One of the things I love about freediving is NEVER knowing what is going to happen when we go diving. So it was today.
Scott, dean of the swamp tromping freedivers, and I decided to try a swamp dive today. It's a great spot, deep, usually super clear, pristine, but hard to get to in the middle of a swamp. Usually we go in winter. At that time its normally its fairly dry and bug free, but this year has had so much rain that we haven't tried. Time was running out, temperature is rising, mosquitoes too and we know from experience that summer is impossible, so, off we went. Drive two hours, plus a long dirt road deep into the woods, park ,suit up and walk down a path into the swamp. On the way we meet a couple of tank divers coming back, pulling their cart full of obscene amounts of heavy equipment, doubles, etc. Of course, we asked how it was, particularly how it was getting to the spot. Turns out they had not made it, mud and water too deep. Now a short conversation showed that these guys had been there before and knew pretty much what they were doing. For them to make the effort and not even get there was a bad sign. Still, I was confident in our ability until one of them said we really should have a boogie board as a float to help us get out of the bad parts of the mud. Hmmm, this is not good. But, we were not about to quit, so onward. Turns out not to be so bad. We are so much lighter and more agile than tankers that we never got much over ankle deep in mud. Mosquitoes were something else, they mobbed us when we slowed down. At least they were big, slow moving, swamp biters and the repellent kept them mostly at bay.
So, we get to the spot. Scott is faster than me, in the water first. I watch(and put on gear) as he starts his first warm up dive. Funny, he's not down very long and surfaces like there is a 12 foot tiger shark nibbling at his fins. Doesn't even stop there, but raises a rooster tail behind him as he covers the short distance to the bank. Now, Scott is normally mister “laid back”; this is not normal behavior. When he gets to the bank, he pauses and yells, GATOR! How Big? “Maybe 5 foot.” Well, having been a Floridian for many years (we have lots of alligators), this didn't seem so exciting to me, but Scott has much more knowledge and a different viewpoint. Turns out a school mate of his was eaten by an alligator. Well, whatever, I'd known people who dove with gators but never had myself. This, I had to see, so in I went. Two or three warm up, near surface dives. No gator. A deeper dive, down to 50 ft, looking all around, no gator. Then I notice the weight on the end of our pull down line jumping up and down like a crazed jack rabbit. I look up and see Scott's light doing the same thing. Ok, something not right, so I swim up to find Scott with his light on the gator at about 35 ft. I had passed almost touching distance away, never saw him and he was more like 6 + feet long, probably outweighed me. This critter is right exactly in the way, in the narrow entrance to a very big and beautiful underwater cavern, where we wanted to go.
Short tutorial on alligators for those of you unfamiliar. Alligators are not usually dangerous. You only need to be concerned about the big ones and around mating season. Trouble was, this fella was right on the line of what is considered big and mating season was starting. Alligators are funny, they sit there totally lethargic until you cross some invisible line, known only that individual gator. At which point they instantly transform into a seething mass of violently belligerent reptilian rage, not to be messed with without great care. And they are FAST! I've seen this a couple of times and had no desire to see it again underwater.
So now what? The obvious thing is to gently encourage the beast to move out of our way. We both got below and behind its tail and slowly moved closer. Now, any reasonably intelligent animal would take the hint when it had a nice straight path up and out of the hole, away from us. Alligators are not intelligent and he didn't move. Ok, how about I drop some rocks (small ones) on his head to get his attention? Trouble was, this critter was sitting under an overhang. To drop rocks on him required getting much closer than I wanted to get. Tried it anyway, arm extended as far as I could. Even tried throwing rocks at it. You know how that came out. He did not move. Scott begins to kid me about getting a long pole and prodding the beast. There were lots of small trees available, but I didn't want to tear up the place and fresh wood would float. I couldn't control a big piece at depth. Ahh, Eureka! There were lots a short (3-4 ft) pieces of water logged wood in the basin. Several of them were pointy ended and streamlined. These should fly underwater like a roman javelin. This will work.! So I get a fairly light piece, swim down the hole and throw it. Looks perfect, starts fast and straight, but loses momentum and falls off to the side, missed. Next piece much heavier, 4 feet long, thick and a nice point. Down the hole, rare back and let fly as hard as I could. Again looks perfect, fast and true but finally veers off to the side and misses the head by inches. The alligator doesn't move a muscle.
Well, any critter that passive isn't going to bother us going up and down a few feet away, so we start diving. It takes a while to learn how to keep an eye on him going down and then on the way up, but once we get that straight, WOW, I'm doing great. Very long dives, getting deeper and deeper. I've been diving frc for a couple of years and have never been able to equalize comfortably much below 80. Now I do an 85 fter, no problem, then a 90 fter, 2:10 dive, easy equalization, easy dive, plenty of time left. I'm stoked!! Checking my heart monitor, very low heart rate at depth and staying low on the way up, great dive reflex, wonderful. I'm already thinking about how I'm going to brag about this to my buddies . . . . . Wait a minute, I'm equalizing a full 10 ft deeper than my best, the last time I went diving was 5 months ago, and it's easy??? That just doesn't sound right. Whats going on?????????????????
Well, its well known that stress increases your dive reflex, kicking in blood shift hard and early and pooling blood in the lungs, making equalization easier. No question that close passage with a big gator is a tiny bit stressful. You tell me, should I be proud of a great improvement in my diving or should I just thank that gator?
What do you think?
Connor
Scott, dean of the swamp tromping freedivers, and I decided to try a swamp dive today. It's a great spot, deep, usually super clear, pristine, but hard to get to in the middle of a swamp. Usually we go in winter. At that time its normally its fairly dry and bug free, but this year has had so much rain that we haven't tried. Time was running out, temperature is rising, mosquitoes too and we know from experience that summer is impossible, so, off we went. Drive two hours, plus a long dirt road deep into the woods, park ,suit up and walk down a path into the swamp. On the way we meet a couple of tank divers coming back, pulling their cart full of obscene amounts of heavy equipment, doubles, etc. Of course, we asked how it was, particularly how it was getting to the spot. Turns out they had not made it, mud and water too deep. Now a short conversation showed that these guys had been there before and knew pretty much what they were doing. For them to make the effort and not even get there was a bad sign. Still, I was confident in our ability until one of them said we really should have a boogie board as a float to help us get out of the bad parts of the mud. Hmmm, this is not good. But, we were not about to quit, so onward. Turns out not to be so bad. We are so much lighter and more agile than tankers that we never got much over ankle deep in mud. Mosquitoes were something else, they mobbed us when we slowed down. At least they were big, slow moving, swamp biters and the repellent kept them mostly at bay.
So, we get to the spot. Scott is faster than me, in the water first. I watch(and put on gear) as he starts his first warm up dive. Funny, he's not down very long and surfaces like there is a 12 foot tiger shark nibbling at his fins. Doesn't even stop there, but raises a rooster tail behind him as he covers the short distance to the bank. Now, Scott is normally mister “laid back”; this is not normal behavior. When he gets to the bank, he pauses and yells, GATOR! How Big? “Maybe 5 foot.” Well, having been a Floridian for many years (we have lots of alligators), this didn't seem so exciting to me, but Scott has much more knowledge and a different viewpoint. Turns out a school mate of his was eaten by an alligator. Well, whatever, I'd known people who dove with gators but never had myself. This, I had to see, so in I went. Two or three warm up, near surface dives. No gator. A deeper dive, down to 50 ft, looking all around, no gator. Then I notice the weight on the end of our pull down line jumping up and down like a crazed jack rabbit. I look up and see Scott's light doing the same thing. Ok, something not right, so I swim up to find Scott with his light on the gator at about 35 ft. I had passed almost touching distance away, never saw him and he was more like 6 + feet long, probably outweighed me. This critter is right exactly in the way, in the narrow entrance to a very big and beautiful underwater cavern, where we wanted to go.
Short tutorial on alligators for those of you unfamiliar. Alligators are not usually dangerous. You only need to be concerned about the big ones and around mating season. Trouble was, this fella was right on the line of what is considered big and mating season was starting. Alligators are funny, they sit there totally lethargic until you cross some invisible line, known only that individual gator. At which point they instantly transform into a seething mass of violently belligerent reptilian rage, not to be messed with without great care. And they are FAST! I've seen this a couple of times and had no desire to see it again underwater.
So now what? The obvious thing is to gently encourage the beast to move out of our way. We both got below and behind its tail and slowly moved closer. Now, any reasonably intelligent animal would take the hint when it had a nice straight path up and out of the hole, away from us. Alligators are not intelligent and he didn't move. Ok, how about I drop some rocks (small ones) on his head to get his attention? Trouble was, this critter was sitting under an overhang. To drop rocks on him required getting much closer than I wanted to get. Tried it anyway, arm extended as far as I could. Even tried throwing rocks at it. You know how that came out. He did not move. Scott begins to kid me about getting a long pole and prodding the beast. There were lots of small trees available, but I didn't want to tear up the place and fresh wood would float. I couldn't control a big piece at depth. Ahh, Eureka! There were lots a short (3-4 ft) pieces of water logged wood in the basin. Several of them were pointy ended and streamlined. These should fly underwater like a roman javelin. This will work.! So I get a fairly light piece, swim down the hole and throw it. Looks perfect, starts fast and straight, but loses momentum and falls off to the side, missed. Next piece much heavier, 4 feet long, thick and a nice point. Down the hole, rare back and let fly as hard as I could. Again looks perfect, fast and true but finally veers off to the side and misses the head by inches. The alligator doesn't move a muscle.
Well, any critter that passive isn't going to bother us going up and down a few feet away, so we start diving. It takes a while to learn how to keep an eye on him going down and then on the way up, but once we get that straight, WOW, I'm doing great. Very long dives, getting deeper and deeper. I've been diving frc for a couple of years and have never been able to equalize comfortably much below 80. Now I do an 85 fter, no problem, then a 90 fter, 2:10 dive, easy equalization, easy dive, plenty of time left. I'm stoked!! Checking my heart monitor, very low heart rate at depth and staying low on the way up, great dive reflex, wonderful. I'm already thinking about how I'm going to brag about this to my buddies . . . . . Wait a minute, I'm equalizing a full 10 ft deeper than my best, the last time I went diving was 5 months ago, and it's easy??? That just doesn't sound right. Whats going on?????????????????
Well, its well known that stress increases your dive reflex, kicking in blood shift hard and early and pooling blood in the lungs, making equalization easier. No question that close passage with a big gator is a tiny bit stressful. You tell me, should I be proud of a great improvement in my diving or should I just thank that gator?
What do you think?
Connor
Last edited:
