The safest place on earth – freediving

Safety first - always! (c) P. Lambreth

2011 is coming to an end – and frankly speaking, for the freedive community it is about time. Here are the facts:

  1. A world record freediver died while training in his little lap pool
  2. An instructor died training in the open water
  3. A scuba instructor died freediving in a 33m deep tank
  4. All those fatalities happened while the men were freediving on their own

Now the media and thus regulators are all over freediving, as it obviously is a dangerous extreme sport that has to be banned. It is not. Freediving is the safest sport in the world. But you have to stick to one simple rule: ALWAYS FREEDIVE WITH A QUALIFIED BUDDY.

Why is this so important?

The human body and mind are like the weather – there are good days, and there are bad days. On one day everything falls in your lap, the other day you struggle for every little step. Be it in the office, in your meditation or while jogging. On a slow day you get tired, you breathe hard – no problem, you just rest for a moment.  It can be a problem when you are in the open water – that’s when your buddy steps in. She will tell you that your lips are purple and you should not push it today, maybe he tows you for a few meters back to the boat to help you over that leg cramp, maybe she comforts you by just being there. There’s so many reasons why not being alone out there – or in a pool. And all of them are easily helped by a good buddy.

This means in consequence: No buddy, no breath holding in water. Simple, right? To make it clear: Never ever a freediver got hurt when sticking to basic freedive safety rules – alway freediving with a buddy is arguably the most important one of them. To argue differently is nothing more than a display of lack of knowledge. This makes me angry.

And not only me. The Belgian freedive pioneer Fred Buyle did the right thing: Together with the graphic designer Pierre Lambreth he developed a logo – simple as the rule! Please read up Fred’s blog in french here and his initial blog about the topic in english.

The only answer is this: Join a freedive course to learn how to assist a freediver or snorkeler in trouble and to get to know yourself better, also as a scuba diver. It’s so simple, so easy to learn and so much more fun to share the experience!

Let’s make 2012 safe!

All the best
Oli