Freediving Safety

Freediving, unlike SCUBA diving, does not require any qualifications to go and try for obvious reasons- everyone already has all the equipment they need. There is no gatekeeper, no one telling you what is right and wrong, what is safe and unsafe. A SCUBA instructor will make sure you know how to rescue yourself when you are using scuba- what to do when your regulator falls out, if you run out of air, if you run out of air and your buddy isn't around.

Freediving has stringent safety measures that will cover any scenario, just like SCUBA diving, but these safety measures are only taught in a course.

Up until recently, Tasmania did not have regular freediving courses, and instructors had to be flown in from another state or students had to find their own teacher outside of Tasmania. This is a significant deterrent for people who are wanting to freedive and is unsafe.

There is a free online safety course for freedivers, presented by Ted Harty, a leading freediver instructor and competitor in the U.S.
It's not a good substitute for a freediving course, but it tells you exactly how to dive safely. We strongly recommend taking it!

Take the Free Online Safety Course

"Another three seconds and I might not have woken up."

"I had been diving since I was a kid. All I had learned from freediving was from YouTube and internet forums. I had a breathhold of over five minutes, and felt confident in my own abilities. Most of the time, I would dive alone. But I was sure that I would never black out because I wouldn't push my limits and I'd only dive shallow.

One day, my internal alarms went off late. I was diving in 10 metres of water, and was holding my breath for 1 minute. I came up to the surface like I normally would and my whole body began to get tingly and numb. I felt dizzy. I had a sense of drugged dread and I thought "I'm not going to make it."

A few metres away from the surface, my vision faded to a tiny circle in front of me, and then disappeared altogether. I remember faintly hitting the surface, and taking a shaky breath, then not being able to hold my head up anymore and flopping face-first in the water.

I woke up after one second. The breath that I had managed to take just gave me enough to awake. I briefly wondered where I was, then it all hit me. My whole body was buzzing and it didn't kick in for a little while how close I was to dying. Another three seconds and I might have never woken up."