Freediver Plunges To Record Depth Floridian Descends 531 Feet With Just A Single Big Breath

On a single breath of air, freediver Francisco “Pipin” Ferreras of Miami descended to 531 feet, or 162 meters a world record off the coast of Cozumel, Mexico, two weeks ago.

“I have dedicated my whole life to understanding the aquatic potential that exists in every human being,” Ferreras said in a telephone conversation afterward. “This brings me that much closer… . Now I’m preparing myself to get down to 200 meters.”

It took Ferreras about 2 minutes to make the descent with a 90-pound sled. When he reached maximum depth, he inflated an air bag to soar back to the surface in just over a minute.

He completed the record dive Tuesday, on his 38th birthday.

Two days earlier, a dive to 535 feet (163 meters) was disqualified because Ferreras lost consciousness about 6 feet from the surface. On his record attempts, the Cuban-American diver is accompanied by a support team of more than two dozen scuba divers.

“Tuesday, everything was the same physically (as Sunday), but mentally, I was 10 times more prepared,” he said.

The 6-foot-3, 210-pound diver begins his diving days with a meditation regimen he says he learned in Katmandu, combined with deep-breathing exercises. The meditation, he said, “is the art of stabilizing the energy and the power that is inside of you with the energy that is in the atmosphere and your surroundings.”

The day of the record dive, Ferreras recalled, “I started meditating at 7 or 7:30 in the morning … It focuses my mind on the dive and doesn’t allow the intellectual part of the brain to go in a different direction.”

Like most ultra-divers, Ferreras wears no mask because of the squeeze it would cause under the tremendous pressure he encounters at depth. For the record dive, he wore a standard wet suit and carbon-fiber Attack fins by Mares, the Italian firm which sponsored the event.

The entire dive took 3 minutes and 12 seconds, shattering the previous record, 492 feet, or 150 meters, set by Italian freediver Umberto Pelizzari. The depth was verified by instruments, accurate to within 10 centimeters, that Ferreras wore on his back.

In the 1998 book Freedive by Terry Maas and Rhode Island freediver David Sipperly, Ferreras said he would retire when he reached 500 feet.

Now he is saying he will retire after descending to 200 meters, or 623 feet. He said the information he collects in his quest for greater depths will help science learn more about humankind’s “aquatic potential.”

“I believe,” said Ferreras, “that intellectually, we are closer to marine mammals than monkeys… . We all came from the water. Inside our brains is a genetic memory” that kicks in to protect us underwater.

How deep can a human dive on a single breath?

“Nobody knows,” Ferreras said. “If I knew 10 years ago what I know now (about the human response to extreme depths), we’d be talking about going to 250 meters instead of 200.”