Freediving & Spearfishing

Chapter 1: The Breath-Hold Safety Framework: Your Personal Dive Protocol

The first time you black out underwater, it is not dramatic. There is no tunnel, no light, no life flashing before your eyes. One moment you are five meters from the surface, watching the sand below you, and the next you are waking up on the boat with your mask ripped off and your buddy's hand on your sternum, asking you what day it is. That is the best-case scenario. The worst-case scenario is that your buddy is not there, and you wake up face-down in the kelp with your lungs burning and your speargun still in your hand, two meters from a fish that does not care how close you got.

I have been that buddy. I have pulled a man back over the gunwale who was blue around the lips and had no pulse for eleven seconds. He was a better freediver than me. He was in better shape than me. He had been diving for six years without a single close call, and he got complacent on a 12-meter dive in flat, warm water because he was trying to get a look at a big grouper hole he had found the week before. He did not black out from lack of effort. He blacked out because he did not have a protocol. He had a routine, but a routine is just something you do the same way every time. A protocol is something you do the same