Freediving and Blackouts: a first person perspective

Last weekend was sort of a blank week for me figuratively and quite literally. I blacked out, not black out drunk but rather I blacked out during ascension from my dive. If it weren’t for my dive buddies I would have probably died, and that is not an exaggeration.

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If you’ve been following my blog you’d know that I am a pretty avid freediver. I’ve been diving on and off for nearly a year. I even took and passed my PADI certification to be a licensed freediver last January. But for the most part of it I’ve only been doing fun dives and reef dives. I haven’t really taken much time to train and fine tune my techniques, which of course could lead to some dangerous consequences.

Dives

In my experience I’ve identified two types of dives you do once you start freediving, Fun dives and Technical dives.

Fun diving is recreational freediving. Where you explore reefs, chase turtles and completely embrace the underwater world. Most reefs are about 5-15 meters deep so after you take an intro to freediving course you won’t need a lot of training to enjoy the experience.

Technical dives is where you build your skills and test your limits. Usually open water technical dives is line diving where you set up a buoy and drop a line to a specific depth. In technical dives you fine tune your techniques and test yourself to dive deeper and longer. (If you wanna know more of the technical skills in freediving check out this blog: The PADI Freediver course )

Leading up to the black out

Now as most of my dives had been on trips so despite having gone through the PADI lectures and course my technique isn’t quite developed yet. So since I had a non-adventure weekend I joined Sawum (Cebu’s Freediving Community) in a weekend dive and do a bit of technical diving for a change.

My dive buddies and I arrived in Kontiki at around 12 noon, the sun was high and the sea was a brilliant blue. It was an otherwise perfect day to dive. Since we were gonna dive I had a light meal, swimming and diving with a full stomach is not a smart move, you might end up barfing and if you want to go technical, it takes energy to digest food which in turn burns oxygen, when you dive you want to conserve oxygen and energy.

We started out with the 10 meter line which at this point became routine for us, going down that depth was no longer a huge challenge compared to where I was a few months ago where I barely passed my PADI certification because I can’t go beyond 7m. After a while the senior members of Sawum( AKA the Titos of Sawum) set up a thirty meter line. I of course had been eager to go test myself, since I haven’t been able to have a proper idea how deep I could go since the certification.

Deep dive Black Out

During my first attempt, I was relaxed and happy to be in the water that I was able to go down to 12-13 meters. After everyone took a turn I went for one last attempt since I was getting hungry and the water was getting cold. I was really relaxed during my decent, I got down to 15m hovered a bit and even beat my personal best and got down 18m. As I was ascending to the surface I had already started to feel the urge to breath, early on in freediving you are taught that the urge to breath is actually CO2 build up and not a lack of oxygen so you won’t need to panic when you feel it. So as I pulled on the rope I kept that in mind not realizing that I was actually running out of oxygen, about 1-2 meters from the surface I had blacked out. The last thing I remember was my face feeling cold then I woke up on top of the buoy with the Titos asking me if I remember what had happened.

What went wrong

As my dive buddies, the Titos had pointed out after I regained consciousness is that there was quite a few things that was off.

Breathe up. Before deep dives freedivers slow down their heart rate with a breathe up, a special diaphragmic breathing technique called belly breathing. As I mentioned above the water was starting to get cold. So as tried to relax and focus on my breathing I didn’t notice that I was hyperventilating. This might have caused my body to use more oxygen than necessary.

Equalization. Freedivers are taught the Frenzel method of equalization. This uses less energy and less oxygen compared to the easier Valsalva method. When diving down sometimes you mix up the equalization techniques. I had ended up doing Valsalva which was more forceful and wasteful of air than frenzel which might have used up my oxygen reserves.

Awareness. As a freediver you become aware of your body. During deep dives you can feel your pulse slow down, and feel every square inch of your body. You can feel slight changes in pressure and temperature. Like I said, I was getting hungry so during my last attempt I was actually running on zero. I burned up my light lunch and since you burn a lot of calories when in the water. I had failed to listen to my body needing food or hydration.

Focus. Another thing that attributed to my black out might have been my focus on depth and neglecting to focus on my techniques and body awareness. I was so focused on chasing that number that I failed to listen to the warning signs my body had been telling me all along. From my shivering due to cold, hunger and even forcing equalization, it was a recipe for disaster. I was lucky to be around really experienced freedivers who responded quickly and know how perform rescues and freediver safety.

“Chase a feeling not a number.”

After my experience I had a long online chat with my freediving instructor Maria Noella Zosa, going through what happened, finding the mistakes and lessons that I need to keep in mind. She reminded me that freediving is largely about awareness. That you need to stick to the dive plan.

Now my story might seem quite scary, and even traumatic to a few, blacking out and probably dying if I was with a group of inexperienced divers. I was lucky to have been around experience divers, of course I would not have attempted that deep a dive otherwise if I didn’t trust the titos. Even after the black out, I felt safe knowing I was in capable hands.

Its experiences like this that remind us that freediving, even if it’s the most freeing experience you can possibly have, is also considered by some to be the worlds’ most dangerous sport. After that experience I still want to keep diving, if anything I am challenged to improve the techniques I haven’t been giving much practice to. Fun diving is great and it will always be my favourite part of diving into the underwater world but if this experience has taught me anything is that it’s important to build on your technique. By improving on these skills you get to dive deeper, longer and most importantly safer.

I am lucky be with such a capable and supportive freediving community. From the titos of Sawum who rescued me, to my Freediving Instructor whom I know was worried and everyone who in the community who gave words of encouragement, tips to take note of. I had learned a lot. This experience was truly one for the books.

To the titos, thank you once more for the rescue! You literally saved my life!!

And lastly NEVER DIVE ALONE.

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If you are new to my blog then it is my pleasure to introduce to you the Adventure Initiative. Aside from a freediver I am also a travel blogger and I am hosting a travel blog contest with a 10 SBD giveaway. The details are in the link above, final submissions will be on April 15 2018.

Tell me your freediving story in the comments! And don't forget to upvote. And please resteem this to spread awareness, you might just save a life!

Thanks for stopping by! Stay Awesome!!