Diver Plunges 100 Meters, Unassisted on One Breath

[vienna]

http://www.grindtv.com/outdoor/blog/22880/diver+plunges+100+meters+unassisted+on+one+breath+ to+set+world+record/

Doesn't he know its so much easier with a submarine?

[onelifecrisis]

Trubidge's accomplishment, however, reveals how far breath-hold diving has evolved, and to what extreme the human body and mind are capable of coping. At 100 meters, lungs fill with blood as a natural means of preventing their collapse. The heart rate slows to the point where a diver can become disoriented, feeling either sleepy or euphoric.

What a nutter.

[Oberon]

Wow...100 meters...and what's more, done without a weight or float bag. Normally they are carried down by a weight and then brought slowly back up by a float bag to prevent the bends but not this guy.
Kudos to him to pulling it off, could have quite easily not been so lucky.
Done for a good cause too.

[August]

I didn't see the article mention who certified this world record. How does he prove he reached that depth?

[VipertheSniper]

I'd hazard a guess that they had a diver down there with special gear suited for those depths.

I'd hazard a guess that they had a diver down there with special gear suited for those depths.

Or a fixed camera viewing the depth tag on the rope, or both so they can have multiple angle shots for their films.

[Tessa]

Originally Posted by Oberon

Wow...100 meters...and what's more, done without a weight or float bag. Normally they are carried down by a weight and then brought slowly back up by a float bag to prevent the bends but not this guy.
Kudos to him to pulling it off, could have quite easily not been so lucky.
Done for a good cause too.

You can't get decompression sickness (the bends) doing a surface dive. At that level you're almost at 7 atmosphere's in pressure, without scuba gear am amazed that the body is able to take that much pressure without imploding from the intense pressure of the water.

Reason people get the bends is that when you are deep underwater (at least 45m/100 feet and of course anything deeper) you take in more O2 to compensate for the pressure that the water is exerting on your body. If the same diver has scuba gear on, he'd be taking rougly 7x the amount of O2 per breath than on the surface. The internal pressure of the lungs must match that of the outside so you start using more O2 the deeper you go.

Problem is the ascent, to properly ascend from any depth below ~25m/50 feet you are supposed to exhale the entire time you are ascending so that all that extra O2 gets out of your body. If you don't exhale all that air in the lungs has to go somewhere, and the nitrogen portion that is naturally in the air enters into your body and is was makes you sick. Thus the need for decompression chambers to slowly reduce the pressure against the body that happens while in the water. Pressure is then reduced slow enough that the nitrogen passes out of your body naturally (through exhaling) and can be the difference between life or death.

Had the skin diver had a scuba diver there at 100m and he taken some air from his tank, then he would be potentially subject to decompression sickness - if he didn't exhale the entire time he was ascending to the surface. Since he didn't, there wasn't an excess of O2 in the lungs that would happen using scuba gear, so the body is in no danger of having nitrogen getting pushed into the body. His biggest worry is drowning!

[GoldenRivet]

Originally Posted by August

I didn't see the article mention who certified this world record. How does he prove he reached that depth?

people at the surface saw the size of his massive testicles and just gave him the world record.

[Oberon]

Of course, I should have remembered that Tessa, I've read it often enough. Makes his feat even more spectacular.

[Dowly]

Originally Posted by GoldenRivet

people at the surface saw the size of his massive testicles and just gave him the world record.

[McBeck]

Originally Posted by Tessa

Pressure is then reduced slow enough that the nitrogen passes out of your body naturally (through exhaling) and can be the difference between life or death.

Yup...important to remember. Also if your are tired, cold, sick or many other things...it can influence the bodys ability to handle the pressure change.

[papa_smurf]

Wow, just wow.

[August]

Originally Posted by GoldenRivet

people at the surface saw the size of his massive testicles and just gave him the world record.

[Gargamel]

Originally Posted by Tessa

Problem is the ascent, to properly ascend from any depth below ~25m/50 feet you are supposed to exhale the entire time you are ascending so that all that extra O2 gets out of your body. If you don't exhale all that air in the lungs has to go somewhere, and the nitrogen portion that is naturally in the air enters into your body and is was makes you sick. Thus the need for decompression chambers to slowly reduce the pressure against the body that happens while in the water. Pressure is then reduced slow enough that the nitrogen passes out of your body naturally (through exhaling) and can be the difference between life or death.

Had the skin diver had a scuba diver there at 100m and he taken some air from his tank, then he would be potentially subject to decompression sickness - if he didn't exhale the entire time he was ascending to the surface. Since he didn't, there wasn't an excess of O2 in the lungs that would happen using scuba gear, so the body is in no danger of having nitrogen getting pushed into the body. His biggest worry is drowning!

You don't use more O2, per se, but more Air, as scuba tanks, in normal diving, aren't filled with pure O2, but just ambient air. There is a difference. A scuba tanks holds about 2500 psi of air. I don't know the volume off the top of my head, But you can last roughly 1-2 hours at 1-2 atmospheres (0-30ft of depth). At 5 atmospheres (about 120ft) that same air last about 5-10 minutes.

It takes 14 psi of air to open your lungs (about 750cc tidal Volume with each breath) at sea level. As the pressure around you increases, you require more pressure, but the same volume of air to open your lungs. This means with each breath, you are reducing the available pressure in your tank more and more. Hence there is less air available with each breath and you use far more air at greater depths.

You are very close with the Nitrogen and the bends. Nitrogen really isn't used for much by the human body, we kinda just tend to ignore it, being a noble gas and all. It easily diffuses into the blood stream and circulates normally, and then leaves when it wants to. But under pressure, it has this tendency to deposit itself into various points in your body, namely joints. Then, when the ambient pressure is reduced, the compressed, deposited, nitrogen suddenly expands, creating gas bubbles in your joints, causing severe pain. The only way to prevent, and cure this, is to slowly let off the pressure to allow the nitrogen to diffuse back into the bloodstream and escape through the lungs.

But yeah, since your not using any compressed air, you can't get bent on a freedive.

Heres a video of him diving the blue arch in Dahab.

I'm really amazed at the effeciency of his stroke, it's a thing of beauty. This dive was 80m down, 30m across, then 80m back up. Impressive.

[Falkirion]

Those bloody crazy Kiwis. Amazing that this bloke went 100m down and then back up on a single breath. The human body really is an amazing machine.