Ep 5 | Easkey Britton | Water, Healing & Our Relationship with the Ocean | Crossing the Tideline

Easkey Britton is an Irish surfer, marine social scientist, writer and ocean advocate who has spent her life studying the relationship between people and water. Born into a surfing family on the northwest coast of Ireland, she competed internationally from the age of twelve and has spent the decades since trying to understand what the ocean does to us, and for us, and what we owe it in return. This one is different to the others in the series. Sharks barely get a mention. But water is where people and sharks find each other, and Easkey has a way of talking about that relationship that gets to something the science and statistics rarely reach. We talk about what it means to have your identity shaped by the ocean, and what happens when that connection gets broken. The healing properties of water, physically and psychologically, and why restoring that relationship after trauma is not something you can think your way through. The complexity of holding love for the ocean alongside genuine fear of it. And why our culture's tendency to want black and white answers makes all of this so much harder than it needs to be. Brett also opens up about where he is in his own process of rebuilding trust with the water, and what Easkey's books Salt Water in the Blood and Ebb and Flow have given him during that. A slower, more reflective conversation. One that sits in the questions rather than rushing toward answers.