Shark Freediving

Motivational speaker and author of ‘Taming Tigers’ Jim Lawless has set a new UK No Limits record by freediving to a depth of 101 meters on August 28. The dive lasted 2:07 minutes and took place in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt.

Jim breaks the 5 year old record by Paul Whincup set at 77 meters in 2005 and is now the first official British freediver to break the 100 meter mark. As a newcomer to the sport Jim took up freediving recently to raise money for a children’s charity called Sparks. Congrats to Jim!

After a successful Swedish record in NLT to 100 meters in cold dark waters under extreme wind and wave conditions, Annelie Pompe from Sweden is going to try to do a 130 meter VWT. So from October 4 till 6 she’s going to try to beat the current world record, set by Natalia Molchanova, at Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt.

Natalia did a succesful variable weight dive to 125 meters on June 16 of this year. It took her 3:38 minutes to complete this dive. The difference between doing a 100 meter no limits dive and a 130 meter variable weight dive are huge! Even when comparing only the diving conditions. So we wish Annelie a lot of luck and success with her preparation for this attempt.

Okay, lets create a new acronym for this kind of video’s because more and more show up and here is the Greek version of it. I don’t think that Guillaume Nery expected so much fame with his now more then 6 million times watched video on Youtube. The Greeks give it another funny twist with some great shots and funny footage.

Herbert and his 214 meter No Limits setup. What will be different this year? (Click on it for bigger version)

40 year old Herbert Nitsch is still planning his incredible journey to a depth of 1000 feet or 305 meters while holding his breath. November in Greece is the time and place we here more and more. So Herbert will attempt to break his already 3 year old No Limits record when he reached a depth of 214 meter. He wants to improve his own record with 91 meters extra depth!

We all know the incredible skills of Herbert but is this 305 meters not just too much? For sure this record has nothing to do with the sport side of freediving, but it’s probably more a personal quest for Herbert to reach that magic number of 1000 feet. What improvements will he make to his already pretty out-of-the-box setup for his last no limits record.

It’s still essential that he will remain around a dive time of 4:30 minutes because of DCS and narcosis problems. And if you see his dive graph of the 215 meter dive it has already got ridiculous ascending and descending speeds. But there is room for speed increase; When Herbert dives down he stops at around 20-25 meters to empty his lungs into a  bottle around. This way he reduces narcosis/DCS problems and he has air left which he can use to equalize in the deep part when air is needed which normally he couldn’t get from his lungs anymore at that depth. To start at the surface, go to 20 meters and fill the bottle and continue takes around 30 seconds.

On the way to the surface Herbert takes it very very slow in the last 20 meters again. Doing a static hang at around 10 meters depth. So his time to surface from 25 meters on is around 1:30 minutes. That leaves 2:30 to go from 25 meters to 215 and back to 25 meters.  1:15 to descent 190 meters and 1:15 to ascent 190 meters, which is around 2,5 meters per second.

To go from 25 meters to 305 in 1:15 minutes is 280 meters with a speed of 3,73 meters per second. For his 215 meter dive his maximum speed going down was 3,1 m/s and going up 4 m/s. If Herbert could descent with a continue speed of 3m/s and ascent with 4,5m/s he would still be in the 2,5 minute time-frame.

Can you imagine stepping into the lift of the eiffeltower elevator on the third floor and touching the ground in 1:30 minute? That would be scary as hell! And now imagine standing at the bottom of the eiffeltower and being on the third floor in only a minute! Pretty Extreme! Puts things into perspective.

Good luck and safe dives to Herbert Nitsch and his crew. Any updates on the expedition can be read here.

Below a video of the 214 meter no limits dive and two teasers from his upcoming documentary about his 1000 feet quest.

What do you think about his 1000 feet quest?

Vacation time is over and work has started again. In the last couple of week I took it somewhat easy with updating the site. Everybody has to rest sometimes and sharpen the saw. So no need for panic, we’re back again. I even got a few news items from the past month I will still post to catch up with some important freediving news and competition results.

It’s great to see that even when I’m not writing, new people find Shark Freediving on the web for news and information. With around 1000 Facebook fans and 5000 daily visitors on the Shark website, we’re growing each month. While feedback is still lower then I would like to see, I got used to the idea that even when it’s quiet that what’s being posted on Shark Freediving is appreciated by many. So for me it stays an honor to keep writing for everybody and that it will be read by many.

To continue in the coming months and years I’m trying to expand the Shark Freediving model once again with searching for help from others. It’s sometimes difficult to find the time to search for news, write pieces, interview people, attend all competitions, etc. So if you think that you can help write, photograph, tweet, hint, mail, design, think or in any other way can help me with Shark Freediving let me know! All help is greatly appreciated.

Congratulations to Denmark and Japan. While Denmark is the men’s winner, Japan wins the women’s tournament. To be honest, it was not the ranking I had predicted, but in the end the strongest won. Congratulations to everybody who participated, set a personal, national or world record and/or won!

During the world championships in Japan, Frederic Sessa from France broke the current dynamic world record by diving a length of 255 meter underwater. The dive time was 2:37 minutes, so an average speed of 1,6m/s (5,8km/h). Pretty fast! Congrats on finally breaking the record (he has attempted it several times before). Below the video of the new record.

Results of today’s Dynamic competition in Japan are in. Loads of national records and even a world record by Frederic Sessa. Four disqualified people due to surface protocol problems.