Wrecks, War, and the Weight of Water

What lies beneath isn’t just wreckage—it’s memory, pressure, and silence that refuses to disappear.
 In this haunting conversation, underwater photographer Anastasia Schmuck takes us into a world few will ever see—where war rests on the ocean floor, where wrecks become living ecosystems, and every dive demands skill, trust, and respect.
 This isn’t just exploration. It’s confrontation—with history, with risk, and with ourselves.

Anastasia Schmuck

Today's episode is brought to you by the Joan of Arc Scroll Medal, a beautiful brass alloy medal, designed by award-winning artist, Pat Benincasa. This uniquely shaped medal is ideal for holiday or as a special occasion gift!    Visit www.patbenincasa-art.com

Joan of Arc Scroll Medal
This brass alloy medal can be worn on a necklace, a keychain, dogtags, on a bag, or in your car.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Please Note: The views expressed by our guests do not necessarily reflect the views of the podcaster.

Follow me on Instagram!

Transcript

Pat:

Fill To Capacity where heart grit and irreverent humor collide. A podcast for people too stubborn to quit and too creative not to make a difference.

Pat:

Hi, I'm Pat Benincasa and welcome to Fill To Capacity, Episode #135, "Wrecks War, and the Weight of Water." Now, what draws someone into the deep past light past noise into places most of us will never see. Anastasia Schmuck, who by the way is joining us from Malta, is an underwater photographer who finds her subjects in shipwrecks. Massive silent witnesses to history now transformed into living ecosystems. In just a few years, she has gone from her first dive to international recognition, including a 2026 commendation from the underwater photographer of the year competition. Her work has taken her from the Baltic Sea to Gallipoli to the coastline of Malta, and down 93 meters. That's 305 feet off of Sardinia, her deepest dime to photograph the World War II, the Italian Steamship Benghazi. Now these wrecks feel suspended in time and documenting them isn't enough. She also volunteers with groups like Ghost Diving to remove debris and protect what remains so technical diver conservation, volunteer research, collaborator and visual artist Anastasia Schmuck has found her canvas at the bottom of the sea. Well, welcome Anastasia. So nice to have you here,

Anastasia:

Thanks. Thank you. Nice to see you. Nice to meet you.

Pat:

You started diving in 2018 and then you went straight towards shipwrecks and deep ones. What was it about the wrecks that spoke to you?

Anastasia:

It all started in Egypt, actually in the Red Sea. I made there two safaris after approximately year when I started diving. Then I went to see such a giant and such a well-known wreck, the Thistlegorm.

Pat:

This famous shipwreck in the Red Sea, the SS Thistlegorm was a British World War II cargo ship sunk in 1941 by German bombers, known for its preserved military cargo, including locomotives, tanks, and motorcycles.

Anastasia:

So whose diving, diving, most likely has heard this name at least once. I was quite fascinated by that also. Then I started to learn to find out for myself that the history was happening not only on the surface, it was happening also underwater. There were lots of events that are linked actually to the water campaign of which we were learning also in the history lessons at school. But somehow I never really paid attention all that much to it, and I never linked this to the famous Cousteau Odyssey. Famous, who I think every child was watching in my time <laugh>. So on

Pat:

The tv, wait, wait, which, which show was that?

Anastasia:

That was the Odyssey of Cousteau

Pat:

Oh yes, Jacques Cousteau!

Anastasia:

Yes. That famous one. Yes. So I kind of somehow, these two things like the events of the wars and the underwater world, they were two different things in my head until that moment in the Red Sea, because also Thistlegorm was found by Cousteau and then something like, you know, something clicked and then it was no longer So interesting to watch on the reefs. Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy it. I do enjoy watching big fish and all the nice and the life corals and everything, but the wrecks, they have something in it that is kinda like calling you and they have particular beauty. It's no longer the ship that is serving. It's no longer something that humans created. It's also something that is now serving the nature as an artificial reef. So once it was alive and once it was doing its job, even after it is no longer usable on surface, it is still bringing something into this world. So to me, it says something extra, something special.

Pat:

Oh, beautifully said, thank you. Now at a certain depth, the light starts to fade. Colors drain out, sound disappears. It's colder, darker, and that pressure is real. You are hovering in this quiet, suspended world where everything slows down what happens to you mentally and physically. When you move in that space,

Anastasia:

Physically, you feel an insane stability. I, I'm not sure even how to describe it because uh, we're used to move in this dimension, like you can go forwards, you can then go backwards, you can go to the right to the left, but there you can go up and down as well and not just walk with your feet. You are moving like in a horizontal position, which gives this feeling that I cannot compare with anything for real. Like I can imagine that similar stuff happens to people when they're doing skydiving. I believe that the feeling is has some similarity and mentally I could compare it with absolute yoga Shavasana, when in the end of the practice, when comes to Shavasana and now wakes up after that, it's such a relief. Calm, you feel grounded. You feel that nothing is really important, that your whole, you are there.

Anastasia:

You don't really care what happens up there. You don't really care about the news, you don't care about anything else. Whether you turned off the tv, whether you remove the iron from the plug, whether you are catching this plane or not, you don't care. All is absolutely irrelevant. It's only you and the moment and your feeling what you feel in your body and the mind is clear. That's why I also love diving, because there are no phones, there is no network, there is nothing. People cannot even talk to you all that much. You, you have time for yourself and only for yourself. Yeah, of course you should pay attention to the bodies and all that stuff. But when we are talking about the real depth, and I mean some, some serious depth, like 50 plus, 60 plus, the feeling there of this depth is totally different than what it's on search.

Anastasia:

It is heavier, it is more pressing, but it also is more stable. It differs and it is calling and I call it "the call of the depth." I gave this, name it to it when I was first time in Egypt and I had a drop off when you don't see any bottom. And I was on 30 even. So it was not all that deep, but when I looked into that deep, I was like, wow, I wanna go deeper. So I called it the depth is calling. And since then, uh, whenever I see the depths, the short line, no reef or no any orientation like besides this shot line that you know, will bring it surface to the boat. Only this dip. Sometimes I even like to watch away to look away and just to see this deep blue color and to feel this depth also, it is amazing feeling.

Pat:

It's interesting how you speak of the metaphysical, the spiritual aspects of being in this underwater world. It's fascinating. That's a very graphic description for those of us who've never gone below maybe eight feet of water. I wanna shift gears now. Some places ask something of us. So a kind of quiet respect, almost a reverence. We feel it in cathedrals, mosques at memorials in spaces where history isn't just remembered it's felt. Do you experience anything like that when you are with the shipwrecks?

Anastasia:

That depends on the wreck. So they are different. My personal experience, right? I know that different people experience it differently, but there are certain wrecks where I am way more respectful and way more careful with things and not in terms of I touch them or something, right? I don't do that. Generally there are certain wrecks where one has this feeling that there was history happening here, or that it, it is uh, some, maybe even a grave, like there is this famous Salem Express in Red Sea.

Pat:

The Salem Express was a large passenger ferry carrying people home across the Red Sea. In 1991, she sank just off the Egyptian coast. The official death toll was reported at 470 lives. But salvage crews recovered closer to 850 bodies. A final number has never been confirmed. She now rests on her starboard side on a flat sandy bottom, 27 meters down about 90 feet. And the human story is impossible to ignore. Lying on the sea floor, a handbag, a briefcase, a child's tricycle, and lifeboats still resting next to the hall, never used because so many lives were lost inside of her. The Salem Express was declared a maritime tomb. Penetration is forbidden. She is not just a wreck, she is a grave.

Anastasia:

For example, there I've been only once inside and I'm never gonna back, gonna go back inside. Not because I am, uh, afraid of going inside. That's not the, uh, that's not the case exactly here. But just because I've seen what is inside and I have a huge respect of the history of the shipwreck and of the people who died there and of those who are still living, whose friends, relatives were on that shipwreck. Also, when we are talking about the war, uh, shipwrecks, this is a war grave. So accordingly, one should respect it. There are certain wrecks, for example, where the authorities are taking the responsibility in taking care of the wrecks and it's officially forbidden to penetrate them due to different reasons. One of them is, for example, it might be dangerous to go inside because of some one is not sure what are the structures they're under wood for quite a while.

Anastasia:

There might be some internal damages and one would not be able to go back and so on and so on, right? But there is also another aspect to it. Since they're taking care of this wrecks, they don't want these to be damaged. They don't want people to take things to the surface. They want these memorials to be kept as they are. We respect the memorials on surface and with the same respect, we should treat the underwater ones. Yes, when coming back to this feeling in certain wrecks, when they have really heavy history, when there was something happening, particularly when there were some victims, one does have a, have a feeling when, when one goes to such res, it is not quite like in a church or in a cathedral. It's not the same. But one does have this deep respect in comparison, for example, to the res that were explicitly put into the water, they were cleared up of all the, of all the toxic stuff, chemicals, oils and so on. And then they were put under water as an attraction for the tourists by itself, it's a good stuff because it attracts tourists, which boost economy, it's again, it's an artificial reef. So, uh, sooner or later stuff starts to grow there and there's fish and, and so we know the cycle, right? But there is no real history behind. So it is a beautiful picture and these are totally different feelings. If you are looking at just a beautiful picture or you are looking at the beautiful picture with the history

Pat:

You wrote about the steamer. Benghazi now resting at 93 meters and the 85 meter long wreck is remarkably intact giving the illusion of a vessel still in motion. And you went on to say the stern rises dramatically with the propeller rudder and deck gun intact while the forward holds are filled with glassware earning the nickname the wreck of the glasses. Now you said this was my deepest dive to date made possible by rare conditions of calm seas and zero current Now you needed near perfect conditions to reach that wreck. How much of what you do is control and how much is waiting for the right window of opportunity?

Anastasia:

Hard to say. It is of course a touch of luck because for example, this weekend we were planning two wonderful dives on the World War II wrecks, but the weather decided otherwise. Uh, so as much as I'm in control, I'm not controlling the weather. It's always the sea that is controlling us. So yeah, if the sea is not in favor, then of course we don't go because first of all, safety first and rough seas are not safe. There are certain situations when even with the flat seas, sometimes there are currents underwater due to the temperature shift. And particularly in Mediterranean that starts in summer in Maltese waters because then the temperature starts to shift for real because up, up on surface it's very hot and down there it's still the same 16 degree all year round. So this for example, sometimes can be so strong that the dive has to be aborted because simply it is unsafe to stay in decompression and such conditions. Now, the most dangerous conditions I have experienced in my life were in actually in Gallipoli in the underwater park because there we are talking about the Dardanelles.

Pat:

The Dardanelles is essentially a long narrow channel connecting two massive bodies of water, the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. Think of it like a river squeezed between two oceans. All that water is constantly pushing through in both directions at once, one current running along the surface one way another running underneath it the other way, add sharp bends in the channel, unpredictable winds and the sheer volume of water being forced through a tight space. And you get conditions that can change fast and without warning for divers, that means currents that can shift on you mid dive timing and conditions aren't just preference, they're everything.

Anastasia:

This is always unpredictable or to be exact. It is predictable, it is gonna be challenging. And same I can say about the Baltic Sea and Northern Sea. It's just by their location and uh, how they are. The visibility is poor, the currents are common and the waves are also common. So one has to count on such factors. One has to know their own skill level one has to know their own physical condition, whether one can do the dive or not. And we are talking not just like, you know, everyone can go down. Question is whether one can go up. So before one goes down, one has to ask themselves the question, will I be able to safely ascend? And after that go up on the boat, if that is a yes, when does the dive, if that is a no, then there is no dive.

Pat:

I'm curious what factors come into, I can't come up to the boat easily. What, what would be at play here?

Anastasia:

The weather conditions. So strong surface current is a problem. Waves. So the swell, this is also always a problem because the boat is gonna be going up and down together with the ladder and everything, right? Nowadays there are particularly, uh, in Maltese waters, there are lots of boats with the elevator. So if, if there is an elevator, it's way safer. Of course for technical divers, again we're talking recreational or technical diving, it's totally different setup, right? So recreational with, with a one tank, I can jump, I can dance, I can do whatever. I cannot do the same with the technical setup. Just simply because of the weight, my configuration, I'm diving the JJ configuration, it is a particularly heavy unit, it almost weights as much as I do. So going up with that gear is a challenge and uh, of course I have to to see whether the boat is suitable.

Anastasia:

So is the boat stable enough? Because if it is some like aluminum boat that is hardly standing any waves, uh, I might very well also just turn it upside down just by the weight. So I need a stable boat, I need uh, good enough conditions. I need the crew on the boat that is skilled and in case of something they, they can happen, they can help, they will not lose me. If something happens, I should SMB and start moving with the current, they'll not lose me. Also, are they able to do the CPR in case something happens or how quick is their response? Are they skilled? I might also need some helpers on the boat because of all the gear. Again, depending on the weather conditions, I might have to go with all the tanks I have right away into the water, which is quite a weight.

Anastasia:

Or if the weather is good and there is no current, there are the waves. Then I just jump and then I receive every extra tank one by one, clip them in. I have my time, I'm chill and relaxed. So you see two totally different conditions and same as with the going up, if it is an elevator, I'm just standing up and we both crew, they're just taking off the tanks off me. I have my unit on me and I'm just sitting down, breathing out, calming down and so on and so on. If it is no elevator, I have to give thanks one by one. It's time again, I'm not alone. There are my buddies. I also like for challenging dives. I will not go with someone who I do not know. I'm going to such dives only with people who I trust who are capable and I know that in case something happens, they will do their best to solve the issue and they expect the same of me. You see, there are lots of factors and also depending on in which part of the world it is done, it may be more or less safe because if it's somewhere far away where there is, let's say no deco chambers, anywhere close by

Pat:

A deco chamber is diver talk for decompression chamber,

Anastasia:

It makes the whole thing even more challenging. So one has to think, okay, if something happens, I'm gonna have to wait until I reach that deco chamber. So we are talking about really far away destinations, but they exist and they're also wrecks and they're also wonderful diving spots. But there is also always this thought in the background in case it gets really bad, which options do I have?

Pat:

What strikes me is the level of trust you must have with your fellow divers because this is life and death. And so to know that you could turn around and motion to someone you're having a difficulty and know they'll problem solve, they'll be there or you for them is really a huge thing. Now, many underwater photographers focus on the shipwreck itself, the hull, the artifacts, the encrusted details. You turn your lens on the divers moving through them. When you photograph a diver inside of a wreck, what are you actually trying to capture the person, the place or something between the two?

Anastasia:

It is more of a motion feeling that is given by the presence of a diver because you know, a shipra by itself is an artificial reef. It is an living organism all good, right? But the diver adds to it certain, it makes it more alive. It's not just me and Iraq, it is kind of kind of communication between the humans now and the history that is lying below this. The whole motive. Well, inside the rec, I'm not going all that much due to certain things in my head that don't allow me to do that. I'm trying to deal with that. Yeah, slowly, slowly. So I'm not a cave diver just to say, so I'm absolutely open face diver, right? So going into the wreck itself is another story. Going into it, it means that you trust your body even more than just going around it because that means that uh, there will be no kicks against set sediment or even if then not so much if something happens, you know, the way back, even if I go inside, if it happens and I go there with a diver, we are trying to bring some life into the empty holes.

Anastasia:

Like, you know, particularly interesting parts of the wreck are usually the engine rooms because this is where the heart of the wreck was. So every diver goes to the engine room, everyone wants to go to the engine room. This is the first destination inside the wreck where everyone goes like, the only thing I hear, for example, on Malta, very famous wreck, engine room night, dive to the engine room, engine room and no one really thinks why I wasn't giving it a thought. And I said, okay, everyone goes there actually, because this is the heart of the rack, it's like a human heart. This is the pump that is running it. So engine is running a wreck and everyone goes there and when you see the engine and the diver next to it, it's like a living organism again. You see this organ is not just there, it it is actually, it's actually kind of alive. If you manage to place the lights right, then it looks amazing. And then this game of the elimination, it brings certain feeling that this thing is still has something living in it. This is the thing. And if we're talking about the wreck from the outside, of course the divers are bringing this motion. So it's not just the giant sleeping on the bottom of the sea. It is the giant who has guests.

Pat:

A beautiful way of putting it, it brings to mind I'm a sculptor and I've done public projects. When I build architectural models of a proposed project to scale, the first thing I do is place a person, a model of a person standing in that space because it gives the viewer a sense of scale as to what they're looking at. If I pull the figure out, there's no scale reference. And so when I've looked at your photographs looking at those tiny divers swimming and these big beautiful wrecks, there's something magnificent about that moment that you capture that, as you say, the the scale of the diver in relation to these sleeping giants.

Anastasia:

Yes, that is also a huge thing. The bigger wreck is the harder it is to photograph photograph the easier and the harder it is to photo, photograph, let's say like that. Because the big, the easier because it has so many motives

Pat:

In photography and in art generally a "motif" is a recurring visual element, a shape, a subject, a pattern that an artist returns to again and again. It becomes kind of a signature. The thing you start to recognize as distinctly theirs.

Anastasia:

And the harder, because it has so many motives, one has to choose the vigor, the choice, the harder it is to make. If you have a little rack, we did a plane rack recently and we were eight people on that one 15 meter long plane. You can imagine there were more divers than than other plane on that dive. So me and my team, we were just waiting until everyone else goes so that we are alone with that wreck. But in the end, I had the exact number of divers to make this wreck look not overcrowded. Yeah. Now that would not happen to a huge ferry lying on the bottom of the see because it's huge and eight divers would have disappeared there and the likelihood that they would appear on the picture is very low. Of course. Another thing, if I go far away from a huge wreck, then the diver is gonna look like little point next to it, but it still gives a life with the CCR divers, it is a bit less because with the open circuit diver, you see, you see the bubbles, which gives it an extra touch.

Pat:

I can say looking at your photos, they're absolutely breathtaking. And the situations of divers at a distance or close or the wreckage itself, your creative eye, the way you frame those photographs are absolutely stunning. So you must know something when you go down there in terms of what you wanna photograph. It comes through.

Anastasia:

Thanks.

Pat:

Your photographs are very much alive. Now I wanna go back in time. The Gallipoli campaign was fought in 19 15, 19 16, 1 of the most devastating battles of World War I where allied forces attempted to take the Dardanelles Straight, which is now Turkey. More than 130,000 soldiers died at Gallipoli. The wrecks lying in those waters, the ships, the submarines, the equipment have been there for over a century. Now, you've touched on it earlier, when you are in the Gallipoli, it's a park now, right? Yes,

Anastasia:

Yes. It's not only the underwater, it's also there is a huge surface part related to it.

Pat:

Okay? So when you swim in those waters, knowing that history, what does it feel like to swim through that? Like do you feel like you're witnessing history?

Anastasia:

Feel not exactly like you are witnessing history, because that would be being in the moment of when it happened and I would rather avoid that. I felt I would like to see more since I was only on the recreational depth at that point I saw only certain wrecks that are quite known in the area. When you see these, you kind of wish for more because you know there is more. We learned about every wreck before it in the briefing, apart from the sea conditions and stuff, right? We were learning how it happened, what happened. For example, in school I did not learn all that much about World War I. We were more focused on the World War II and what was happening and the revolution in Russia at that point, right? Because it was following the World War I and World War I somehow was left kinda aside for us.

Anastasia:

So for me it was an extra history lesson. So I was listening extra carefully because to me it was some new world opening. After visiting this rec, we were also going to the museum or to some memorial or to the specific places where we received even more information about how it happened here with the battles here with the battles. So one can link the events on surface and what and why actually the ships are lying down. And with every day I had this deep wish to learn more, to see more and to go deeper as well because very nice racks ally at the depth last year was a photography competition in the Gallipoli and the deep divers were, and it, I couldn't because I was not certified to that depth. But I've seen the photos and I am truly jealous.

Anastasia:

I know people who are diving them, some of them are not personally my friends. And these wrecks are truly amazing. They are in indeed intact. So I wrote this about Benghazi, that it is like intact. It is the same there, the full ship is intact. You can imagine huge tumors in compared to something that was sunk on purpose. Absolutely not. You can see every detail how it was. Some of them are now covered with the fishing nets, but they're on such depth that it cannot be even removed safely. When you see it, you see that the history was actually happening there. It is not the feeling that you are feeling this history happening, but you see that it was there, that there were events and that explains why the whole region is so respectful towards it. For the first time in my life, I actually faced such respect towards the events of the past. I mean, I grew up in Russia and of course they have special treatment of the Second World War, right? It is a special thing there in this particular region. They were, I believe that if I stopped someone on the street and ask about the Gallipoli campaign, they would be able to tell me the whole story. You see, it was so much about it. Whenever you go there is a reminder that hey, you are in a historical place. Be respectful. It was fascinating. I've never seen it before.

Pat:

Now, alongside your photography, you do conservation dives, working with a team like ghost diving to remove abandoned fishing gear from wrecks and the surrounding sea floor. Do you feel obligated to do this work or is it something else?

Anastasia:

Let's do it a bit, a bit differently. I will tell you how it started and how it is going. So it started in the COVID when a friend of mine, we were basically bored because in Germany everything was closed, right? And we were searching some activities and stuff. So, and traveling was not really an option. I was already at the level of training when I could do a bit more than just like, you know, bubble around. And then he found this option to go to the Baltic Sea and to recover the nets. And I was like, why not? I mean, I'm not sure whether I can do that because sounds quite dangerous, but at least it's interesting. I mean, why not to try? We tried. It was challenging as well because the, uh, I learned about the conditions on the, on the Baltic Sea.

Anastasia:

And there was this one net that actually I consider that day. Like kind of like uh, my, well not the second birth, but uh, close to that because when we recovered it, there was a like a grenade in it from Second World War, I was stuck and such things happened there. I mean it wouldn't have exploded or anything, but uh, such things are found in the plexi, in the Baltic Sea, in the North Sea, everywhere actually. You see that all over the world, the world was happening. When you recover certain old stuff from the bottom of the sea, there is always a chance that there will be something like that found. That's not always the case. Okay? So we need to differentiate. I actually liked how it is. And then I started to search around a bit with a team. We started to look around and then we found a ghost diving organization.

Anastasia:

And actually from Germany, two people or three people separately wrote to the same person from Ghost Diving. Me, Derek Kremers. We wrote to Pascal and asked him if we would be able to join anyhow, right? And then he was like, okay, several people contacted me from the country, we need to do something about it. And then German Chapter was formed. I had to leave it un because I switched the country of residence. I moved to Switzerland and there are not many, many seas there. So I did join a project in Greece. I did join a project in Malta, but I do it freely. I like to do it. And also I'm participating mostly as a photographer because if the world does not see, the world will not know. And if I am maybe not the best line cutter in the world, I can make photos, I can make it public.

Anastasia:

In my social media framework, I can tell people of what it's and what we see underwater. For example, after COVID there were so many masks, even in the deepest part of a wreck, one could find a face mask and it was terrible. People on surface, they don't see it. They don't see which impact. All this creates to the environment when the diverse see it actually because we do see underwater all these products that humanity creates and uh, we see the direct impact like this. I understood at certain point that I moved towards harder training to be able to stay deeper on a CR to be able to join the project and then end. And I only reached this level of training this November. I am now gaining a bit more experience and only then I can say, okay, now I'm ready for more serious projects, which means that I can start again to search for opportunities.

Anastasia:

I can probably join a project or two if I just write a call people and say, Hey, do you have something, I'm willing to participate. Again, this is all volunteer work, which means it's not paid. And those who are volunteering, they are of course bringing their input and their resources as well. So there is no gain in there for us. The only gain we get, we get from this is actually cleaner environment. And you can see how much garbage is collected from the base on Malta for example. And it has, these are not the ghost nets. So the ghost nets are a problem.

Pat:

Ghost nets are fishing nets that have been abandoned, lost or left in the oceans, lakes and rivers. They're made from non biodegradable synthetic materials like nylon and they last for centuries drifting and trapping marine life, a phenomenon known as ghost fishing.

Anastasia:

But in certain regions there are way bigger problem than ghost nets. And uh, all that requires of course skilled people who are actually able to safely recover things from the bottom. I mean one of the last dives two weeks ago or something I did on the boat, the depth is 50 meters, 56 bottom there we found a cage, which is huge cage and there was a grouper in it. The fish is alive so we potentially can even save it. How much time do we have on the bottom? 'cause we actually did not plan with any of this. And then like cages were done of metal or plastic. Plastic, nice. Then we can cut it. I put the camera right away. I took out my cutting tool, create the hole in it, grouper is free. And then the next problem, I cannot uh, shoot this cage up because the only thing I have with me is the SMB and that I need in case of emergency,

Pat:

What is smb?

Anastasia:

It is like a buoy signal buoyancy device that I can send to surface. For example, in case I'm lost, I am drifting with this s and p and it gives the signal so it can be seen from surface. But I had only one of these, which means that I cannot send the cage up with that. I needed myself for my safety. So the cage is still there. And then the local NGO that is also taking care of the, of the cleanups contacted me with questions where it is how big and I hope there will be recovery planned soon for this. Yeah, because even though the grouper is free, but it might catch someone else. Plus there were some more of these lying around so one could make a proper dive. This is not just simple recreational dive, the works underwater and such steps cannot be underestimated. They require skill, they require readiness and they require certain training. Otherwise it'll be dangerous very fast. And again, this is all volunteer work. I have certain pleasure doing such things because it's not just like, you know, it's diving with purpose. It's not just doing something I like to do or I love to do. I can do, but also I know that it brings something good.

Pat:

Now I'm dying to ask you a question, Anastasia, every time you go off a boat in a sense you're going into the unknown. Do you ever feel fear

Anastasia:

In this particular understanding of fear? Like I am afraid of going down?

Pat:

No. Like if you're down there, all of a sudden there's a set of circumstances and you're looking around, do you ever like get a jolt of fear? Like, oh no,

Anastasia:

Not quite like that. No, but I do have certain preferences towards things not happening. For example, I am not a fan of surface current. Well no one is, but if surface current happens, it gives me extra anxiety because apart from all the gear around, I also have a camera on top, like a parachute. So it's an extra and I just don't like the waves so I can deal with them. But there are certain limits where I would say, okay, with this level I can go with a technical gear with this level I would go with a recreational gear, but not with technical gear. With this conditions, I will not go at all. I did have certain anxiety after I witnessed an incident happening, accident, actually deadly accident happening here on Malta. I did have certain anxiety going that particular dive site. Dive site. Particularly since it is not the first one happening there.

Anastasia:

And I am sure I'm luckily not the last one because people don't learn. Every now and then it happens that people overestimate their skills and underestimate the weather. So I don't believe it, it's the last one. But after witnessing it for real, of course this anxiety kicks in. One can work on this like with some exposure, a little bit there, a little bit there it gets better. But the fear of, oh no, I'm not going. Or a fear of like, oh no, my mask rips off. What? What do I do? I don't have this because I am very confident in the training I received. So I prevented preparing for the dive as good as I can and evaluating the dangers, the threats, the conditions. Is it safe or what are my exit scenarios? So it's more of preparation work and pre-work, actually preventive work to prepare myself for as many possible scenarios as I can.

Anastasia:

So that kind of helps to deal with all this. Oh yeah, I know that people do do have fear. Some people are afraid of drop off. Some people are afraid of going away from the reef. Some people are afraid of sharks. Like we are all afraid of something, right? This is normal. I do have fears, for example. I have a fear, mentioned it shortly before. I have a fear of going into the overhead environment. So I don't do cave, which means that I'm just not doing cave because I know that my anxiety is go, is gonna go so high that it's not gonna be safe for me neither for my body to dive that. And so I just don't do that.

Pat:

What this comes down to is know yourself, know what you need to do, what you need to prepare rigorous training. And if you don't like caves, then don't do caves.

Anastasia:

Yes, exactly. If you're afraid of sharks, just don't go to the places where there are sharks. I mean it's simple, but it's the case. So if one is afraid of waves, and the thing is that the sea can change very sharply, very rough, unpredictable. And yet there are prognosis. So you know, in the morning it is a perfect flat sea and then one hour late, one of a sudden four meter waves. No, that's not how it works. There is always some hints and prognosis that it's gonna happen. So for different people, this pain point is in different places and at the different depth, let's say. So they just don't do such things. And there are people who are saying, I know we can do that. Come on, I'm mature and whatever. And like, I'm gonna do that. Then they're terrified in the water because they over overestimated themselves and this is the actually the worst that can happen. That this is no joke. Know your limits. What we learned from, uh, open water course, and this is real

Pat:

As we wind up this conversation now, most people will never see what you see. What do you want them to feel when they look at your photographs? What do you want them to walk away feeling or knowing?

Anastasia:

Hmm. I would like them to know that there is much more to this world than they see in a daily life. Much more. This planet is amazing and this planet is interacting with us and we are interacting with the planet and it should be respected and we are part of this world. We cannot neglect it. So we should live our life knowing that it has an impact. And it's up to us to decide what this impact is.

Pat:

Yes, it is up to us. Well, Anastasia, thank you for taking us into your world in such a vivid, wonderful way. This has just been really exciting. Thank you so much for coming out capacity. Thank you.

Anastasia:

Thank you. Thank you very much. It was a pleasure.

Pat:

And thank you listeners and take care. Bye.