‘TV Guide’ interview – Canadian scuba show a visual feast

For Scott Wilson and Ellis Emmett, the world literally is their oyster. After all, they dive into it whenever they have the opportunity.

Scott Wilson, a Brantford, Ontario native and New Zealand’s Ellis Emmett serve as guides in OLN’s Descending, a 13-part exploration of our planet’s oceans, seas, rivers and lakes.

Part documentary and part triptych, Descending is the watery follow-up to Wilson’s three-season Departures, which found him and buddies Justin Lukach and Andre Dupuis criss-crossing the globe on land and getting into a pile of adventures.

With 70 per cent of the world covered by fresh and salt water, a diving series was a no-brainer for the two.

“It was a natural transition,” Wilson told TV Guide Canada during a telephone interview with the two.

“It was while doing Departures that Andre and I were introduced to scuba diving and fell in love with it immediately. Over beers at the end of a filming day, we would talk about how cool it would be to do more of it. Once I got my open water certificate and started to dive, I realized there were some incredible stories and this was the evolution of the travel genre.”

The result is Wilson and Emmett’s year-long splash fest, which highlights not only the flora and fauna that exist in the shallows and depths of Earth’s waterways, but the stories of the cultures that live near them. Departures cinematographer Dupuis returns in Descending, capturing the action above and below the waves.

Episode 1, which debuts Sunday night, takes place right in Emmett’s backyard of New Zealand.

“I’m about as passionate about New Zealand as you can get, and I’ve been very, very fortunate to explore many of the dark corners in New Zealand both above and below the waterline,” the former host of Don’t Forget Your Passport says in his Kiwi drawl.

“The moment the guys talked about coming to New Zealand for the first episode, I just drew a wish list of all the dive locations I wanted to take them to. It was fantastic to start the show off like that.”

The imagery in New Zealand is stunning. Cameras capture Wilson and Emmett grabbing lobster-sized crayfish, cursing liberally when their fingers get caught in the crustaceans’ pincers, and the intricate, lace-like construction of black coral, a relation of sea anemones. Octopuses curl their questing tentacles around hands (“it feels like hundreds of little kisses,” comes one observation), and a blind eel writhes through the water.

The two reveal more striking footage is on the way via episodes devoted to diving the Great Lakes, where they explored shipwrecks.

“What really lights my fire are the wrecks and the history,” Wilson, co-founder of Echo Bay Media Inc., says with excitement. “This is local history. I grew up surrounded by them and spent my summers on Lake Huron. I had no idea what was down there, and just off the coast of Toronto or Kingston.

“It’s our local history that is locked down there, and it’s 100 times more interesting than going to a museum. You’re not holding on to a red velvet rope or looking through a pane of glass. You’re on a shipwreck that went down with those who, in some cases, lost their lives on it.”

Descending debuts Sunday, Feb. 19, at 9 p.m. ET on OLN.