Episode 1: Transcript

Brittany (00:25)
Hello and welcome to the Dive Long Island podcast. I'm your host, Brittany McCabe, and I want to share with you why I decided to start this podcast. I've been diving since 2010 in Long Island waters. From the beginning, I always had people saying to me, wow, you dive up here? Is there anything to see?

Because the public perception is that what you see at the beach is generally what you could experience if you went underwater. I would share some of the great stories that I've had experience up here and people would be really surprised to hear how awesome the diving really can be.

I thought over time as diving became a more popular hobby, that that question would become less and less frequent and more people would be diving on Long Island. But fast forward 16 years and well, not too much has changed. So I wanted a platform where people could hear about not only the amazing history that we have in our waters here with all the shipwrecks.

But also the history of the divers here because there are some really incredible stories. So I decided to start Dive Long Island. As you continue to listen, which I hope you do, you will find out information about some of the legends that we have that have dived up here, some of their really incredible origin stories, how they got into diving, and the type of diving that they do. 

I interview commercial divers, spear fishermen, dive shop owners and naturalists, and other experts in their field to give you a really great picture of what Long Island diving is like. Now, this is only the first season and I plan on doing many more.

With more guests introducing newer stories or different stories. I hope you enjoy this very first one. To kick off this season, I thought I would share with you how I got into diving. So like I mentioned before, I started in 2010 that opportunity came about because I used to be an educator at the Atlantis Aquarium in Riverhead, which is now the Long Island Aquarium.

At the time, they were considering having the educators possibly do the shark talk from within the shark tank. The shark diving program had already been established for a good amount of time at that point. When this opportunity came up, I said, yeah, I'll do that. That sounds awesome. Because I was already doing lectures from above the tank or from within the tunnel. 

I thought, how cool would it be to actually do it inside with them? So they decided not to do that program. I was so excited by the idea of being certified that my parents thought, you know what, maybe we will get her for her 18th birthday, the Open Water Certification. And they did.

So my 18th birthday summer, I ended up getting Open Water certified at Hampton Dive Center in Riverhead. Man, was I hooked from the very beginning. I remember one of the first dives that I did after my certification was in Wildwood Lake in Riverhead. I had an incredible interaction,

also surprising, but incredible interaction with a snapping turtle there. And any kind of fish that was there amazed me. On my open water dives, we first did on day one on a Saturday, we did our open water dives in Wildwood Lake. I will never forget my instructor telling us, hey, you know, this lake has a very silty bottom, so I need you guys to really work on your buoyancy and not to sink all the way to the bottom and touch the bottom, but to gradually descend and be hovering above the bottom. 

And everybody in the class, we looked at each other like, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. We could do that. she said, okay, great. And stay close because if anybody does silt it up, visibility will decrease and I want to be able to see you all.

So we descended and unfortunately some of my classmates weren't able to stay off the bottom and they silted it up. I just remember this brown silt cloud just filled the water column and I thought, well, I'll just hang out here. You know, nothing's wrong. This is good. Um, unfortunately I can't see my instructor or anybody else anymore, but I'm sure she's going to each person.

And starting the skills with them to assess us and evaluate us for certification. Then suddenly a hand appeared in front of my face, motioning to go up, which looks like the thumbs up signal. And I went up as my instructor requested. She goes, you know, guys, visibility has gotten really poor. Unfortunately, we silted it up. We're going to have to do this one at a time.

And the assistant that was there supervised us at the surface while we weren't being evaluated. She gradually took us one at a time to do our skills farther away where it hadn't been all silted up. My classmates were pretty rattled by that experience.

They were hesitant to keep going because of the change in visibility. For me, it really didn't make a difference because I thought it was the coolest thing. The next day we went into Shinnecock Bay to finish up our open water dives. And I remember when we got in the water, our instructor had us do our skills. Then we had the opportunity to explore the bay by the rocks. I saw some small fish, some blackfish and I was amazed. 

Man, I couldn't believe the clarity and the amount of life that I was seeing. When my instructor had said all right, now the dive's over. We got to, we got to head out. Congratulations. You're certified. I'm like, wait, but I want to stay longer, you know, and I want to see more. And I just wanted to keep coming back and doing more and more diving  

What ended up happening, was I went off to college and when I was working, had saved some money and I put that money aside to purchase my own equipment. And I came back for the seasonal tent sale where Hampton Dive Center sold the rental equipment that they had used for that season. I grabbed my sizes, so stoked. I'm standing in line waiting to be rung up. I turned to my friend.

And I said, wow, look at all these places that you could go if you, if you worked here and if you traveled and dive, like that's amazing. So not only could you dive up here, but you could also travel more. It must be super cool to work here. I got rung up. I'm packing my equipment into my car and Ditte who's the course director at Hampton Dive Center also worked at the aquarium and knew me pretty well through the shark dive program. 

And she came up to me while I was packing my car up and she said, hey, Brittany how serious were you when you said that you thought that this would be a great place to work? And I said, I was pretty serious. I really thought that would be amazing. she said, okay, Randy, the owner of the dive shop is waiting inside. He's going to interview you.

He interviewed me for an internship position and I got the position and I from then on proceeded to climb the ladder. So that was in 2010 when I got certified. I became a PADI instructor in 2014. I had started technical diving in 2012.

And I kept progressing from there. Today I am a prism 2 rebreather diver. I'm still actively teaching and I absolutely love scuba diving, especially up here. As it may surprise many people, Long Island is my favorite place to dive. Despite the fact that I've been very fortunate to travel to Fiji, the Caribbean, Truk lagoon, all those beautiful places, where I loved diving there too, but the challenges that Long Island waters can present is really what hooks me to this hobby. 

And I'm hoping that when you hear how awesome the stories are the incredible life you can see and the history of the wrecks, that maybe you'll become curious about it too.

Before we wrap up, I do want to share something personal. As you follow through this season, you'll notice that I'm actually progressing through my pregnancy. I'm also hoping that this shows some that are considering starting a family and still pursuing what they love that you don't have to choose between one or the other. Because for me, diving isn't going anywhere.

Well, that concludes everything that I think you need to know before the start of the season. I hope you enjoy listening to the legends that I had a chance to interview. And I'll see you between dives. 

Thank you for listening to the Dive Long Island podcast. If you enjoyed this conversation, make sure to follow and subscribe so you don't miss future episodes. For sponsorship opportunities,
guest ideas or to connect, can reach me at infodivelongisland@gmail.com and follow along on social media at @divelongisland. Thanks again for listening and I'll see you between dives.