Don't Go Sea Treking, Go SeaTrekking!

Introducing the exciting sport of queuing underwater

We had never heard of Sea Trekking and when we did, what came to mind was a picture of fat tourists, large surface-supplied helmets framing their terrified faces, groping their way along a submerged guideline.

This, they would undoubtedly have been told when they parted with their hard-earned cash, would be an undersea adventure like no other. It’ll be like you’re Captain Nemo undertaking a fantasy walk beneath the waves just like in the Jules Verne classic. Sea Treking requires no swimming ability, no previous experience or specialised skills. Just descend into the water, travel along the pre-set route and enjoy the “once-in-a-lifetime adventure” of being surrounded by marine life of all shapes and sizes. Yawn!

Of course, more often than not, the helmet-encased tourists stir up so much sand and sediment as they haul themselves across the seabed that the fantasy adventure soon turns into a hellish walk where the only thing visible through the murk is the odd wrasse flitting between the clouds of silt and bubbles. And not all the bubbles come from the same ends….

We cannot think of a more horrendous way to spend thirty minutes of our life than to be herded like cattle across the sea floor, our heads enclosed in a cyberman’s helmet, trying to avoid looking at the wobbling backside of the flatulent Homer Simpson look-alike in front. It’s not a Jules Vernesque adventure, it’s hell in high water and the very thought brings shivers to our collective spine.

Coasteering

Fortunately however there is another form of Sea Trekking, one that is much more to our taste. Back in 2005, so the story goes, a group of youngish people who enjoyed hiking decided that walking around the coast was fun but what would be much more fun is if they added the sea to their hiking trails. Ah, you might exclaim, they’ve discovered Coasteering. That sport where you hike around the coastal fringes leaping in and out of the sea etc. Err… Well… Yes and no. SeaTrekking combines hiking, snorkelling and freediving and although it shares some similarities with Coasteering it has several significant differences one of which is that unlike Coasteering, the SeaTrekker doesn’t see the water as an obstacle to be navigated, rather it is a part of a journey that should be enjoyed. SeaTrekking is about traversing coastal areas, travelling above, in and below the water as much as travelling on land. SeaTrekkers spend days, even weeks exploring the coast carrying everything they need with them and at night they camp beneath the stars on secluded beaches and coves. Some of you might consider such an activity as rather romantic, an escape from the rat-race, exploring the shores less travelled and spending long evenings starring up at bejewelled skies. Others however, might be thinking that it sounds like hippy nonsense. The sort of stuff that pot-smoking wasters, who still wear tie-dyed t-shirts and refuse to wash their hair, dribble on about. In truth, both points of view are valid.

SeaTrekkers with kit

SeaTrekking is the brainchild of one Bernard Wache, whom it is fair to say, does have an air of hippydom about him. “We wanted to escape everyday life,” Wache explained to National Geographic Magazine, “We were looking for a way to feel what’s essential again.” However don’t think for one minute that he is just another airhead trying to “find himself”. For one thing, Wache is German, not the most airy-fairy of races we’re sure you’ll agree and for another he is a Designer and diver who has put some considerable effort into finding a way that the SeaTrekker can take their tent, cooking gear and spare underwear with them into the water without ending up with pile of smelly damp stuff at the end of each day. The first example of what would become a lifelong obsession to design watertight gear for the sport was a simple garbage bag that he tied around a sleeping bag and then to his foot. After that, he couldn’t let go of the idea of diving with camping gear. “I always wanted more time in the ocean,” the veteran snorkkeler and freediver explains, “going the most direct, puristic way I could imagine, without technology, boat, or backup.”

For a decade, he tinkered with ideas for how to keep his gear dry, sewing and gluing prototypes by hand in his basement. Finally in 2011, he contracted a company in Munich that make aluminum molds, and started commercial production. “Some people make a house, or a family,” Wache says. “I made a rucksack.” His new company Aetem, (which is similar to Atem the German word for "breath”) has plans to make new versions of the original waterproof rucksack, that will be better and cheaper.

Although still relatively new, SeaTrekking is gaining popularity as a sport and a dedicated community of intrepid adventurers is cropping up in Europe, Japan and beyond. Wache’s company Aetem, also offers tailored tours along coastlines not normally accessible by foot. Thailand, Croatia and Sardinia are just a few of the locations that can be visited.  

Oh the sense of freedom you get from packing stuff

SeaTrekking, with its adventurous spirit of exploration, love of nature and romantic notions of getting-away-from-it-all sounds marvellous but we do have a few issues. For instance the current waterproof bag, on offer on Aetem’s website, retails at over 900 Euros. That’s not cheap and even if the newer versions come in at half that price, that won’t be cheap either. Secondly there is that entire hippy, Gaia loving, anti-materialism stuff that fills the Aetem and SeaTrekking community website. In fairness there is nothing wrong with wanting to get back to nature, but it does sound a bit hypocritical if the way you go about “escaping everyday life” is to manufacture and sell a very expensive product and then move into the world of commercial tour guiding. Selling stuff seems a strange way of escaping materialism. These are minor issues however, born from too many beers and, in all honesty, a little bit of jealousy. You see, what Wache calls SeaTrekking, is very similar to what we’ve been doing for years (except we call it extreme snorkelling), we just didn’t think to try and make money out of it. But then nor did we realise that we needed to take a great big waterproof backpack filled with camping gear with us when we go for a days snorkelling, as we tend to have a 4x4 waiting for us at journey’s end. We like to call this: planning ahead. Then again, running a adventure tour company or designing a waterproof rucksack seems like a lot work to us and we’d rather be snorkelling. 

Nitpicking and jealousy aside, we think SeaTrekking is not a bad way of spending some free-time and if you are of bold spirit and are a good swimmer we’d recommend you give it a go because as once-in-a-lifetime underwater adventures go, SeaTrekking kicks the proverbial brown stuff out of Sea Treking.

By the way we have joined the SeaTrekking community, we don’t know why but it seemed like a good idea at the time. We may however be posting some stuff on their website so why not have a look around now and again. 

Rob Stewart’s Rebreather Ninja In The Dock

On a cold February night, in an unremarkable London pub an argument broke out. The argument was long, heated and at times rather abusive. One bloke, called Bob, even walked out saying he just couldn’t reason with the others. He hasn’t been seen since. So what was the argument about? Well it was about the sad death of Rob Stewart, he of Sharkwater fame. There were seemingly so many questions surrounding the events leading up to his death.

Why did Rob undertake a third deep dive of the day using a rebreather when he was relatively inexperienced with rebreathers and had never made such deep dives before? Why was the instructor the first out of the water rather than Rob (the student)? How did no one notice when Rob sunk below the surface again and “disappeared”? Why did it take so long to find his body considering it was eventually found 300 metres from his last known location? The questions just kept on coming and because no one had any answers everyone was forced to speculate and speculation leads to people called Bob making rude gestures and walking out.

Now it seems that those questions and many more might just get answered. The family of Rob Stewart have filed a lawsuit against Horizon Diving Adventures of Key Largo, Florida, Add Helium of Fort Lauderdale, Florida and a certain Peter Sotis who ran Add Helium. You may be familiar with the story of Rob Stewart’s final dive but in case you are not here’s a quick recap. Just before Christmas 2016 Rob Stewart posted on Facebook that he was “looking for a rebreather ninja mid-January in Florida for some 300ft dives to film for Sharkwater 2… Let me know if you’re interested and super-capable”

There is something troubling about the word “ninja” to us. Perhaps nowadays “ninja” means some technical wizard or superhuman that work wonders but to us a ninja is a shadowy Japanese assassin who didn’t like attacking people head on but instead preferred to attack when they were most vulnerable – when they were eating, asleep or on the toilet. 

Whatever Rob Stewart meant by the term, the ninja he got was Peter Sotis, owner and training director of Add Helium. Rob must already have known Peter, as he trained on Rebreathers at Add Helium back in August that year. Add Helium claims to have educated “more rebreather divers, instructors and instructor trainers than anyone else… Period” Peter Sotis allegedly regards himself as a leader in rebreather diving if not the leader and says his team “consistently pushes the limits as they explore deep walls in excess of 600ft” It could be argued that Peter was definitely pushing the limits on the day in question. Peter and Rob had already made two (hopefully planned) dives on the Queen Nassau, that lies in over 200ft of water off the Florida Keys. where Rob hoped to film the endangered Sawfish. The third dive however, seems to have been unplanned as it is alleged that the only reason that dive was undertaken was to re-cover a $15 grappling hook which had been placed on the wreck and was attached to a surface buoy that marked the location of the dive site. It was on this dive that Peter and Rob encountered difficulties. Accounts say that on surfacing Peter Sotis (the instructor remember) was first to board the boat, promptly collapsed and required urgent oxygen therapy. It was whilst everyone was attending to the instructor that the student, Rob Stewart, slipped back beneath the waves and sank to his untimely death. Three days later, following a search that encompassed miles upon miles of ocean, Rob’s body was finally located a mere 300 metres from where he had originally surfaced.

At the time, very few people knew much about Peter Sotis and it is possible that if Rob had known a little more about his “rebreather ninja” he wouldn’t have been that eager to push the limits with him. For Peter Sotis seems to have a rather murky past. He is, for one thing, a convicted armed robber and is under investigation by the U.S. Dept of Commerce for selling Chinese made Scuba Cylinders with faked CE certificates. Perhaps worse still, Peter Sotis is under investigation by the FBI and U.S. Dept for Homeland Security for allegedly selling military spec rebreathers to Libyan Militants despite being advised not to by U.S. Authorities. There is conflicting information regarding whether the equipment in question really was military grade or whether the Libyans were terrorists but Peter’s own business partner, Shawn Robotka, also filed a lawsuit against him alleging that the sale was illegal, contravened U.S. arms embargoes and that Peter Sotis went ahead with the sale despite knowing that it was in fact, unlawful and that the buyer was a known militant in the region. Reports also say that a disgruntled shareholder has pulled his money from the Add Helium bank account forcing the company's closure. Peter Sotis and several other directors of Add Helium have now filed for bankruptcy. Which suggests that there will be little left to pay the Stewart Family should the court find in their favour. But then that is beside the point. As the Stewart family have made clear, this is not about compensation, it’s about safety.

Rob Stewart's death was clearly preventable and by being so it is all the more tragic. But perhaps there is a silver lining in the cloud. Rob Stewart wasn’t just another tourist that nobody had ever heard of. He was an accomplished SCUBA diver, photographer and world famous documentary maker. And it is that fame that will bring the ensuing court case to attention of the world.

There are going to be a lot of people squirming uncomfortably in chairs soon and not all of those will be facing the lawyers in court. As the case unfolds a great many questions are going to be asked about the diving industry itself; about rebreathers, their use by sport divers and the whole training, licensing and regulation of those who claim to be diving instructors or even diving ninjas.  For years we have been saying that there are far too many idiots in the diving industry, far too many charlatans and far too many self-appointed experts who want to push the limits. And for years people like Peter Sotis keep proving our point and yet the idiots still prosper and the deaths continue to rack up. Rob Stewart, one of the worlds greatest advocates for sharks, has become one more name on the diving worlds long list of needless deaths. How much longer will it be before the diving industry realises it has a bloody big problem?

Links: 

Lawsuit story; watch the videos to see the Stewart family Lawyer outline the case

Stewart Lawsuit

Shawn Robotka Lawsuit