Exactly 20 years ago I started freediving, though my childhood was mostly spent in the water (photo 1 by @dtrubridge ). In January 2003 I left London, not intending to come back, but not knowing where forwards would take me. When you lie on the surface of the ocean and gaze into its depths, you have no idea of what is contained in that void below. Likewise, I had no idea where this voyage back to the Caribbean would take me. I had a flight booked to Belize, with the vague intention of following the coast of the Caribbean Sea down the Central American isthmus. (From my autobiography ‘Oxygen’): “On the first day we were taken to a site in 15 to 20 metres of water. The guide led his retinue of tourists down to the bottom, columns of bubbles ascending from each cluster of hoses and aluminium tanks. I watched from the surface, breathing through my snorkel, wondering whether I could reach the same depth. To my surprise, on my first attempt I swam all the way to just off the bottom, and spent several seconds there gazing around. I was floating above a landscape of undulating coral ridges, separated by strips of sand that filled the valleys between them. Fish flickered, bounced and soared in the midwater, swarmed and spun above distinct coral outcroppings, or slunk through coral hedges and shady gullies. Surface waves split the sun into flickering beams that tattooed erratic patterns of light over the whole scene.” Photo 2 was taken by @adam.laverty.5 in Utila, Honduras, in those first months of 2003 when I rediscovered freediving.
Photo 3 was my first course with @umberto_pelizzari June 2003 in Sardinia.