AUTHENTIC MARINE MAMMAL

Freediving World Record - 88m without fins from william trubridge on Vimeo.

New Zealand freediving champion William Trubridge set a new world record two years ago in the Constant Weight without fins discipline. He's broken his own sequential records ever since and will be trying to best his own record again (of 95 meters/ 312 feet) in a blue hole in the Bahamas in a few days time.

What I like best about this video is the way you can see the moment when his buoyancy flips from positive to negative and he no longer has to kick to descend. On the other hand, he then has to frog-kick hard for most of the way up before he can simply float to ascend.

In his own words:

I have a relationship with the depths
they beckon me beyond my means
cold dark vacant pressure
forever night, endless dreams

(William Trubridge freediving at Dean's Blue Hole, the Bahamas.)

FREEDIVING A BLUE HOLE

There are many reasons to love the French and Guillaume Nery just moved to the top of my list.

The film is part fiction, composited from four days of dives and multiple dives per day at a blue hole in the Bahamas. But that only makes it more lovely, afloat on art rather than fact. From Outdoor:

"We just wanted to show another approach of freediving," Nery explained. "For me freediving means to be in harmony with the elements, it means freedom, it means exploring the unknown. We tried to express this feeling in one video."

Julie Gautier, a French freediving champion and model, who filmed the dives while freediving herself, wrote on her blog: "Our goal was to emphasize on aesthetic images and innovative camera moves."

This National Geographic photo is of the Great Blue Hole in Lighthouse Reef, Belize.