The Final Descent
Moving slowly along the pool bottom, I controlled my pace at one foot per second and exhaled one precious air bubble at a time. I counted the tile squares, sang songs in my head, did anything I could do to not think about the one thing we humans rarely consider: breathing. In a scuba diving emergency, rushing to the surface without exhaling causes an embolism as the compressed air expands too rapidly inside your lungs, arteries, brain. The rapid ascent can kill you.
One breath must last a crawl the length of the pool, 25 meters. At the end, my buddy waited with a tank of air, ready to share it with my starved lungs. I had to make the length, then stop inches from the air I need. Then signal three times, “out of air” a slice across my throat, “need to buddy breath” a hand to mouth then toward my buddy and back. Lungs aching, air so close. Twice. Three times.
Fifty feet in, the first jolt hit, my lungs convulsed. “Hey, I need air!” my body said. I ignored the heaving. The internal jerking continued, more insistent, “I need air. You can’t make it.” My mind agreed with my lungs. Two meters from my goal, I broke the surface and inhaled oxygen and failure. Worse, my buddy didn’t pass the skill until I did. Twice I failed him.
Next try, I meditated on the edge of the pool to slow my heart rate and calm my racing mind. I worked on yoga breathing, full breath in, expanding my chest and stomach, long exhale, pulling in my stomach. Slow exhale out. No hyperventilating. That causes a blackout.
I would not fail this try. I inhaled deeply, then tucked underwater, gently moving forward. Twenty-five tiles in, I ignored the first convulsing of my lungs. I kept calm. I ignored thoughts of failure and panic. Thirty tiles. Forty. My chest heaved. I swallowed hard against the lurching. Sixty. Seventy. My buddy waited. I saw him willing me to finish. I met his eyes behind his mask. My lungs screamed, but I stopped and signaled three times. He handed over the regulator, and I purged the water out with the very last bit of air in my lungs before I gulped a huge breath.
To complete the skill, I handed the regulator back to my buddy and shared the air supply. This last step was critical because, had I not been in control, my instinct would have been to take the regulator, bolt to the surface, and kill us both.
We learned safety and freediving skills to control panic and build confidence for an emergency ascent. It was an old school scuba course, taught straight from the Navy dive manual, by an old school instructor.
I was surprised when I saw scuba in the fall course catalog. I was in Missouri. A thousand miles from the ocean I’d first seen during one of many family upheavals that landed us in Corpus Christ, Texas. I loved the water immediately. The sound, the smell of salt, the continuous waves on the surface over depths of stillness. Though we lived there only a short year before the next move — the next place of being the outsider — the connection to the ocean stayed constant as my life changed.
Scuba meant going back to the ocean to explore a world where humans didn’t belong. The idea appealed to me. I was a fish out of water, going back in.
The class began with 150 students in a lecture hall. Students rapidly dropped as they faced the in-water challenges and the 90 percent or higher test score required for an open water certification trip. The trip included a three-mile swim with tank and full gear and a simulated out-of-air emergency wearing a blackout mask at thirty-foot of cold lake water. At semester’s end, only ten of us certified, including my buddy and me.
We could have bailed and got a c-card for recreational diving in a few fun weekends. But we stayed. We stayed for the challenge. We stayed for each other; scuba buddies became more than classmates with “Coach” as our strict, fatherly patriarch of this forged family. I signed up for scuba to escape the world around me. I found where I belonged.
Jacques Mayol, the first freediver to set a world record of over 100 meters, or 330 feet, pioneered many freediving techniques. Mayol became legendary when a fictionalized account of his story became the movie The Big Blue. I saw it in college with my scuba friends.
One hundred meters down, the length of a football field, on a single breath. Scuba diving on regular air is lethal at this depth due to oxygen toxicity. To make that record-breaking dive, Mayol traveled the length two football fields on one breath, descent and ascent.
Mayol used a metal sled on a rope to speed his descent. This doesn’t require swim effort, but it’s incredibly hard on eardrums. Rushing the descent to save time could have caused his eardrums to burst, ending the dive and his career if he damaged his inner ear.
Like the pacing on his descent and my crawl along the pool bottom, every move Mayol made was deliberate. Every movement cost oxygen-fueled energy. Reaching the surface alive took all the oxygen he had with a single breath. Any quick action — rushing the turnaround or the last of the ascent, a race to the surface to survive — any sudden change would have caused him to lose consciousness.
Coach told stories of Mayol and others who pioneered the sport of diving. He shared, in detail, the stories of the ones who did not surface from their mistakes. In the process, these names took on the quality of legend. What I never expected, sitting there reeking of chlorine in a Missouri classroom, was that I would someday learn from the legend himself.
Scuba class led me back to the ocean. A few years after I got certified, I studied coral reef ecology at a school for field studies on the tiny island of South Caicos.
“We have a surprise tonight,” said the school director. “Jacques Mayol lives on the island part-time, and he is going to share his documentary with us.”
Two heads turned in surprise at the name — the divemaster’s and mine. No one else knew of the first man to break the 100-meter freediving threshold. In diving lore, legends were youthful, tan, and muscular, beaming from black-and-white photos. I didn’t expect the slight, white-haired man who showed up with an entourage of older ladies in flowing, flowered gowns, looking as if they’d mistakenly stepped off a tour bus from Sarasota. They were out of place on this remote island, and even more so next to Mayol, who was still fit from diving, yoga, and daily training.
The documentary centered on Mayol’s accomplishments and his philosophy that humans retained a connection to our aquatic ancestors, much like dolphins and whales still have vestigial hipbones from their land mammal ancestry.
Mayol wrote a book, Homo delphinus, based on his belief that man could, with training, hold his breath for long periods by diverting the blood flow only to life-sustaining brain and body functions just like the dive reflex of marine mammals. Mayol predicted that freedivers could breath-hold for ten minutes and that dives of 200 meters were possible. His speech drew polite applause. The absence of audience questions left a void in the room.
History is filled with individuals mocked for thinking differently. Mayol’s attention-seeking tone didn’t fend off ridicule. In a cheesy French accent, students later laughed at Mayol’s presentation, saying, “I am Jacques the Cock-a-roach-a, I hold ze breath 45 minutes.”
But Mayol was accurate in his prediction, if not our kinship to dolphins. Herbert Nitsch set a no-limits freediving record of 253.2 meters in 2012, diving so deep that he required decompression treatment upon surfacing. In the static apnea category, where the diver does not swim, and the skill is breath-holding length, Branco Petrovic’s record is 11 minutes and 53 seconds. Both divers used yoga to slow their heart rates, Mayol’s technique.
As far-fetched as his Homo delphinus philosophy sounded, Mayol believed it. And lived it. He learned freediving as a commercial diver caring for dolphins at a Miami aquarium. He thought of the dolphins as family and mentors, feeling closer to these marine mammals than the humans around him. Mayol spent his life pushing his diving skills to match theirs.
I didn’t see Mayol’s ideas as crazy. They felt familiar. His connection was more spiritual than scientific. Emotional connections are rarely built on fact, but they have power. Tremendous power.
In Mayol, I sensed an outsider like myself. He seemed lost in the distance from the bright glory of his record-breaking days. He needed to be seen in that light again. I wanted to learn what he could teach. After his presentation, I told him we used his techniques in my college class. He lit up, grateful for my recognition. I asked for his advice. He asked me to join him for training.
I agreed to meet him for his three-mile training swim. It was against the school’s policy. Swimming along the reefs put us in the path of conch fishers’ boats speeding out for the day’s catch.
Mayol met me after sunrise, eyes beaming, a towel draped around his neck like a scarf, striding across the sand. In his sixties, he still wore the suit of choice for competitive weightlifters and Europeans — a tiny black Speedo. He was tan, with his signature thin mustache etched above a broad smile. His short frame was lean.
“Let’s swim!” he said as if getting in the water was an exciting new experience and not what he did every morning for decades.
We donned our masks, snorkels, and fins. Mayol’s yard-long Cressi-Subs dwarfed my stout, short Scubapro jet fins. He moved gracefully, as if he were, indeed, one of the ocean’s inhabitants. As we swam for miles, we made shallow dives, played along the reef, and soared with eagle rays, weightless. Free. Unlike in the pool, it was easy to swallow back my lungs’ jerk for air. I wanted to stay under more than I wanted to go back up.
Still, I surfaced frequently. Mayol stayed under, ten-foot below me, inverted so he could look up at me at the surface, surrounded by waves and sky. He was calm for minutes. I wondered why he never dived deeper. Like Mayol, I rolled over to look up at the surface and got lost in the beauty of sky rippling through the underside of the waves. I felt joy, a glimpse of my companion’s euphoria and ease. Halfway, we stopped at a rock point to rest. I needed a break.
Weeks later, at the request of Jim, the school’s divemaster, Mayol agreed to teach him how to use a freediving sled in open water. On the way out, Mayol sat in the bow in a lotus position. He rocked with the waves, eyes closed, like some life-sized Zen hood ornament. After he gave instructions on setting up the lines and the sled, he returned to quiet meditation. Three of us with scuba gear went into the water first; two were safety divers, one at the bottom and one stationed mid-point. I was a safety diver and photographer at 20 feet. Mayol coached Jim on surviving the 100-foot attempt.
As I watched Jim grab the sled and glide by, I expected Mayol to follow him down. I looked around, only to see my mentor hovering behind me. Mayol stayed underwater the entirety of Jim’s descent and ascent, never diving deeper. When we surfaced, Mayol tapped the side of his head. “My ear was injured,” he explained. “When it’s healed, I will dive again.” Mayol kept diving into his seventies, reaching depths of 60 meters, but never the record-setting feats of years past.
Freedivers usually peak in their youth or their early 30s at the latest. It’s a strenuous sport. Mayol was 49 when he broke the 100-meter barrier, and 56 when he broke his own world record. Diving to 105 meters, he proved the sport takes more than strong, young lungs. It takes more mental strength than physical.
Now, as I confront my fifth decade, like Mayol, I practice yoga daily. I’m not training for a world record. My body is aging, and genetics were not kind. Yoga and two millimeters of cartilage stand between limping a bit and a hip replacement.
I wanted to ask Mayol how he set a world record at 56, persevering toward an extreme goal at an age when most of us realize how hard aging is going to be. I wanted him to mentor me again and share the secret of his mental strength. But I can’t. My friend is gone, and I am left wondering how Mayol died the way he did.
Mayol’s dives began long before he got in the water. He spent his morning in meditation. Using yoga and focusing on deep relaxation, Mayol slowed his breathing and metabolism. His heart rate dropped from 60 beats per minute to 27. This skill takes years of practice. The ability to control panic during the dive, the mental aspect of freediving, takes more than practice. It takes unshakable faith.
For every meter Mayol dived, he used this faith to survive the distance back up. Some experience reverse claustrophobia at depth. There are not just columns of empty ocean between a diver and the air above. Mayol was surrounded by a blue expanse, infinite and open, while the water pressed heavily on every square inch of his body.
The light spectrum is absorbed as it passes through the water column, disappearing first from the shortest of rays, red, through the rainbow. Past 75 feet, only blue is left, darker blue into black below. It’s like floating alone in space. This is The Big Blue, as the partially autobiographical film was named.
This isolation is enough to raise the heart rate of a diver on scuba. A freediver’s mind plays tricks when it’s starved for oxygen, a phenomenon known as negative suggestion. In the dark, alone, Mayol’s belief that he was one with dolphins and belonged more in the water than he did on land was not a controversial philosophy. It was the source of his survival.
Mayol had to hold onto his faith, to think and move deliberately so he wouldn’t blackout. He had to control any panic, any escalation of his lowered heart rate, any desperate urge from his lungs to get air now. He also had to control the negative suggestion to know which thoughts would carry him back to the light — and which led to darkness.
It was Jacques Mayol’s mental strength that has me puzzling over his death. Mayol’s final descent was on December 22, 2001, when he completed suicide. The Big Blue that enveloped him was not water, but depression. His rival and friend Enzo Maiorca said that Mayol was struggling with aging and loneliness.
Graceful aging is a myth. I once watched an elderly man in an airport walking to his gate. He wore a backpack and had a cane in each hand. He pulled himself along, slowly, alongside the people mover. He could have ridden more quickly. He could have been whisked to his gate in a cart. But he chose each painful step. To some, he was frail and old. Weak. After a year of my chronic hip pain, I realized that this man was not weak. He was the strongest of us all.
So how is it that someone with Mayol’s mental toughness — strength to face death over and over for decades, to control fear and body functions — could not surface from the depths of depression to survive the difficult but inevitable process of aging? Was the absence of deep connections on land the empty expanse he couldn’t overcome?
These questions nagged me as I talked with my 85-year-old mother-in-law, who was in hospice care. We were in the Arizona desert for our last visit while she could still communicate and enjoy the company of her family.
For four years, her life was enveloped slowly by Parkinson’s. It started with minor tremors. When the diagnosis was apparent, she learned about the stages ahead and the unknowns she faced. More frequent tremors. A moment where she paused mid-sentence, looked into space, and panic clouded her eyes. She seldom talked about what she was enduring.
Her fears showed when she cried happy tears on our arrivals. She cried more when our visits ended. “How soon will you be back?” she said, eyes damp as she hugged her only grandchild. She was not a woman of faith. Her will to endure lay in the promise of time with friends and our visits. The life we shared with her meant more than the promise of an afterlife.
As the disease progressed, her mobility became limited. She fell often. She got injured. She needed a walker, then a wheelchair, then full-time care. Her body became rigid as she sank deeper into the grip of the disease. She had trouble swallowing, then speaking. We watched her slowly drown in the stillness of her own body.
She knew it was coming. The inevitability. She decided how her life would end even as she could not control the when or if. She chose dignity and acceptance without intervention — hers or others. She made brutal decisions with a quiet strength that was different from Mayol’s minutes-long, death-defying dives. She would not be able to defy death, but she defined how to accept it when it came to her.
We spent our final visit sitting with her on the patio. At first, we tried to play cards and make conversation, but small talk was challenging and one-sided. She got confused easily. When I brought out a laptop loaded with family photos, she came to life. My husband started a story from “the old days” then she chimed in with details, recognizing faces and names that he couldn’t. Her eyes shone with laughter and light. Each night, she kept us there until nearly midnight looking through years of captured moments. When we finished over a thousand images, she wanted to start again. Her life flashed before our eyes on the small screen. When the trip ended, she didn’t ask how soon we would be back. We hugged her and made promises anyway, promises she knew we wouldn’t have to keep. Less than two months later, she died slowly and deliberately over a week when she could no longer eat.
Early one morning, during that last trip to Arizona, we took a sanity break to go hiking. It was my first hike since my hip diagnosis and my painful work to hold onto as much strength and range of motion as possible. My husband and child were faster than me now. I had to use hiking poles to take the effort of climbs and the impact of downhills into my arms. I tried to enjoy the peace while I lagged. I tried not to think of the poles as canes. Mostly, I was relieved to face my new limits alone. I wasn’t sure I could make this hike or if I would ever hike again. I never doubted my physical ability before. It scared me.
As I crested the top of a climb, a man in his seventies headed my way on the trail. I stepped to the side, apologizing for my awkward shuffling of hiking poles.
“They are great, aren’t they?” he said, nodding to his pair. I confessed that I was using them for my hip issue. “My wife has a new hip. She loves it. She’s usually out here with me,” he said, smiling and passing by, a perfect stranger, giving me what I needed to know most.
It’s just a hip. It’s equipment. Life goes on, and there can still be adventures.
I’ll never know what’s ahead until I face it. I didn’t know what Mayol struggled with or why he gave in to the depths. Like watching the ocean as a child, I saw only the motion and light on the surface of this man. I sensed the stillness below, but we didn’t dive deeper. I stopped our morning swims before I reached the limits of my rule-bending. Mayol left the island without saying goodbye. I focused on my next adventure and left the program early for a shark research position in Bimini.
On my first day in Bimini, the team measured and tagged a six-foot bull shark and released it back into the water. The shark sank to the bottom, in shock. “Time to go in,” said Dr. Sonny Gruber, the Shark Doc, a much less patient mentor than Mayol.
“Um, how close can I get?” I asked, reaching for my camera and fins. Either there’s no danger or this is how they get rid of the slow interns, I thought. I paused at the boat gunnel. I tried to calm my nerves and heart rate. I channeled every bit of Mayol’s confidence I could borrow. I closed my eyes, pulled in a long, slow breath, and slid into the shallow water with the shark and a teammate.
The shark lay still on the bottom as I approached within a foot of his snout. I hovered, careful not to kick up sand that would cloud the photos. I forgot about breathing, my world was the shark in front of me and the tiny viewfinder of my Nikonos V. I clicked a few images, surfaced for a deep inhale, and dived back under. My teammate did a curious thing. He put his arms around the shark, picked it up off the bottom, then pushed it forward. The shark sank back down. Again, he embraced the shark and propelled it forward to push oxygenated water across its gills, a sort of shark CPR.
The next time I surfaced, I handed up my camera, caught a breath, and tucked back under. This time, I placed my arms around the shark and marveled at its rough skin and solid muscle. I had no idea what would happen when the animal came-to. Would it turn on me? I pushed it forward. The shark snapped its tail and, with a few quick movements, was off to the open ocean. I watched the magnificent creature leave me behind. When I turned back toward the boat, I half-expected to see Mayol hovering behind me. I rolled over, putting my back to the sand, and watched the sky through the underside of the waves. Joy. I belonged in the water.
I regret never telling Mayol how much his lessons meant to me. He made such an impact on my life even though we spent so little time together. I wish I could tell him not to give in to the negative suggestion. To surface again in the light that he shined in my life, and the lives of others. That he was never alone. That none of us are alone in this world where a few kind words from a stranger can change your life.
When I think of Jacques Mayol, I don’t want to contemplate his final descent. Or ponder unanswerable questions about my friend. I have to find my answers.
I have to choose to see Mayol meditating in the sun on our way out to dive. To recall his smiling eyes in his mask and calm presence over my shoulder, he, holding his breath, and me on scuba as the safety diver. I remember him gliding along the shallow reefs, wrapped in the reflections of light striking the waves above, arms outstretched, with the eagle rays and me.
I see the joy to hold onto no matter what heights or depths I face. I feel it now, atop one mountain looking toward the taller peaks ahead. The gratitude for still being here, despite the pain endured to make this climb. A mile further, my family is waiting for me by a tiny stream in the desert. I planted my poles and started up the steep, rocky trail.
