Is Freediving the new Scubadiving ?

photo by Phil Simha

Many years ago Scubadiving had been one of the great adventures in Life. Of course there has also been sports like parachute jumping or kite flying, but none of them is a way to explore a world, which humans are not made for. So scubadiving was a way to go where you can only go with special training and special gear.  Scubadivers were adventurers and the were seen as people who withstand the power of swell, current, surf or waves. They were like astronauts. Today Scubadiving is not completely seen as one of the biggest adventures in life. This is not bad, as a whole industry depends on it. The adventure is now open to many peoples and not only to the ones who earn a huge amount of money. Together with the knowledge of what is beneath the surface also the awareness for the enviroment has been rising. So altogether there are a lot of pros for this. But yes there is a little image problem. So this is why the SSI extended range or the freediving system is more and more important for the industry. Whereas the extended range program is familiar to everybody - so this is the training and the gear you need to go deeper or longer or do deep dives safer. Freediving is still not so easy to understand for divecenters. Is there a potential like in scubadiving ? Is it possible to sell specialty courses, recognition cards, are there travel agencies offering journeys on a single breath, magazines, books etc. Yes, there is this potential. I can see, the monofin freediving course, I wrote together with Phil Simha ( sunfishproductions.com ) two years ago is very popular, the book we wrote ( www.dive-naturally.de ) is succesfull too( unfortunatelly only available in czech and german so far ). There are agencies who sell loads of freediving trips all around the world. And of course there will be a freediving magazine in the near future. But sure you cannot transfer everything from scubadiving to freediving. Different people, different ideas and very often you see how people struggle to offer Freediving trips without the knowledge of what is really important to freedivers. This goes together with the right food, the right divesite, time for preparation etc. If you want to sell Freediving it is good to be part of it ( see my blog „what does the „free" in freediving mean" ), you start and in order to improve ( improvement is not always about diving deeper, longer or farther ) you need to get to know the ideas of people like Pelizzari, Mayol, Nery and many more. And in the end, the fascination is different to everybody - some want to discover the depth, some want to discover themselves, others want to be part of the underwater world - like a dolphin and not like an astronaut. Yes Freediving has got a big potential because it is still fascinating and challenging. And it is important to understand freediving is different to scubadiving. I am still curious about where freediving will be in the next years. I think we are still in the beginning of freediving and it is still underrated.