Beluga Whale saves a diver....

[ILDiver]

Beluga whale saves drowning diver's life | The Sun |News

I did not see anything on here about this yet.

 

[trux]

Yes, I saw it too. At Daily Mail Emma Farrell commented on it as follows:

Amazing the whale saved her, horrendous that the competition was organised like that and with no safety. 'Static Apnea' breath holds should never be done at depth as when you begin your ascent, the volume of air in your lungs expand, robbing oxygen from your blood which can cause shallow water blackout. In addition, safety divers should have been at her side throughout the whole dive, checking for responsiveness and acting when she got into trouble. Anyone interested in breath hold diving should take an AIDA certified course where you learn how to enjoy freediving safely.
Emma Farrell
Head of Freediving Education, DeeperBlue

Personally, for me the most interesting fact in the article was that there are freediving competitions in China. Until now I saw only very few Chinese freedivers here on DB or on other freediving websites. Perhaps it would be a good idea trying to contact them, and try creating Chinese national AIDA branch. They might profit from the safety procedures already established, and we may perhaps learn something new from them too, or at least get more new faces into our community.

 

[trux]

And there are Martin Stepanek's comments about the incident in this article:

Beluga whale rescues Chinese free diver: Why it happened and how to avoid it

 

[FreeRestriction]

the fact that they did this in a tank with a beluga whale shows that it was souly for a show for spectaters... dosent china also have those girls in dresses perform in deep tanks like that? i cant seem to find a video where a girl freedives in a tank with a dress and it gets caught in the rocks at the bottom... just another example of a bad idea.

 

[LunkerBuster]

that whale is f@cking incredible...belugas are really not human-social animals like that...that whale rules...the competition and freediving stuff aside, the whale is the real story to me..

 

[FreeRestriction]

that whale is f@cking incredible...belugas are really not human-social animals like that...that whale rules...the competition and freediving stuff aside, the whale is the real story to me..

"step right up to see the amazing beluga whale save a drowning swimmer.. only ten bucks gets you in the splash zone!!!" lol

but is a beluga whale a whale or in the dolphin family? it has free neck vertebraes so it can turn its head etc... seems more like a dolphin to me. my point is that usually dolphins are human-social..

 

[FreeRestriction]

 

[LunkerBuster]

i was recently at the vancouver aquarium (amazing place) and they have the only captive born beluga calf there, i saw the lesson the marine biologist gave about the whales and they said they were largely a mystery. they behaved in old ways, going to great depths for periods of time, they can shut down parts of their circulatory system to conserve energy and 02 and they can be friendly or quite aloof.
I do not rule out that they are similar to dolphins, i still think it a lot rarer for a beluga to do something like this while we hear about Dolphins doing it all the time.

it would be soo disturbing if they made it an attraction hahaha

 

[fcallagy]

dolphins and whales are pretty closely related orcas and pilot whales are part of the dolphin family afaik. some stories out there of dolphins holding people down too rather than saving them so they aint all like flipper lest we forget. leopard seal drowned a diver a few years ago in the arctic as far as i remember and obviously they should have had a safety diver rather than depend on the whale.

 

[saver]

Beluga and diver..

--SAVER--