I'm not a freediver, an apneist per se, I'm a spearfisher instead. Allow me to shed more light to this discussion.
CMAS killing U/W sports is old news, maybe not for freedivers whose organizing efforts are relatively recent. This prohibition was enacted in 1996, motivated by a Brazilian CMAS vice-president worried about his domestic politics losses. In Brazil, a non-CMAS spearfishing federation
http://www.cbcs.com.br was founded in 1990 and all major athletes joined it. They started to be invited to many import tournaments abroad. So what CMAS does? Instead of recognizing them, they tried to ban them. The results is that 99% of competitive spearfishing in Brazil is done by this new body, not to mention with much more enviromental conscience than CMAS' rules
Now that even in freediving their incompentence is showed--I read their first "freediving world champs" were a joke, lest almost a tragedy--, it became very convenient weapon to threat everybody. Yes, not freediving, other UW sports guys are also pissed at them.
The result of this threat, in the spearfishing side, was more cracks on the wall: like AIDA, a new spearfishing-only international federation is being founded by major countries like France and Brazil. It's called FIPSA and it will hold its first World Champioships in Brazil, next March. Now you'll understand the timing of this threat, don't you?
Their major claim is that they're recognized the IOC. This means fundings in some countries through national olympic committes; funds that, as I far as I know, barely trickle down to athlete-divers. Do athlete-divers really need the IOC sanction? The latter, really, couldn't care less for us. It all boils down to greed and personal vanity.
Ok, let me get off the soap box now...
