By Ted Harty. Lead image courtesy of Lorenzo Mittiga. Other images courtesy of Ted Harty. Hey there, tech diver!  You and I both started as scuba divers. Then, we both decided plain old “regular” scuba diving wasn’t enough for us. You decided you wanted to go deeper and stay longer. You decided if one tank was good, eight tanks were better. You decided you wanted more math in your dive planning. You decided you wanted way more gear. You decided you wanted a new type of diving where a mistake might kill you. You decided you want to spend way more money to go diving. You decided going into ..read more

By Tec Clark Timing a static apnea. Photo courtesy of Tec Clark I became the National Director of the YMCA Scuba Program in the summer of 1998, where, while at the USA YMCA headquarters in Chicago, my attendance was requested at an urgent meeting with the top legal counsel of the Y. Once there, I was asked, “Can you tell us what freediving is?”  With enthusiasm, I described the sport in detail since I was a freediving judge and co-founder of the U.S. Freediving Team. After my passionate pitch the attorney said, “Well, we just had a fatality at a Y. A member told the lifeguard to ‘leave hi ..read more

Text by Michael Menduno. Header image by Lorenzo Mittiga, who provided photos used through out the FREE story bundle. Diving into the wild! photo by Lorenzo Mittiga This month we take a plunge into the wild world of freediving. You are holding your breath, aren’t you? In our view, the diving community writ large can arguably learn a lot from freedivers who have essentially operationalized their knowledge and their ability to manipulate mammalian physiology to significant effect. Today’s top athletes are all pushing beyond 100 meters, even intermediate freedivers are reaching into tech diving d ..read more

By Charly Stringer. Header image: Diver Lily Crespy coming to the end of a Constant Weight (CWT ) competition dive. Photo by Kalinda Wijsmuller Diving to your deepest capabilities can be nerve wracking on even your best day. Throw in some judges, spectators, plus the pressure of diving for your country, and this can take the nerves to a whole new level. So how do you handle these nerves and stay relaxed enough to perform well in a freediving competition? Let’s dive into Ted Harty’s Freediving Summit, and see what some of the deepest divers in the world have to say about relaxation techniques a ..read more

by Dean Laffan. Header image courtesy of Justin Bruhn Pure Underwater Imaging If it gets to the point in recreational or technical diving where you must hold your breath to reach the surface, something has gone very wrong. But there is one form of diving where not only is this accepted, but indeed mandatory. That is, of course, freediving. The Global Underwater Explorers’ (GUE) system was fundamentally designed as a way for divers to conduct their dives in the safest possible manner—all while having fun! As said often by George Irvine, Director of the Woodville Karst Plains Project (WKPP) dur ..read more

by Florine Quirion. Header image by Lorenzo Mittiga. Photos and video courtesy of Oxama. The current tech craze inspires rapid hardware development in many industries, including recreational scuba and tech diving. However, tech innovators have seemed to skip over freediving—until now. In mid 2022, Oxama will introduce an audio freediving computer.  In 2019, Claudio Mattavelli, Massimo Moi, and Vincenzo Palumbo founded Oxama, an Italian start-up. The three passionate freedivers from Milan define their computer as a virtual vocal coach that “tracks your freediving experience.” The team too ..read more

By Sabrina Figliomeni . Header image by Sabrina Figliomeni Predive Clicklist: Do You Wanna Build A Snowman? from Frozen “If the world is going to end in ice, we may as well cut a hole and go diving,” say a handful of people on the planet. It’s true that jumping into an ice hole—let alone freediving under ice—is not on many people’s bucket list. Setting aside the thought of a massive sheet of solid water over your head for a moment, there are other pre-dive factors to consider: first is the surface cold—so cold your mask is clearly frozen to your hood and your nose and lips are numb. You’r ..read more

By Reilly Fogarty. Header image and photos by Lorenzo Mittiga unless noted. Decompression sickness (DCS) is old hat for divers; breathe inert gas under pressure, eliminate it too quickly on ascent, and Voilà! The changes in ambient pressure, the potential for tissue saturation, and the constant supply of inert gas make decompression sickness first and foremost on a diver’s list of concerns.  Until recently, breath hold divers weren’t even on the radar of academics researching DCS—their dives were too shallow and too short in duration, the supply of inert gas held in a single breath was co ..read more

By Michael Menduno Header image: DeeperBlue.com team onsite at DEMA 2017. All images courtesy of DeeperBlue.com.   Predive Click: Don’t You Worry Child by Swedish House Mafia Having written about diving for over three decades, and launched and published two diving magazines—aquaCORPS and InDepth, I appreciate what an enormous challenge running a dive media business can be. That’s why I find 43-year old British publisher Stephan Whelan’s achievement with DeeperBlue.com so impressive. His depth-full, online diving media platform is celebrating its 25th anniversary o ..read more

by Ted Harty Header image by Lorenzo Mittiga Photo courtesy of Ted Harty I’m going to share with you what is, in my opinion, the most common ear injury in diving; it’s so common that many people, myself included, didn’t even realize it was a diving injury. By way of background, my name is Ted Harty and I’m the founder of Immersion Freediving, my pride and joy Freediving Safety, and my new podcast Freedive Live. I’m a Performance Freediving International (PFI) Instructor Trainer, PADI Staff Instructor, and competitive freediver. I’m also a past USA Freediving Record Holder, and I’ve been invo ..read more