Shark Freediving

I just received an interesting interview with champion USA freediver Tanya Streeter. Tanya is probably one of the most succesfull freedivers in the world nowaday, not only performance wise, but just the complete package. Good media attention, sponsors, etc. Unfortunatly I didn’t have the source about who took the interview, so if you know… Have fun reading. If you want to see more of here take a look at her website.

Redefine your Limits
An interview with champion freediver Tanya Streeter
Just months after discovering her talent for breath-hold diving, Tanya Streeter began to set records. I had the opportunity to talk to her about her success, her passions and her future plans. I thank Tanya for her open and honest answers. I learned a lot from her, not just about freediving, but about determination and commitment as well.

I’ve always thought of freediving as more extreme than scuba diving and I’m not real familiar with the sport. Can you define freediving for me?

Freediving is breath hold diving. Instead of descending to whatever your target depth is on scuba, you’re descending on a single breath of air that you take at the surface. For recreational purposes, you might swim around, look at the coral, and enjoy the fish. For competitive purpose, you’re simply going straight down and straight back up again. As far as it being an extreme sport, it is definitely viewed as such but when compared to other extreme sports it has essentially less risk and in fact, it has less risk than scuba diving.

Can you tell me a little bit more about yourself and how you became interested in the sport of freediving?

I was born and raised in Grand Cayman and so I’ve always had a passion for the ocean [since] I was a little girl. Up until I was 25, I really knew nothing of freediving as a sport; I was just a snorkeler. I was somebody who could probably snorkel a little deeper than the other kids. I just enjoyed it like that. I started [freediving] because someone came down to the island and saw me snorkeling and diving up and down, which I didn’t know was called freediving, and thought that I had an inherent talent. That’s how I got into it. Somebody saw me and convinced me I should start trying to do records.

What physiological aspects must a person possess to become a world-class freediver?

That’s up for debate, still, amongst freedivers, physiologists, scientists, and amongst those people who think we’re freaks. To become world-class, I think it’s having the right amount of absolutely everything. To be a good freediverI think that maybe you just have less of one element, maybe less commitment, determination, or physical strength. World-class freedivers are going deeper and deeper and deeper. At some point, I’ll realize what my limit is and it’s unlikely it is going to be in determination because I’m a really determined person. It’s unlikely it’s going to be in any of the philosophical things: determination, commitment, drive, [or] stubbornness towards failure, because I’m very strong in all those. But it is likely, and I’ll have to accept that at some point, I’ll simply reach my physical limit of either how strong I am to be able to kick back up from a certain depth or my ability to equalize. I’ll reach my limit, and as such, I’ll drop out of the world-class and there’ll be people that will advance beyond me.

The things that you can’t necessarily work on or push your body anymore are the things that will stop you and a lot of that is mental. A lot of that is simply saying, I can’t get up out of bed and train this hard every day any more, unless your body is falling apart, which [could] happen at some stage; your joints will be too beat up or something. It’s really hard to say, I think perhaps a better answer I can give you is what separates one of the best freedivers in the world from somebody who is simply really good but will never enter that circle of the great freedivers, it’s simply possessing slightly less of one of the elements that gets the best into the level that they are. But, that is continuously changing, so it’s a really difficult question to answer.

What is a typical training day like for you?

When I’m in training it all depends on where I am in relation to the date of the record. Three months in advance from the date of the record I might be doing some intensive cardiovascular training which involves an hour to an hour and a half of cardio training: running, stair-master, cycling or even swimming but at a high rate– maintaining a high heart rate– for about sixty to ninety minutes. That would be probably three times a week. Then the other three days of the week will be more intensive weight training. The idea to both of those in terms of the fitness is to build up a really high level of cardiovascular fitness and to target the muscles I’m going to use for the dive. If it’s a constant weight dive that means I’m using my legs. I’m kicking so I’m working on my abs and down, targeting those muscles and making sure they’re strong. If it’s the category where you pull up and down the line and you don’t kick at all, then I’d probably be working my abs and my upper body including my abdominal muscles, and less emphasis on my legs. That’s the first month; three days of each and not too much more. I might start in that period doing some breath hold work, as well, one or two times a week working on my breath hold ability.

In the second portion of the training, it’s more maintaining the cardiovascular fitness so [I'm] still doing cardio three times a week, but not for so hard and so long. You risk burn out like any athlete. You work towards a window of time, which should include your performance, and you don’t want to be burned out by the time you get there. What I find suits me is to maintain that cardio fitness and strength work. I combine them. I’ll do forty minutes of lighter cardio plus forty minutes of lighter weight training. The other three days of the week [consist of] more conditioning work. Condition your muscles and body to work without oxygen by doing breath hold activities and expending energy at the same time either in the gym or underwater laps.

The third phase is predominantly diving. For the most part it’s getting adaptation– starting off at a shallower depth and gradually inching nearer to the target depth. I won’t dive every day. I’ll dive every two days or maybe every three days and the rest days will be working on breath hold and cardiovascular fitness maintenance because basic level of fitness has a direct impact on how efficient your body exchanges gasses. And of course, seeing as I’m breath hold diving, I want to make sure that the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide in my system is efficient.

That’s why I need to maintain physical fitness. The same way if you run up a flight of stairs and you’re unfit, not overweight but just unfit you get to the top and you’re out of breath. If you train at it every day, you’ll find that within whatever certain period of time you’re getting to the top of the flight of stairs, getting there faster, and getting there less out of breath. Your heart rate recovers back to a normal base much faster. That’s basically an indication of how fit you are. The reason you’re recovering faster is because your body is more conditioned to doing it. That means that your exchange of gases– you’re respiration– is efficient.

There’s mental training all the time because everything is a challenge. It’s good mental training to face challenges and overcome them. When it comes to the diving, [it] is a third of the training (maybe a little more, but not that much) of the training. By that time I’m physically fit, my muscles are strong, and it’s just a case of maintaining the fitness, maintaining the strength and at the same time exposing myself to increasing levels of pressure and increasing breath hold time for the dive.

Have you ever been afraid during any of your freedives?

I�m never afraid of depth, dark water, the pressure or anything like that because I always have a period where I get used to it. I start shallow dives and I inch closer. I don�t suddenly wake up one morning and [say] �OK, I�m going to go 200 feet� because that would be really scary. I start off at half that, which is less scary for me. I�m not scared of dark water anymore because I�ve had an initiation process�at the beginning I was scared. The one thing that does scare me is cold. I have a real problem with cold just because for me, I have less control over my body when I�m cold and my determination and everything is really whittled down when I�m cold. I just think, �OK this isn�t fun, I don�t want to do it.�

Really, the things I�m scared of when I dive are just simply not meeting the expectations I�ve placed upon myself. I expect a lot out of my body physically, but I am more prepared to accept my physical limitations than my mental limitations because I just think there is no end to how mentally strong you can be– how much you can handle. When I face a dive, one of my biggest motivations is simply not letting myself down. I know what is to return to the surface, not having achieved what I set out to achieve and the disappointment is really great. When you�re disappointed with yourself, somewhere you�re accepting that you didn�t try your hardest. That�s the most scary thing for me is weakening mentally and it�s so easy to do. Since you�ve become more experienced has it become easier for you?

Certain aspects have become easier, yes. Facing challenges have become easier. I have to [dive] in New Zealand later this week actually and I�m terrified of the cold. It�s winter down there and I keep thinking I must be out of my mind�doing this. A year ago I would have just said no, sorry no way, not a chance. And now, because I do have more experience in facing challenges as they come up�I�m more prepared to say, �I�m going to go. I�m going to try.� I can entirely really trust myself to try 110%. I know that I only accept my failure once I have tried 110%. I can�t ask myself of anything more and I�m comfortable pushing myself to that degree. I�m comfortable with the fact that at some point I�m just simply going to have to accept that I can not do it. Whether that�s depth, whether it�s cold, or whether it�s juggling all of the different emotions that are involved with doing something like this, I will at some point have to accept that. I�ve kept my eyes open from the very beginning and it�s made each challenge a little easier on some level.

How open is the sport of freediving to women?

With more women getting involved and more women having a higher profile in this sport, it�s perceived as being more open. The fact is it�s never been closed to women. It�s very much a male dominated, ego dominated sport. There are still unfortunately freedivers who believe that women shouldn�t be competing. But there�s no reason why women shouldn�t. It�s just as easy for a woman to get involved in her area as it is a man or as difficult as it is for a man. There�s really no physical limitations. Women aren�t the weaker sex physically and we�aren�t the weaker sex mentally. In terms of physical limitation, we�re not built differently for the sport. I don�t think it�s closed to women.

I think that perhaps the way that it�s perceived as being dangerous and because there are so many more men in it, maybe that is an intimidating factor for women to get involved. The most rewarding part about it for me is the amount I�ve learned about myself. I know so much more about myself than I did three years ago. Mountains more and it�s really empowering. It�s really rewarding and I�m so glad that I had this thing in my life that did teach me. I don�t know when I was going to learn how motivated and mentally strong I can be if it wasn�t through freediving.

There�s several different disciplines that I read about on your website. Which ones do you practice and can you tell me a little bit more about them?

I pretty much practice all of them, all of the depth ones. I�ve set records in all of the depth categories apart from the one called variable ballast where you ride the sled down and then you come back up under your own power. But, I�m hoping to do that later this year. The other two categories, which don�t involve depth, but one involves purely distance underwater– the dynamic apnea, and the static apnea, which is just holding your breath face down in a pool, are very interesting. I hold the American women�s record for static and dynamic, but I only found that out because I had to do it for tryouts for the American team. I guess no other women had really tried it�but I�m not even that good at those categories. They�re very hard. Typically, you don�t find people that are good at the timed one as well as the depth one because they require such different strengths�and maybe different motivations. One of my goals is at some point going to be to prove that I am capable of being good or the best at both of those because I am always thinking of bigger challenges. For the time being, I find those much harder than I ever find deep diving. It�s just a personal choice. There�s people who are really good at holding their breath but can�t dive deep. It�s what you train for. There are a few people in the world that are good at both but not that many. It�s quite unusual.

Do you plan to attempt any more records any time soon?

Later this year I�m looking at doing two in fresh water. I already hold the constant ballast and the free immersion– the one where you kick down and up and then the one where you pull down and up. I already hold both of those records in fresh water. So I may either go and re-break those or I may set records in fresh water in the no limits category– using the sled down and the lift bag back up again; or the variable ballast category– the sled down and coming back up under your own power. I�m hoping to do those in Austria in September in a very cold lake there. Nothing short of a few challenges.

I also read on your website that you�re involved in some environmental projects.

One of the�rewarding things about having achieved the success that I have freediving is that I can have a little soap box that I can get up and preach from and if I�m lucky I don�t bore people to death. They listen. I�m just like anybody else who loves the ocean and wants to protect everything in it. Now I have an opportunity to give back to it because people do listen and better than that is that I�ve been invited to work with different organizations to help raise the profile of the great work that they do. That, for me, is a huge passion that, as far as I�m concerned, I just don�t get enough time for. But, it�s my way of fulfilling even more childhood dreams– protecting the ocean and protecting the animals that are in it.

The Reefball Foundation is an organization [that] restores, rebuilds and places new reefs in different areas if they�re needed either for tourism, local fisheries, when reefs are damaged or even to protect the beaches from erosion. Instead of dumping a big old car engine in there, they�ve come up with this very cool design that kind of gives nature a�start. They�ve placed a reefball down there�designed with water flow in mind, with how the coral can stick and grow, how the fish are going to use it, different things like this. I help to promote their work and I go on trips with them.

The Whaleman Foundation does work to raise awareness of the plights of whales and dolphins and marine mammals in our oceans. They�re a small organization, but they do some good work with the bigger guys. They affiliate themselves and they helped stop Mitsubishi [from] nearly wipe out one of the last remaining mating grounds for the [California] gray whale.

The other organization is The Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society. They are a big organization�based in England. They [are similar to] The Whaleman Foundation. They�re actually very anti-captivity and they work to raise awareness for the dangers and plights that animals face in captivity and the absolute senselessness of keeping any animal in captivity. I think that maybe ten or fifteen years ago the argument could be deemed less valid because you need to keep a certain amount of animals in captivity to educate the populous about the millions of them in the wild. But, with today�s technology– the way we can see animals in the wild, the way we can simulate animals in the wild on the TV or computer screen, the ease now that you can go on a trip and see them in the wild and appreciate them– [it] kind of takes away from the necessity to go and see dolphins perform and make circus acts out of them. I do believe captivity is getting to the point where it simply serves no purpose. They [The Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society] work really hard, especially to release the 16 Orcas– killer whales– that are in captivity around the world. We�re human beings. We�re sensitive people. We should understand what we�re putting these animals through. It�s like taking you and five complete strangers and locking you in a broom closet for the rest of your lives then making you do tricks for dead fish. You wouldn�t do it as a human being and it�s an insult to the intelligence, beauty and awesome power of the animals to take a 40-ton creature and lock it in a swimming pool. A lot of those animals are suitable for release now and we all know that Keiko is being released (Free Willy Keiko). They�re working hard at releasing him up in Iceland. He�s not far from being released, but there�s another fifteen. These animals don�t live for twenty years, they live for�sixty years. They only live for twenty years in captivity because they�re so bloody miserable. They�re not suited to it. They all rave about how this animal stayed with [them] twenty-five years before it died. It was still in it�s infancy at twenty-five years. It�s something I feel is really important, and�I don�t have enough time to work with them. I hope that one of the things that will happen�when I do decide to give up competitive freediving is that I will be able to give more time to organizations like that. But, of course I have to keep my profile up so that they still want me and so people still listen to me.

It�s a little difficult. It�s kind of a juggling act. I�ve been involved in smaller efforts�with the American Oceans Campaign [and] the Great American Fish Count. My participation in things like that is so that a couple extra TV cameras come down and they have a slightly more interesting headline to their story and it does serve a purpose. People read and people learn. Then they support the organization and they ultimately help the aquatic environment.

Can you tell us a little bit more about the Sports Illustrated photo shoot and whether or not you have anything like that going on in the near future or are you just concentrating on training?

It was a photo shoot and they�re exhausting. It only took up about two days. I tend to be able to fit things like that into training time. As it happened, I wasn�t training at the time. I did a shoot with Outside Magazine about ten days ago as well. That will be out�for the September issue. It�s in the Rising Star section. Then there�s also something coming out in National Geographic Adventure in the [September/October] issue. They�re using�images from my last record and I�m doing a little interview with that, too.

I�m going to New Zealand to do some filming with National Geographic Television as a relatively small part in a big series that they�re doing on diving. They�re mostly looking at scuba diving and they get to a point in the program (it�s called The Force) where they have some technical divers who are going to be doing about a 400-foot dive on the wreck of the Niagara, which is in New Zealand. They�re�very qualified technical trimix divers. What they�ve decided to do is invite me to go down there and go to 300 -350 feet using the same crew who does the dive on the Niagara as my safety crew [and show] all the equipment they need to do it and then [show] how I just go down to the same depth. It remains to be seen if I can actually do it in the freezing cold water. But, I�m going to try.

All this while I am starting to get back into phase one of my training, getting physically fit again. Because, as I say, I want to do these records in Austria in September and September�s not that far away. By the time we get back from New Zealand, we�ll be stopping in Hawaii to finish up trials for the American Team for the World Cup in October in Spain. By the time I get back from [the trials] at the beginning of August�I go to LA for one night to record [a] game show. I hope to be in Austria in the middle of August to complete phase two and begin phase three of the training to be ready to set the record at the end of the month. Then at the beginning of October, the world championships are from the fifth to the thirteenth. That�s a team composition and I�ll be competing for Team USA.

After that, by the middle of October, I don�t have anything planned. I don�t think that�s going to last very long, though. I�m fairly sure something�s going to come up that�s going to fill up my schedule and I hope it�s something that�s record based or something really exciting. I love to be home, but I am trying to make a career out of this. I think that this year is going to be busy. I know that when I�m done in New Zealand I�ll be doing a ton of publicity down there. I have to wait and see how much is generated on the American market for the records I do in Austria, I�m sure there�ll be stuff in the dive magazines.

One of my forum members wrote that he�s been a freediver for over twenty years and he thinks that his ability to stay underwater has actually diminished over time. And he wanted to know what could cause this.

One of the really good rules of freediving, especially if you are of a competitive nature either against yourself or in an actual competition, is to avoid any kind of negative suggestions. It�s hard to do if you�re already saying, �my breath hold is diminishing.� That kind of thing is negative suggestion. That is one of the things to avoid. It�s [difficult] because it�s a hard mental exercise that you have to do. I find it very difficult to understand why that would be the case. If anything, I can imagine that he may reach a plateau, as we all do at some point. We improve to three minutes and we just can�t get past three fifteen. Or like the world record holders, they improve to six minutes and can�t get past six ten. Everybody reaches a plateau and I�m surprised that he says it has diminished rather than it�s not getting any better. I can understand it plateauing out. Things that may directly affect that is physical fitness. It�s possible that over the course of twenty years, it�s logical to think perhaps he�s become an older man and therefore less physically fit. That might be one thing, because it directly affects his efficiency of respiration.

How do you avoid shallow water blackout?

Diving within my limits and understanding the physiology that is associated with freediving. Those are two of the most important things. In understanding the physiology, you�re going to understand how much preparation time you have to give for a dive. You can almost not prepare for too much as long as you stay hydrated and you stay�comfortable. If you want to do a fifty foot freedive down and up, and, for argument�s sake, that�s at 70% of your ability, you want to be warming up�preparing at the surface as in long slow inhalations and long slow exhalations for a good three to four minutes before you descend. A lot of people try to do that on one or two minutes and it�s not going to happen. You also need to be in the water doing warm up dives or breath holds a good thirty to forty minutes before you are actually at the level where you will perform best because you�re kicking in the dive reflex. It�s adequate warm-up and preparation. If you understand the physiology behind freediving, you�ll understand the necessity for good warm up and good preparation. If you dive within your limits then you�re not going to push yourself to the point where you can blackout. Another thing is to slow down your ascent in the last thirty feet. That�s very important. Or if you�re going deeper than 100 feet slow down your ascent in the last 50 feet.

How long can you hold your breath?

I hold my breath for over six minutes– six minutes, eight seconds. It�s not quite the world record but maybe I�ll train and go for it, who knows. I find it very difficult.

How can your train yourself to hold your breath for long periods of time?

Physical fitness. I can�t stress enough how important that is. When you�re going for a breath hold, you want to be on a completely empty stomach– even a little bit hungry. The other thing [is] adequate warm up and adequate preparation. It�s always a good idea when you get in the water to do your first breath hold that you push. It�s no point getting in there and doing one minute as your preparation if one minute is easy for you. If two minutes is hard then you want to do something like one fifteen to one thirty. My point is that you need to push yourself a little on the warm-ups, not to the point where you�re exhausted but to the point where your body knows [you have to hold your breath and it starts doing everything efficiently]. You have to push a little bit harder.

Does holding your breath for a long time result in potential risk for brain cell damage because of repetitive episodes of oxygen deprivation?

Absolutely not. It�s not possible. People typically confuse an unconscious person– a person who remains unconscious for six, seven, or eight minutes with irreparable brain damage. We�re holding our breath, but are completely conscious for that amount of time. If we don�t prepare adequately we will become unconscious. But, by doing the adequate preparation and the adequate ventilation, in effect you�re tricking your body into thinking you�re still breathing because you�ve packed so much oxygen into your system, that your body is just really efficiently burning through that. And if you�ve prepared well and you�re physically fit so that the respiration (the process of the exchange of gases) is efficient then it�s going to take a longer period of time before you need to breath.

What you have to do as somebody who�s pushing the breath hold ability is to overcome the contractions that you feel in your chest, which signals the need to breath. A good freediver will recognize when the contractions are something you can overcome and when the contractions are something that are severe enough that you need to exit the water and breath straight away to avoid a blackout. You can overcome them. You can fight them. Your body has this incredible reserve. It�s simply saying [it needs to breath] and at some point its going to [say] �If you�re not going to breath then I need whatever oxygen is left for the brain so I�m going to cut off your consciousness.� It�s like a breaker switch. It just cuts it off and all the blood now goes to the brain. It�s enough to sustain it for X amount of minutes. After that figure which tends to be six, seven, or eight minutes– then and only then does brain damage occur. Brain damage is not going to occur in a breath hold situation where you remain conscious. Even if you�re unconscious for a couple minutes you�re not going to [expose] yourself to brain damage.

These were all concerns of mine and I wouldn�t be doing it if there were risks that were going to leave me temporarily or even permanently impaired. No way. I don�t take chances in life�Of course, there are naturally inherent risks that are associated with any breath hold activity and the single undeniably most important rule to freediving and to breath hold is that you never ever do it alone. You do it alone, you not only do expose yourself to possible risk of brain damage, but you expose yourself to a very clear risk of death. It�s possible, it can�t be ignored, but there is a very easy way to avoid it. The first, easiest, and most efficient way to avoid it is to dive with a buddy. That includes breath hold in the gym, sitting on your couch, in a swimming pool and of course freediving.

What effect does water temperature have on a person who is freediving?

If you are too warm, your heart rate is going to be too high. The body is fighting to get cool and wasting energy. When your body is starting to get cool, it sweats and just the process of that�dehydrates you and that�s terrible and�it�s burning energy. Your sweating. Your heart rate is up because your body is pumping blood to the veins and capillaries that are nearest the surface so the heat can escape. That all takes energy. You don�t want to be too hot. You don�t want to be too cold. Your body is going to fight�to stay warm. Shivering is a natural reaction to being cold and it burns energy. But, it�s hard to suppress shivering. It takes as much energy to suppress it as it does to shiver, burning energy you need for breath hold.

I prefer to be warm and I tend to like diving where the water is over 70-75 degrees and still in a 3-mil wetsuit when it is like that. 75-80 degrees for me is comfortable and I�m in a 3-mil. Anything less than that– my time in the water is limited. Below 70 degrees, well I�m scared. I can�t even think about it, but I have to go face it. But the fact is that for kicking in the mammalian dive reflex, a temperature range from 58-68 degrees has been proven to be most efficient. Because the nerve endings and receptors, specifically in the face around the eyes, lips, mouth, nose, forehead, back of the neck– those all react faster to that range of temperature.

But, if you�re going to sit there and shiver in 65 degrees of water then there�s no point. Spend more time warming up and kicking in your dive reflex in slightly warmer water. What effects does it have? It depends. Extreme effects are going to be completely inefficient. If you can be comfortable in cool water, then that�s where you�re going to be the better freediver. [As for cool water], that�s all entirely a personal decision as to what is cool. I think that if its less than 75 degrees it is cold. You can just put on a thicker wetsuit and always where a hood that kind of thing.

What are some of the things a person should not do when they are engaging in the sport of freediving?

Never dive alone. I just can�t stress how important that is. It�s the difference, honestly, between life and death and the thing is when you�re freediving with a buddy, there�s almost zero chance of injury, let alone death. That�s the single most important rule to freediving.

Always stop any breath hold activity if you or your buddy suffers from a shallow water blackout or any kind of temporary loss of control. Basically, if either of you has a �blackout during depth freediving, both of you should end the session because the person that suffers the blackout immediately becomes more susceptible to another one and possibly worse and that person is also not in good enough condition to be a safety for the other person. If it occurs during land or pool based training, then the person who suffers the blackout or loss of control should stop, but could probably safely do safety for their buddy as long as a nice quick recovery is made and everybody is happy with it.

You should never hyperventilate when your freediving. It�s just total misconception that rapid ventilation is good preparation for breath hold. All that does is reduce the level of carbon dioxide in the blood but it doesn�t replace it with any oxygen.

You should not freedive after scuba diving. If you do, you should treat your freedive as if it were going to be a scuba dive. Therefore, you should have the surface interval that you would have if you were going to be scuba diving next. Refer to your dive tables, pretend the freedive is a scuba dive and that�s how long your surface interval should be. Nothing less. Having said that, you a probably better off leaving a good twelve hours between freediving and scuba.

You should stay well hydrated. You lose a lot of water when you�re diving because of the increased respiration (the exchange of gases); the body undergoes physiological changes that are inherent with the mammalian dive reflex. You don�t realize how much fluid, how much water vapor that you lose when breathing. You�re breathing much more when your freediving than you are in everyday life. And your body�s efforts to stay warm as well. You need to keep replacing that fluid.

You should always wear a wetsuit when you�re freediving, even in warm water. The point is that you have extra buoyancy. You offset it by wearing a weight belt, but you should treat your weight belt as a disposable item, which can be ditched if you need assistance from your extra buoyancy when you�re surfacing. You should be weighted for neutral buoyancy around 30 feet if you�re diving up to about 100 feet and�60 feet if you�re diving [deeper]. That natural buoyancy from that depth where you�re neutrally buoyant upwards is only going to assist you on the way up. You should slow down in the last atmosphere of pressure to avoid the risk of shallow water blackout. You can slow down and use that extra buoyancy to help you bring [yourself] to the surface. It also has to do with the partial pressure of oxygen. The fact that you�ve burned up so much oxygen in your system in doing the dive, then in that last atmosphere of pressure, as you return to the surface in the last 30 feet, is when your lungs are going to re-expand at a much faster pace than over any other period of the dive. And it�s just going to heighten the fact that there�s not very much oxygen left in the system.

If you�re not freediving from a boat you should have adequate buoys, flags or some kind of rigging to make sure that you�re visible from the surface.

Don�t freedive if the current is anything more than a light surface, deep currant or the visibility is less than say ten feet or the waves are more than two or three feet.

Knowing your personal limits and accepting that as individuals, we are going to have personal limits. Mine might be a little deeper than yours, but I�m still going to have to accept them nonetheless when I reach them. Avoid negative suggestion. Recognize the fine line between trying hard and trying too hard. It�s a limit that varies between individuals but it�s a limit that has to be respected by everybody.

That�s all the questions that I have. Are there any other tips or comments that you want to make?

I really can�t stress enough that freedivers shouldn�t dive alone. I�m really excited that there is this much interest in the sport. It�s a rapidly growing sport and to me it�s one of my goals to continue to promote it. I�m really pleased that people are interested and that they do have really intelligent questions. Dive safe.