The British Journal of Sports Medicine has published an interesting article about the “Passive Sinus Flooding” technique used by Patrick Musimu in his world records.
The abstract is viewable for free here, to view the full article you need to purchase it first.
Some interesting picks from the article:
-Patrick can perform the technique on dry land with a bottle of tap water. Water pressure is not involved. The technique is completely passive.
-The team has not come a cross any side effects, such as middle ear infections or sinusitis, which is suprprising
-According to the article, Patrick did not use packing for his deepest dives
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between man and the animals from the inside out” says Gregory Colbert.
His exhibition sponsored by the Rolex Institute has been visited by more than 1.5 million persons around the globe.
Venice, Tokyo, New York, Los Angeles…mexico city.
His website is pure magic with some astonishing pictures putting together men freediving with and animals…Visit ashes and snow wesite here ( sound on will make the visit even more magic )
]]>The competition will take place from the 1st to the 11th of april in the BLUE HOLE ( Bahamas ).
Seems that the competition is limited to 18 freedivers, among the best in the world says William who just sent us this information.
Nery, Ryuzo, Mullins are some of the athletes who will probably compete…we don’t know yet who the others will be.
You can find some more information about the comp on www.verticalblue.net/blog or just by visiting his website on www.verticalblue.net
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Sources inside AIDA have informed us that Apnea Academy Red Sea has requested to be the organizer of the 2008 AIDA Team World Championships. Apnea Academy Red Sea is located in the world renowned diving destination Sharm-El-Sheik and was responsible for successfully organizing the 2007 AIDA Individual World Championships a few months ago. This request certainly comes as a great relief to both AIDA athletes and officials as at the start of the year no organizer had made a firm commitment to organize the event.
The AIDA Team World Championships include the disciplines of Constant Weight, Static Apnea and Dynamic Apnea and each AIDA National organization are entitled to participate with teams (women’s and men’s) of three athlete. Each national team is judged based on the total score of all three athletes in all three diciplines. This setup makes the Team World Championships one of the most respected events in the freediving world.
Possible dates that are being discussed for the 2008 AIDA Team World Championships are between late September to October 2008. Stay tuned for more information…
The SubHuman Project website by Ted Ciamillo has some new videos and updates. Ted has also built him self a “testing lagoon” for testing his inventions instead of taking them to the ocean every time. How many freedivers wouldn’t mind having that? The much discussed “Lunocet” monofin can be seen in action in these videos:
Unfortunately the quality in the lunocet footage is hard to make out due to the murky visibility of the pit, but it demonstrates nicely how the fin behaves in motion.
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Herbert’s website has been updated with his latest plans. Herbert is preparing for his most ambitious freediving project so far. He plans to make a no-limits dive to no less than 250m in June 2008. The attempt will be followed by a documentary team. He will also try to break the Variable Weight Record.
The site still lists 300m as the ultimate goal for Herbert.
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Herbert Nitsch was a guest on a German TV show. You can watch the clip on-line here (only in german).
The clip includes good moments such as Herbert being interviewed while holding his breath and coaching the host to an almost 2 minute static via excessive hyperventilation.
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The Chinese monofin manufacturer BinFins has renewed their website. The site now supports more western languages and has also some freediving specific renewals in their catalog and an improved ordering from.
BinFins monofins offer a good alternative to the other popular monofin types used by freedivers currently. In the finswimming world they have been received well and many world records have been broken with their design. A Chen Bin fin was also used by Guillaume Néry on his 109 m constant weight world record.
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Alex Sarasitis of the company Trygons, famous to freedivers from designing and implementing the systems used by Herbert Nitsch on his 214m no-limits record, has an interesting project in the works. The Australian marine biologist Lloyd Godson and his Greek partner Carolina Sarasiti plan to cross 500 km of distance in custom-built human powered fish shaped submarines, designed and built by Alex.
The “Life Amphibious” project has many parallels to the previously mentioned “Sub Human Project”, as it also includes the idea of crossing great distances in the sea using a human powered submarine. Also similar is the is the re-design of the concept of the monofin, achieving greater efficiency by dynamically changing the angle of the blade. There are not much technical details yet, but it is very interesting that the latest update hints at Herbert Nitsch using this design on a world record attempt in 2008.
On the last update you can also see a picture of a kind of early prototype of the device, which is very strange looking indeed.
Looks like the year 2008 will be the battle of the monofins. Will the lunocet or Alex’s invetion take the trophy? Or will traditional monofins still hold their place? In any case this year should be interesting for freedivers.
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The Subhuman project is the brain child of inventor Ted Ciamillo, who plans to cross the Atlantic Ocean on a biomechanical submarine. While interesting in it self, freedivers will be especially interested in the subproject of this adventure called “The Lunocet”, which is a type of monofin that mimics the biomechanical propulsion of Dolphins. While already discussed before and yet to be seen or tried by freedivers, the project certainly looks interesting and gives food for thought in the cold winter months when we all yearn for the sea…
For more information check the subhuman project web site or this PDF.
How long until we see more completely different solutions to this problem? Or is this just a marketing gimmic and the current monofins are just “perfect”?
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