“You should come and watch me dive tomorrow,” says my newfound friend, Brazilian free-diver Karol Meyer. We both take another sip of tropical blue cocktails the precise color of the lagoon just feet away. “Oh, and I’ll teach you how to free-dive if you like,” she adds casually.
Meyer has come to Bonaire, a tiny speck off the coast of Venezuela, to add a fifth world record to her free-diving resume. I hold exactly zero world records but have come to sample some of the best scuba diving in the world. It feels like a serendipitous meeting.
The next morning I find myself floating alongside Meyer seemingly miles from shore, suffering from a touch of buyer’s remorse. Without the comforting weight of scuba gear on my back, it’s just me and the deep blue sea. Sitting in my lounge room, I can usually hold my breath for around three minutes, but surrounded by zebra-fish, groupers and the disconcerting whir of propellers I barely last thirty seconds. “Let’s try something else,” Meyer says before diving effortlessly to the ocean floor. “Keep your head straight. Don’t look at the bottom. Equalize your ears by moving your jaw,” she instructs after returning to the surface. “If you run out of air, remain calm and work through the convulsions. Think of them as just hiccups.” I feel like a fool as I splutter, red-faced to the surface for the tenth time, but Meyer very kindly assures me that I’m a natural.
The next morning I board a dive boat with a dozen safety divers and a paramedic who confides to me that at those depths, Meyer is fatally out of reach if anything goes wrong. I can already see the long shadows of a school of tarpon following the boat. Bonaire is legendary in scuba diving circles for its abundant wildlife. On previous dives I had seen snaggle-toothed barracuda, turtles and eagle rays but, for Meyer, the abundant fauna holds little appeal: she wants as few distractions as possible. We motor gently beyond the reef and tie off to a buoy a hundred meters from shore. Free-diving has many disciplines: in this one, Meyer hopes to descend on sled to 97 meters and then swim to the surface under her own power.
“Quiet please!” hollers her coach, signaling that Meyer is about to start meditating in order to lower her heartbeat and calm her mind. “If you worry about anything you use more oxygen,” she had explained earlier. Around her, a team of leathery safety divers silently dons weight belts, tanks and dive computers, their inch thick wetsuits peeled to their waists, some revealing tattoos of poisonous fish and other fearsome marine motifs. The two deepest safety divers shoulder six tanks and a re-breather (a device for circulating expelled air for further use) for the long wait in the cold, dark water below.
Finally Meyer’s coach gives the five-minute signal: my cue to enter the water in my privileged role as spectator. A delicate spiral of silver bubbles rises from the safety divers below. I twitch nervously as the bubbles pass under me, their lingering touch like that of a jellyfish. When Meyer is floated into position she’s a vision in a form-fitting silver hooded wetsuit and mermaid-like tail. On the sled, she takes one last breath. The sled drops out of sight, whirring like a fishing reel as it pulls Meyer down into the depths. It stops with a clang. We wait. One minute passes. I strain my eyes, trying to be the first to spot Meyer’s silhouette in water so blue it shames the tropical sky. Not that Meyer would notice. While free-diving she closes her eyes, relying only on the gentle touch of her fingers against the guide rope for direction. Pressure and asphyxiation do strange things to a person’s mind. Meyer often hallucinates that whales are swimming beside her. I drift a little from the boat. The wait feels long. Her coach is poised, all senses alert, ready to stage a rescue. When Meyer finally bursts to the surface, a roar of relieved applause echoes across the sea. Survival, and a new South American record at 93 meters.
Emboldened by her feat, the following day I swim out to the reef and follow a trail of bubbles effervescing in the waves. I breathe as Meyer taught me and clear my head of thoughts of drowning. I dive towards the ocean floor and follow a turtle down to the soft coral. The lung contractions begin but I successfully ignore them. Together, the turtle and I come across a scuba diver. He looks incredibly cumbersome to me now, burdened with his tanks and hoses. Perplexed, he shows me his depth gauge. It reads 60 feet – an incredible achievement for mortals such as me, even if it is a full 245 feet short of Meyer’s record.
Words by Adam McCulloch. Originally published in The Australian. The format has been altered to suit Tumblr. To view the original story click here.
