A Deep Sense of Presence: Kinga Philipps on her Spiritual Connection to the Sea and Passion for Freediving

Jason Elias: 0:08

Hi and welcome to the Big Deep podcast. Big Deep is a podcast about people who have a connection to the ocean, people for whom that connection is so strong it defines some aspect of their life. Over the course of this series we'll talk to all sorts of people. In each episode we'll explore the deeper meaning of that connection. Today I speak with a TV correspondent and journalist whose passion for exploration is driven by a deeper spiritual connection to the ocean. Hello, this is your host, jason Elias. Welcome to the Big Deep podcast. In today's episode I speak with explorer, ocean activist and television journalist, Kinga Philipps. Kinga Philipps Freediving Kinga was one of the founding journalists and hosts of Al Gore's current TV and since then she has gone on to host several shows on both National Geographic and Travel Channel, most recently becoming the first female host on Discovery Channel's Shark Week. But the reason I was interested in talking to Kinga is her high profile. Roles on television have always been in service of her deeper passions for ocean advocacy. This has led to her becoming a fellow at the prestigious explorers club and becoming a board member of the non-profit Shark Allies, which works on the protection and conservation of sharks and rays and is dedicated to changing the public perception of sharks. Kinga is also an avid freediver and she spoke about how she first discovered her passion for the ocean on the shores of the Baltic Sea, discussed what she found to be the more spiritual aspects of being in the water and described a profound moment with her sister swimming alongside a whale shark off the coast of central Mexico.

Kinga Philipps: 1:51

My name is Kinga Phillips and I have worked in television, specifically documentary and unscripted, for the last 22 years, with a big focus on ocean conservation and sharks.

Jason Elias: 2:05

Can you talk a bit about where you grew up and when you first remember your connection to the ocean?

Kinga Philipps: 2:11

I was born in Warsaw, poland, and my parents were both nature lovers. My dad was a geologist, trekked all over Europe, my mom was a Polish pharmacist, so emphasis on botany. And they loved being outdoors and we particularly always gravitated towards the ocean, and the ocean there in Poland is the Baltic Sea, so we would go and we would gather, amber and just walk for hours and hours and hours, and I loved it so much. My family moved from Poland to Bartlesville, oklahoma, in 1981. And we didn't have a lot of money so we didn't really fly anywhere. We didn't have vacations to tropical destinations. So our big trip every year over spring break with Florida, we would get in our big blue van and we would go trip to Florida from Oklahoma, stopping at AOA campgrounds, and in hindsight that was the best way to grow up. When we got there I fell in love with this warm, crystal clear, briny water that I just found to be the most magnificent thing in the world. I think two big memories that I had were one finding a deceased sea turtle on the beach, which I refused to believe was anything but napping, and sat with him for a very long time. And then we loved horseshoe crabs. I spent hour after hour perusing the mangroves and looking for them and thought that they were the coolest, most prehistoric thing ever, because they are, and these memories stuck out to me as my earliest connections to how spectacular and vast the ocean is, and that's never left me.

Jason Elias: 3:58

So it sounds like for you there was always a sense of wonder around the ocean, which perhaps helped guide you to becoming one of the more visible journalists and on-air personalities in the exploration space. Can you talk a bit about that path? Were there challenges, and what motivates you to continue pursuing that sense of exploration?

Kinga Philipps: 4:19

When I was in college I had seven different majors and I couldn't quite wrap my head around picking one thing to do for the rest of my life. So the seven major I had were marine biology, lots of medicine. I wanted to do doctors' outborders, I mean, there was entomology so many different things. And because I always gravitated towards wildlife I would watch the old shop who Sto Show Voyage of the Clipso and I thought that's it, that's what I want to do. So I landed on journalism, then becoming fascinated with sharks and joining shark allies, and all of that together started to develop into one world. And now, looking back, that long game for exploration, for research, for wanting to understand how we physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually connect to the natural world, and the ocean in particular, it was always present and all of that together was kind of the perfect storm to bring me to where I am now.

Jason Elias: 5:13

Right, but one of the things I find interesting about you is you often go beyond more established narratives of science journalism and are willing to explore more spiritual and esoteric aspects of our human experiences in this world. Would you mind talking a bit about your perspective on that, regarding the ocean and how it might relate to your larger worldview?

Kinga Philipps: 5:40

Being in the ocean is actually being enveloped in what this planet is made of. I remember I was surfing with a buddy of mine and we jumped off our surfboards and we were just swimming around and he goes look, we're in the earth right now and for some reason that really resonated with me and I thought well, we are actually immersed, we are fully submerged in the earth and that, on a spiritual level, is very interesting, and I never feel more at peace than when I'm underwater. There's something healing and intriguing about that. I loved sci-fi movies as a kid and I just don't think that there is anything that could possibly be out in this universe that is as cool as some of the fauna that we have in the ocean. I mean, I can't imagine anything beating out of horseshoe crab or a narwhal, a mola-mola sunfish, seeing a tiger shark in the water and being able to swim effortlessly next to it, or having a young hunk back approach you and start to spin and then mimic your movements. There's something about that that is every child's fantasy and I tingle at the idea that there are still storylines yet to be discovered. I mean, in the shark space, the fact that we have never seen a great white shark mate again birth. How amazing is that. Everything that exists in the ocean to me is the best sci-fi movie that you could ever imagine and it's real. So it's kind of the eternal childlike wonder for me when I'm immersed in the ocean.

Jason Elias: 8:00

Well, that was beautifully said and, as a huge sci-fi fan myself, I think you're absolutely right that there is a profound beauty and otherworldly weirdness about so much of the ocean, and I think probably a lot of people who are connected to the water might also echo your sense of the spiritual aspect of being with these animals, and I wonder if, in some ways, that also shaped the way you dive. I know you've shifted from being primarily a scuba diver and are now more focused on free diving, so I'm wondering if you'd talk a little bit about that and why you might have made that transition.

Kinga Philipps: 8:39

I am fortunate enough to work in an industry where I get to experience a lot of things, and it usually comes in the form of me getting thrown into a situation that I have very little experience in and it's literally sink or swim. I was a scuba diver, probably going on 20 years, hundreds of dives and I was enjoying it because it was my access to the ocean and I love that space, I love that world. So I was on a travel channel show and they took me to Hawaii and they said we're going to put you with this gentleman named Sean Harada. He's an amazing spear fisherman, amazing freediver. Go, and they literally handed me a spear gun. We're like so we're going to drop down to 50 feet, you're going to hunt the experience of being down there on my breath, the silence of it as opposed to the silence of the ocean. I loved it. So when I left I went into a free diving class and kind of learned the basics and ever since then it's actually quite hard for me to go back to scuba. I mean, there are wonderful times and places when we do shark week, we'll scuba dive or I'm on a live aboard. There are environments where it's just preferable. But I love the freedom of freediving. When you're on your own breath, it is silent and you were immersed in the waves. There's a sense of extreme presence and you know you can't get as close to a whale or a shark or a manta ray on scuba as you can in this silent space where you kind of feel like one of them. There is something so spectacular in that I feel changes in my system that I can't get anywhere else. It makes me tingle. I love it.

Jason Elias: 10:18

Yeah, it's so fascinating when people talk about how, when you freedive, you can get closer to the animals because of the lack of scuba bubbles, which can sometimes frighten the animals, but also the greater sense of presence that people feel when they're freediving and how that allows them to interact closer. And I just find that fascinating. And that specific dynamic also predicated a story you've told before about a trip you took with your sister to Mexico to go diving with whale sharks. Can you talk about that trip a bit and why you found it so profoundly moving?

Kinga Philipps: 10:50

One of the first trips that I ever took solo was to Isla Mojarras and went out twice, swam with the whale sharks, and it was an incredible experience. I absolutely loved it. Several years later, I really wanted my friends and my sister to have that experience, but instead of going to Isla Mujeres, we decided to go to Isla Hallbosch, which is just north of Cancun, and I had warned the girls in advance. It's an incredible experience, but it's also crowded as all hell. You're having people crawl over your head as they're trying to get to the whale shark. It's a magnificent experience, but I'm just warning you right now that you're going to be a little annoyed with the amount of humanity there. From Isla Hallbosch they gave us the option. The water around Isla Hallbosch is more of this emerald green color. It's a little bit more murky, but if you want to pay a little bit more, we'll take you to where the water is really clear blue and corresponds with where the boats out of Isla Mujeres go out to, and I said I would rather go to the blue. I just think that's an spectacular experience. We're getting our little boat, rupanga, and we're out there probably for two hours from Isla Hallbosch, and it really does change from this gorgeous emerald color to this beautiful deep blue. And there's one boat sitting there as we start to get ready, the boat packs up the leaves and we jump in the water and there are 15 whale sharks around us Me, my sister Julia, my friend Mina and my friend Sophia. So there are four of us girls with 15 whale sharks. They were feeding in this area, so they just kept circling us. They didn't leave. We were in the water with these 15 whale sharks for so long. Just the four of us. What experience. Alone in this planet where there are eight billion people and to think that's four friends who got to have this phenomenal experience not to be shared with anybody else, these magnificent creatures which just move through the water with their big old slots and their open mouths. There was this huge whale shark making its way through our group. My sister and I started pacing it on both sides and I remember I looked up at her. I waved to her over the back of a whale shark and the two of us just started laughing in our snorkels because we realized this was this extraordinary moment where two goofy sisters just waved to each other Over the back of a whale shark in 500 feet of blue water. That is one of my favorite life moments. Your heart is so full of joy, everything is right with the world and you are distinctly rooted in the present moment, in that space, in that moment. If someone gave you the option to be anywhere else in the world, you would say, no, I want to be here, and for that to be facilitated by the ocean and this massive animal that allowed us into its presence. When you look back on your life, that to me is one of the main moments in my life that I think this journey on this little planet, with my little soul being here, that was worth it.

Jason Elias: 15:21

Finally, we end every interview and every episode with a single open-ended question. We ask everyone we talk to what does the ocean mean to you?

Kinga Philipps: 15:32

The ocean is an extension of my consciousness. I am also a big believer in self stewardship, and when you are in the ocean, you are responsible for your own well-being, and there is something very primal in that that I absolutely love makes you feel very alive.

Jason Elias: 15:58

Thanks for listening to the Big Deep podcast. Next time on.

Alex Hearn: 16:02

Big Deep. When I came to Galapagos, I wanted to work on something that would make some kind of difference, to be able to look back and say well, I tried to make the planet a little bit better than it was when I was on it. I tried to clean up a little bit.

Jason Elias: 16:24

We really appreciate you being on this journey into the Big Deep as we explore an ocean of stories. If you like what we're doing, please make sure to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. Also, please find us on the socials where you can like and comment, because those subscribes, likes and comments really make a difference. For more content from our interviews in our series, photos of every guest or just to get in touch, please reach out at our website, bigdeepcom Plus. If you know someone you think we should talk to, please let us know at our Big Deep website, as we are always looking to hear more stories from interesting people who are deeply connected to our world's oceans. Thanks again for joining us.

Kinga Philipps Freediving