Deep Sea Diving Documentary

[Kizzy Burnworth]

Humanshave been freediving since we first ventured into the deep, holding our breaths to fish and explore. Today, some are still thrilled by the prospect of diving without clunky oxygen tanks, both for fun and for sport.

Competitive freediving is overseen by a few global governing bodies that ensure athletes dive under conditions that prioritize their well-being. Safety divers stand ready to bring a diver who passes out to the surface. The death rate in competitions is roughly 1 in every 50,000 competitive dives, according to Apneaology.com, a website dedicated to freediving. Recreational freediving is riskier, with about 1 death for every 500 dives.

"Avatar: The Way of Water," James Cameron's epic sequel, is set in a fictional ocean-focused world. In order to get the shots he needed, the director had key cast members learn the basics of freediving breath-holding techniques. Kate Winslet broke Tom Cruise's record when she held her breath for more than seven minutes.

Luc Besson's 1988 film "The Big Blue" is considered a freediving cult classic. And there have been more than a dozen movies, many of them documentaries, made about the sport's top athletes, including one about Russian phenom Natalia Molchanova (2020's "One Breath"), who disappeared while freediving in 2015.

As to why they dive, despite the inherent risks, McGann says freedivers will tell you "it's the freefall. You get to about 30 meters (100 feet) and then you just start to fall, and it feels like flying. You go into this gorgeous meditation on the ride down, but you have to keep a little of yourself conscious to make the trip back up."

McGann says she's not on a mission to bring more people to freediving. Rather, she was "just moved by Stephen and Alessia's story as well as their love of the ocean, which I know is a place that does so much for my own mental health, just putting on a snorkel and fins and looking at the kelp in the Irish Sea."

In research for her movie, McGann learned the human body, once submerged in water, has a natural response that extends a breath. "There's a physical reaction to having water on your face, which triggers the mammalian dive reflex," she says. "It all goes back to where we came from as humans, we crawled out of the sea."

McGann tried freediving while filming on location, but the trip was short. She made it only about 10 feet down before the pressure in her ears forced her to come back to the surface. "But it was beautiful," she says.

"She said 'Thank you,' and I just burst out crying," says McGann. "The next day, she asked me for a copy so she could show some friends. She said, 'Showing it saves me from having to explain what I went through.' "

Imagine scuba diving without a breathing apparatus, diving down hundreds of feet on a single breath and holding it for as long as three minutes. That's freediving and extreme sport that's growing in popularity and interest.

The risks are high, some freediving sponsor considered as deadly as Mount Everest. A documentary called The Deepest Breath is now streaming on Netflix. It goes inside the sport following two freedivers, Alessia Zecchini and Steven Keenan. It is both mesmerizing and terrifying to watch.

Laura McGann, Director, "The Deepest Breath": I read about Steven and Alessia in 2017. And, and initially, I didn't know what freediving was. So I had to Google what is freediving. And I was mapped by these incredible images of people swimming underwater, almost like a seal or a dolphin. Like with a seemingly without the urge to breathe.

I couldn't believe it. Like I couldn't believe that this was something that people could do, that humans were capable of. But then over time, as I learned more about Steven and Alessia, that's when the story, the gravity of the story and how universal it was, you know, it really just inspired me it made me feel like God, am I living my life to the fullest? You know.

After 30 meters, the pressure pushing me down. It's called a freefall. And this is, for me, the best part. it feel like you're flying. The silence, it's unique. It's like being in the least quiet place on the earth.

Absolutely, yeah. Freediver say that you meet yourself down there, you know, you're holding your breath, there's nothing other than, you know, the ocean around you. Anything that you might be kind of like, being not quite honest with yourself about in your own mind, you're going to find that there.

So it's like a deep meditation, you know, maybe in a similar way to like running a marathon and you know, you learn a lot about yourself when you're running marathon. And like this it's such a kind of massive experience for the body that you do learn what you're capable of and what comes up for you. I imagine I could and this is what I've heard.

You talk about when you're learning from your body. We've learned recently what the pressures of deep ocean can do with the submersible that was going down to the Titanic. Now these free divers don't go nearly as deep but there still is a fair amount of pressure that the water is exerting on them. What did you learn about what that pressure can do to the human body?

You know, if you drop your goggles at the end at the bottom of the pool, okay, you've got a kick quite hard to get down there to get the goggles. So it's the same in the sea. So the first few meters, you've got to really kick quite hard. But once you get to 10 and 20, then 30, the pressure above you then starts to push you down. So you don't have to kick really hard to go down further.

So Alessia wanted to be a free diver from the age of about 13, which was unusual, even in Rome, where they do pool free diving quite a bit. And she wasn't allowed to compete really until she was 18. Because she kind of turned up and was blowing everybody out of the water.

So the Federation really quickly brought in rules to say, you can't do this. So she had to wait. When she came back at 18, she had a lot of fire in her belly. And she absolutely arrived like a rocket.

Steven Keenan, and on the other hand, is an Irish guy. And he finished school and didn't really know what to do with his life. He was a big fan of David Attenborough. So he kind of went off to be, you know, his own version of David Attenborough explore the world a little bit and just really experienced what was out there.

One of the things that really struck me was that with the safety divers, you know, you have an athlete and a safety diver say at a competition or, you know, maybe even just a recreational dive. And the agreement is whether it's spoken or not is that the athlete, if anything happens to me, while I'm down there, you, my safety diver are going to bring me back up to air, land, my family, you know, my life, that's where my life is. It's up there. It's not down here.

And that's the trust that like the ultimate trust exercise. A safety diver could save a number of lives in one day, so build up this like beautiful kind of trust and bond in the community that I just kind of felt was really, really unique.

He said that he was going to, you know, go out and drink up every last drop of the earth and I just thought that is beautiful. And so that's something that I really try and kind of take a beat every so often and just kind of think about where I am and just trying to connect with the moment.

John Yang is the anchor of PBS News Weekend and a correspondent for the PBS News Hour. He covered the first year of the Trump administration and is currently reporting on major national issues from Washington, DC, and across the country.

Extreme Cave Diving follows Broad and his team of scientists and cave divers as they explore the underwater caves of the Bahamas. It is not only an eye-opening scuba diving documentary that shows the numerous dangers of cave diving, but also one that gives insight into the history of these natural formations that were once inhabited by land animals millions of years ago, before the rising sea levels.

Continuing on the same note, Diving into the Unknown follows a breathtaking recovery mission. The documentary tells the story of four Finish divers that set out on a secret mission to recover the bodies of two lost friends deep inside an underwater cave in Norway after the official recovery mission was called off by the Norwegian and British authorities due to the dangers involved.

Despite this, the four fearless friends were successful in their attempt to swim through the cave and retrieve their loved ones. The Norwegian police did not press any charges against the divers.

The film contains footage from the accident and multiple cameras used for filming their unofficial recovery mission. Diving into the Unknown not only gives insight into the risks of cave diving, but also tells a story about friendship and the psychological tolls this kind of accident has on the survivors.

A strength of this film, however, is that Pascal is not portrayed as casual or as some kind of gung-ho diver so much as a normal human being fearful and apprehensive about his deep dive record attempt. In fact, as the film progresses so does his fear.

The film offers insight into the history of deep diving with a focus on the record breaking saturation dives at Comex during the 80s and 90s. Non divers are introduced to the perils of deep diving and the sickness that can result. As director Mini builds the tension even those of us who are divers come to better appreciate the extreme nature of this record attempt.

I went into this six-part Thai-led dramatisation of the mission for Netflix in much that mood, but was won over by the sensitive treatment of the theme. It delves deeper to emphasise the plight of the 12 boys, their coach and the families, and to examine the work put in not only by overseas cave-divers but by the local governor, emergency services and the army of volunteers, in particular Navy SEAL Saman Kunan.

One for the freedivers, this French movie was inspired by the life of Audrey Mestre. I well remember the vitriolic response to her shocking death on a 2002 dive, directed mainly towards her husband, Cuban freediving star Pipin Ferreras. Conspiracy theories abounded, fanned by the intriguing book The Last Attempt by former friend Carlos Serra in 2007, and the rumours never really went away.

3a8082e126