Of Sea Turtles and Sharks: No Need to Breathe

Today the free-diving class went over to a pool to practice our skills in the water. We spent a total of four hours in the water, with the first two spent on static apnea and the next two spent on dynamic.

For a few definitions, in case you're wondering about anything. Breathing-up is the process you go through right before a breath-hold attempt in order to fill your body with as much oxygen as possible without hyperventilating. Hyperventilating, in this case, can lead to other issues. Once you're holding your breath, at some point you begin getting contractions. These are the signal from your body that you've reached a certain level of carbon dioxide in your system. Normally, this is when you take a breath. When free-diving, however, you've filled your body with oxygen during the breathe-up so the first contractions can simply be used as a marker--an indication that you're about a third of the way through your dive. You learn to recognize the increasing frequency and severity of contractions as an indication for how far you are into your dive and, consequently, how much longer you can safely hold your breath.

It felt very different to me to simply sit there underwater and hold your breath. In some ways it's easier--you know for certain you can't and won't cheat--but in some ways it almost feels harder. As the contractions to breathe become worse, it's easy to start worrying that you're going to accidentally inhale a bunch of water. The added stress, of course, does nothing to help your breath-hold time. I was only able to make it to 3:16 minutes today. I was pleased to note, however, that 1 minute is now a breeze (I can do it without bothering to breath-up) and I really don't start getting contractions until around 2 minutes.

Working in buddy teams during static apnea. The
buddy simply double checks that the other person
is ok and can help if something starts going wrong.

Katelyn (back) and Stacey (front) breathing-up before a breath-hold.

Dynamic apnea I found much easier today than static. I think it was because I could easily see how far I was along the pool by gauging off the lines on the bottom. The tile decoration had broad, blue stripes approximately every five meters--very helpful! Jason, Sarah, and I were able to make it to around 75 meters. (In case you aren't too familiar with how far that is, for comparison, an Olympic pool is 50 meters.) For Sarah and I, that's a new record for female Oceans interns!