On the 20th of May 2017, I said no to scuba tanks for the first time in my life. Surprised this happened? So am I! But bouy was it worth it.. (pun intended)
I joined Australian freediving champion Adam Stern on his ‘Deep Week’ in Amed, Bali, to train my mammalian dive reflex and to learn the art of diving on a single breath. I had previously done a little bit of freediving but never anything extreme, and whenever I did freedive I didn’t really have any idea of how to hold my breath, kick or even how to position my body.
The first day of training involved some intensive theory as well as some pool work. As a lazy scuba diver, I quickly learnt that holding your breath was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be, and that everything I knew as a ‘scubie’, as I was affectionately called, was wrong (for freediving anyway). When we finally jumped in the ocean and set out buoys and lines I knew this was going to a challenge. The key to freediving is relaxing. I, however, run on about three to five cups of coffee a day, and nothing makes me more excited than being in the water. The fact that we had a giant green sea turtle swim underneath us on the first day didn’t help my excitement levels either.
When you freedive on a line, the aim is to look at the line. You want your body to be straight, you kick from your bum with straight long legs, and tuck your chin so that you’re almost looking back up at the surface. You swim blindly, head first, towards the ocean floor. Talk about new experiences and breaking habits. I’m not sure how many times I actually asked ‘But what do you mean I can’t look around while I swim down? What if there’s an eagle ray down there?’, but the thought definitely crossed my mind more than a couple of times. Daniel Parsons was my instructor for the first few days, and very patiently helped me fix my freediving technique by giving me some excellent descriptions of what I looked like as I was swimming down.
Example A: ‘Mel you swim like a banana’
I’m not sure how many times I was told I swim like a banana in the first few days, and I’m not sure how many times instructor Shane Tierney smacked me on the head with his snorkel because I had dived down (again) with my snorkel still in my mouth (that’s not allowed in freediving for safety reasons). I’d like to blame that habit on being so used to having a reg in my mouth whilst scuba diving, just to set the record straight. But bad habits aside, I quickly came to enjoy plummeting blindly towards the ocean floor with the other crazy freedivers, and by the third day, I reached 30m on a single breath.
Now I was still struggling with relaxing, and everyone kept talking about their ‘happy place’ and ‘singing a song’ in their heads to take their mind off their burning lungs and contracting diaphragm, but the ocean was my happy place, and the only song I could think of for some bizarre reason was ‘The Eagle Rock’ by Daddy Cool. So, that became my dive song. As I did my breathe-up on the buoy I tried to clear my mind, and as soon as I took that first kick down, the Eagle Rock started playing in my head. And it wasn’t just the chorus, oh no, we started from the beginning each time.
At this point I had developed a tremendous respect for freedivers. I thought scuba divers were relaxed, but these guys were insane. The guys would joke about ‘having a little nap’ down at the bottom of the line they were so relaxed. At first, I thought they were joking about blacking out or having a samba, which is when you lose your motor control reflexes due to lack of oxygen and sort of spasm until you catch your breath, however they were actually talking about being so loosey goosey on the way down that they could just fall asleep. Crazy right?
I didn’t really miss my dive tanks until we dove the Liberty Wreck and I felt that incessant need to explore every nook and cranny of that sunken ship in search of nudibranchs and frog fish. However, freediving the Liberty was amazing, exhilarating and exhausting all at once. Diving down inside the belly of the boat provoked a stream of thoughts from my overactive brain. Would I make it back to the surface? What if I got stuck down here? I wonder what’s hiding under the ledges and crevices? And then, as my curiosity increased and I battled the current to stay over the wreck, the ‘scubies’ arrived, and began swimming below (cue jokes about having spa baths in the divers bubbles and all the photos being ruined by their exhaling breaths). It was probably at this point I truly realised how ‘free’ the freedivers actually were. We weren’t bound by tanks and regs, we could slip through the wreck silently, like a shadow. The fish didn’t swim away from our noisy breathing or bubbles, they accepted us as another salty friend and watched with curiosity. The scuba divers didn’t see us coming, and to everyone’s amusement often didn’t notice some of the cheeky freedivers until they were next to the scuba divers attempting to hold their hands underwater.
My week in Bali taught me invaluable skills that I will treasure forever. Freediving is something I’ve always wanted to learn, and having had the opportunity to experience it with some incredible people has been life changing. I have gained so much. Adam Stern and his beautiful group of instructors really went above and beyond in helping everyone in the course, working with each of us on an individual level to improve our skill set, and constantly celebrating our achievements, no matter how big or small. I can’t thank everyone from Deep Week enough, not only for the help with my freediving techniques, but for putting up with me constantly pinching scooter rides around Amed, the adventures, and most of all, the incredible time!
