:24]
Joe Rogan
This has to be dark waters.
- [149:25]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, this is right. You can't see. No, you can't see anything.
- [149:28]
Joe Rogan
But you want to dive. Those are the places.
- [149:30]
Gus Gonzalez
That's where cave diving was born. Like, of course, you know that you. You want to go there, but yeah, Budapest will be awesome. Yeah, there's. There's several caves around the world that sound amazing.
- [149:44]
Joe Rogan
So the. In Budape, the city's built on top of the water. I didn't know that.
- [149:47]
Gus Gonzalez
Correct. The whole city is built on top of caves.
- [149:51]
Joe Rogan
Wait, but that kind of looks clear right there. Is that, that one?
- [149:54]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, it's clear water.
- [149:55]
Joe Rogan
Left, left side, Joe, Second down.
- [149:59]
Gus Gonzalez
And the water is not cold from what I understand.
- [150:02]
Joe Rogan
That's under Budapest right there.
- [150:04]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah. Y.
- [150:06]
Joe Rogan
And you would do that in a dry suit?
- [150:08]
Gus Gonzalez
I don't think the water is that cold. I don't think you need to do a wet suit. I will probably do it in a wet suit, yeah.
- [150:14]
Joe Rogan
Wow.
- [150:16]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah.
- [150:17]
Joe Rogan
And a lot of that's unmapped.
- [150:18]
Gus Gonzalez
No, I think it's very mapped. I think they know where everything is. But it would be cool to do it on map. Caves, they're really hard to find for me. I think there's supposed to be a cave in Venezuela where I'm from, where there is the largest underground or underwater lake of all Latin America is supposed to be in Venezuela. And I don't think that has ever been dived or mapped or anything like that. I would have Loved to do that. I don't think there's a lot of Venezuelan cave divers to begin with. Definitely not in Venezuela, like the country's disaster with the regime and all that. But I would love to be the first diver to go into some of those caves. I mean, we're right at the ocean and it's, it's, it's limestone, you know, like the rock in Florida that, where all the caves are in Florida. So I only assumed there's a ton of caves in Venezuela that nobody had ever dived, so I would, I would love to do that.
- [151:11]
Joe Rogan
How long were you in Venezuela?
- [151:12]
Gus Gonzalez
22 years.
- [151:13]
Joe Rogan
Oh, you were in Venezuela for 20. You didn't come here for 22 years?
- [151:16]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, I grew up there.
- [151:17]
Joe Rogan
How long ago did you.
- [151:19]
Gus Gonzalez
2005. I came.
- [151:21]
Joe Rogan
So what, I mean, it's got to be kind of hard to come here from Venezuela just because the relations aren't too good. Right?
- [151:27]
Gus Gonzalez
Right, Yeah. I mean, in, in 2005, I came because I, I knew where the country was heading and I just decided to, that I didn't want to raise a family there. I didn't have kids yet or anything, but I knew I was going to eventually have kids, and that's, that's why I decided to come to the States. I sold everything I own and I moved.
- [151:45]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, how, how hard was that process, though, because you were coming from there just because, like, the relationship between the US And Venezuela are not great.
- [151:52]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, I mean, I, I, I came, you know, completely legal, I guess, with a visa and all that, and then eventually found a job and I got married. And so I just built my life.
- [152:01]
Joe Rogan
And that's awesome.
- [152:02]
Gus Gonzalez
You know, when you do everything through the legal path that exists in this country, then everything is relatively easy. It takes a long time. Right. And I think the length of time, and this has not, has nothing to do with diving, but I think the length of time that it takes is mainly to make sure that the people that get to stay are good people, you know, So I think the hardest thing for me was, you know, waiting and waiting and waiting and then getting background checks ran on you, and then you have to wait another two years and then another background. So it's like they are, they are waiting years to make sure you're not some douche that is going to come from some other country to be a bad asset to society here. And that's good. So I came in 2005. I became a citizen in 2010.
- [152:45]
Joe Rogan
Do you still have family back there?
- [152:46]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Extended family. Know, my, my My parents and my brother, I only have one brother, they all live in Georgia. But extended family, you know, cousins, aunts, that kind of thing, they're all still over there. But anyway, you asked me what caves I would love to dive. There's caves in Venezuela that I would love to go there.
- [153:03]
Joe Rogan
But what do you make of what's going on in Venezuela right now? Because it feels like the United States is, is certainly ramping up pressure and obviously the regime there is not great. But you know, as someone who's from there and came here, what, what are your thoughts right now?
- [153:18]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, I mean I think, I think just like they've done with Cuba, I think this is a lot of, I don't know if anything will be done as much as I would love for that regime to go away, of course, because it's just a bunch of thugs that don't know how to do anything. You know, I would love to see someone that is capable of getting the country out of the hole to take over. But the people that are leading the country right now, like president and ongoing like all that, that people at the top there are a bunch of thugs, like I think the president went to prison for robbing armored vehicles. Like it's this, these are legit thugs that are running the country. You're not going to get him out with votes. Like that's just not going to work. So I think Trump is putting pressure, President Trump is putting a lot of pressure to try to get rid of him, but I just don't think you can do it. Like I don't think they're going to bomb him or anything. I feel like it's a lot of just like Cuba, like how many decades Cuba has been under communism and they've never done anything right. Like all the pressure they can put on them is like at some point there's just nothing you can do.
- [154:20]
Joe Rogan
Yeah. One of my long time guys, Christian is, is from Venezuela and lives there and it works with me. And it's, it's tough like you know, gets pulled over by Maduro's guys sometimes. Yeah, they'll lose electricity for 10 hours at a time, 12 hours time. It's, it is, it's not a great situation down there. Obviously like people don't want to see like regime chain wars and stuff like that from the perspective of the US but you would love to see at some point the people be able to get their own, you know, actually democratically.
- [154:52]
Gus Gonzalez
Elected leaders and it's, I mean they have the largest oil, oil reserves in the world. They have, I think, the second largest natural gas in the world. So when it comes to, like, resources, Venezuela is a rich country from that, but everyone is stealing that money. So if they could leverage that, you know, money to put their citizens ahead, I feel like it would be so much.
- [155:19]
Joe Rogan
Right.
- [155:19]
Gus Gonzalez
So much better for. For the country as a whole. I just don't think you can. I don't think you can undo it at this point. They're far too gone. But. But, yeah, I mean, it's. I hate to see what's happening there. You know, I. I became a citizen in 2010. I renounced my Venezuelan citizenship just because I was in such a disagreement with the regime at the time. So I'm just an American citizen. I still obviously say that I'm from Venezuela. I grew up before communism and all of that. I tattoo the stars from the flag in my arm. Like, I, I, I am Venezuelan, but, you know, I am so disconnected from what's happening there right now that it's just terrible.
- [155:58]
Joe Rogan
Wow.
- [155:59]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, that's.
- [156:00]
Joe Rogan
That's wild, man. I'm glad you were able to get here too.
- [156:03]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah.
- [156:03]
Joe Rogan
I mean, now you can't.
- [156:05]
Gus Gonzalez
No.
- [156:06]
Joe Rogan
Someone here from Venezuela. I made that call because I was trying to see if we could. Christian here. I was like, buddy, we're gonna have to wait till 20, 28.
- [156:13]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, no, last time I went was 2007. And since then, like, my family just comes and visits here because, I mean, it costs the same to fly there and back then to fly from there and back to Venezuela. It's a. So I'd rather see them come here and actually have electricity and food, you know? So.
- [156:31]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, it makes you appreciate a lot of stuff.
- [156:33]
Gus Gonzalez
For sure.
- [156:33]
Joe Rogan
For sure. I mean, like, when I, When I talk with them and just see some of the basic stuff, it's like, God damn, we got it so good here, man. But, yeah, I hope to see something change there. But back. Back to diving, you guys. I didn't know that. You know, obviously, there was the whole Chernobyl disaster years and years ago, which involved a nuclear reactor. I didn't realize, as people dive down into that thing.
- [156:56]
Gus Gonzalez
Insane.
- [156:56]
Joe Rogan
And you guys did a full breakdown on this. Who the hell did this dive?
- [157:00]
Gus Gonzalez
So there's this group of guys are like the Jackass of Ukraine, basically. It's like this rack, that group of lunatics, Kurosan is their name. And they just go and do all kinds of crazy stuff, like, not just. Not just, you know, going there and diving in Chernobyl, but going in like. Like subway trains. And, like, they just do all kinds of crazy stunts. Right. Kurozen. And they went to Chernobyl. And one of the buildings in Chernobyl is basically flooded. I think it's by rainwater. And of course, these guys exaggerated a little bit to say, like, oh, we're close the reactor or whatever. Now that reactor has been sealed. You can't get there. But there are buildings around the reactor that are still there that perhaps were other reactors, not the one that blew up, that basically was abandoned because of the radioactive disaster that happened there. And because they're flooded, these guys are just going in there. It's just like. But they're not even divers.
- [158:03]
Joe Rogan
Get on that. Like, to even do that.
- [158:05]
Gus Gonzalez
Well, you can go to Chernobyl right now. Like, legally, you can go and do tours. They do tour. Well right now, not even divers right now. With the war in Ukraine, you. That's probably not happening. But before the war in Ukraine, you could go to Chernobyl, do a tour. Like. Yeah. So these guys are just sneaking in and putting like, a. Like a fishbowl in their head and going underwater. Like, just total lunatics. So we love these guys, by the way. They're also very entertaining.
- [158:32]
Joe Rogan
Total lunatics. Yeah.
- [158:33]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah. I mean, I obviously, I don't want them to die, because they're gonna die. I mean, if you want. If you watch their videos, they're complete. Like, they don't know what they're doing, clearly.
- [158:42]
Joe Rogan
And they do all different. They don't just.
- [158:44]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, it's not just diving. Like, I don't know, out of hundreds of episodes, they've dived in, like, three or four of them or something like that.
- [158:50]
Joe Rogan
So how long was the dive they did? And, like, how difficult was it?
- [158:54]
Gus Gonzalez
Ah, five or ten minutes or something. Once they realized, like, this is crazy, that. Yeah.
- [158:58]
Joe Rogan
Did they even see anything?
- [158:59]
Gus Gonzalez
No, no, no, no.
- [159:00]
Joe Rogan
It's just a video of it.
- [159:02]
Gus Gonzalez
Like, yeah, they video it and it's just zero. This. I mean, it's just. It's just terrible.
- [159:06]
Joe Rogan
And there's nothing in that water that's like nuclear or something, probably.
- [159:10]
Gus Gonzalez
I don't know. Like, it's the same. Same. The same. Like, everything.
- [159:13]
Joe Rogan
We.
- [159:13]
Gus Gonzalez
We posted a reaction to these videos, and you get all this nuclear scientists that comment, you know, because everybody's an expert, so they are saying it's like, well, no, the water is safe, but the air is not. You know, you don't know who to believe. Overall, if this wasn't in Chernobyl, this will be a cool dive. I would do this Dive.
- [159:29]
Joe Rogan
You would do this?
- [159:30]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah. If it wasn't in Chernobyl.
- [159:31]
Joe Rogan
Right.
- [159:31]
Gus Gonzalez
If this was in France or something where there was like a flooded building, I would love, like, how cool would it be to just. Just dive into a building like eight stories down and going to rooms of the building.
- [159:43]
Joe Rogan
You. It's cool to you to do.
- [159:45]
Gus Gonzalez
I'll.
- [159:45]
Joe Rogan
I'll watch the live stream on Twitch.
- [159:47]
Gus Gonzalez
But that would be. That would be pretty awesome to. To do the. These. These dives and you know, submerged buildings like that. That would be awesome. Yeah, we've done mine diving. Mines are cool.
- [160:01]
Joe Rogan
Gold mines.
- [160:03]
Gus Gonzalez
No, it was a let mine.
- [160:05]
Joe Rogan
Where from?
- [160:05]
Gus Gonzalez
Back in Missouri as well. Yeah, it's a Bontera mine in Missouri.
- [160:10]
Joe Rogan
So it got flooded.
- [160:11]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, it's flooded and you can't deep. Are we talking right now? I think it's shut down because there's some legal dispute over the rights of it or whatever. But. Well, the mine goes. I don't know how. I don't think they found the bottom of that mine. Our friends who used to be guides there, they've been to over 200ft. But you can see these are some pictures of Bontera mine.
- [160:32]
Joe Rogan
And that looks so clear too. Well, yeah, I guess because it's like rain water filling it. Right.
- [160:36]
Gus Gonzalez
It's super. I don't know if it's a spring that fills it up or whatever. I know they have to pump water out or else it will flood all the way to the roof. But it's really cool to dive there and we go there.
- [160:47]
Joe Rogan
Pump water out.
- [160:48]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, because if not, it would just keep flooding with water to the top.
- [160:52]
Joe Rogan
Wow.
- [160:53]
Gus Gonzalez
So it's cool because you go in there and this was an operational mine, so you'll be like 100ft deep or whatever. And there's buildings and stuff and boards with stuff written in it like it was a mine. There's tools, there's cat cars, you know, mine cars or whatever with like on rails. And it's just super cool to see all this stuff down there. It.
- [161:14]
Joe Rogan
What's amazing about what you do is that I'm trying to think of even what the to compare it to, but it's not like it's not like a swimmer who swims in a bunch of pools and they're all, you know, 25 meters or 50 meters or whatever.
- [161:32]
Gus Gonzalez
Right.
- [161:32]
Joe Rogan
But it's a pool. It's got chlorine. It's water. One's 20ft feet deep, ones 10ft deep, whatever. Yeah, you're going to like different, like Narnia maps. You're going somewhere where one place is like, oh, this is a naturally flooded lead mine.
- [161:45]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah.
- [161:46]
Joe Rogan
In the middle of land somewhere.
- [161:47]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah.
- [161:47]
Joe Rogan
The next one is, oh, this is a 300 foot deep fucking drug mining cave off the ocean in Mexico. Oh, this one's a dark pool in Egypt that maybe the pharaohs dumped. Fucking Egyptian.
- [161:57]
Gus Gonzalez
Who knows? You know what I mean?
- [161:59]
Joe Rogan
Like, you're doing entirely different. Different.
- [162:02]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah, Scenario things.
- [162:04]
Joe Rogan
Now it's the same skill you're driving.
- [162:06]
Gus Gonzalez
That's what I was gonna say. In a cave, you're not training for every one of those. You just train how to be a cave diver and then you can use those skills for any of that. By the way, you mentioned Egypt, I believe that some of those pyramids are flooded and some people have dove inside the pyramid. So that would be another thing. Egypt. If you're watching, give me a call.
- [162:22]
Joe Rogan
People have taken dives in the pyramids in Egypt.
- [162:26]
Gus Gonzalez
Yes. From what I, from what I understand, some of that stuff has been flooded and divers go in there. I would love to stuff to go diving in this. Egypt.
- [162:35]
Joe Rogan
Egypt. Oh, you know what it's like, I just thought of this. It's like golf courses. You could play a golf course in Scotland that's like St. Andrews, which is like deep bunkers and reeds everywhere. Or then you could go play some, you know, Torrey Pines on the, on the west coast of California, which is wide fairways on a cliff like there. Or Pine Valley in Jersey, which is kind of northeastern classic Ben Benkras golf. These are all very different environments, but it's the same.
- [163:05]
Gus Gonzalez
You're playing golf, same skills. Yeah.
- [163:07]
Joe Rogan
That's interesting. Okay, so you're like a golfer, except.
- [163:10]
Gus Gonzalez
You dive, so a little harder. Yeah.
- [163:14]
Joe Rogan
Do we have anything on people diving in pyramids, Steve? Just like people talking about like, like interviews, but I'm not getting like actual.
- [163:22]
Gus Gonzalez
There's not a whole lot of footage.
- [163:24]
Joe Rogan
You're diving, you're like, there's the alien. I would. It's not a human body. I would love that. You'd go very viral if you did that.
- [163:31]
Gus Gonzalez
I would love that. You live stream that we reacted to.
- [163:35]
Joe Rogan
Wait, wait, what was that? Flooded tombs. What it's like to scuba dive under pyramids. I mean, the pyramids in Egypt are more famous, but the ones in Sudan. Oh, they're talking about the ones in Sudan. Royal burial sites that archaeologists can explore.
- [163:51]
Gus Gonzalez
What the, Any pyramids.
- [163:54]
Joe Rogan
You know this trick, the mom Ben's trick.
- [163:56]
Gus Gonzalez
Oh, there's a. There's a bunch like that.
- [163:57]
Joe Rogan
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's really cool. Oh, let's go. We got deep. Got it. All right, so let's read a little bit of Steve. Oh, that's already scary looking at it. That's just him entering right there. Down in a crevice. All right, so scroll down. Is it having trouble scrolling? All right. I could feel myself suffocating.
- [164:16]
Gus Gonzalez
I'm already 20, 22.
- [164:18]
Joe Rogan
Each step down the bedrock passageway brought me closer to what I long the pool of khaki water. The flooded tunnel it hid. And the moment I'd have to enter that darkness, the crumbling grandeur of a pyramid loomed above here at the ancient necropolis of Nuri in Sudan's northern desert. Kushite royals were laid to rest millennia ago in a series of underground burial chambers beneath mighty pyramids. Now, the chambers were flooded with groundwater leaching from the nearby Nile. So Nile stumping into this. Archaeologist Pierce Paul Kreisman, funded in part by a North by National Geographic Society grant, was leading a team that would be the first to attempt underwater archaeology below a pyramid. Initially, I'd been calm, even excited about going along to photograph this ambitious and risky effort in 2020. But as I walked deeper underground, my heart raced and I could barely breathe. So this guy is a photographer who's going down with him? He's not even like a, a, like a train diver.
- [165:12]
Gus Gonzalez
I would love to do this.
- [165:14]
Joe Rogan
Holy. Look at that picture. If you're watching on YouTube or Spotify, like, and these are flooded down below, Allegedly.
- [165:22]
Gus Gonzalez
I don't know. I've never been to Egypt or Sudan, but yeah. So there's 20 pyramids. It says right there, 20 pyramids that appear strung together.
- [165:31]
Joe Rogan
What's. What's, what's the.
- [165:34]
Gus Gonzalez
That would be epic.
- [165:34]
Joe Rogan
How do you get called versus, like, other divers? Like, you said, the one in Texas, they called you. They happen to call you in Atlanta. And that was a rescue one.
- [165:42]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah.
- [165:43]
Joe Rogan
But then, like an exploration run, they are call. Like they call Gus Gonzalez because he's known. You're known for doing certain explorations?
- [165:51]
Gus Gonzalez
No, so. So the ones I did in Mexico was part of a team. It's mainly connected to this guy named Mike Young, which is also one of the greatest divers that ever lived. Mike is a cave explorer. And Mike, we became friends over the years because he makes rebreathers, and we dive the rebreathers that he makes. And then we started traveling with Mike. First, it was a trip just. We were just diving in the ocean in Cozumel. It was like over New Year's, and he's like, oh, let's just get together and dive rebreathers in the ocean. Great. And then we went to Roaring river and then we went to Mexico. And so he knows us, we're friends with Mike and he has invited us in the past and we always are very thankful and love to join his ex expeditions. Now he goes in way more expeditions without us too because it's a large team and you don't always need everybody. And then for the one in Texas, I believe they reach out to us via email. Just like info divetalk.com whatever. Yeah, they, they know about the channel, whatever they said, would you guys be willing to come to Texas and help recover some of these bodies?
- [166:57]
Joe Rogan
So basically from everything from the famous Thai rescue to things we don't hear about it, it's usually like reputational or word of mouth or someone knows that you exist and it's like oh, we can call them versus like there's not this system of like every time X happens. Here's the phone book of these are the 10 people we go to.
- [167:20]
Gus Gonzalez
Not necessarily. The thing is that even though there are organizations like that, like there's like the International Cave Rescue, something like that, ICUR or something like that, I don't remember exactly the nomenclature of it or whatever, whatever the acronym. But even though there are organizations like that, I don't think most people know about it. I, I don't think most people know about those kind of organizations. And sometimes I feel bad. Like I remember, I think it was last year, maybe earlier this year we got also either an email or a call or whatever from some, some people that drown in Namibia, which is north of South Africa, is in Africa and they contacted us. It's like, oh, there's, you know, there's this incident that happened in Namibia. We need to help recovering these bodies. Would you guys be willing to come if we pay for you to come? And I said yes, but you shouldn't like you. There's so South Africa is known for like their divers. Like there's some amazing divers in South Africa that are right next to you. It would be like if there was an accident in Canada and they were calling people from Africa to come and help. Like why just use Canadians or people from the U.S. you know, that are closer. So we respectfully the decline. We said we would come and do.
- [168:30]
Joe Rogan
It but save you some money.
- [168:33]
Gus Gonzalez
No, like just people will be there faster. There are way, way, way capable. Just work with the South Africans. If you don't have someone in Namibia that can do it. Ultimately I'm not sure how they recover the bodies, but they did recover them and we didn't have to go. So. Yeah, I think the fame of dive talk has opened up some doors. You know, one of my favorite doors that has opened is people that have. Have holes in the ground in their properties, like in Florida, and they're like, hey, there's a spring in my property or my grandpa's farm or whatever. You guys want to come and dive it?
- [169:02]
Joe Rogan
Sure, yeah, absolutely. So these are completely unknown springs that you're just going. Completely unknown, right?
- [169:10]
Gus Gonzalez
No, some of them are crystal clear, beautiful. It's just because it's in private property, divers don't go in there. So they are like, would you guys be willing to come and map it? Or whatever until. Absolutely. We'll go there. You get in there and it's. And those are awesome.
- [169:23]
Joe Rogan
And what's the deepest one you did?
- [169:26]
Gus Gonzalez
Well, the deepest one in Florida was Eagle's Nest. But those. No, no, the private properties, they're not that deep. They're like 100ft or whatever.
- [169:33]
Joe Rogan
Oh, yeah, not deep at all.
- [169:35]
Gus Gonzalez
No, I mean in, in. In relative to other caves.
- [169:39]
Joe Rogan
How wide is that? Like, I mean, I imagine they vary, but someone private property, they get a spring and it's 100ft deep. Are we talking like it's like a cylinder like that, and it's 10ft wide at the top and 2ft at the bottom. What are we talking?
- [169:51]
Gus Gonzalez
So, like the last one we did, I think it was in April or May, that one had multiple entrances. So, like in the same property, they had multiple springs and they were all connected together underwater. So that was cool because I went in the first entrance, which was the closest to the car, really. It's like that one is the closest to transport gear and stuff. Let's just go in on this one. And it was like, I don't know, I would say like a 10 by 20 hole in the ground. And then we went in and I tie the primary line. So basically we start running line from open water. The idea is if you follow the line on the way out and you're completely blind, when you reach the end, you can go straight up and find air. That's why it's called the primary. So I ran the primary. I was the first one in and I ran the primary line and I went like, I don't know, like 200ft or whatever into the cage. And I can see this cave going in like all directions. It's like this thing is just going everywhere. I was like, oh, my God, this is the best thing ever. And I came back out and I'm telling. There were four of us. They're like, dude, hurry up. Like, this. This cave is awesome. And I'm like, get me my exploration reel. So that one had 1200ft of line or 1800 something like, it's a big, big spool. And I went in, we followed the line, and then I laid the whole thing, like all 1800ft of line into brand new cave. Take it's like an hour and a half, two hours, something like that. I don't remember. And I. I just. I remember telling the guys, I'm like, I'm gonna keep going until I run out of line. And, like, I could go back there with 10,000 more feet and keep going. Like, it's just like the cave just seemed to be going and it was just awesome. It's like all these crevices that you go on the right and you get to like a dead end and then you look up and it's like a chimney. I guess we're going up. Elevator ding. Here we go. Up. Then you would go up and you would just open up again. All right, let's go that direction. Then you go and drop. Drop back down. I mean, it's just awesome. I just absolutely love that. That was really cool.
- [171:47]
Joe Rogan
This is one of the most interesting podcasts I've ever done in my life because, like, I told you, I don't.
- [171:51]
Gus Gonzalez
Think anyone's watching because they're used to. They're used to all these amazing guests that you have on the show.
- [171:56]
Joe Rogan
Dude, you're unbelievable.
- [171:57]
Gus Gonzalez
Super interesting.
- [171:58]
Joe Rogan
I've been. I. But that's the thing. I don't know about any of this. That's what, like, when you reached out, I was like, oh, this seems awesome. Like, I don't know anything about cave diving.
- [172:06]
Gus Gonzalez
Most people don't know.
- [172:06]
Joe Rogan
I have like a. There's so many questions I have now. Like, I have a full education on this, so I'm sure people out there who are listening do too. Like, it's amazing stuff and, like, what you've accomplished over, like, not a long period of time, as I said a couple times today, is unbelievable. But I think it's really cool that you're actively doing all this. You're actively jumping into a lot of unknown situations just because you're curious and you're bringing that to the public with dive talk. And you and Woody going through this whole thing and explaining what you do, reacting to other dives around the world, explaining everything that goes into this. And that's probably one of the coolest things about the, the Internet these days is that very, very specialized skills like this can be available to some kid out there who knows nothing about it and he gets to learn from you like a college professor. So I hope you guys keep doing it. It's, it's, it's awesome stuff.
- [172:54]
Gus Gonzalez
Yeah. Thank you. I mean, I think Dive Talk is. And I, I always tell people, like there are other channels out there that are much better than us divers like, that are much better than us divers who are documenting their dives much better than us. I think the way we like to do it is more from the entertaining side of things. It's like, let' talk about cave diving to anybody. Like, you don't have to even be a diver.
- [173:15]
Joe Rogan
Yeah.
- [173:16]
Gus Gonzalez
I think that if you're a serious divers, there are other channels out there and you can watch an entire two hour cave dive from beginning to end if you want to. That's not what we do. We like to just talk about. Yeah, yeah, talk about the Donald Cerrone like that, the, the Chernobyl video. Like talk about this lunatics doing this stuff and try to make it entertaining and educational at the same time. And not being afraid to admit when we mess up. Like we're not the greatest divers in the world. We make mistakes. I mean, we did whole episodes about training that we failed. We did the training, we failed the training.
- [173:45]
Joe Rogan
I think that's great because the Internet, you know, had for a long time has incentivized this thing of like showing up perfect. You are at everything. And that's not the reality in anything, especially a highly specialized skill like this. That's like highest stakes in some cases. So that's awesome that you do that. And, and it was, it's just cool. Like this is the coolest part about my job when like someone like you reaches out, out and I get to find a whole new world that I know nothing about. So this has been absolutely awesome today. Thank you for coming up to do this everyone. Check out Dive Talk. We'll have it linked below. I'm also happy to collaborate this with you guys if you want as well on YouTube. So that'll go into the algorithm for your audience as well. But is there anywhere else, any other links you want us to put down there for you guys to, you know, be found online for what you're doing?
- [174:30]
Gus Gonzalez
No, I mean we're not in a bunch of different platforms. Everything we do is on YouTube. Basically. We, we have like Instagram and whatnot, but we, our content is for YouTube. It's long form. Like, a lot of our videos are super long. And it's always interesting because when we post a video that is like 30 minutes, people are like, well, what the hell? It's normally 90 minutes. Like, what is going on?
- [174:49]
Joe Rogan
They're gonna like this episode.
- [174:50]
Gus Gonzalez
They're gonna like this episode. Yeah, but, yeah, I mean, just look us up on. On YouTube. We. We are. We try to branch out into other things based on our audience. So, for example, people, after watching our videos and stuff, it's like, how can I dive with you? I'm a diver. I would love to dive with you guys. So we started doing a trip every year called the Dive Talk Meetup.
- [175:10]
Joe Rogan
Oh, cool.
- [175:11]
Gus Gonzalez
And every year becomes the largest scuba diving trip in the world. It's 130 people show up. Typically, a typical dive trip is like 20 people, tops 15, 20. And we have over 100 people that show up. We give away tens of thousands of dollars worth of gear. We give away rebreathers. We give away, like, all this stuff. People, you know, ask again to dive with us. We started that. We also started making a rebreather. Most rebreathers are like 15,000, $20,000, whatever. We partner up with Mike Young, who has been making rebreathers for decades, and we launched a rebreather to the market that is 3500 bucks is still not cheap.
- [175:49]
Joe Rogan
Like, that's way better than 15, 20 grand.
- [175:52]
Gus Gonzalez
There's nothing like that in the market called a Dive Talk Go and is. It's great for that. So everything we do is really based in our audience. Like, all the videos that we make, all the things that we that we put out there are based in our audience. And yeah, I appreciate you for the.
- [176:07]
Joe Rogan
Shout out and for the invite, dude, thanks for coming. We'll link your Instagram down below as well, and we'll also link your website where people can check out some of the equipment you just talked about. But thanks so much for walking me all through this today, man. It's been great.
- [176:18]
Gus Gonzalez
My pleasure.
- [176:19]
Joe Rogan
All right, everybody else, you know what it is. Give it a up thumbs thought. Get back to me. Peace. Thank you guys for watching the episode. If you haven't already, please hit that subscribe button and smash that, like, button on the video. They're both a huge, huge help. And if you would like to follow me on Instagram and X, those links are in my description below.