Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale - long deep breaths. As I float on the surface and look down I start thinking about how light and relaxed my body feels. I take a last deep breath, pack my lungs, release the snorkel from my mouth, close my eyes, forget the world above me, and begin my descent. You may be thinking this is a story about performance freediving or reaching incredible depths - but it is not. Below me is a small Nassau Grouper at about 30ft waiting for me to come back down and give me a chin tickle, cheek rub.
This is a story about how I got into freediving and interacting with sharks. I do not hold any records - either spear-fishing, static, dynamic or any other freediving disciplines. What I do love is being in the Ocean and interacting with animals - from small to large.
In my family I had little choice not to develop a relationship with the Ocean. I was born in the Bahamas, and our back yard was literally a reef. Before I could walk my parents introduced me to the water - you could say even before that - my mom would dive while pregnant (not with tanks), and apparently I "saw" my first shark while in her belly - my dad loves to tell the story of her starting to paddle back to the boat like a crazy woman and that he had to grab her by the fin to slow down and relax.
After leaving the Bahamas, every vacation we took brought us to the Ocean - in those days you had to be 13 years old to be certified by PADI - which forced me to freedive until then. To my father's disappointed and my mother's delight (I became her buddy) I received my Jr. Open Water certification in Bonaire (which I still have to date). My SCUBA days did not last long, and by the time I was 15 I was once again relying on my lungs.
My father, Wolfgang Leander, has been an avid freediver for over 50 years and is definitely responsible for my taking to the sport - in our case really a religion. At the age of 6, my father was already immersed in the underwater world, he devoured books that had images (not pictures) of sharks, divers, orcas, barracudas, giant squids and drew them himself.
It was not until he moved back to Europe in the 50s that he started to dive in the Mediterranean Sea - like most divers back then, it was the hunt that brought them to the Ocean. He would never take up SCUBA and has combined his other passion, photography, with freediving - particularly focusing on sharks (how the interest of sharks came along will be part II of this article).
Over the years it seems that freediving has really become somewhat of an "extreme" sport, and has this aura of being only for daredevils and super athletes. Like with any sport, there are always those that push the limits...but freediving is much more than depth or length of breath hold - it is about become part of another world. And while you should
definitely be fit, it is a sport that anyone can practice and learn to love.
I always get the comment: "but you cannot stay down there long enough" - generally comes from SCUBA divers - I usually tell the bubble blowers that anything I do does not require more time. Plus, the bubbles scare animals away - you can never be part of the environment wit
h the cumbersome gear and the noisy discharge of CO2 (unless of course you are on a re-breather, but that is expensive and requires special certifications).
Freediving really boils down to mental preparedness and your ability to feel comfortable in the water - nothing more aside from a good pair of fins and mask. As with any sport, practice, practice, practice if you want to improve - and you have probably heard this before - never freedive alone even when training in a pool.
Once you a comfortable freediving - the next step could be to freedive with sharks...we'll keep that for another day.
Felix Leander and his father Wolfgang maintain the Ocean Dreams blog on freediving, sharks, life and the ocean. This post was republished with permission based on an entry Felix wrote for DeeperBlue.net.
Image Credits: 1, 2, 5: Wolfgang Leander, 3: David Ulloa, 4: Lynn Meeker
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