![[Freediving] Someone Nearly Died in the Water](/_images/a02ffce9a921-1440w.webp)
The Editor says: Freediving is a captivating sport, yet many people treat it as a casual recreational activity — renting a pair of long fins (freediving) and a mask from a dive shop and jumping in with a few friends, having a great time while completely ignoring the enormous risks lurking beneath the surface. Instructor YIMIN shares a first-hand experience to help us understand how a potential accident can unfold. This article is reprinted in full from the MISO Freediving Familia Facebook page.
If the title caught your eye and gave you a jolt — good. But if you have a moment, please read this to the end and share it, so more people can know what happened and what we can learn from it. The language below may be blunt at times; please bear with me.
My name is YIMIN, and I am a freediving instructor. Today is August 20th. I was out with a student conducting an open-water course. Around noon — 12
— I was preparing to take my student on one final dive before wrapping up and heading back to shore.At that moment, a freediver surfaced beside my buoy from the direction of the neighbouring buoy (the line connecting the two buoys was roughly 5–6 metres). This told me two things: he was not wearing a safety lanyard, and he was 5 to 6 metres away from his dive buddy. From his side profile I could see his neck moving — he appeared to attempt 1–2 recovery breaths, but they were incomplete, just two quick, shallow gasps. Then his body began to sink…
His body was completely relaxed — arms spread, legs spread — and he exhaled a bubble of air as he sank during the freedive.
At that instant, I knew something was wrong. But strangely, the image that flashed through my mind was @din_1shian — the look of a competition judge at a pool event — shouting at me: Go! Grab him! (For context: at pool competitions, it is the judge who determines whether a competitor on the surface is conscious and whether a safety diver needs to intervene.)
I dove in immediately, bent down, and pulled the sinking freediver up. He was wearing no wetsuit — just board shorts. As I brought him up, his upper body was trembling with a laryngospasm/motor control loss (LMC). Once at the surface, I removed his mask and called out to him 4–5 times: Breathe! Blow! Breathe! — blowing air toward his face and tapping his cheeks.
Then he came to. His first words were: Why are you holding me up? Whose legs are pushing against me? (From what he said, it was clear he had blacked out — a blackout (BO) — and his consciousness had stalled at the point where he thought he had already surfaced. He had absolutely no memory of sinking, exhaling the bubble, or being rescued.)
Afterward, the student I had been training that day told me that when I was pulling this person out of the water, his dive buddy was loudly saying: What are those people doing?! (Think about how terrifying that is — you were unconscious underwater, being rescued by a stranger, and your own dive buddy had no idea anything was wrong.)
My friend, you are truly lucky. I don't know if you will ever read this.
If I hadn't been planning to leave early, I wouldn't have been positioned in front of your buoy — and there would have been no one in front of you at all.
"You would have been dead — sunk to the cold seafloor, with no guarantee of ever being found."
If I had happened to be facing the other way, and your dive buddy had no idea you were blacked out underwater five metres away —
"You would have been dead — sunk to the cold seafloor, with no guarantee of ever being found."
So please — value your own life.
Take the proper courses. Ask when you don't understand something. Look up the concepts you're missing.
Stop thinking that instructors just love to complain, that instructors just love to nag — going on all day about wearing your lanyard, about following the buddy system, urging you to take a course and learn safety procedures properly. Every time we say it, we sound like broken records, like we're just trying to squeeze money out of you. But when a human life is in your hands — or right next to you — and can be gone in an instant, nobody can afford to take it lightly.
Freediving Safety — Key Takeaways:
- If you've already taken a course, go back and thoroughly review and practise your safety concepts, rescue skills, and buddy system procedures.
- If you haven't taken a course yet, please find an instructor — north, central, or south — and properly learn safety concepts, rescue skills, and the buddy system. If you truly cannot take a course, at the very least Google is free — search those keywords yourself. If you're too lazy even for that, I'll leave a link below to a great freediving safety article by @weirdo.freediving. Read it all the way through. You need at least a basic level of common sense.
Finally, remember: the first line of defence in the buddy system is you.
You must be able to make independent judgements — is the diving environment you're currently in safe? Does your buddy have sufficient ability? Are your safety devices properly in place?
Only after making that independent assessment can you hand the second line of defence over to a buddy you trust and who has the competence to match.
What's truly frightening is not ignorance — it's not knowing that you're ignorant. When you're out in the open natural environment, maintain situational awareness at all times.
Without proper safety knowledge, a functioning buddy system, and rescue protocols in place:
Freediving is extremely dangerous — and the price is your life.
Freediving is extremely dangerous — and the price is your life.
Freediving is extremely dangerous — and the price is your life.
@weirdo.freediving freediving safety article: https://www.weirdofreediving.com/blog/5442238
As the freediving community continues to grow rapidly, I believe there is still a small but real portion of people who have no awareness of these risks. If sharing this post gives even one more person the chance to understand the hidden dangers and avoid them — why wouldn't we?
I am MISO YIMIN.
The MISO Freediving Familia instructor team cares about your safety!
Cover photo: Photo by Naja Bertolt Jensen on Unsplash
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