Diving Deep down under… how much down under?

I hope your good sense has prevailed and you haven’t dived into a pool first to check the answer. There are others who are slightly insane who’ve done this for you.

Free-diving, or apnea traces its 4,500-year-old roots to pearl diving and Mediterranean deep-sea fishing. Deep diving without equipment is not such a bright idea. Although people can get to surprising depths, their dives are limited to their individual capability and only last a minute or so.

Apnea of more than approximately one minute’s duration leads to severe lack of oxygen in the blood circulation. Permanent brain damage can occur after as little as three minutes and death will inevitably ensue after a few more minutes unless ventilation is restored. The most common danger is of a blackout, which occurs when the diver pushes to a limit where the oxygen drops to a level that the brain can no longer perform normal functions and the diver passes out.

But it’s a whole different world for record divers. The current official world record (October 2007) for Constant weight apnea without fins (an AIDA* free-diving discipline in which the free-diver descends and ascends swimming without the use of fins or without pulling on the rope or changing his ballast;) is held by William Trubridge of New Zealand for -82 meters! The same record in the women’s category is held by Natalia Molchanova of Russia at -55 meters. (*Courtesy AIDA International, Association Internationale Pour Le Developpment De L’Apnee, the world’s largest federation for breath-hold diving)