This week, in Indonesia, Scott and Ellis experience Raja Ampat – a reserve rich in beauty, diversity and culture. Ellis befriends a local Papuan who teaches him to fish like a local and the divers have a close encounter with Giant Manta Rays.
We chat to Scott about this incredible experience.
Hi. I was at TEDxChristchurch today. Coming to TEDx each year is like watching a child grow up because the quality of the event gets better every year.
Ellis Emmett – Adventurer. “As we approach our invisible comfort line we start to feel more and more fear. Sometimes we get to the line and we turn back. But, we never learn anything from turning back. What if we ask “what’s the worst that could happen?” And “could I deal with the consequences?” That’s when the most valuable lessons are learned.”
Ellis and Scott take a trip through history and visit the world’s best collection of freshwater shipwrecks in Canada. We chat to Ellis about this incredible experience.
“Diving the wreck of the Arabia is going to be hard to beat. It’s a 127 year old wooden ship thickly cloaked in history. Exploring this incredible wreck made me feel like I was diving an ancient pirate ship. The character of these wooden ships speaks to a bygone era that we will never see the likes of again. It’s better than any museum I’ve ever been!”
Ellis Emmett. An unexpected treasure that TEDx Christchurch curator Kaila Colbin found on a sea floor somewhere. He’s a Kiwi adventurer and documentarian who is much better known overseas than here because NZ television networks haven’t seen fit to air his programmes until recently.
His latest effort, Descending, is playing now on Sky TV’s Travel Channel (Wednesday, 8.30pm). But it wasn’t his excellent lifestyle that mattered. It was his decision to always confront his fears head on. This is a guy who fears heights, so climbs mountains, a guy fears sharks, so swims with them. A lesson for us all.
Anything that you can ever imagine already exists, all you have to do is connect the dots.
– Ellis Emmett –
The long-awaited TEDx Christchurch is sold out but you can follow the conference via a livestream on press.co.nz from 10am on Saturday. See below for the programme and profiles of speakers.
Ellis Emmett, Adventurer
Ellis Emmett’s many and varied adventures have taken him from the peaks of inaccessible mountain tops, deep into remote jungle, to over 1,000 feet beneath the ocean – and literally hundreds of places in between.
History fanatic Scott talks Ellis into diving the shark-infested waters off the coast of the Solomon Islands. We speak with Ellis about his experiences.
“Diving on the Catalina plane wreck was definitely one dive site that is still vivid in my mind.”
“However, not just because we were among the first to see this beautiful wreck after almost 70 years on the bottom, but because of how amazing condition it was still in. Diving this wreck felt like opening up a time capsule and playing detective in some forensic mystery.”
Canadian Scott Wilson and Kiwi Ellis Emmett have been where no men have been. They touch two continents at once in some of the world’s clearest water and attempt to dive where no one has gone before.
An 18 month trip took them to some of the world’s remotest dive locations – many of which have only recently been discovered
Cheviot-based Ellis Emmett is one of the hosts of the Travel Channel’s underwater adventure series ‘Descending’. He’s dived with sharks in South Africa, in a shipwreck off Vanuatu and aquifers off the coast of Iceland.
He’s now planning a five-year sailing odyssey around the globe and has already filmed a pilot – a 6,000km round trip between NZ and Tonga.
Kathryn Ryan interviews Ellis Emmett – New Zealand adventurer on Nine to Noon .
This week, Scott and Ellis are in Los Angeles to see if vibrant marine life can exist off the highly developed coast of Southern California. After meeting up with a pair of eco-warriors, the team scours the Sea of Cortez in search of the elusive and fearsome “diablos rojos (red devils)”.
What diving risks were you concerned about in this location?
“Hmmm, let’s see… dangling by a cable below an active fishing boat with fisherman jigging around us with huge hooks, in the dark, over 2000 foot of water, looking for highly aggressive Humboldt squid in heavily shark-filled waters. Yep, that about covers it!” describes Scott.
