Deep: Freediving, Renegade Science and What the Ocean Tells Us About Ourselves

by James Nestor

Sperm whales have the lowest reproductive rate of any mammal; females give birth to a single calf once every four to six years. The current sperm whale population is estimated at about 360,000,

begin the pre-dive breathing exhalations — “Inhale one, hold two, exhale ten, hold two” — and close my eyes, trying to calm my thoughts and relax my body.

Freediving, as William Trubridge said, is a mental game.

Her answer then struck me as woo-woo: she said it felt like the ocean was hugging her. But that’s exactly how it feels, a generous squeeze from the largest mass on the planet. I drift farther down.

Part of me wants to keep going, to continue exploring this alien space. I feel no onset of convulsions, no nagging need to breathe, no coldness, not even a strong sense of being underwater. But I know this is competitive freediving’s temptation speaking to me — Go deeper, it says. And that’s not the kind of freediving I’ve come here to master.

There’s no sense of flushing in my face; no quivering in my stomach; no need to gasp for air; no aching ears, throbbing headache, or dizzying highs. There is no pain at all.

Our world is built on microscopic bones.

By studying these microbes, Bartlett and his team hope to figure out how the Earth might have formed billions of years ago, where life on the planet first began, and, possibly, where all life might be heading one day. These are hard questions, made harder by the location

Today, the hadal zone remains one of the most poorly investigated habitats on the planet.

Wächtershäuser thought that all life on Earth started from a chemical reaction between two minerals, iron and sulfur. This reaction touched off a metabolic process that created a single molecule.

The process in the vents was so reliable and consistent that life most likely emerged from hundreds or thousands of vents at around the same time — trillions of different cells replicating in the boiling water of the Earth’s core across the seafloor. A people born from the entirety of the world’s oceans.

One hundred million sharks are killed in the world’s oceans every year.

Jean-Marie Ghislain, whose underwater photographs

The stunning and otherworldly photographs that appear in the middle pages of this book come courtesy of Fred Buyle (nektos. net), Jean-Marie Ghislain (ghislainjm.com), Yann Oulia, Olivier Borde (olivierborde.tumblr.com), and Annelie Pompe (anneliepompe.com). Merci les gens merveilleux qui sont français, belge, et ceux qui ne sont pas français!

While you’re looking all that up online, please gambol over to Hanli Prinsloo’s I Am Water (iamwater.co.za) and DareWin (darewin.org). Both

SharkFriendly,

Morgan, Elaine. “Elaine Morgan: I Believe We Evolved from Aquatic Apes.” TED.com (TED Talk video), 2009. http://www.ted.com/talks/elaine_morgan_says_we_evolved_from_aquatic_apes.html

Fred Buyle/Nektos.net