Free diving

With clear water and a sand bottom invitingly sloping down between the corals, I just had to try and see how deep I could swim using fins and only one breath of air. A big amphora being the tempting goal down below. Thereby discovering the great feeling of free diving and setting a new personal record - a rather easy thing to do when it's your first serious attempt.


As I reached the point where my lungs were just too compressed to squeeze any more air out of them to equalize, the amphora seemingly only an armlength away, but out of reach nonetheless, I turned around and looked up at the surface high above... what a sight!

Then I started finning up, slightly worried about shallow water black-out. This is not something you want to try without a buddy watching you from the surface, ready to dive down and pull you up should the worst case scenario occur!

Fish let you come much closer, even letting you swim among them, when you're not blowing expanding bubbles all the time, at least as long as you don't frantically move your arms around, using just your fins in stead.

So now my head is buzzing with free diving jargon like: constant weight, static and dynamic breath-hold etc. I definitely have to look for a low volume diving mask... besides training my breath-hold capability and improving my underwater swimming & finning technique.