Tag Archives: sea walking

Seawalking but Freediving Style !

The idea this week was to get my new gear, Aqualung Falco mask, camera pole, pivots and straps but due to some delay in the mail as a result of easter just around the corner I didn’t get my gear prior to the sunday that I usually go diving. So as a result, the initial plan to give the new diving pole and mask a test run didn’t happen.

No matter, I went back to Gordon’s bay but this time decided to try a few different things under the water that I can’t normally do on land 😛 One of the things I always wanted to try was to do those really cool acrobatics that you see at the circus. So I tried to do some summersaults  on the way up, man it felt great, spinning and twirling around in the ocean, weightless and free 🙂

Whenever I do something new I always do it in shallower waters and always time my dives to gauge my air levels and closeness to feeling light headed. Doing these different activities like spinning around, holding up a stone and walking around felt pretty comfortable towards the 1 minute 20 mark and I felt that I have enough air to go for longer so i’ll do it in deeper waters and try to do more circus type maneuvers (so fun !).

A few weeks ago I also saw this clip about nomads that live on the water called the Baju people (living between the Philippines & Indonesian islands) and saw this amazing underwater hunter who can walk on the bottom of the ocean and stalk his prey like hunters in various tribes around the world do but only on land. It was amazing, so I wanted to see what it felt like to walk on the seabed. The problem with my situation is I am positively buoyant (unlike the underwater Baju hunter). I also haven’t done the AIDA or SSI courses so I don’t know and wont attempt to strap weights onto myself until I know how to do it properly (I have read about it extensively but its not good enough :P).

So to mitigate this issue I snorkel to an open area where I can see some rocks below and just hold onto the rock while i walk around keeping me firmly grounded. Then when I want to get some air, I just drop the rock and float up nicely, quickly and easily. It’s an amazing feeling to just stroll around the bottom of the ocean, makes me wonder if the feeling I have bouncing around with near weightlessness is the same as how Niel Armstrong & buzz Aldrin felt when they first stepped out of their craft and began bouncing around on the moon’s surface ? (I know that they use underwater simulators to train astronauts so it might actually be the same, if it is how cool is that :P) .

Anyway the feeling was amazing and I will definitely try to do it again next week, video above 🙂 Again sorry for the jerkiness