00:00:02
If a shark is coming towards you, you know, just most of the time just staying calm and just maintaining eye contact is
00:00:09
going to do the trick. It's when people start freaking out and flailing around is when they're like, "Oh, is that a
00:00:13
prey? Why is the Why is the energy so high? Why is this thing looking like prey, right?" I mean, I have a hard time
00:00:20
getting sharks close to me most of the time because I'm like wanting them to get close.
00:00:26
This is Tanner Mansell. He's been diving with sharks for about 10 years. The first time was in 2016
00:00:35
on vacation in Jupiter, Florida. We got out there. We We jumped in the water and it was just [music] like these
00:00:42
sharks were just swimming within 5 ft of us just [music] minding their own business, you know, looking at us,
00:00:49
swimming around, but it was this overwhelming feeling of just calmness [music] and peacefulness. You know, it was a it
00:00:57
was a a high, a literal high that lasted months [music] afterwards. Tanner had been working a corporate job
00:01:05
in Oregon. >> [music] >> But after this vacation, he decided he wanted to make a change.
00:01:11
I couldn't go back to what I was doing knowing that that existed. [music] So, I just started
00:01:17
reading books. I started putting everything I could together to be like, "Okay, how do I exit,
00:01:22
you know, this [music] lifestyle that I'm in and start over completely doing this?"
00:01:29
By 2017, >> [music] >> Tanner had saved up enough money to move to Florida. Eventually, he started helping out on
00:01:36
tours with the same company he'd gone diving with. Working with a man named John Moore.
00:01:43
John and Tanner would take small groups about 4 mi offshore in the Gulf Stream. Then they put a cage with fish into the
00:01:51
water to attract sharks. Jupiter, Florida is known for its sharks. Depending on the season, they have bull
00:01:59
sharks, hammerheads, and sometimes even great whites. By August 2020, Tanner had been working
00:02:08
as a shark diving guide for about 3 years. On Monday, August 10th, they had a tour
00:02:15
scheduled with six passengers, a couple and a family of four. Here's John. And we headed out to our normal bull
00:02:25
shark spot and uh I can't remember the water was a little bit murky, but we had great sharks that
00:02:31
day. Um I think it kind of rained, so the the it was kind of a bit overcast and the the sharks were and the water
00:02:38
just wasn't super clear, but I do remember we had really good shark activity. And um we did a probably about a
00:02:46
45-minute dive and then we were headed back and we still had extra time, you know, before our It was right before
00:02:56
our lunch break. There was a nearby shipwreck that John and Tanner sometimes took tours to if
00:03:02
they had extra time. And so, we cruised over to that wreck, but the water was really murky there.
00:03:08
Like I'd say, you know, almost no visibility. Like maybe not the kind of water you'd really want to be in just
00:03:15
because, you know, it's it just becomes a little sketchier when the water's not clear.
00:03:20
And so, we were getting ready to go back in and uh And as we spun around, I could see this
00:03:27
orange float like or an orange speck in a little bit further out and uh so, I was like, "Ooh, god." You know,
00:03:33
cuz sometimes if there's like a diver comes to the surface away from a boat, he'll inflate a little colored thing so
00:03:40
that his boat can find him and other boats don't run him over. You know, there's been
00:03:46
dozens of times where we've we've picked people up out in the water. And And so,
00:03:50
when I saw this buoy, I was thinking to myself, "Oh, it's probably a scuba diver
00:03:54
or trash." So, we did our normal routine. If it's trash, we'll pick it up. If it's a diver, we'll we'll help
00:03:59
them out get get them back to their boat. And as we got closer, we realized, "Okay, it's just some,
00:04:05
you know, random buoy." And >> [music] >> Tanner grabbed it, but he's like, "Oh,
00:04:11
there's a fishing line on it." And um he started pulling in the line and he's like, "It feels like there's something
00:04:16
on this." And, you know, and it's a very [music] thick fishing line. He pulled and pulled and pulled and then we got
00:04:22
to >> [music] >> um a shark that was swimming on the on the line. Neither of them had seen anything like
00:04:30
this before. I was out there at least 5 [music] days a week. And uh we'd never seen anything like
00:04:37
that because, you know, occasionally, you you know, it it's Florida and people catch sharks occasionally.
00:04:45
Um But, you know, there there's strict regulations for shark fishing. Um >> [music]
00:04:50
>> And so, we cut that shark free. But that line was attached, you know, to uh a thick a very thick line.
00:04:59
Um [music] and so, we just started pulling on that thicker line and uh and it was one of those where it never
00:05:06
ends. Like we we pulled it in we started pulling it and we got to another shark.
00:05:12
Um which we cut off and then we And then the line continued. So, we realized we found something really, you know, odd
00:05:19
out here. When he looked at the setup a little more, John realized that it looked like a
00:05:25
fishing method called longlining. But he'd never seen a long line in this area. And he'd never seen one with sharks on
00:05:34
it. Longlining is uh it's a method of fishing where you will have miles of of fishing
00:05:42
line set out that'll have hooks spaced out upon it. And, you know, when I was in college, I I did uh a couple tours um
00:05:51
working on a longline boat for fishing for swordfish. And so, I knew what longline is, but
00:05:57
this wasn't, you know, where when I was fishing, we had it was a very legitimate-looking setup. It wasn't like
00:06:04
This was not like your regular longline setup. Um This had like little pink and purple weights from Walmart
00:06:14
attached to it and uh to hold the line down and had this little, you know, faded buoy on the end of it.
00:06:22
It was not like a legitimate-looking setup. Um when I, you know, when I longlined, I was a buoy man, so I
00:06:29
I set the the buoys out for the thing and we would have, you know, a massive buoy with on the end
00:06:34
of the line with a with our boat name, uh permit number, and everything on it. And then
00:06:41
it had a a large mast with a radar reflective dome thing on the top so that other boats would recognize it and stay
00:06:50
away from it. And um this didn't have any of that. This looked like something very illegal
00:06:55
and subversive going on. And And we felt like, you know, if we didn't act, um yeah, these sharks would
00:07:02
definitely die. Tanner says there were all different kinds of sharks on the line. Tiger
00:07:09
sharks, nurse sharks, lemon sharks, and hammerheads. And that some of them looked like they
00:07:15
weren't doing well. Some sharks, like hammerheads, need to keep moving to get enough oxygen.
00:07:22
So, they're trapped. They're not getting oxygen. So, they That's how a hammerhead
00:07:28
shark will die is you you stop them from moving in the water. Tanner got in touch with a coworker and
00:07:35
she called NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. She said they seemed very concerned
00:07:42
about what we had found. Then their coworker called Florida Fish and Wildlife. And they were as baffled as we were.
00:07:51
Cuz they'd never heard of this either. Like this is not an area where, you know, I knew lots of fishermen
00:07:57
there. No one had ever heard of a longline there ever. And yeah, so, you know, we we got no
00:08:04
indication from anybody that we should stop doing this because nobody knew what this was.
00:08:10
So, they kept pulling the line. At first, we kept thinking this was going to end. Like, you know, you keep
00:08:15
thinking like, "Okay, here's, you know, there's another shark. Oh my god, and this must be the end of this line." But
00:08:21
it didn't end. It just It went on forever. And this is like backbreaking work. Like you're like
00:08:26
hand-over-handing, especially cuz we're collecting this line and putting it on the boat because, you know, we didn't
00:08:32
want to just, you know, cut these animals free and leave like this line out there to, you know, pollute the
00:08:38
ocean or or potentially ensnare some other wildlife. And uh And so, you know, we're we're picking up
00:08:45
this line and coiling it into the back of the boat. The passengers that were on board with
00:08:50
John and Tanner helped pull the line in. And they took videos of them cutting the
00:08:56
sharks free. Go free, baby! Yeah, he's alive. Woo! >> [cheering] >> Ha-ha, that made my day.
00:09:09
And everyone, you know, and everyone was like kind of excited, too, because they'd seen, you know,
00:09:13
it seemed like we had found like something very criminal going on and we were, you know, saving this wildlife. Um
00:09:20
and the first few sharks, you know, they looked exhausted cuz they've been, you know,
00:09:25
pulling against this line for a while. But, you know, when we cut them free, they just they just swam away. Um but
00:09:32
then we got to like a bigger hammerhead shark. And that shark was not in good shape.
00:09:39
It sort of half swam, half sank, and I'm I'm pretty certain it died. And it was a
00:09:44
big, probably like a 12 I'd say at least like a 12-ft great hammerhead. They cut 19 sharks free.
00:09:55
At one point, a few hours in, John called Fish and Wildlife and spoke with an officer named Barry Partelow.
00:10:03
John told him that they were still pulling the line in and cutting sharks free. Eventually, they had to head back to
00:10:11
shore. And on the way, John spotted a Fish and Wildlife boat. And so, I buzzed over to the Fish and
00:10:18
Wildlife boat. And I said, "Hey, you know, we found this line, you know, out there." And And he's like, "I was the
00:10:24
guy you were talking to on the phone." And so, he took photos of this line of this giant pile of line in my boat and
00:10:34
uh and said, "Oh my god, that's crazy. Like, I've never seen anything like that." And he's like, "Can you like put
00:10:40
it on the dock?" And I said, "Sure, yep." And so, I headed back to our marina, where I did, you know, as he
00:10:47
said, I put it on the dock, much to the chagrin of the harbormaster, who was like, "Wait, why are you putting this
00:10:53
massive pile of line?" But, everyone was so intrigued by this line. Like, people
00:10:59
were just coming up and checking out this massive pile of line that we've now unloaded on the dock and we're telling
00:11:06
everyone the story and the passengers are you know, all excited telling everyone what what happened and what we
00:11:13
found out there. And there was a At that point, there was a guy that had like a fishing blog or something and he said,
00:11:20
"Oh my god." So, we told him the whole story too and he's like, "Can I take pictures?" And uh And so, we had, you
00:11:27
know, we're posing with all this line and and he was taking pictures. He's like, "I'll put it in my fishing blog.
00:11:32
This is so crazy." And And that was one of the pictures that then went viral online.
00:11:40
That night, John and Tanner started getting a lot of messages from people who'd seen the photo online.
00:11:47
John noticed that there were some comments that said he and Tanner were going to get in trouble because someone
00:11:53
had a permit to set up that line. And I was just ignoring it because I thought there's no way that that's a permitted
00:11:59
line because, you know, we'd already talked to all the authorities and nobody had told us that there was a permitted
00:12:04
line out there. But then, I was still talking to Fish and Wildlife that evening and they said, "Hey, well, can
00:12:12
we talk to you again tomorrow?" And I said, "Yeah, absolutely." And uh and they were at this point, they're still
00:12:16
everyone's so nice and and you know, they were, you know, acting like we had thwarted a crime and uh and it wasn't
00:12:23
until the next morning that like all of a sudden the tone [music] had changed. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.
00:12:36
>> [music] >> We'll be right back. To listen without ads, join Criminal Plus. The day after John Moore and Tanner
00:12:54
Mansell found the long line, John noticed that he'd missed a call from Florida Fish and Wildlife. So, I
00:13:01
called them. And now the guy was like very like the tone had changed so dramatically on the phone and the guy
00:13:10
now was like super aggro sounding on the phone. He's like, "I need you to come down to you know,
00:13:16
the marina right now and you know, I want to talk to you." And I was like, "Hey, I'm going to talk to a lawyer
00:13:22
because I knew something was up." And I did not go down and meet him and I said,
00:13:26
"You can talk to my lawyer." And then, John found out that the rumors he'd been hearing online were true.
00:13:35
The long line had actually been legal. Someone had a permit for it. And it was a permitted through NOAA,
00:13:42
through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The organization that John says had
00:13:48
seemed concerned about the line being there when his co-worker called them. They learned that the permit belonged to
00:13:56
a local fisherman's boat and that it was a type of permit that was hardly ever granted.
00:14:01
Here's Tanner. So, this is the most rare um permitted line in the US. Uh only up
00:14:11
to five, I think, are given out per year. And initially, I just felt bad because I'm like, "Oh, you know, we
00:14:18
obviously interfered with a legal thing." But, we did everything we could to make sure that it wasn't. Like, we
00:14:24
you know, we we thought we were uncovering a crime the whole time. We asked law enforcement.
00:14:30
John and Tanner didn't hear anything else from law enforcement over the next few months.
00:14:35
But, they say a lot of people in the community were talking about what happened.
00:14:40
There's a a big anti-shark culture in Florida. Um you know, I in a certain, you know, in the fishing community.
00:14:47
You know, because they the a lot of the fishing community hates the sharks because, you know, the sharks eat their
00:14:53
catch. And so, a lot of the fishermen, you know, want the sharks dead. And you know, and we regularly see, you
00:15:02
know, gunshot wounds to sharks. Like, you That's just a standard in our business, you know, where we're out
00:15:08
there diving with these sharks and you see sharks on the daily with bullet holes in their head and stuff. Um and
00:15:15
so, as soon as the fishing community found out that this was a legal line that was
00:15:20
killing sharks out there and that we had that we had thwarted this, um we became
00:15:26
like public enemy number one and they were like I was getting death threats. A couple of months after they found the
00:15:33
line, Tanner got a knock on his door. It was an official from NOAA and some police officers.
00:15:41
Tanner remembers them saying that they were now investigating what had happened with the long line as a stolen property
00:15:48
case. They essentially said to me, they were like, "We're not going after you. We're
00:15:53
going after Captain John. We're not planning to put you on the indictment, but we need information and we need your
00:15:59
cooperation." And I was like, I all I said was, "Yeah, I'm not doing that. I'm going to speak to a lawyer and we can
00:16:06
talk after that, but I'm I don't feel comfortable." And so, they're like, "Okay, very well.
00:16:13
No No worries." Um and then they left. And then, I told John, I'm like, "Dude, John, like
00:16:19
they're seriously coming at us. They were coming at you and I just didn't say anything cuz I didn't feel comfortable."
00:16:26
The whole thing just seemed so insane. Like, we you know, if I was going to if we were going to commit a crime out
00:16:33
there, like, I wouldn't be calling the police while I was doing it. I wouldn't be calling, you know, Fish and Wildlife
00:16:40
repeatedly on myself. Um and the people that the passengers we had, this chief of police, his wife, who also worked in
00:16:48
law enforcement, as witnesses to this, you know, cuz these they were listening to my phone conversations on speaker. Um
00:16:56
they were seeing me reporting this in real time. There was no way that you could have thought that we were doing
00:17:01
anything, you know, illegal out there. John and Tanner both hired lawyers. But, they hadn't been officially charged
00:17:10
with anything. So, they waited and tried to keep working as usual. It was always in the back of my head,
00:17:17
but I honestly, you know, I I never thought anything would come of this. You know, we you couldn't forget about it
00:17:23
because still like almost on a daily, there were people like waving pistols at me when I'd go
00:17:31
out of the harbor, you know, fishermen waving guns at me and, you know, yelling obscenities at my passengers and stuff.
00:17:38
Like, like the the level of, you know, vitriol from the the fishing community um was insane.
00:17:50
It was like this for a couple of years. In 2022, Tanner traveled to Indonesia, where his partner runs a nonprofit.
00:18:01
So, I just landed in Indonesia. I'm about 2 days in and I get a call from my lawyer who says, "You're being arrested
00:18:09
and you need to be in the US tomorrow." John was at home in Florida when he got the call.
00:18:17
He remembers it was his wedding anniversary and he was at the store buying flowers for his wife.
00:18:24
>> [music] >> Tanner's lawyer reached out to the prosecution to explain that Tanner was
00:18:29
out of the country. And said, [music] "They're willing to turn themselves in. Tanner's in
00:18:34
Indonesia, he'll catch the first flight back. >> [music] >> Um but, we need a little bit of time."
00:18:39
And that's when things started getting really serious because >> [music] >> the prosecutor started arguing that we
00:18:45
couldn't do what's called like a safe surrender or we couldn't turn ourselves in, that they were going to arrest us on
00:18:50
our doorstep. John [music] says that after a lot of back and forth through their lawyers,
00:18:56
they were finally able to turn themselves in. They were both [music] charged with
00:19:01
theft of commercial fishing gear in federal waters, a felony. The prosecutor offered us plea deals
00:19:08
[music] to plead guilty. And John and I didn't even hesitate. We're like, "No, we're not pleading guilty to something
00:19:14
we didn't do." So, we were if we would have pled guilty, we would have got misdemeanors,
00:19:20
um community service and we had to write a letter of an apology and admit guilt and be like, "We did, you know." And
00:19:28
we're like, "No. We We're like, we're not going to do that because we didn't do anything wrong
00:19:32
here." John and Tanner's lawyers started preparing for the trial. Our lawyer sat John down before and they
00:19:41
they tested him to see how he would hold up. And John is such a like good energy,
00:19:48
agreeing kind of guy that he failed so miserably. They quickly said, "John, you are not
00:19:54
cut out for for this. They're like, it's so easy to make you say, 'Oh, yeah, I know I see what you I see
00:20:01
your point.' And they're like, "This doesn't work in court." So, our lawyers were like, "Look, this
00:20:06
prosecutor's going to eat John up if he goes up there." And I didn't even consider going up
00:20:13
there because I'm like, "Well, if John's not going, I'm not going." We had four different lawyers representing us and
00:20:18
they said, "We don't think that you guys should take the stand. We think that we
00:20:22
have enough evidence here to acquit you." So, we decided not to to testify. The trial began on November 28th, 2022.
00:20:33
The prosecution argued that we intentionally sought out to destroy uh this fisherman's property because
00:20:43
sharks are worth more to us alive than dead. Um so, we stole essentially they said we stole the sharks
00:20:50
um from them. Because you have a tourism business that relies on your clients being able to see sharks.
00:20:58
Exactly. Which um you know, obviously I don't want to see uh sharks die, but I'm also m- you know,
00:21:08
no fool. I know that it sharks are being harvested off of Florida daily, you know, so I'm not I'm not you
00:21:16
know, I wasn't trying to take a stand. I was trying to do the right thing and I thought somebody was illegally killing
00:21:21
them. The Fish and Wildlife officer who'd been on the phone with John, Officer Barry
00:21:28
Pardelo, testified. He told the court, quote, "I advised him as a law enforcement officer, we would
00:21:36
never remove anything from a hook or a line without first investigating it. And we would never advise anybody to
00:21:44
remove anything from a hook and a line without investigating it." He also said, "I told him not to cut the fish off the
00:21:52
line." John says he was surprised when he heard that. He says Officer Pardelo never told
00:22:00
him to stop. We reached out to Florida Fish and Wildlife and NOAA for this story,
00:22:07
but didn't hear back. A NOAA officer who filed a report on the incident also testified
00:22:15
and said that the report didn't include anything about John being told to stop. The trial lasted nearly 3 days.
00:22:26
And then the deliberation lasted an eternity. It was like 2 and 1/2 days of the jury
00:22:33
sending notes to us. One note from the jury to the judge read, quote, "Not unanimous. Cannot get there."
00:22:43
The jury asked for more specific definitions of certain words like mistake. Near the end of the first full day of
00:22:51
deliberations, the judge said the jury was, quote, "Still very divided." The next day, the judge issued something
00:22:59
called an Allen charge, which urges the jury to work harder to reach a verdict to avoid a hung jury.
00:23:07
It's also sometimes called a dynamite charge. So, after our 3 days basically of jury
00:23:14
deliberation and deadlocked jury, they said the jury has come to a decision. And honestly, we had like a
00:23:21
you know, like we all felt really good about it and and the prosecution looked stressed and and so, when
00:23:29
the jury came out, you could immediately see on their face that it was bad. You know, like people
00:23:39
they like people were avoiding eye contact as they came out. Some of the jurors were crying.
00:23:44
And that's when I knew. I was like, "Oh, yeah, they're they're they're going to find us guilty."
00:23:52
And like the whole courtroom like everyone behind us started crying. And you know, in our side of the
00:24:00
courtroom um and uh and I was just honestly, I was pissed. >> [laughter] >> I was in shock and I was just and I was
00:24:09
pissed. >> [music] >> We'll be right back. The US Department of Justice issued a
00:24:30
press release announcing John Moore and Tanner Mansell's conviction. It began, quote,
00:24:37
"A boat crew offering tourists the opportunity to swim with sharks took a pause between dives to steal a
00:24:44
commercial fishing gear set." What was their sentence? The prosecutor was trying to get us to
00:24:51
go to jail for 5 years and pay $250,000. They were each sentenced to 1 year of probation and had to pay back the cost
00:25:00
of the longline equipment and the sharks they let free. And I had 1 year of community service,
00:25:06
which was, you know, I volunteered at the shelter walking dogs. Like that was great. Like it was something I like to
00:25:13
do anyway. The judge said, "I think their primary motivation was trying to protect the sharks and the
00:25:21
ocean life." You know, so the the sentence itself [snorts] was nothing, you know,
00:25:27
was really nothing. No you know, but it's there's a lot of things that come along with a
00:25:33
conviction, you know, it's with a felony life changes. You know, I my daughter lives in Canada. I couldn't go visit my
00:25:40
daughter in Canada. She had just bought a house, just had a baby and you know, with a felony conviction anything like
00:25:46
like renting an apartment, you have to put down that you're you know, I we're planning on moving to California
00:25:54
um which we finally have were able to do, but it you know, when as we're applying for houses to rent, you know,
00:26:01
you have to put down that you're a felon on the thing, which you know, the most bizarre thing for me. Like I didn't even
00:26:07
have I didn't have speeding ticket. Like I had never, you know, this was not my my
00:26:12
wheelhouse. Did Did you appeal? Yes, we appealed. And uh Luckily, you know, my attorneys, they
00:26:21
they did it for free. You know, they they said, "We're going to appeal." And I just said, "Listen,
00:26:26
like I am I'm completely bankrupt from this. I you know, I we lost. I I can't afford to appeal." And they're like,
00:26:33
"Well, we're doing it and you don't have to pay anything." They appealed on an issue about jury
00:26:39
instructions. Three appellate judges heard their case and decided to uphold the convictions.
00:26:47
But one of the judges wrote, "Because I am bound to consider only the single narrow issue raised on appeal,
00:26:55
I join my colleagues in affirming, but I do so with reluctance. John Moore Jr. and Tanner Mansell are
00:27:03
felons because they tried to save sharks from what they believed to be an illegal
00:27:07
poaching operation. They are the only felons I have ever encountered in 18 years on the bench and
00:27:14
3 years as a federal prosecutor who called law enforcement to report what they were seeing
00:27:20
and what actions they were taking in real time." And so, my lawyers were like, "Well,
00:27:27
we're not done. We are going to see what the next step is." And it was it looked
00:27:33
like it was going to be the Supreme Court. But then, in May of 2025, nearly 5 years after John and Tanner
00:27:42
found the longline, they both got a phone call. It was the day after my birthday. We
00:27:48
were walking our dog and I got a call from my lawyer. She said, "John, I I have a
00:27:55
Can you talk for a second?" I said, "Yeah, of course." And then she said, "I have the White House on the other line."
00:28:00
And I was like, "What?" >> [music] >> I was actually on a plane and the plane started rolling forward
00:28:09
and I started getting a call from my lawyer. And he never calls. He's always emails.
00:28:16
So, I was like, "Ooh, I wonder what this is." Like, you know, I I didn't know. So, I answered and I said, "Hey, I'm on
00:28:21
a plane. It's rolling forward. I've got like 30 seconds. What's [music] up?" And
00:28:25
he said, "You were just pardoned by the President of the United States. Congratulations."
00:28:32
And I just broke down. I started crying. I was like, "Oh my god, finally. It's [snorts] like some good news." I
00:28:39
couldn't believe it. The person next to me thought I was [music] probably crazy.
00:28:44
They were both shocked because they hadn't even applied for a presidential pardon.
00:28:50
I could vote again cuz that was another obvious thing that, you know, you couldn't do. Um
00:28:55
and if I wanted to have a firearm, which I hadn't wanted, but um I could have a firearm again and all that, but you
00:29:01
still couldn't um it wasn't recognized internationally. You were still a a a felon, but you were
00:29:09
a pardoned felon. Meaning that the conviction, along with the pardon, would still appear on their
00:29:15
criminal records. John would be able to visit his daughter in Canada, but he says in his case, he would have
00:29:22
to apply for a special permit. John and Tanner's lawyers started working to get their felony records
00:29:30
expunged. They submitted a petition to the original judge who heard their case. John says they were told it might take
00:29:39
several weeks to hear back, but they heard the next morning that the judge had cleared their records.
00:29:47
John and his wife live in California now. He's still out on the water most days and still guiding shark dives and
00:29:55
wildlife tours. How has this changed the way you do your job? Um I don't know if it's changed the
00:30:04
way I do my job at all, but it's changed my outlook on everything else. I'm like
00:30:10
a very optimistic person by, you know, like annoyingly optimistic for a lot of people. Like you can ask my wife and uh
00:30:17
and you know, it it stripped a little of that optimism from my brain because you know, it I always thought if you do
00:30:26
the right thing, then you know, then then the universe takes care of you. And uh you know, and this was not the case
00:30:34
in that situation. Tanner still lives in Jupiter and still leads shark diving tours.
00:30:42
But he says he isn't able to enjoy it the way he used to. One day this past summer,
00:30:48
he was heading back to the marina after a trip and saw two large gasoline canisters
00:30:54
floating in the ocean leaking gas. And my reaction is always obviously is to stop and pick them up and put them,
00:31:02
you know, clean up the ocean, right? So I got there and I immediately started feeling I was
00:31:07
going to have a panic attack. Um and uh yeah, no, that was So, I started feeling like I'm going to
00:31:15
have a panic attack. And um kind of everything froze. And I just started feeling like
00:31:25
you know, what what's in these these tanks, right? Like what uh what's going to happen if I if I do this? So,
00:31:34
you know, even though I can blatantly see you know, gas leaking in the ocean, I was hesitant and
00:31:41
it took me like a good 5-10 minutes to like collect my thoughts and be like, all right, this is
00:31:49
the right thing to do. And picked them up, took them in. >> [music] [music] >> To see photos and videos from the story,
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00:32:28
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Veronica Simonetti. This episode was fact-checked by Katie Sederborg. >> [music]
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