9 ms·

The Disappearance of the World’s Greatest Free Diver

97 points by Thevet 11y ago

Gys 11y ago
Reminds me of a great movie about two competing free divers: The Big Blue (Le Grand Bleu) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095250/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095250/ It also has a sad ending...
- patkob 11y ago
  thanks for the spoiler!
  - dublinben 11y ago
    I would argue it actually has a happy ending. It's not a spoiler really.
    - smoyer 11y ago
      Two competing opinions ... a sad ending and a happy ending. I'm going to play it safe and say that it has an ending.
      - soci 11y ago
        As a freediver myself, I dit not like THE ending ;)
        pferde 11y ago
        The murderer is the gardener.
  - Gys 11y ago
    Its not a spoiler. Go see the movie.
ChuckMcM 11y ago
More of an obituary really. A really amazing woman with what seemed to me to be an inhuman ability to go without breathing. I have never had the courage to be this kind of athlete, whether it is free diving or base jumping or any other sport where dying is only slightly less likely than not dying. And have always wondered about what they are thinking when they start out on their next "event", do they make their peace with God each time? Will fully disbelieve their chances of dying? Recheck their will and other documents? I like to believe she died doing something she loved doing, I really hope that is true.
- kukx 11y ago
  "I like to believe she died doing something she loved doing", like it makes any difference for her.
  - cstrahan 11y ago
    It doesn't make any difference to her now, but I imagine it did when she was still alive. Consider that we're all in the process of dying - it's just not as imminent for most. I imagine you still want to enjoy life, despite knowing that one day you won't be around for that enjoyment to mean anything to you. Knowing that everyone is eventually going to die, and that fulfillment is still important, why wouldn't you wish it upon people to enjoy their life til the very end?
    - kukx 11y ago
      If you die you die. What difference does it make if a second ago you enjoyed your life. If anything it makes it even worse. Dying when you enjoy the life the most? I can understand that someone wants to die when he suffers terribly, but not this.
      - ChuckMcM 11y ago
        > If you die you die. What difference does it make > if a second ago you enjoyed your life. I don't know if you've watched anyone die but it isn't "fun" for most people (either the watching or the dying). Many people are there with their parents when they pass, or with grandparents or loved ones struck down by accident or disease. So in general I think everyone will likely watch as at least one other person they know and care about dies. When that happens, you may find yourself sharing the dying person's pain, and that is a heavy burden. When I am listening to, or reading about, the death of someone. I wish for them an an easy passing, with as little pain and suffering as possible, for both them and their families and loved ones, because I know from my own experience how painful it is to watch someone die and be unable to help them. So for me, the living, it makes a huge difference if the person died doing something they loved (and thus were likely experiencing joy and satisfaction at the end) then knowing someone died slowly, painfully, and inevitably spending hours, perhaps days or weeks, moving toward their own demise.
kainaer 11y ago
Not intended to offend.. but see it as 'free driver' at first sight..
shorttime 11y ago
I'm surprised that she did not have a diving buddy. All of the training I've had with water diving, scuba or freediving, always recommends to have a buddy. The freediving buddy typically waits on top, looking down, to see if the diver has issues. If any issues are encountered, this buddy can potentially save the divers life.
- abandonliberty 11y ago
  Expanding on what you said, the top 10 metres are by far the most dangerous due to rapidly dropping air pressure in the lungs causing shallow water blackout. For serious freediving, your partner meets you at -10m as you ascend. This can clearly be seen in the fantastic william trubridge arch video. [1] It's quite common for an instructor to dive alone with students. Even a first level freediver knows how to save someone from a shallow blackout; it's unclear if her diving partners were suitable or if she took excessive risks. This is a good reminder that no one is invincible. [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrXQbucZUDA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrXQbucZUDA
- fabrice_d 11y ago
  We don't know what happened to her exactly, but if she had an issue while being still deep (more than 20m) that would have been very hard to spot for a buddy, and even harder to do a rescue. She was not alone by the way. The only way this could have been totally safe would be to dive along a line, using a lanyard to not drift away. This is the setup used in all competition or deep training and this has prevented many casualties.
  - abandonliberty 11y ago
    Still speculative, the original article mentions a lack of spotters and an io9 article mentions a depth of 30-40m. For her this was child's play: freediving gets exponentially harder the deeper you go. She could've decided to go exploring a bit on the bottom - at that shallow depth she'd have 2+ minutes of bottom time. With ~5 days of training, a person can get to 30-40m. Then it becomes harder (e.g. the air in your lungs gets squeezed to a smaller volume than a complete and total exhale) http://io9.com/well-probably-never-know-what-happened-to-freediver-nat-1722730731 http://io9.com/well-probably-never-know-what-happened-to-fre...
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
soci 11y ago
"No one knows what happened to her. There were powerful currents in the deep water beneath her and she may have been somehow carried away. She may have lost consciousness." I've been freediving for 20 years now and I've never heard of anyone (nor myself) having trouble reaching the surface because of currents. Strong currents affecting a freediver are lateral, not vertical. Not trying to say currents are not dangerous for freedivers. I've friends who did end up lost for hours in the surface because of currents. Also, if you want to reach a certain spot in the sea floor and there is current you will consume more O2 and you increase your chances of blackout before reaching surface. But dying because of being carried away? hmm no.. So, the only true thing is that she did black out and did not come to the surface. The current is the reason why they are not finding her. No one will ever know why she blacked out. edit: typos
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- smt88 11y ago
  What about the fact that she was wearing weights? Could that have caused a lateral current to affect her vertically?
  - soci 11y ago
    Weights are small pieces of lead used to compensate the wetsuit buoyancy. They don't have a big surface so they don't have hydrodynamic impact. In some freediving disciplines weights may be used to go deeper in less time, but then you leave the weight at the bottom, otherwise you would not be able to come back to the surface.
    - smt88 11y ago
      I think the article I saw said that they believed she'd lost consciousness (somehow due to the current) and been unable to remove the weights. Could that explain it?
sovande 11y ago
The concentration technique (attention deconcentration) mentioned in the article sounds very interesting. Anyone know more or have tried it? Edit: Could be a useful technique when free-diving into a code base. Apropos diving, another concept that comes from the diving world which I have found useful in Software Development is "incident pit" which can be useful as a perspective to post mortem failed projects and conversely for a PM to know about the danger signs.
- dermybaby 11y ago
  wiki shows only this - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconcentration_of_attention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconcentration_of_attention I am adding this on to spark a simpler explnation from someone who is experienced with this. An excerpt from her website talks about this, link found from wikipedia, http://molchanova.ru/en/article/attention-deconcentration-freediving http://molchanova.ru/en/article/attention-deconcentration-fr... - "States close to AD can be achieved if person distributes attention on the field of vision periphery, i.e. focuses attention simultaneously on the regions above, below, on the left and on the right. Distribution of attention on the periphery requires voluntary efforts, since human visual apparatus is designed to detect objects in the central part of the vision field. There is useful deconcentration method when one imagines all objects are pictured on a transparent screen in front of him and concentrates attention only on the surface of the screen. This suspends spontaneous eye movements and focuses attention not on objects, but on fragments of vision field. If person performs the exercise correctly, his eyes do not “cling” to objects when he turns his head, but remain motionless relative to the head. This deconcentration type is called “planar deconcentration”. Further explanations can be found in Bakhtiyarov’s works."
  - thanatropism 11y ago
    > when one imagines all objects are pictured on a > transparent screen in front of him and concentrates > attention only on the surface of the screen As they say it on the C2 wiki, IHaveThisAntiPattern. I'm more distractible by peripheral visual stimulus than by noise. This is why I'm okay with working on small bullpens as long they give me three chest-height walls, but can't do any work on open plan offices where everything is on my line of sight when sitting down.
postila 11y ago
I've started to learn freediving since 2010 with Natalia and Alexey. All trainings with them were always amazing. I even decided to move my family to live next to the pool (in Moscow) where they do daily training -- to be able to train more often. Every sea training in Dahab was always a LOT of fun and great experience for my whole life. There was always some magic around Natalia – you understand that you're sitting next to one of the greatest humans in the world, who is able to do smth absolutely incredible and it's hard to reflect how deep are the feelings inside you during those moments. Her lectures and discussions were interesting even if you hear it for 2nd or 3rd or 4th time :) I will always remember that parts of my life and it's really smth that is absolutely remarkable and amazing. Those freediving trainings changed my life a lot. They changed how I think about anything what surrounds me: you consider any thing like "it's a part of the huge world", you fall in anger much less often, you become more stable, and strong. I also will always remember when I went to just another training in the pool and right after that realized that Natalia just made yet another world (!) record during Russian competition. Or later, In Kalamata, Greece, in 2011, when she did a couple of depth records, in World Championship.. It was BIG. It was EPIC. Always. Every her move. When I moved to San Francisco a couple of years ago, I was missing freediving and Natalia a lot. It's strange that there is almost no freedivers in SF and Bay area. I see huge potential in this kind of sport for tech guys in California – we are always sitting with our computers and are lacking some way to reboot our mind. Freediving is GREAT way to get rid of everything useless from your brain at the end of every hard day. But maybe the ocean is too cold, or visibility is low.. Don't know, but I hope it'll become popular some day in this part of the world. I should say special words about Alexey. This young guy (28 y.o.) is in his very difficult times these days. He should be strong to go through these days and months and years. He is active World Champion and World Record holder (WR: 128m in depth, with monofin only). But this is very personal and not so difficult as another thing – Natalia built probably the strongest local freediving school (thousands of people graduated) and strong national freediving organization – and the question is whether or not he will find enough power to continue this work. It's hard time... We all loved (and love and will love) Natalia. We wish all the good to Alexey and his sister, Oksana. R.I.P Natalia. Thank you for all you did for us.
CHAINSAWED_VAG 11y ago
Die, bitch.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
ChicagoBoy11 11y ago
Reminded me of Audrey Mestre's tragic accident/homicide? ESPN's movie on it is incredible: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tqLPwJHMM4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tqLPwJHMM4
danielyaa5 11y ago
I feel like this would not hand cracks or bumps well...
doug1001 11y ago
i had no idea about free diving until i read the OP. Natalia, the subject, who was one of the handful of world elites, and had been for many years, had a couple of years before (2013) descended to a depth of 418 feet, and ascended back to the surface under her own power--no supplemental oxygen, used at anytime. Absolutely amazing. I had no idea humans could do that--with or without training.

97 points by Thevet 11y ago

Gys 11y ago

Reminds me of a great movie about two competing free divers: The Big Blue (Le Grand Bleu) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095250/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095250/ It also has a sad ending...

patkob 11y ago
thanks for the spoiler!
- dublinben 11y ago
  I would argue it actually has a happy ending. It's not a spoiler really.
  - smoyer 11y ago
    Two competing opinions ... a sad ending and a happy ending. I'm going to play it safe and say that it has an ending.
    - soci 11y ago
      As a freediver myself, I dit not like THE ending ;)
      - pferde 11y ago
        The murderer is the gardener.
- Gys 11y ago
  Its not a spoiler. Go see the movie.

ChuckMcM 11y ago

More of an obituary really. A really amazing woman with what seemed to me to be an inhuman ability to go without breathing. I have never had the courage to be this kind of athlete, whether it is free diving or base jumping or any other sport where dying is only slightly less likely than not dying. And have always wondered about what they are thinking when they start out on their next "event", do they make their peace with God each time? Will fully disbelieve their chances of dying? Recheck their will and other documents? I like to believe she died doing something she loved doing, I really hope that is true.

kukx 11y ago
"I like to believe she died doing something she loved doing", like it makes any difference for her.
- cstrahan 11y ago
  It doesn't make any difference to her now, but I imagine it did when she was still alive. Consider that we're all in the process of dying - it's just not as imminent for most. I imagine you still want to enjoy life, despite knowing that one day you won't be around for that enjoyment to mean anything to you. Knowing that everyone is eventually going to die, and that fulfillment is still important, why wouldn't you wish it upon people to enjoy their life til the very end?
  - kukx 11y ago
    If you die you die. What difference does it make if a second ago you enjoyed your life. If anything it makes it even worse. Dying when you enjoy the life the most? I can understand that someone wants to die when he suffers terribly, but not this.
    - ChuckMcM 11y ago
      > If you die you die. What difference does it make > if a second ago you enjoyed your life. I don't know if you've watched anyone die but it isn't "fun" for most people (either the watching or the dying). Many people are there with their parents when they pass, or with grandparents or loved ones struck down by accident or disease. So in general I think everyone will likely watch as at least one other person they know and care about dies. When that happens, you may find yourself sharing the dying person's pain, and that is a heavy burden. When I am listening to, or reading about, the death of someone. I wish for them an an easy passing, with as little pain and suffering as possible, for both them and their families and loved ones, because I know from my own experience how painful it is to watch someone die and be unable to help them. So for me, the living, it makes a huge difference if the person died doing something they loved (and thus were likely experiencing joy and satisfaction at the end) then knowing someone died slowly, painfully, and inevitably spending hours, perhaps days or weeks, moving toward their own demise.

kainaer 11y ago

Not intended to offend.. but see it as 'free driver' at first sight..

shorttime 11y ago

I'm surprised that she did not have a diving buddy. All of the training I've had with water diving, scuba or freediving, always recommends to have a buddy. The freediving buddy typically waits on top, looking down, to see if the diver has issues. If any issues are encountered, this buddy can potentially save the divers life.

abandonliberty 11y ago
Expanding on what you said, the top 10 metres are by far the most dangerous due to rapidly dropping air pressure in the lungs causing shallow water blackout. For serious freediving, your partner meets you at -10m as you ascend. This can clearly be seen in the fantastic william trubridge arch video. [1] It's quite common for an instructor to dive alone with students. Even a first level freediver knows how to save someone from a shallow blackout; it's unclear if her diving partners were suitable or if she took excessive risks. This is a good reminder that no one is invincible. [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrXQbucZUDA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrXQbucZUDA
fabrice_d 11y ago
We don't know what happened to her exactly, but if she had an issue while being still deep (more than 20m) that would have been very hard to spot for a buddy, and even harder to do a rescue. She was not alone by the way. The only way this could have been totally safe would be to dive along a line, using a lanyard to not drift away. This is the setup used in all competition or deep training and this has prevented many casualties.
- abandonliberty 11y ago
  Still speculative, the original article mentions a lack of spotters and an io9 article mentions a depth of 30-40m. For her this was child's play: freediving gets exponentially harder the deeper you go. She could've decided to go exploring a bit on the bottom - at that shallow depth she'd have 2+ minutes of bottom time. With ~5 days of training, a person can get to 30-40m. Then it becomes harder (e.g. the air in your lungs gets squeezed to a smaller volume than a complete and total exhale) http://io9.com/well-probably-never-know-what-happened-to-freediver-nat-1722730731 http://io9.com/well-probably-never-know-what-happened-to-fre...

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

soci 11y ago

"No one knows what happened to her. There were powerful currents in the deep water beneath her and she may have been somehow carried away. She may have lost consciousness." I've been freediving for 20 years now and I've never heard of anyone (nor myself) having trouble reaching the surface because of currents. Strong currents affecting a freediver are lateral, not vertical. Not trying to say currents are not dangerous for freedivers. I've friends who did end up lost for hours in the surface because of currents. Also, if you want to reach a certain spot in the sea floor and there is current you will consume more O2 and you increase your chances of blackout before reaching surface. But dying because of being carried away? hmm no.. So, the only true thing is that she did black out and did not come to the surface. The current is the reason why they are not finding her. No one will ever know why she blacked out. edit: typos

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
smt88 11y ago
What about the fact that she was wearing weights? Could that have caused a lateral current to affect her vertically?
- soci 11y ago
  Weights are small pieces of lead used to compensate the wetsuit buoyancy. They don't have a big surface so they don't have hydrodynamic impact. In some freediving disciplines weights may be used to go deeper in less time, but then you leave the weight at the bottom, otherwise you would not be able to come back to the surface.
  - smt88 11y ago
    I think the article I saw said that they believed she'd lost consciousness (somehow due to the current) and been unable to remove the weights. Could that explain it?

sovande 11y ago

The concentration technique (attention deconcentration) mentioned in the article sounds very interesting. Anyone know more or have tried it? Edit: Could be a useful technique when free-diving into a code base. Apropos diving, another concept that comes from the diving world which I have found useful in Software Development is "incident pit" which can be useful as a perspective to post mortem failed projects and conversely for a PM to know about the danger signs.

dermybaby 11y ago
wiki shows only this - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconcentration_of_attention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconcentration_of_attention I am adding this on to spark a simpler explnation from someone who is experienced with this. An excerpt from her website talks about this, link found from wikipedia, http://molchanova.ru/en/article/attention-deconcentration-freediving http://molchanova.ru/en/article/attention-deconcentration-fr... - "States close to AD can be achieved if person distributes attention on the field of vision periphery, i.e. focuses attention simultaneously on the regions above, below, on the left and on the right. Distribution of attention on the periphery requires voluntary efforts, since human visual apparatus is designed to detect objects in the central part of the vision field. There is useful deconcentration method when one imagines all objects are pictured on a transparent screen in front of him and concentrates attention only on the surface of the screen. This suspends spontaneous eye movements and focuses attention not on objects, but on fragments of vision field. If person performs the exercise correctly, his eyes do not “cling” to objects when he turns his head, but remain motionless relative to the head. This deconcentration type is called “planar deconcentration”. Further explanations can be found in Bakhtiyarov’s works."
- thanatropism 11y ago
  > when one imagines all objects are pictured on a > transparent screen in front of him and concentrates > attention only on the surface of the screen As they say it on the C2 wiki, IHaveThisAntiPattern. I'm more distractible by peripheral visual stimulus than by noise. This is why I'm okay with working on small bullpens as long they give me three chest-height walls, but can't do any work on open plan offices where everything is on my line of sight when sitting down.

postila 11y ago

I've started to learn freediving since 2010 with Natalia and Alexey. All trainings with them were always amazing. I even decided to move my family to live next to the pool (in Moscow) where they do daily training -- to be able to train more often. Every sea training in Dahab was always a LOT of fun and great experience for my whole life. There was always some magic around Natalia – you understand that you're sitting next to one of the greatest humans in the world, who is able to do smth absolutely incredible and it's hard to reflect how deep are the feelings inside you during those moments. Her lectures and discussions were interesting even if you hear it for 2nd or 3rd or 4th time :) I will always remember that parts of my life and it's really smth that is absolutely remarkable and amazing. Those freediving trainings changed my life a lot. They changed how I think about anything what surrounds me: you consider any thing like "it's a part of the huge world", you fall in anger much less often, you become more stable, and strong. I also will always remember when I went to just another training in the pool and right after that realized that Natalia just made yet another world (!) record during Russian competition. Or later, In Kalamata, Greece, in 2011, when she did a couple of depth records, in World Championship.. It was BIG. It was EPIC. Always. Every her move. When I moved to San Francisco a couple of years ago, I was missing freediving and Natalia a lot. It's strange that there is almost no freedivers in SF and Bay area. I see huge potential in this kind of sport for tech guys in California – we are always sitting with our computers and are lacking some way to reboot our mind. Freediving is GREAT way to get rid of everything useless from your brain at the end of every hard day. But maybe the ocean is too cold, or visibility is low.. Don't know, but I hope it'll become popular some day in this part of the world. I should say special words about Alexey. This young guy (28 y.o.) is in his very difficult times these days. He should be strong to go through these days and months and years. He is active World Champion and World Record holder (WR: 128m in depth, with monofin only). But this is very personal and not so difficult as another thing – Natalia built probably the strongest local freediving school (thousands of people graduated) and strong national freediving organization – and the question is whether or not he will find enough power to continue this work. It's hard time... We all loved (and love and will love) Natalia. We wish all the good to Alexey and his sister, Oksana. R.I.P Natalia. Thank you for all you did for us.

CHAINSAWED_VAG 11y ago

Die, bitch.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

ChicagoBoy11 11y ago

Reminded me of Audrey Mestre's tragic accident/homicide? ESPN's movie on it is incredible: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tqLPwJHMM4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tqLPwJHMM4

danielyaa5 11y ago

I feel like this would not hand cracks or bumps well...

doug1001 11y ago

i had no idea about free diving until i read the OP. Natalia, the subject, who was one of the handful of world elites, and had been for many years, had a couple of years before (2013) descended to a depth of 418 feet, and ascended back to the surface under her own power--no supplemental oxygen, used at anytime. Absolutely amazing. I had no idea humans could do that--with or without training.