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It's not foolhardy but it can be extremely dangerous when coupled with some task loading. The instructor we had in our Performance Free Diving class said free dive spearfishing is the most dangerous sport there is as far as deaths per thousand participants. But this is mainly because of shallow water blackout by divers with no buddy waiting for them on the surface.
When chasing or fighting a fish, the urge to breath suddenly lessens. You get task loaded and honestly, just don't feel it. It happens even at the sight of a large fish. This is when it gets really dangerous.
Many don't, but diving "one up, one down" when spearfishing makes it infinitely safer.
When doing the static breath holds in shallow water during the PFI course, I almost blacked out after 5 minutes. I could hear the instructor telling me to stay down as I stood up on a ladder and could hear him telling the others, "see? his lips are blue? ahhhh, now they're turning pink".
My son, who had to beat the old man, DID black out after 5 min 8 seconds. But I was there, held him up, blew on his face and he came to in seconds asking why I was holding him. He said, "nooooo, I didn't black out".
He actually surfaced, took one big breath, and out went the lights. Just like they described to us and I've seen on film.
Just thought I'd share that....it's made me a much safer free diver.
I'd like to try to clarify some things in this thread.
Rule of 9's.
90% of the blackouts happen at the surface after the diver has taken 2-3 breaths. I show videos in my courses of people hitting the surface giving the ok sign and then going out.
9% of the blackouts happen between 15ft and the surface.
.9% of blackouts are deeper than this, and are this is only seen in high level competitive freedivers who are diving super deep. In these cases we have advanced safety to deal with this.
Black out in the ocean are mostly due to the rapid drop of partial pressure of Oxygen as previously stated. On dry land the partial pressure of Oyxgen you breath is .21. Once this number drops to .10 everyone will black out. You most likely not notice that anything is wrong as you ascend to the surface. You will hear untrained freedivers say things like I don't need a buddy because I know my limits and I'm in tune with my body. Unfortunately the physics behind what is going on says otherwise. As someone who has seen blackouts and talked to people that have had them, most of them say they knew nothing was wrong and then they woke up in someone arms wondering what just happened. These are people who were trained and had a trained buddy watching them so they were fine.
Blackouts in the pool are different. Here the oxygen level is slowly but surely dropping. I've blacked out in a static competition and there was no surprise. I held my breath longer and longer, I had very strong contractions, and I just held too long.
Both of these situations can be made worse by excessive hyperventilation. This lowers the CO2 levels and rising C02 levels are our main signal to breath. This why I teach my students not to hyperventilate.
In 2009 there were 90 fatalities from freediving combined with spearfishing in the United States. All of them were untrained freedivers. In almost everyone of these cases these three rules were not followed.
#1. Do not dive over weighted. Most spearos weight themselves so that if they were to black out they would end up at the bottom of the ocean. You don't black out with a full lung of air. You will exhale some air upon blackout. To test jump in the water in your gear and take a full breath and let the air naturally come out like a "sigh". This is how much air you have in your lungs if you blacked out. If you sink when you do this, you will sink to the bottom if you blacked out. Not a good idea. Make sure you don't sink on a "sigh"
#2. Dive one up one down, you need a buddy close enough to grab you every time you surface. Having 3 "buddies" each 100ft away from you is not a buddy system. That is three people in the same ocean on the same day.
#3. Upon surfacing watch the person for no less than 30 seconds. Many people are not aware the blackouts can happen after the diver surface even as they are breathing.
In my opinion freediving with out training, which is what 99% of freedivers do is just as dangerous as scuba diving with out training. In a scuba class you will learn the risks associated with scuba and learn how to handle them. What do if your mask floods, what do to if you BC over inflates, what do if you run out or air, how to assist someone who's run out of air, how to tell if a diver is panicked, what to do if a diver is panicked, how to dive and not get bent, how to recongize if someone is bent etc..
In a freediving class you will learn all the risks associated with the sport and how to mitigate those risks.
You can have problems while scuba diving, if you dive long enough those things can happen. As a scuba instructor I've had 1000+ dives. I've had a regulator malfunction at 100ft before. Because I had a tight safety system in place, it was a non issue. I used my buddy's octo, ascended did a safety stop no big deal. If my buddy was 80 feet away from me that would have ended differently. These types of situations are not common but if you don't have a solid safety system in place things can end badly.
You can have problems while freediving, and luckily these hypoxic events are not common. If you have a problem AND don't always dive with a solid safety system in place, things can end badly.
Freediving with out formal training can be VERY unforgiving.
Lucky the free diving education market is exploding here in the US. My advice take a course, you will learn how to dive deeper, stay longer and most importantly be safer!
If you've ever wondered what goes on in a freediving class here is a video from my last entry level course, you can see students learning how to rescue people during a simulated underwater blackout.
Here is video from an Immersion Freediving PFI Intermediate course where I had one student dive to 132 feet!
You guys need to come up north and do a class or two. I was too busy at DEMA but would have loved to been in for one of the demo's. 2 minutes with only 30 min of instruction was what I saw. Some even longer.
I did one demo at Vegas dema, with 8 scuba divers with no free diving experience. At the start the longest breath hold of the group was 47 seconds. After 15 minutes of training I had 6 out of the 8 do a 3 minute breath hold. One of them was an old scuba instructor friend of mine. I told him, "I just got you from a 30 second breath hold to a 3 minute breathold in 15 minutes, imagine what I could do with you if you gave me 4 days!
What Ted is saying mirrors my experience in teaching breath-holding at the start of each scuba class. My results were not quite as good as his, but they were close enough to make what he is saying completely credible, especially when you consider that this is his specialty.
Glad to hear that someone with extensive knowledge is able to provide some of the basic and very important information.
Since most of the people reading this are probably scuba divers, it might provide some additional perspective by saying that:
It is much safer to scuba dive solo than to freedive solo. A scuba diver can bring a pony bottle or some redundancy, while a solo freediver is extremely vulnerable to an accident unless they have a buddy watching them during and after the ascent (or spend a lot of money for a freedive safety vest).
The statistic that only untrained freedivers died makes it sound like training will preclude deadly accidents, but it is not that simple. The training teaches the fact that buddy diving is essential for any degree of safety, but the training itself is not going to help if you are solo and a BO occurs.
While I agree with DD about not diving alone, the training will help people avoid blackout by helping them learn their personal limits under controlled conditions.
Great info, and Ted I'd really like to take your class sometime. Thought that might be easier when I checked your website and saw all the references to Austin's ...after reading a little more it looks like I'll have to wait until I'm down in South Florida again.
:snorkel2:
I did one demo at Vegas dema, with 8 scuba divers with no free diving experience. At the start the longest breath hold of the group was 47 seconds. After 15 minutes of training I had 6 out of the 8 do a 3 minute breath hold. One of them was an old scuba instructor friend of mine. I told him, "I just got you from a 30 second breath hold to a 3 minute breathold in 15 minutes, imagine what I could do with you if you gave me 4 days!
To be fair, freediving is like working out in that beginner gains are rapid but start to stagnate and require a ton of training after that. It isn't hard to get a 3-4 minute static but it is substantially harder to push that to 5-6, etc.
One of the reasons for rapid gains on first day classes IMO is as I mentioned earlier statics tend to get progressively easier (esp. for beginners) after a few warmup statics - most people would only try it once, get to 1 min, give up and be like well i can only hold my breath for 1 min. If they did it for 20 mins they'd find they are doubling or tripling that (and that is all that happens in freediving static classes, along with learning proper technique, etc. - ie. it is well within everybody to reach that right away rather than the fact you are learning something revolutionary).
So what is it that you're purging your body of if not the carbon dioxide? Medically, I think this is still hyperventilation. From Wikipedia:
Hyperventilation or overbreathing is the state of breathing faster or deeper than normal,[1] causing excessive expulsion of circulatingcarbon dioxide.
It might be hyperventilation to a degree but it isn't what people traditionally think of as pre diving hyperventilation (several very fast strong complete inhale/exhales.
Another safety tip for spearfishing is to set a limit for maximum time spent down (a conservative number no where near your max) and stick to it religiously.
Yes taking a course does not stop accidents, taking a course and following the procedures 100% of the time on every dive does.
Just like taking a scuba course and deciding not to follow the safety procedures taught is clearly unsafe.
It doesn't matter than I can freedive to 200+ ft, have extensive knowledge of freediving safety procedures and thorough experience with freediving rescue techniques. If I wear to have a BO and be by myself I'd be toast. Just like having a regulator malfunction, while diving on wreck at 130 feet, with no buddy and no pony bottle would not turn out well.
Its funny, I occasionally freedive with my girlfriend. She is mostly a scuba diver but has taken the entry level class and can provide me adequate safety when I'm free diving in the 30-60ft range. When she gets tired and wants to get back on the boat my freediving is done. I try to bribe and/or beg her for 15 more minutes because I know once she gets back on the boat I'm done freediving.
Freediving is an amazing sport which unfortunately viewed as crazy and extreme by many. This is because most people's exposure to freediving is competition freediving.
You can scuba dive to 200+ feet, to do so requires tons of training, classes, gear, time, dedication etc.
You can freedive to 200+ feet, to do so requires tons of training, classes, gear, dedication etc.
Most people that scuba dive, are shallow reef divers that just want to enjoy being underwater.
Most people that freedives are shallow reef divers that just want to enjoy being underwater.
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