The Deepest Breath

[Bemyclementine]

Has anyone seen this???? It's unbelievable what these free divers can achieve, but oh my goodness, they hit the surface barely conscious at times, pass out. And WHY DON'T THE SAFETY DIVERS HAVE OXYGEN????

I thought this too.

All very odd.

I mostly find it sad the death was entirely preventable. I feel the two of them over romanticised the whole thing and wanted this special moment in the water just the two of them (I.E without any ropes / lights etc)

so didn’t add the extra dagger measures that would have saved his life.

although this could have been the editing of the show and I may be wrong. It just seems strange simple things like a light on the the of the rope was missed

I watched it a few days ago. Like others, I found myself feeling very anxious as I watched, and incredulous, because it's people just choosing repeatedly to nearly die. I used to love mountaineering, reading about it as well as dabbling in it, but I suddenly couldn't get past the selfishness of it - men and women with small children. Free diving is similar.

I understand the need for humans to push their physical limits, but so much of this is egotism.

And I couldn't understand the delay of 20 seconds, either. Nor could I understand why this wasn't seen as a big conflict of interest given they had entered a physical relationship. I felt unmoved by the ending - it felt overly romanticised and all completely avoidable.

As someone with physical disabilities I found it quite strange watching all these very fit, young and healthy people putting themselves so close to the edge of death or becoming severely physically disabled. Health is a privilege. People take it for granted when they have it.

This. It can take hours for scuba divers to ascend safely from depth so not a solution to the problem here.

You might save the free diversions but you'll kill or seriously injure the scuba diver.

I understand about safety divers incompatibility, free vs scuba. But why on earth couldn't they have had a couple of scuba divers with torches to show the way? Hindsight is a wonderful thing I know.

Sounds like poor planning and lack of equipment.

When I've wreck dived we've always had torches, lines, sketches of the wreck and planned turn back times/air levels/signals even if we haven't seen all of the wreck.

Do you watch Dive Talk?

DIVE TALK - YouTube

They talk about cave diving, wreck diving and things that can go wrong - and analyse accidents.

The Blue hole is well known for things that have gone wrong.

There is a video of a diver who recorded his own death at the Blue Hole. He was not very experienced, developed narcosis and seemed to lose all understanding of what was going on.

I watched it last night - mesmerising. The idea of plummeting into the dark is so terrifying. And also that going down is fairly easy - the hard bit is coming back up. No wonder it’s so dangerous!

Two things I found really haunting were the faces of the divers who passed out coming up, as pp have said, and also the face of her father watching her dive online during the competition. Obviously the latter was reconstructed, but watching your child disappear into the dark depths and then just waiting to see if they come up again must be unbearable.

The final incident does seem badly planned, which is odd as he was supposed to be such a good safety diver. I suppose there was a bit of over confidence because she was so good so they didn’t think more back-up was necessary - but only one woman had ever done it before! The hubris of doing it without finns the first time! Do it normally to begin with surely, until you really know what you’re doing!

The relationship was a bit unclear to me - were they actually going out? He was clearly really into her but it wasn’t clear to me that she was. Until afterwards anyway, but I guess someone dying for you in such a direct way would be very traumatic and hard to get over. A sad story - but I’m actually surprised there aren’t more deaths. What a crazy sport. How did she come to be so obsessed with it at such a young age? Strange!

Watched this last week. I was also not sure it was a wholly mutually romantic relationship. He was into her but not convinced it was reciprocated.

I assume they must get addicted to the high because there doesn't really seem to be much point to what they're doing. But that's because it's utterly unfathomable to me. But they don't just risk death but permanent lung damage.

I simply can't get my head around swimming down and down just holding my breath. I can only hold my breath for about 10 seconds 😄

The hubris of doing it without finns the first time! Do it normally to begin with surely, until you really know what you’re doing!

That as well. I assume it's a small world which feeds into a sense of specialness.

I also wasn’t clear from the documentary if they were together, or for how long. Seemed to be absolutely no back up to be plan. I get if he wasn’t ready to go down but he must’ve realised the timing was critical. Also is that common as presumably in the competitions they had to go as soon as the diver is coming up. There were scuba divers down to film her but nothing in place so one could show her the exit route, no redundancy built it. It was all a bit bizarre and sad all round