Valentine Thomas, a former Quebec lawyer turned spearfisher, shares her radical shift from corporate life to sustainable hunting after nearly drowning at 14 and discovering freediving in Egypt. She details ethical clashes—like killing a 25-pound blackjack fish or a charging tiger shark in Tampa—while exposing commercial fishing’s hypocrisy, including mile-long trawler nets devastating marine ecosystems. Her five-minute breath-holds and near-death dives (e.g., an 85-foot shallow-water blackout in Mexico) contrast with societal outrage over shark hunting, despite industrial fishing’s far greater ecological toll. Now a documentary filmmaker (Aqua Negra), instructor, and future TV show host, Thomas champions self-sufficiency, raw food preparation (soaking fish in milk/lemon to curb "fishy" taste), and guilt-free consumption—urging others to reject comfort zones and reconnect with their food’s origins. [Automatically generated summary]
I actually made a career switch when I moved to London in 2010. So I started working in finance, so I worked for hedge funds, and I basically decided on quitting law.
I didn't like the part of law where I was stuck in one place.
So, you know, when you study law, let's say in Canada, even in Canada, it's even worse because I was studying in Quebec, which is civil law, and then I was stuck in Quebec for the rest of my life.
And I just got like, oh, that's not going to happen.
And yeah, and then my friend was like, well, you're not done, you know, you have to grab, like, the fish, you have to drag it all the way to the boat, and I was like, alright, I'll grab the fish, I have waves in my face, and then I get, it was kind of a big fish, it was a big, it was a good, um...
What I always tell people is that when you live in a big city, when I've never experienced that before, I've never felt that I was part of the ecosystem whatsoever.
Right.
And then all of a sudden I've been putting myself in the water when I'm surrounded by sharks or big fish or different things.
And I'm like, wow, we're actually not on top of the food chain at all.
There's a lot of stuff above us that can kill us.
And it's scary and it's humbling.
And I think as a person you have to experience that.
You have to put yourself out of your comfort zone to understand that you need to respect what's around you.
You cannot tell me 10 years ago, oh, you have to eat that fish because it's bad for DRM. And I'd be like, yeah, yeah, sure, buddy.
And then you see in a plane, you're like, ooh, that looks good and it's fine and this.
But then when you're in the water and you see what's going on and you see that a spot you've been diving for five years all of a sudden is empty, then it makes you understand that, you know, we actually have a very strong impact.
When you're, you know, first experiencing this your first time, in this feeling of connectedness and freedom and just being a part of the ecosystem, did you imagine that somehow or another this could be your life and your job?
I was reading somewhere where they were going to do an interview on you and they decided not to.
They were going to feature you in something, but they decided not to because of concerns for the depletion of fish in the ocean.
And I said, that is one of the dumbest fucking things I've ever heard because the impact of someone like you, what you're doing for your own personal consumption, taking a fish a day or whatever you're getting for your own personal consumption, Is negligible in comparison to all these people that are probably writing these articles that are going to buy sushi from commercial fishermen.
They're buying fish from the store that's wrapped in saran wrap.
They're completely out of touch.
You're in touch.
You're as in touch as you can get.
But to think that...
Somehow or another, you're doing something evil because you take photos of it and put it on your Instagram.
You had this amazing photo from a couple days ago with you, this big fish.
It was so fresh, and you guys were eating pieces of it.
It's a bullshit argument, but from their perspective, it's just about optics.
It's about how it looks.
That's all it is.
And if they go there, and people love to get outraged about something.
If they go there, and then they go to your Instagram and they find pictures of you with fish, they're like, well, this girl's cleaning out the ocean all by herself.
Jamie, see if you could pull off the horrific effects of commercial net fishing.
Because if you find a video, we could watch a clip of the video.
It's crazy when you see the sheer volume of fish that they pull out of the ocean and when you realize there's countless numbers of these boats and essentially pretty much unregulated.
And no one's watching them.
They're doing it all over the world.
I mean, there's areas where you're not allowed to fish.
But overall, it's nothing like the way we treat wild mammals or wild birds.
The way we treat wild mammals, especially in North America, is they're very closely monitored.
Their numbers, their populations.
We make sure that unless it's an invasive species like wild pigs, like, here we go.
This is...
This is awful.
They take this gigantic net, they circle all these fish, and then when they're pulling them in, you get to see the sheer volume.
Yeah, so basically we're the cheaters because we can see the fish.
And I'm like, how can you be in your camping chairs on your boat, drinking beers all day, telling me that I'm the cheater when I'm working my ass off, diving at like 60 feet to catch my fish?
To bring it back.
And I risked my life.
I risked my life drowning.
I risked my life with sharks.
I risked my life with all sorts of things that can happen.
And you're telling me, drinking your Budweiser in your freaking camping chair that I'm the cheater?
I mean, I guess that was a very successive thing to say because I'm seeing catch food, but I just don't see why a human being genetically would have to go underwater.
It's a very controversial theory, but the theory is that we evolved somehow or another.
Like, you know, dolphins apparently were at one point in time a land animal.
Is that right?
Were dolphins a land animal at one point in time?
I don't know if that's true.
I might have made that up.
But the idea was that humans were the only ape that grew up in close proximity to water to the point where we evolved in the water.
Dolphins may have remains of legs.
Yeah, okay.
Fossil Remains shows dolphins and whales were four-footed land animals about 50 million years ago and share the same common ancestors as hippos and deer.
Whoa.
Scientists believe that they later transitioned to an aquatic lifestyle and that their hind limbs disappeared.
Okay, so this is fairly recent.
If you think about evolutionary terms, you know, the dinosaurs were killed 65 million years ago.
So inside of that, 15 million years later, they were walking around.
Which is fucking nuts.
They were like hippos.
They think...
So Google the...
Whoa, look at what they used to look like.
What the fuck, man?
Google aquatic ape theory.
I don't know enough about this to really speak on it, but that has never stopped me in the past.
But this theory is one of the reasons why they think humans have so much fat on us when we're babies, is that we float easier, and that if you take a human baby and you chuck them in the water...
It purports that some humans, notably children under five, may also use this reflex to survive prolonged submersion.
The mammalian dive reflex theory was developed in 1960 as an explanation for well-publicized survival of exceptional submersion times of some near-drowning victims.
But see if there's anything, like an actual article, that makes sense on the aquatic ape theory.
Okay, the aquatic ape theory, now largely dismissed, tries to explain the origins of many humankind.
Unique traits popularized in the 1970s, 1980s by writer Elaine Morgan.
The theory suggests that early hominids lived in water at least part of the time.
This aquatic lifestyle...
Supposedly accounts for our hairless bodies, which made us more streamlined for swimming and diving, our upright two-legged walking, which made wading easier, and our layers of subcutaneous fat, which made us better insulated in water, think whale blubber.
The theory even links an aquatic existence to the extinction of human speech, evolution, rather, of human speech.
The hypothesis was met with much criticism, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
2009, Richard Rangham of Harvard University and colleagues suggested in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology that shallow aquatic habitats allowed hominids to thrive in savannas, enabling our ancestors to move from tropical forests to open grasslands.
So from 2.5 million to 1.4 million years ago, Africa became drier during certain seasons.
Already dry savannas became even more arid, making it difficult for hominids to find adequate food.
But Wrangham's team suggested that even in this inhospitable environment, there were oases, wetlands and lake shores.
And these aquatic habitats, water lilies, cat tails, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
The theory is that We, like, you know, obviously there's a bunch of different kinds of primates, and some of them are still in trees today, those fucking losers.
But then again, the second you merge your face in the water, you do like your first dive, and then you feel the pressure.
Your body understands that you're trying to hold your breath, and you need to do that.
So the blood is gonna start coming from your fingers, your extremities, your toes, and then your hands, your feet.
So all the vessels are gonna start constrict.
So all the blood flow is gonna go towards your vitals organs.
So your body is getting ready for it.
So they want to make sure that the oxygen goes exactly where it needs to be and make sure that you need as less effort to do anything as possible when you're actually underwater.
So I do mostly, especially when I'm in the water, I do a very short inhale, so about five seconds, and then I do a long inhale, maybe 10 to 15 seconds.
And then when you exhale, you're focusing on everything getting relaxed.
You use your tongue to control the air coming out.
And then when you do that, you get as relaxed as possible.
And then the more relaxed you are, that along with your mammal diving reflex, which is your heart being slowed down naturally, your blood shifting from extremities to your final organs.
And then you also have...
About a few years ago, maybe only 50 years ago, they taught that when you reach 30 meters, your body would be completely crushed inside.
That the pressure would be so great there that your body would be completely crushed.
But then again, with that dive reflex, what it does is that that overflow of blood is going around your alveolies and your lungs, which prevent them from crushing.
Your body is actually a design machine to go underwater.
And then we were there for about five weeks, five or six weeks, and then the living conditions were really bad.
And there was no grocery stores around, and we had to catch our own food, and it was really a self-sufficient type of trip.
And the first week, I remember, the only thing I could focus on was, oh god, this is terrible, we don't have a shower, there's no hot water, the bathroom is disgusting, I'm starving, there's nothing around, and then all you can think is how your comfort's gone.
And after a week, that's...
The focus changed on the good things that we're seeing around us.
And by having nothing all of a sudden, then I was like, oh, I actually now, for the first time in my life, can take the time to realize what's good around me.
And then how we were having fires with the neighbors and then how we were offering them fish and we were thinking, oh, you know, if I give this guy two fish, he's going to eat one today and then one tomorrow.
But no, they're inviting new neighbors to share and they make sure that there's like a whole community sense to all of it.
And I was like, wow, I've been living in London for six years.
I don't even know the name of my neighbor.
And it's bad.
It's not a way of living that I want.
It's not focusing on the right things and it's...
In that way, you know, it's realized how much of an asshole we actually became, and I just didn't want to do that.
I do believe that a human being, to be happy, you need to have this sense of community, which is why, you know, when you go on the subway and you see, like, somebody singing, everybody's laughing, and you see those videos on YouTube, and it makes you all warm and happy inside, it's because that's what we're meant to be, you know?
And we're meant to live with other people, we're meant to socialize, we're meant to have this...
This strong feeling of, I don't know how to say that in English, to be part of something, to be part of a group and people like that.
And I do think it's a necessity for human beings to be actually happy.
I think so too, and I think it's probably one of the reasons why so many people are so grossly unhappy and so depressed and so disconnected and they feel alienated even though they live in these giant cities.
People feel extremely lonely, even though there's a lot of people around.
I mean, one of the weirder things about New York City, you know, I have friends who live in New York City and one of the things they say they love is how many people are there.
There's all this energy.
There's all this energy.
I'm like, yeah, but you're not even talking to those people.
That's what's weird.
It's like you're alienated in this little 1,200 foot little cubicle that you live in.
You know, this little, I guess 1,200 foot's not that small.
But, you know, some of them, like Ari's place is like, I have to ask him.
But the idea is that you don't know anybody around you, but you're stacked around all these people and then you go out you're walking around these people, but you're not really talking to them and you have a few people that your friends with maybe that you work with and you interact with them, but then you're constantly surrounded by all these other people that you don't even know.
It's a very weird weird way to live.
Whereas The way you were living, the way you were describing this with these people and they're all sharing fish and everyone's taking care of everybody and giving some to their neighbors and sharing.
That's how people have been living forever.
I think there's certain human reward systems that are built into who we are as a being, as a species, that just aren't being met.
And that's why I'm so fascinated by your choice to go from being a lawyer to living this very interesting life of spearfishing.
Meanwhile, when they cross, they're allowed, I think it's about when you're two miles away from the coast, you're allowed to dump your garbage in the ocean.
There's an interesting place in Seattle where you can go and watch the salmon swim upriver.
There's like a bridge and you go underneath the bridge and they have this setup where there's thick glass walls where you can actually look into the ocean and watch the salmon go up the salmon ladder.
It's really fascinating.
It's crazy to watch them.
But one of the guys who was there who was a guide was explaining how How when they were doing construction and doing various things and they're building Seattle, they'd shut down one of the rivers and these salmon would just get to the mouth of the river where they thought they were supposed to go and fucking die.
And it was crazy.
Like millions of them died while they were trying to figure out a way to carve this path again.
But again, you know, the Wall Street Journal and their Instagram page when they're promoting a recipe for shrimp that are probably coming from Thailand or salmon that is farmed and very bad for the environment.
But then they think that, I don't know, there's something ridiculously taboo about catching food.
It's ridiculous.
And people...
Imagine...
I know how hunting has a bad reputation because of the blood and things like that.
But in fishing, we deal on top of it with a bunch of lobbyists that are fighting us for the fish at the same time.
There's like a trend now for people who catch their own food and people are starting slowly because there's so many of big people, special celebrities.
They're spearfishing?
No, they're voicing themselves when it comes to food sourcing and now people are starting to realize that hunting or spearfishing is actually not as bad.
And the young is really the one that you don't trust.
The big old sharks, you know, they're wiser.
They know.
They check you out and things like that.
But the young ones, they want it a little bit crazy.
So they're going to go more towards you and they're going to go try to do, like, curious bites, which is what happens most of the time with shark bites.
It's a curious bite.
And so the shark is in front of me and he's charging me with his mouth open.
So with my gun, I'm poking it.
I'm poking the eyes.
I'm poking the gills.
I'm poking the nose.
I'm trying to poke everything that's going to hurt him as much as I can.
And I'm not very strong, especially in the water.
So I'm really trying to bang this freaking gun as hard as I could in his face.
And he doesn't back down.
He keeps circling and he keeps coming in for me.
And at some point I'm like, okay, like something – I'm going to have to shoot it hoping that I'm not going to miss because if I miss, then it's the only thing between me and the shark.
Yeah, so it became, instead of it being something that was just another fish, then it became something that's protected and people with a very shallow understanding of what a shark is were freaking out about it.
Because the seal population became really high, and then because, you know, the great white shark population takes more time to grow, now we're at a stage where there's shit tons of lionfish, and now there's a lot of great whites too.
We're saying when a surfer gets bitten by a shark, they're like, oh, it's his fault, it was in his territory, like, you shouldn't have, like, done anything to the shark.
I'm like, put your mother in that cage with that gorilla.
It's just we've made them into movie characters and TV show characters and people have this idea of what they are based on Just this sort of image that gets portrayed in the public and we accept this narrative.
And I think that's happening right now with sharks.
You know, no one wants sharks to go extinct.
I think sharks are awesome.
They're cool.
But they're also edible.
And if there's a lot of them, I've seen people catch mako sharks.
Off of the coast of California and and cut them up and make shark steaks up and eat them and it used to be normal No one cared until I feel like within the last decade Something happened in the last decade that people became incredibly outraged when someone kills a shark I Actually think that people became outraged when you kill anything But they're so hypocritical because they're killing things left and right with their pocketbook.
They just don't know it.
They're killing things with their credit card.
They're killing things with cash.
If you buy fish in the store, you're killing fish.
I don't care if you like to think you're not.
You are.
You're supporting the fish industry.
You're supporting the killing of these animals.
You're eating them.
It's a direct connection.
You're paying a supermarket hitman to go out and do the work for you.
There's a Whole Foods that's about two miles up this way.
And then if we go down the street, there's another one.
There's a Sprouts.
They have a fish section.
Then we go a little bit further down, there's a Gelson's.
They have a big fish section.
There's just fish all over the place.
But the ocean's pretty fucking far from here.
I mean, you have to drive to get to the ocean, you know, and they're not going to the ocean and pulling these fish out themselves.
It's all coming from a giant commercial boat that distributes it all throughout Southern California, all throughout Northern California, all throughout.
Then you get into the middle of the country.
That's where it gets really crazy.
If you're buying halibut and you're in South Dakota, where the fuck is that coming from?
And in our lifetime, the population has decreased radically.
And there's no better example than that than the Tokyo fish markets.
You know, the Tokyo fish markets, you interview those guys, and they talk about what it used to be like when they just, the amount of tuna that they used to deal with, and the amount they deal with now, it's a significant dip.
And this is within 40 years.
What is it going to be like 40 years from now?
And the estimates are that it's going to be a radical decrease in the population of almost all fish.
If we would put regulations on everybody's fish, it's like, okay, look everybody, I know you want your salmon, but it's going to be close of January to May.
I know you want your halibut, but you can't eat it this year.
We'll eat it next year.
If we would be willing to live with just...
I mean, I think people would survive it, that's for sure, because I don't think people would get used to pretty much anything.
But then the industry is worth so much money that they're not willing to do that.
It's not just the industry is worth so much money, it's that there's certain people in certain countries in particular where that is all they have.
I mean, there's certain people out there where they they're dependent upon the ocean and its bounty for their survival.
And if they can't sell fish and they can't buy fish, and we're talking about individual fisher people that have boats and, you know, are doing it on their own small scale commercial fishermen.
Those aren't a problem, though, like the small family commercial fishing boat.
They're not the problem.
I mean, when you see those guys bring in, you know, like the guy in the video earlier, yeah, he's catching a big net, he's catching quite a bit of fish.
The reality of things are ships, foreign ships, raiding the entire ocean with nets that are like kilometers long.
Well, again, the U.S. is trying to regulate that, and they actually made efforts that proved to increase the amount of fish, so it's good.
They're actually working in the right direction.
But the problem is that still to this day, I'm not sure exactly how many Nautical Mali have to be, but a Russian or a Chinese foreigner trawler is allowed to fish from the coast of the United States.
You know, this same exact problem was going on in the United States in the 1800s.
Market hunting is what they were calling it, where they devastated all the wildlife in North America.
The buffalo population was almost brought to extinction levels.
Really close.
There's still some wild herds that exist in Mexico, and there were some of them that exist in the United States, and now they brought them back.
But to this day, the majority of buffalo that live in North America are all on private land, the majority of them.
But at one point in time, there's millions and millions of them all throughout the country.
Elk, they've only been...
Repopulated to a small percentage of their original range.
I think it's something like 30%.
There's some animals that have thrived like white-tailed deer because they live primarily in farmlands and farmlands have gotten so huge that they were essentially like farm animals now.
It's very strange.
Like when you think of white-tailed deer, the places where they're the most popular...
Yeah, caribou are these migrating deer that live in Canada primarily and in Alaska.
And they migrate for hundreds and hundreds of miles in these massive herds.
They're very different in that, you know, unlike deer, you'll see them, like hundreds of them, moving together in one group, in one line across the tundra.
But these animals that were in North America, not Alaska, but the lower 48, they were wiped out almost to nothing.
Antelope, deer, elk, buffalo, they were almost all wiped out by market hunting because this is back when we didn't have refrigerators.
So people would shoot these things and bring them to market and people would go to market and buy that meat and they would bring it in on trucks.
I mean, I guess they just have blocks of ice and these trains and trucks and they would bring in this meat and they killed almost everything.
In a short amount of time, like less than 100 years, there was almost nothing left.
And then they instituted these laws where it was illegal to sell wild game.
So if you buy elk, like say in this country, if you buy elk meat, you're buying it from New Zealand.
I think you can sell commercially raised deer and elk in America, but if you go to a restaurant, most of what you're getting, you're actually getting from New Zealand.
Like say if you went to the woods and you went and shot an elk like that one up there and you tried to sell, it's illegal to sell.
You can't sell that meat.
It's not a marketable product.
It's something that has to, you have to have a tag for it, you have to pay for the tag, and then it has to be for your own personal consumption or you can give it away to your friends, but you can't sell it.
It was the only way to bring these populations back.
And then they had to enforce these very strict conservation efforts.
And then here's the big one.
I think it's called the Pickman-Robertson app.
Whatever the Pickman-Robertson, is that it is?
That's the name of it?
What it is, is it takes 10% of all of the proceeds from hunting supplies and gear and puts it to wildlife conservation, which is an enormous amount of money, billions and billions of dollars.
So it goes to preserve habitat and wetlands.
It goes to reintroduce species into places where they had been decimated, like elk are now in viable numbers in places where they were completely extinct, like in Virginia, and I think Tennessee has them now as well.
Kentucky, I know, has them.
Pennsylvania has them.
And at one point in time, there was none there, like up until, you know, just a few decades ago.
The United States is like, it's on land, it's controllable, it's within the boundaries of this one country.
The control is accepted.
When you're talking about the ocean, It would be really difficult to get other countries to agree to that kind of strict management that brought back wildlife in North America to do that to the ocean.
But if they did do that to the ocean, maybe everything could bounce back.
I mean, a few states, Florida is definitely one of them, where they're looking very closely to what's going on, and then they have close seasons and things like that.
And it actually makes a really nice and big difference.
But again, I think the problem is not coming from that.
The problem is coming from, again, like deep trawling and commercial, foreign commercial fishing.
Also, I mean, the biggest problem with commercial fishing is I went to...
I actually went to Taiwan last year, and I was helping them finding government and giving them a proposal on how they can change the law to make the fisheries better.
And they explained it to me, like, they have those ships, and they hired people from the Philippines or from Indonesia, and then they put them on a ship for six months.
They take their passport, and they're getting paid like...
When I've been traveling, there's some places where I've been, and the third time or fourth time I was coming back, I could see there was even less and less fish.
Yeah, Anthony Dordain did something in Italy, and there were so little fish that they were actually throwing frozen fish into the water, like frozen octopus into the water, and they wanted him to pretend to catch these frozen octopus.
Instead, he made a mockery of it and showed the guy throwing the frozen fish into the water, frozen octopus into the water.
So they told me that they have a sustainable farm, so I'm going to visit it.
I'm going to see it.
You just have to be really careful because, again, if they leak into the ocean, then it contaminates other fish, and then if some of them escape, it creates problems.
We did a podcast recently about CWD. Quantic Wasting Disease is a disease that's spreading amongst deer in this country.
And they think a lot of it is coming, or some of it at least, is coming from deer farms.
They have these deer farms, and all these animals are eating off the same food, then they escape, and then they spread it, and then there's an incubation period.
I mean, it exists in the wild, and it exists in deer farms, so it's very complicated.
Actually, my lake, when my parents have a country house, they do that too and it works.
The only problem I would see with that for like an ocean fish would be, I'm thinking because they never had predators in captivity, that that may be, it might have a survival problem after that.
So a person like you, although what you're doing is if you explain it and you look at it objectively, it's very rational.
But they're not trying to be rational.
What they're trying to do is avoid any conflict.
Like, there was a guy...
Who is a NASCAR driver, okay?
And he lost a sponsor recently for some racist stuff that his father said 30 years ago.
This is how crazy people are getting.
30 years ago, his father used a racial slur.
And because of that, this guy, who wasn't even alive when this happened, or maybe he was alive, maybe he was seven years old or some shit, He lost a sponsor.
I mean, it's one of the Companies are such cowards like they're so terrified because of social media because people are so willing to protest and There's a bunch of fuckheads out there that just get a thrill off of getting people fired and of getting things canceled and of like Exercising action and seeing a result all they're doing is pushing buttons It's not that they've thought about this and like hey is this guy really responsible should we really?
Blame him for something his father did 30 years ago.
That's ridiculous.
What we should do is nothing.
Just let it go.
I mean, unless this guy is like some sort of white supremacist or some racist himself, and he's not.
We should just do nothing, but that's not that doesn't that's not fun.
What's fun is Getting a rush a power trip out of action Like clearly there should like if you find a real racist something someone who's doing something actively to harm other people Simply based on their ethnic origin or the color of their skin.
Yeah, that's terrible You should talk out about that.
That should be eliminated from our society real real racism But that's not what this is.
What this is is people deciding that they're going to take action and then NASCAR being a pussy about it or this company being a pussy about it.
And that's the same thing that's happening with you.
This is not a rational decision.
They should look at it and go, wow, what an interesting way to get your fish.
How many of these people that made this decision actually eat fish?
So with the Wall Street Journal or the Washington Post or whatever paper it is, what they're worried about, they're worried that someone's going to come along and say, the Wall Street Journal supports...
And Starbucks had this whole thing about, you know, a big sign about how, you know, we're doing our part for the environment, we're eliminating straws, and then on the tweet it said, okay, so you're just putting plastic lids on your coffee cups?
Yeah, and what happens with them?
And then Starbucks, it said, oh, dot, dot, dot.
I'm like, Like, you're not fucking, you're not fixing shit just because you get rid of the straws.
You got plastic lids everywhere you go.
Those goddamn Starbucks lids are littered on the street.
They're everywhere.
unidentified
But this is a perfect example because it shows exactly this.
I think it's the way that people are handling the fact that they're being told that everything is wrong, that they're trying to be like, no, I made my effort.
I made a Facebook post this morning saying that I wasn't getting straw, so I'm green.
That there's a new invention that they use for water runoff before it goes into the ocean.
It's this giant net that catches all these plastic particles.
Was that on your Instagram page?
No.
It's really interesting.
Someone has invented this cover that's like a filter that as the water's going through, it catches all the stuff that would ordinarily be washed out to sea.
And so it basically, over these storm drainage pipes, these enormous pipes, is this huge net.
So the water can still go through it, but it just shows you this insane amount of water.
Debris and garbage that would have ordinarily just been washed out to sea, and they're catching it in these nets.
It's not everything, but it's a start.
It's not going to make up for the fucking cruise ship that's dumping things just right offshore.
I'm 31. So this is an age where people are like, oh Jesus, you're in your 30s, you should have your shit together by now.
That's what a lot of people think.
You're in that area where you should have your career in order, you should think about settling down, having a family, you should start your 401k, and you should have all this stuff in line, and you're out there...
I'm just saying that in the path from graduating high school to going to college to becoming a person that's 31 years old, I mean, a lot of people compare themselves In a very sort of foolish way, they compare themselves with other people like how much stuff have these people accumulated?
When I was seven years old, I look at my mom and I said, you know, mom, when I grow up, I'd rather have a job that I don't like when I make a shit ton of money than a job I love when I make nothing.
I'm figuring out what's important for me and what my real values are.
And I don't think you can discover the person you really are by staying in your 9 to 5, by not knowing anything and being unhappy and not being able to go outside of your comfort zone.
You have kids, you have this and that, but it's people that tell me like, oh, you're so courageous to have done that.
Or, oh, I envy your life so much.
I'm like, well, when I first quit my job, I lived in my freaking car for a while because I didn't have a place to stay and neither no money to sustain myself.
But logic is not how most people live their lives.
What you're saying is like you're...
It's romantic.
Like you're saying I want to live my life with passion and I want to follow my interests and I don't mind living in my car and showering at the beach.
I don't mind.
I'm fine with that.
Most people are not fine with that.
Most people would be insecure and they would be scared of the future and they would want some sort of stability and that's what's courageous about your decision because One of the things that, like, I was talking to people about you before I did this podcast, and the question from everybody is like, how does she make a living?
I'm like, I don't know.
I'm not sure.
I'm like, I guess she's this professional spearfisher person.
I go, but I don't know how you make money doing that.
I'm like, maybe you guide people, take people out.
And I'm sure, look, people love a story about someone who's following their passion because there's so many people out there that really desperately want to do that.
They just don't know how to do it or how to get the courage to do it.
Or they get stuck with a mortgage or maybe they have a family and responsibilities or maybe they have loved ones that are taken care of and they can't.
And so when they hear about someone who's going for it, Either they're jealous of you and they hate on it and they say, that's stupid, that girl's a fool, blah, blah, blah.
Or they go, God, I wish I could do that.
Those are the two, depending upon the mindset of the person that's watching you, that's going to be their reaction.
I know it seems like it, like I'm free-spirited and I travel around, but I'm still a very ambitious person and I do want to achieve things that are going to make me proud.
It's not always, you know, it's not...
I didn't quit everything to become a hippie and live on the beach and wear no shoes the rest of my life.
No, I just, I quit my job to live and build my life and my career the way I wanted to and in a way that was making me proud and happy.
No, even like in this life, you know, especially when, you know, filming a documentary in Africa or in different places.
Well, you know, you have no food and you, like, have a table with people and we're sharing, like, a can of tuna between four people and you're like, like, yeah, let's share.
I'm happy to share.
And you're just like, I just want to, like, push in the ground and run away with a can of tuna.
You know, another hard thing would be if you tried to relay your experiences on a television show, it would be edited down to, even if it's a one-hour show, with commercials, it becomes 44 minutes.
And you're just not going to be able to get all that.
be a real reality show but the reality of reality shows is most of them are at least planned out if they're not scripted totally and you can tell you know you could tell when people like well we got to fix this gas pump we're not gonna get this boat started you know it's such bad actors you You see it in their face.
I also think what you're trying to do is relay your passion for something.
I've struggled with that with bow hunting because I've done some things on camera.
I did a film last year for Under Armour where we went elk hunting.
But part of me is like...
Not everything should just be broadcast.
Not everything should be filmed.
Sometimes life should just be experienced.
Especially for someone like me who's...
I think I'm overexposed in the first place.
I would be better off doing less things publicly.
So that's one that I've decided to do less of publicly.
But part of me wants people to know...
That there's a satisfaction to, like bow hunting in particular, is very, very difficult.
It's very hard to do.
It takes intense practice.
It takes a lot of physical exercise.
You have to be able to run up the hills.
You have to have endurance because you're climbing through the mountains all the time.
And then it's hard to do.
It's hard to find the animals.
It's hard to get close enough to shoot one.
You have to be able to execute when the moment is there.
It's very difficult to shoot an animal with a bow and arrow, especially long distance.
I mean, you have to have an extreme amount of proficiency before you can ever pull that off under high-stress situations.
So part of me wants to relay that there's a misconception about what people see.
When they think of hunting, they think of cruelty, and they think of someone who doesn't respect nature, and they think of this...
Abusive relationship that humans have with animals instead of the way I look at it Which is you have this deep understanding of the food chain and this food chain exists whether you're there or not this food chain exists with Bears and wolves and mountain lions and deer and elk and all these animals are struggling for survival and all you do is Is interject.
You step in for a little bit and you take your part in the food chain and in turn you also give out all this money that goes to conservation.
This money that goes to conservation ensures that this opportunity be there for other hunters in the future and ensures that the populations of these animals will stay healthy and it ensures that they'll be monitored By the proper fish and game and wildlife biologists and all these different people that are going to ensure that this environment and this experience is preserved.
And the wild habitat that these animals enjoy will be preserved.
And for people, it's very conflicting.
For people, it seems almost hypocritical that you could say that you love these animals, but you also want to eat them.
Yeah, but that's that's not what's what's what's what's the hybrid thing to do is to say that you love them and then buy them for grocery store not caring how they got there.
I got a bunch of vegans following me now because I took the time to respond to their concerns and now they actually got it.
But how can we make improvements when you have on one side an angry bunch of people that all they want to do is scream scandal or everything they see and then on the other side the people that matter that have a strong voice are scared to talk about everything because they're scared of that first group.
And then by doing that we're doing nothing.
I've been toning down a lot on my Instagram.
I stopped posting fish with blood on it or things like that because people just don't want to see it.
And I don't have a choice to do that because, again...
And fish, you have to do it straight away, almost in the water, if there's not too many sharks around, because the blood coagulates very, very, very quickly.
Yeah, because when you fill it, you cut it on the side, and then when you flip it, there's just blood everywhere, and then it's tainting to me, and then it creates a taste that is not that good.
And I think that's one of the reasons why they soak fish in milk.
It changes the flavor, because I think, if I remember this correctly, there's enzymes in milk that destroy the harmful bacteria that causes fish to taste fishy.
And I think they said that this works also with meat and with chicken.
That there's a certain smell to chicken in particular that when you get it, like it might smell a little funky.
What that is is this certain bacteria that's on the surface of the skin.
And then if you soak it in milk, see if you can find that.
And then we managed to, the Coast Guard came and they tried to tow the boat and they started telling the Coast Guard to like, go screw themselves because, because I don't want to pay for this, you're a bunch of assholes.
So basically what happens is that you dive down and then When you come to the surface, if you stay too long, your lungs on your way to the surface are going to expand back.
And then your residual volume of air that you have left in your lungs becomes really, really small.
So then the percentage becomes too low and then you pass out.
But then that's what happens with people is that when it comes back up, if your buddy is not watching you, and that's why spin fishing is a team sport, if they're not watching you, if you pass out in the water...
The guy that was diving with me lost his brother a few years before to a blackout, so he was looking at me very, very closely, and I was beyond grateful to see his face at the surface.
You have to take the mask off, you have to keep the head off the water, and then you have to blow on the ice because you have a high concentration of nerves, you slap a little bit, not too hard.
Call the person's name, and then you normally wake up pretty fast, unless you inhale water.
It operates on your opiate receptors in some sort of strange way, which is one of the reasons why they're making the argument that it should be illegal, but if...
Any opiate is legal.
It should be that one.
Because it helps people tremendously with addiction, tremendously with pain.
It doesn't seem to be toxic to the point where it can kill you.
Or it's very, very rare that it does.
It seems to operate in a completely different way than any other opiate.
And like I said, even though I was definitely high, like I was definitely under the influence of something, nobody, I don't think anybody knew.
I mean, I could have conversations with people, but in the back of my head, I was like, I'm so high!
But I'm talking to people and it was all totally normal.
I wasn't driving, but if I was driving, I think I'd be fine.
I was fine walking.
I think I even worked out.
Oh, really?
Yeah, it just operates in a very different way.
I've had my knee operation.
I had one of my knee operations.
They gave me a morphine button when I was in the hospital.
They said, if you want morphine, just press that button and it'll give you some morphine.
I just fucking hate that thing.
Because once you get high off the morphine, you're in the hospital, you're like, this is great!
Keep pressing the button, and the pain of the knee is...
Also, my knee was on this motion machine.
Right after the surgery was done, they put me on this machine that extends and contracts your knee, brings it back and forth, and that's not comfortable.
I'm definitely not regretting any second of it, so I'm happy I did that.
Thank you so much for having me here, and it's crazy how you came up.
I was asking a friend of mine for a podcast to listen, and he talked to me about yours.
I was sitting at a beach in the Bahamas, and my friend Arunas that went to law school with me was like, oh, you should listen to this Royal Oregon podcast.
It's awesome.
I look you up on Instagram, and I saw you were following me.