Holding your breath
Netflix is currently showing not one, but two free diving documentaries: Hold Your Breath and The Deepest Breath. Hold Your Breath: The Ice Dive is about a Finnish woman who is training for the world record in ice diving (i.e. swimming horizontally while holding her breath under the ice), while The Deepest Breath is about free divers going for the world record in the deepest dive without oxygen (we’re talking over 100m).
Watching both of these films made me want to take in giant, appreciative lungfuls of air. The power of the mind is amazing, especially when you watch the free divers in a meditative state being pulled down by the pressure of the deeper ocean. I didn’t know this, but apparently below 30 metres the sea pulls you down and it’s called the free fall – the free divers describe it as like flying, but downwards. That’s the easier part, but coming up they have to swim against the current and also not black out before they reach the surface…
Both of the docos are worth watching if you enjoy seeing people push their physical limits underwater (and there’s incredible footage), but I am not tempted to take up free diving or ice diving. I enjoy the sensory pleasure of swimming underwater with my breath held, but a few seconds’ duration is plenty!
Would you, or have you, tried ice diving or free diving?
The deep sea
Related to depth, this week I ‘attended’ a webinar from Seaweek about the deep sea. Every now and then they offer a free webinar about the ocean, anyone in the world can sign up, and it’s usually just for an hour or so in the evenings. They had three ‘expert’ talks and I really enjoyed them, particularly a talk from a ‘deep sea advocate’ named Thom Linley who co-hosts the Deep Sea Podcast. Thom was talking about how the media generally lump all deep-sea creatures together as weird, alien-like, ugly monsters from the deep, which he said is unfair because they’re usually just tiny critters minding their own business and they also become a bit disfigured when removed from water and the heavy forces of the deep sea – just like you or I would if we were dunked in water for ages and sent to the moon. We might look a bit funny too! Thom said as a science communicator it can be a conundrum as to whether to run with these weird/alien/creepy tropes to raise more awareness of the deep sea, or push against them.
We know so little about the deep sea and most of us don’t feel connected because we never see it, and possibly a bit spooked because it is a dark and cold ‘abyss’, home of the Titanic and ill-fated submersibles as well as fanged critters, but the deep sea takes up almost the entire planet – and everything in the world is connected, whether we visit it or not.
Gaining speed
As I mentioned, I’ve been focusing on my swim technique at the pool to get a bit faster and more efficient (i.e. use less energy) and it’s really paying off. I’m attending three swim squads per week at the moment and trying to implement everything I’ve learned from coaching, YouTube videos, and handouts shared with me by other swimmers. The group setting is fun and I can feel myself gliding more and getting into a rhythm, all the different parts coming together: stretch, pull, glide, turn. I think of the pool as a blue rectangle: enclosed, linear, orderly, tepid. But all these things are beneficial when I’m concentrating solely on my swimming.
It’s the inverse of last summer, when I was feeling quite good about my sea swimming but would get into the pool and really struggle with the drills. Now I am spending 99% of my swim time in the pool, something I would not have anticipated, and barely getting in the sea at all, partly because the swim times of local groups don’t work with my child-related commitments, but it’s also by choice. I am really enjoying the freedom of movement, the reaching, the gliding. the rhythm of the lanes, without having to pack a lot of gear, spend too long in the water and then deal with shivering afterdrop. (But I’m still doing a little bit: about once a week I walk into the sea alone in my togs, gasp and splash around in the cold, and then a few minutes later I get out, the stinging feeling on my skin and a feeling of renewal.)
Is this pool preference a natural and temporary response to the winter (August is the coldest month here, with air and water temperatures about 10°C), or am I moving in a new direction? As a kid I enjoyed the water but was slow at sports, and last-picked and generally told by frustrated teammates that I was “useless”. It’s hard to shake those childhood taunts and my own self-talk, but doing new things or pushing boundaries with new swim times, places, and distances of my own choosing has been a revelation. And it’s all thanks to my swim groups (indoors and out), where you can be any type of person at any level, showing up when you can, and you’ll be welcomed and supported. I hope I can do the same for others.
Knitting the sea
I don’t usually write about my knitting because it’s not something I do in the sea or pool, but I just finished a crescent shawl and realised when I blocked it that unconsciously the colours, pattern and shape mirrored the waves and depths of the sea. Funny how the mind works. I don’t really know how/when/where to wear a shawl but it was a fun and easy pattern that I could knit in front of the TV each night. I taught myself to knit about 10 years ago with YouTube because you can rewind and rewatch tutorials as many times as you need to. I found knitting really helpful when I was writing my books, I think because the precision of patterns gave my mind a rest from the more open-ended creative side of writing, but also the threading and weaving together of yarn paralleled the weaving together of the book.
People enjoyed my marine trivia last newsletter, so here are a few more things I’ve learned from lectures/podcasts/articles:
Mussels can close their shells as a protective mechanism when salinity levels are too low.
A ‘fire breathing’ shrimp spews out blue bioluminescent fluid when defending itself against predators.
‘Upwelling’ is when wind on the sea surface displaces large volumes of water and is replaced from below by cold, nutrient-rich water that wells up and generates high production at the surface (primary production of tiny phytoplankton, which leads to secondary production of zooplankton, which feeds the larger species, and so on). There is coastal upwelling, Equatorial upwelling and Antarctic upwelling.
In the tropics, warm and mild conditions mean production is more or less consistent (and not particularly high) year-round. In temperate waters it is more seasonal, with a ‘spring bloom’ and stronger winds and currents. Down south in Antarctica there is a later ‘summer bloom’ because it takes longer for the sun to shine directly over the sea. While swimming I’m surrounded by millions of microscopic plankton, tiny floating beings that are a vital part of the oceanic food web and the stability of our planet.
This helmet-shaped jellyfish has the nickname Darth Vader, for obvious reasons!