Reset Password
Reset Link Sent
| Blogs > Spiked_Log_Trap > The Teeth |
Freediving!
|
Freediving! I recently have been reading about freediving in the book Deep by James Nestor. I haven't found such a fascinating book in a long time. I couldn't put the book down and reread it as many times as I could while I had it checked out. Free diving is simply taking a deep breath and going down under the water. There are 3 types of freedivers today. The sport is where you take a deep breath and see how far down you can go on one breath..they can usually hold it for 3 minutes. Divers commonly go down to depths of 200 ft below the ocean in competition. The record is at least 702 feet! Theres hardly any light down there. Thats crazy deep! They train by just doing sets of timed breath holds and yoga stretches on their upper bodies musculature. I believe I read that a trained male freediver can hold 10 L of air in his lungs vs. 6 liters in an untrained male. For women its around 6 L vs. 4 L for untrained. How are their lungs not crushed at 702 ft deep and how can they hold their breath for so long besides enhanced flexibility? The answer is called the Mammalian Dive Reflex. It turns out when you submerge in water colder than the air, your blood vessels in your extremities start to constrict shunting blood away from them and into your vital organs strengthening them against the pressure of the sea. Also, your heart rate drops dramatically, even if you're doing a vigorous workout underwater. At extreme depths heart rates of 7-17 bpm have been recorded! It turns out you only have to put your face in water to start the reflex, putting a limb in the water won't do it. The next group of freedivers are those who dive for food or pearls. Ancient cultures throughout the world dove for culture, spearfished or dove for food, often holding their breaths for 15 minutes. No one knows how its done. The ama are a 2000 yr old culture of Japanese women who dive regularly for seafood like abalone. They regularly dive down to 100 fr for seafood to sell..In fact, up until the 70's, Japanese women always dove wearing only a loincloth! That really blew me away considering how buttoned up Japanese culture is. In olden times, the ama even had a special status and rights beyond that of non-ama women as they provided the ruling class with one of their favorite foods: abalone. There is a culture of women in Korea that free dive for seafood as well. The final group is private researchers who have their own non profits. They dive down to study whales, sharks and dolphins. Often times they swim right along side them! I'd love to be able to swim along side a shark and not have it bite me! Sperm whales, which dive down to 10,000 ft on one breath, get as large as a school bus. It helps to be able to dive down to 40 ft to get out of the way when a whale decides to give you a playful slap with its<b> enormous </font></b>fin! I hope you enjoyed reading this if you made it all the way through to here. |
||||
|
Seems like it would be fun to try, although I have to admit that the times I've tried to go beneath the surface while snorkeling, I've never been able to stay down very long.  
| |||
|
Feel free to comment anyone.
|
Become a member to create a blog
