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>> Tom Layson: In 1940, it opened with great fanfare the Tacoma Narrows Bridge.

From day one pedestrians and drivers came from far and wide to experience the undulations of Galloping Gertie.

But just four months later, disaster struck, leaving the old bridge in ruins at the bottom of the Tacoma Narrows.

80 years later, a new film takes us down to the debris field.

What's down there?

We'll answer that question next on Northwest NOW.

That's the opening sequence of a film called 700 Feet Down.

It tells the story of a group of local divers who went out to document the ruins of Galloping Gertie at the bottom of Puget Sound.

On November 7 of 1940, Leonard Coatsworth was the last man off, running from his car and escaping just before the first bridge plunged into the Narrows.

With America's entry into World War II just a month after the collapse, a new bridge wouldn't be completed until 1950 when Sturdy Gertie went into service.

It remains standing today, providing the westbound lanes parallel to the new, new Tacoma Narrows Bridge, which opened to eastbound traffic 13 years ago in 2007.

So now enter director and avid deep diver Peter Bortel and local producer and filmmaker Carly Vester.

Welcome both of you to Northwest NOW.

Great to have a conversation about the Tacoma Narrows.

I think a lot of folks when they drive over that bridge look down and wonder what the heck's down there.

And we're going to dive into that, no pun intended.

Peter, let's start with you.

Where does the title 700 Feet Down come from?

Because I don't think it's that deep there, right?

>> Mr. Bortel: Yeah.

No, the depth in the middle, which is called the arena, is about 234 feet.

That's the deepest part.

The title actually comes from a picture I saw when researching the movie of a construction worker working on the 1940s bridge.

He was doing a headstand on the very top of the tower, if you can believe it.

And I thought to myself, I wonder how far he would have to fall if he fell from there.

He came all the way down and went all the way to the bottom of the arena, how many feet would that be?

And I just added up all the different levels and came up with exactly 700 feet.

So that's where the title 700 Feet Down comes from.

>> Tom Layson: Good piece of trivia there.

Carly, why this project?

What got you going on it, interested in it and saying, yes, I'm going to dive into this and complete this film?

>> Ms. Vester: So I live in Tacoma.

I grew up driving over the Tacoma Narrows Bridge as a kid, and I always heard the crazy, giant octopus legend that is associated with the bridge.

And it's also the bridge that spectacularly collapsed.

So I knew the story pretty well.

And Peter approached me with the idea to put together a film that not only chronicled the wreckage and high definition footage of the wreckage underneath but brought to life some of the really colorful eyewitness stories of the collapse.

And I had never seen anything that combined all the factors together, so I thought it was a brilliant idea and hopped on board to bring a full feature film about this legendary Pacific Northwest icon to life.

>> Tom Layson: Yeah.

There's certainly a lot of good raw material there for storytelling down several different tracks, the technical side, the natural side, environmental.

Peter, any special permissions required for this?

It is fairly deep.

the tides there are notoriously hazardous.

Can you -- is it -- can you just go there and do this at will, or what are the rules there?

>> Mr. Bortel: Yeah, you can.

I wouldn't recommend that everybody does.

I've been diving the Sound for 30 years, and I'm comfortable going down there.

But specifically for this film, we engaged with a group of professional divers who do this deep diving for a living.

They go down to 3, 4 or 500 feet on rebreathers all the time, and they're down for between 2 and 10 hours at those depths.

So there's areas of the bridge that you can dive very easily, the sides, the Tacoma side and the Gig Harbor side.

But if you're going to go in between the two towers, you definitely want to have some advanced training.

The currents are anywhere between 3 and 7 knots when you're down there, so it's the equivalent of swimming against a river.

A lot of smaller boats can't navigate under the bridge because the current's too strong.

>> Tom Layson: So that obviously limits your time, too, because you don't want to end up in Victoria.

You've got to dive, you know, what, an hour before and an hour after slack tide?

What's that window?

>> Mr. Bortel: So the window's tighter than that under the bridge.

Typically it's about 15 minutes before the slack.

You want to get down before the slack, it narrows.

And you're going to hit a current no matter what, so you want to dive in on a day where the exchange between the high and the low is less than 2 or 3 feet.

So we had to find the perfect days of the year where we have flat tides but also decent weather so that the boat can get there and coordinate all the divers' schedules.

>> Tom Layson: Yeah.

So, Carly, that is really a tough thing for a filmmaker, trying to hit the weather hope, things work out right, hope it's not too choppy, hope the tide's right, hope the lighting's right.

I mean, it's just one thing after another, I always tell people that filmmaking and doing video production is really all about overcoming.

So what did you have to overcome?

And share some of your tales of whoa.

>> Ms. Vester: That's a great question.

You know, like you said, I think the challenge with unexpected conditions out there, you're on a boat that's constantly moving.

You're dealing with a number of different things between rain, wind, keeping track of the divers, divers coming off and on, bridge noise, water noise, other boats passing by.

All of the elements are pretty challenging out there.

Our first dive, we actually miscalculated that slack time and had our divers drift further than expected.

And one of the divers, in particular, we spent a small chunk of time looking for.

He ended up a couple miles south of the bridge because he got pushed along with the current.

Thankfully, he was able to pull himself out.

But the challenges are numerous of capturing that and filming that.

And then having usable footage with all of those elements in place.

I will say our divers are an incredibly talented bunch and brought back beautiful underwater footage, both at depth of the wreckage as well as in the shallows area of the vast array of life that is down there and the colors that are in the Puget Sound.

And with that, we also had historical footage.

So we went through a number of really rich archives, including archives from Harvard History Museum and University of Washington who graciously provided us with footage that really hasn't seen the light of day, as well.

So I had a lot of assistance with getting appropriate footage for this film.

>> Tom Layson: Carly, obviously, in this era, if you're going to go through this effort, you want to make sure you capture in 4k, I'm assuming.

And how about the musical score?

How did you deal -- you talked about the audio challenges, man, with the water and the bridge and the noise.

I can't imagine trying to shoot interviews out there.

But what did you do for score?

And did you acquire in 4k?

Did you kind of future proof this thing?

What did you do?

>> Ms. Vester: Yeah.

So all the footage was shot in 4k.

The score was actually through a pretty robust music database through a variety of different artists that I did the sound design of on my end and mixed to kind of give you what you hear now.

We were able to use some of the raw audio from underwater clips as well as kind of above boat noises and the things that you'd hear while on the Sound as well.

So that is all mixed together to bring you what the film is.

>> Tom Layson: I don't want to geek out too much with Carly over gear because we can sit down and probably do that for an hour.

So, Peter, I wanted to ask you about your gear.

You mentioned rebreathers.

Were you on gas down on this dive?

Were you in oxygen or what -- >> Mr. Bortel: Yeah.

I was on an open circuit diving nitrox for this dive.

We did several dives on the bridge.

I believe there was about four dives done on the bridge.

I participated in the first one just out of the selfish pleasure of being able to go down there and have a little fun.

But my -- I took a camera there too.

But we just -- we utilized the cameras and the lighting of the professional divers who were down there, Mike, John and -- help me, Carly.

>> Ms. Vester: Mike, John and Aaron.

>> Mr. Bortel: -- and Aaron and one other in Gig Harbor.

>> Ms. Vester: Oh.

And Jared.

Jared.

>> Mr. Bortel: Jared.

Thank you.

Jared was really good with the photography.

But they actually had to bring down -- it's interesting.

They had to bring down 40,000 lumen to light up that area.

Once you get past about 30 feet, it gets pretty dark down there.

And they were well towards the arena.

So 40,000 lumen is the equivalent of 40,000 light bulbs that they brought down there with them to light up the wreck of the bridge.

>> Tom Layson: Carly mentioned the case where you had a diver that ended up getting caught up in the tide a little bit, which I'm imagine is a little shocking to go down into Tacoma and pop back up and see the state capitol down in Olympia probably.

Did you have -- were there ever any moments that there was true danger where you guys were like kind of having a holy cow moment?

Or did they all go pretty smoothly from a safety perspective?

>> Ms. Vester: I think that diver mishap was the only moment that I had a bit of a panic.

And, you know, everyone was very calm.

These guys are all not only certified technical divers but they also are dive instructors.

They know their stuff, and they were very calm in practice.

Our captain on the boat has been diving this area for 20-some years.

He's been running dive tours for 10 years.

So his experience was vast as well.

So while I was having an internal panic that one of her divers was missing, the whole team located him smoothly, you know, within 10 or 15 minutes.

I think that was the only real moment of terror.

>> Tom Layson: Yeah.

Well, producers and directors are nervous by nature.

It's the law that you have to be a little bit of a nervous Nellie.

And I want to mention, too, that it's not possible really they have a discussion about the floor of the Tacoma Narrows without a discussion of the legend of the giant octopus.

And this film does dive into that question.

>> Narrator 2: The story of octopuses in Puget Sound goes way back.

And I think that from earlier settlers that actually there was a market for hunting octopus and squid.

And so people would go out and get them.

It also leads to this big legend about the giant octopuses of Puget Sound and that live in the Narrows and, you know, people think there's this one giant octopus that lives down, down deep underneath the Narrows Bridge.

And, you know, it's 50 or 100 years old.

>> Tom Layson: So, Peter, you're the diver.

Truth to the legend of the giant octopus?

Have you ever seen a monster down there down below?

>> Mr. Bortel: You know, I have seen monsters in the Puget Sound.

We're blessed with some of the biggest GPOs in the world.

I've dove with GPOs that extend 25, 26 feet arm to arm and weigh close to 100 pounds.

The legend is of a 600 pound octopus that has 100-foot arm span and yet to see that guy.

It's pretty doubtful that we ever will given the lifespan of an octopus is about five years.

But they do get to be massive, and I have got tangled up with them before, not by choice.

They've actually reached out for my lights and camera equipment.

They're very inquisitive creatures.

But under the bridge, we did get some octopus video.

No giant krakens, though.

>> Tom Layson: Okay, good.

Good to know.

And, Carly, you mentioned this before, and I'm going to circle back to it.

Some of the video you got is amazing.

And there's a shot of an octopus that's flying on the tide that is really one of the iconic shots in the film, if you ask my humble opinion.

How did you get those?

And were you pleasantly surprised by what you got?

Did you kind of have this feeling like, gosh, we could go down there and not see one, which would really be disappointing.

I think it was probably a sigh of relief when you got that, right?

>> Ms. Vester: Yeah.

Definitely a sigh of relief.

And, again, I'm going to credit one of our divers Aaron Moser with that stunning aquatic footage down there.

Aaron has been diving the Puget Sound for quite a few years, enough to have seen that change underwater just in ecosystems and damage and degrading.

But he is the one who was able to capture all of that beautiful underwater footage and really find the life down there.

And I think Peter can also speak to this as a diver just how dynamic it is to dive with those creatures down there.

>> Mr. Bortel: Aaron will sit outside a cave of an octopus for four hours and wait for that perfect shot in his rebreather.

He will literally just sit there the entire day waiting for that shot.

He's really an amazing diver.

>> Tom Layson: Did you have to decompress?

With spending that kind of time down there, did you have to decompress, Peter, or was the depth where you could go up and down at will?

>> Mr. Bortel: You're always decompressing when you're going past 100 feet.

You're always -- almost always going to some level of deco.

I personally didn't go into a significant deco, maybe five minutes.

But -- and when the divers are on rebreathers, they all have computers telling them their deco stops and for how long.

But every diver whenever he goes down past 60 feet should stop at, you know, 15 feet for three minutes just to let the nitrox and nitrogen come out of their system.

>> Tom Layson: Good.

Carly provided a segue into this next clip just a couple of minutes ago.

One of the most interesting parts of the film is what is not at the bottom of the Tacoma Narrows.

We've already established, of course, that there's no monster octopus.

But some of maybe what should be down there is increasingly absent as well.

>> Mr. Bortel: Call it kind of a cultural heritage that the world that we have the natural world.

So, for one thing, it's important that we preserve these natural beauties for future generations.

It's not right to say, oh, you know, we got to see this stuff back in the day.

But, oh, it's all gone now.

That's not the way that that we need to leave this planet.

>> Tom Layson: So, Peter, what are some of the signs of ecological problems that you've seen in your years diving?

You have a really great perspective because you did it back in the day and you're doing it now.

What are your observations?

>> Mr. Bortel: Yeah.

I dove under the Narrows right after college in the mid '90s.

And there were lingcods everywhere, lingcods growing between 3 to 5 feet.

And they were behind every crevice and every concrete block.

Now you're down there, you're lucky you see two or three.

They've opened up a few weeks of lingcod season where people shoot them, and it's awful.

Because it's such a small area the population has just been decimated.

The rock cod population has also been reduced.

There's still some but -- and the octopus population has been reduced.

So I just wish we would, you know, outlaw spear fishing and create a natural habitat under that bridge because it is an absolutely beautiful dive site and definitely needs to be protected for future generations of divers.

>> Tom Layson: Yeah.

That's interesting.

The rock fish, you do see.

It looks like quite a few rock fish down there.

And they're very long-lived.

They take a long time to grow.

The lingcod, you see a couple in there.

But it's interesting that your observation is that the abundance that used to be there.

Carly, you talked about some of the colors you captured.

But it's also mentioned in the film that the colors, the corals and a lot of that life just isn't what it used to be.

>> Ms. Vester: Yeah.

That's correct.

And, you know, when a lot of people think of diving the Puget Sound, I myself am not a certified diver.

But I've found a lot of people are like, what is there to see in the Puget Sound?

It can't be that colorful.

And that is quite the opposite at healthy spots that you're diving.

You get a lot of pinks from the corals.

You get a lot of greens from the kelp beds.

Of course, you have the marine life in there as well.

And it is apparent when that's not there, not as it should be.

>> Tom Layson: And that's a good segue into a conversation that I want to hear from both of you.

When you're working together on a film, you have to have a common vision, but I still would like to get both your takes.

And, Peter, I'll start with you.

What is the -- in your mind is the message of this film?

What is -- what would you like people to walk away with after seeing it?

>> Mr. Bortel: Well, you know, there's a couple messages.

When we started this film, it was, you know, don't repeat the mistakes of the past.

Don't build a bridge or put together ideas in the future that you haven't checked with the past and seen how they've already failed.

Plan the future looking at the past.

That was the idea.

But then when we got divers down there and we start talking about the history of their diving under the bridge and we heard about the -- you know, heard stories and talked about the lack of fish populations and the lack of anemones and everything else, starfish that used to be down there and where we are today, we began to emphasize the need to protect that area.

So there's -- it's a multifaceted answer.

>> Tom Layson: Carly, same question to you.

As a filmmaker, if somebody watches this, what are you hoping it is the message that they take with them?

>> Ms. Vester: I think Peter nailed it on the head.

Learning from our mistakes of the past and how we can move forward with acknowledgement to our past but also looking at some of these sensitive areas, particularly in the Puget Sound and diving a little deeper, no pun intended, into what that looks like, how we can protect it, how we can better respect it and learn from the whole bundle of history that's down there because really the wreckage is a whole reef of life to learn from.

>> Tom Layson: What has been the reaction from people who've seen this, Carly?

You know, you've got a couple of different audiences.

There's the old timers who know this story and know it well.

There's a lot of people who have moved to Puget Sound in the past 10, 15 years or 5 years or whatever from Palo Alto who have no idea.

So what is -- what has the reaction been, and who do you kind of hope sees this?

>> Ms. Vester: That's a great question.

The reaction, a lot of people are surprisingly familiar with the story of the bridge that fell down.

They learned about it in school or through another lesson and it's, you know, how not to build a bridge.

And so that's been pretty fun to have that connection with folks who knew the story.

And then for those that don't, I just hope they take away a little bit of education, a little bit of adventure and maybe some inspiration to look twice at this area and maybe inquire, you know, what's under the water in their own regions, whether that be a lake or river or salt water.

>> Tom Layson: Yeah.

There's some people around in the Puget Sound area who do some really neat work with underwater photography that have helped me on a couple of special projects.

Peter, what reaction have you received from people in your circle who've seen this, maybe the diving community?

What do they think of this?

>> Mr. Bortel: Well, we've been pretty, pretty hesitant to show it to a lot of people.

It's premiering on VOD on Amazon and iTunes and other channels in July.

So we really haven't left it out to more than, gosh, I would say individually maybe 10 or 12 people and one or two Zoom presentations for some folks who have helped us on the film.

So the limited number that we've shown the long version to have been, you know, very much enjoyed the movie.

But, again, not a lot of folks have been able to see it yet.

So we're looking forward to a premiere of the show.

>> Tom Layson: And that's a good segue into the question where can people eventually see this?

You alluded to Amazon, I guess Prime Video?

What are some of the channels you've got if somebody wants to see this?

>> Mr. Bortel: Sure.

Cinedigm Documentary Film Channel, Amazon on Demand, they can pull it up just by typing in 700 Feet Down.

iTunes, all sorts of VOD.

I'm sure Peacock and other channels.

That'll be on July 27 is when we'll launch on all of those channels.

>> Tom Layson: There's a curriculum that comes along with this, too, that I'd like maybe you can talk about that, Carly, or whichever one of you wants to.

But I think it's real -- a real nice companion piece for some of the learning that can go along with this.

Can you describe what that is and where people can find that.

>> Ms. Vester: I don't know that we really have a formal curriculum that goes along with it, actually.

>> Tom Layson: I saw one on your website that talked about -- >> Ms. Vester: We do -- we certainly have worked with a select few schools who have shown interest in the shorter version of the film and showing it within their classrooms.

So engineering classes and physics classes, in particular, have found interest in it and as a visual way to view the story and understand the collapse.

I'll also give a shout out, the trailer is online on YouTube as well.

So if you just search 700 Feet Down, you can watch the trailer for the film and see a little bit of the clips for what's to come.

>> Tom Layson: Last question for you.

And, you know, you both can answer this as well.

And, Peter, we'll start with you.

What's next?

Do you think -- >> Mr. Bortel: Sure.

>> Tom Layson: -- are you doing a follow-on project, or do you have other dives you want to do?

What are you thinking?

>> Mr. Bortel: Yeah.

So we started filming our follow on project just last week.

The title in -- that we've come up with so far, not formal, was The Last Mile.

And it's a story of strong women in our society.

It's a story of a 70 Mile race that these women are doing on a paddleboard over 48 hours.

So they start in Tacoma and paddle up to port towns and with about 100 other boats.

And it's the story of this race called the SEVENTY48, which has been going on for years every summer.

>> Tom Layson: Wow.

Well, Carly, all I can say is get in shape because if you're going to be rowing and filming at the same time, you're going to have your work cut out for you.

>> Ms. Vester: I get muscles built up.

>> Tom Layson: Good.

Well, hey.

I appreciate both of you coming to Northwest NOW.

I think this is an interesting piece.

Galloping Gertie is always grist for a great story, and you two really definitely added a different dimension to it by taking us down underneath to see what's down there.

Thanks both of you for coming to Northwest NOW.

>> Mr. Bortel: All right.

Thank you.

>> Ms. Vester: Thanks, Tom.

>> Tom Layson: There are a lot of new people moving to Western Washington every year.

And if this is the first you've heard about Galloping Gertie, there's a lot more to learn.

In fact, you can go to KBTC.org, hover over local productions and then click on Full Focus in the drop-down and you'll see a great story called bridging the Narrows about the original disaster and the construction of the two new bridges.

The bottom line, our Pacific Northwest home is filled with fascinating stories and we're proud to help tell them.

I hope this program got you thinking and talking.

To watch this program again or to share it with others, Northwest NOW can be found on the web at KBTC.org.

And be sure to follow us on Twitter at Northwest NOW.

Thanks for taking a closer look on this edition of Northwest NOW.

Until next time, I'm Tom Layson.

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