Aloha,
Dolphin diving is different from what has become freediving. For most divers, freediving is diving down and then moving laterally as with spearfishing or in training or contests, coming straight back up. In my life, the joy of diving came from moving from place to place at depths of 20 to 40 feet with very little straight vertical movement and a lot of hydrodynamic coasting. 800 feet would be a horizontal distance if I ever encountered it (not that good). Rarely did I spearfish but I did "swim with da fishes" (and live to talk about it). I spent hours underwater and discovered my own "taravana". With research in the physiology department at the University of Hawai'i, I found out how freedivers can get a precursor to the bends and in some cases bent.
As a result, I became a fast dolphin diver (in my younger days) and have swum with dolphins on numerous occasions. In my experience, dolphins like to swim with humans who swim fast underwater. I have also been involved in dolphin research and know a thing or two about cetaceans. The recent research with freedivers swimming with Sperm Whales is a case in point, cetaceans are fascinated by humans who swim like they do.
Freediving is a portal for entry into dolphin diving and the different experiences it entails. Like freediving, dolphin diving can have competition but the dolphin diving competition is a horizontal orientation, not a vertical orientation. But, my experiences with dolphin diving have been more like underwater hiking than a race but there is nothing wrong with racing underwater, it improves the technology.
I know that many think of snorkeling as hiking in the water, but my version is more like flying jets at ground level in combat flight simulators. (In fact that is why there is a big gap in my life when I did not dive very much.) There is nothing that compares with swimming fast just above the reef and surprising fish when you come over a rise. Of course that can be risky when that fish is a shark. But with the right technology, we can swim very fast underwater, in fact the Olympic training programs have established that the fastest humans can swim is underwater using the dolphin kick or stroke.
So, are there kindred spirits out there that like swimming fast underwater using the dolphin kick? Can we have an very interesting discussion about a future for dolphin diving?
Aloha,
PrimeMerian
Dolphin diving is different from what has become freediving. For most divers, freediving is diving down and then moving laterally as with spearfishing or in training or contests, coming straight back up. In my life, the joy of diving came from moving from place to place at depths of 20 to 40 feet with very little straight vertical movement and a lot of hydrodynamic coasting. 800 feet would be a horizontal distance if I ever encountered it (not that good). Rarely did I spearfish but I did "swim with da fishes" (and live to talk about it). I spent hours underwater and discovered my own "taravana". With research in the physiology department at the University of Hawai'i, I found out how freedivers can get a precursor to the bends and in some cases bent.
As a result, I became a fast dolphin diver (in my younger days) and have swum with dolphins on numerous occasions. In my experience, dolphins like to swim with humans who swim fast underwater. I have also been involved in dolphin research and know a thing or two about cetaceans. The recent research with freedivers swimming with Sperm Whales is a case in point, cetaceans are fascinated by humans who swim like they do.
Freediving is a portal for entry into dolphin diving and the different experiences it entails. Like freediving, dolphin diving can have competition but the dolphin diving competition is a horizontal orientation, not a vertical orientation. But, my experiences with dolphin diving have been more like underwater hiking than a race but there is nothing wrong with racing underwater, it improves the technology.
I know that many think of snorkeling as hiking in the water, but my version is more like flying jets at ground level in combat flight simulators. (In fact that is why there is a big gap in my life when I did not dive very much.) There is nothing that compares with swimming fast just above the reef and surprising fish when you come over a rise. Of course that can be risky when that fish is a shark. But with the right technology, we can swim very fast underwater, in fact the Olympic training programs have established that the fastest humans can swim is underwater using the dolphin kick or stroke.
So, are there kindred spirits out there that like swimming fast underwater using the dolphin kick? Can we have an very interesting discussion about a future for dolphin diving?
Aloha,
PrimeMerian