It’s incredible how popular Freediving Koh Tao has become in recent years. It feels like it comes out of nowhere but actually although Freediving or Breath-hold has been around for centuries it’s only relatively recently that it gained immense popularity as a sport and is currently one of the fastest-growing watersports in the world. Breath-hold diving has been practised by the Ama Divers in Japan for over 2000 years and incredibly is still being practised today in the Izu Penninsula and in Okinawa.
As an activity, Freediving has been around as a sport since 1949 when the first depth record was attempted by Raimondo Bucher a Hungarian Fighter Pilot and keen spearfisherman who got to 30 meters in a single breath. Shortly after the 1950s, the legendary duo and very close friends Enzo Maiorca & Jacques Mayol broke a freediving record after record in their never-ending rivalry to outperform each other made famous by the 1988 motion Picture ‘The Big Blue’, and interestingly enough the inspiration to calling our Dive Center Big Blue!
The surge in popularity in the sport in recent years has been fueled by social media with freediving videos and imagery appearing news feeds all over the world and made famous by iconic clips such as William Trubridge ‘freedives The Arch’ video and Guillaume Nery and Julie Gautier’s famous ‘Base Jump’ in the Blue Hole.
Because of the visually stunning and appealing nature of this media, it has a natural draw to the viewer and for most people, it awakens a strong desire to be the person they are viewing for a variety of reasons & this often leads to their introduction into their world of Freediving.
We start Freediving courses every day here on Koh Tao with our very experienced Freediving Instructor, Juan Pablo, manager at Big Blue Freediving. In just 2 days we’ll have you holding your breath for over 3 minutes easily up to 5 minutes if you’re focused and descend down to 20 meters. If you can spare us another day we’ll get you down to the 1949 world record! 70 years late but still quite a feat!
If you’re interested in taking part in the quickest growing water sport in the world then get in touch. [email protected]
