Amber Bourke stands on the ocean floor, facing away from a black abyss while holding her breath. Slowly, she crouches down and pushes off, arching her back gracefully and spinning down into the seemingly bottomless hole.
It’s almost as terrifying as it is mesmerizing to watch.
Bourke is a freediver. That means the 34-year-old Australian swims down as far into the ocean as she can and returns before running out of oxygen.
The longest Bourke has made it in one breath is 266 feet (81 meters) and back. That’s nearly the length of the Washington Monument.
Although a niche sport, freediving has been gaining more attention through viral TikToks that Bourke has been posting and the release of a new Netflix documentary called “The Deepest Breath,” which has been on the platform’s global top 10 list for two weeks.
With more attention on the extreme sport, the athletes who love it hope it will gain more credibility, and one day, acceptance as an official Olympic event.
Among the hurdles the sport faces is a reputation for danger in the wake of various high-profile deaths and a recent doping scandal.
‘Being free’
Bourke has been always been drawn to life under water.
Growing up in Brisbane, Australia meant easy access to the Great Barrier Reef, where she and her family would go on snorkeling trips.
Bourke got into synchronized swimming as a girl and spent much of her teenage years competing in that, making it to the world championships in 2007.
In 2011, she heard of freediving.
Bourke was 22 and on a solo trip in Dahab, Egypt. She looked up things to do in the area on TripAdvisor, and the No. 1 recommendation was snorkeling at a place called the Blue Hole.
Once there, Bourke learned it was a Mecca for freedivers and that she could give it a try, too.
“It just amazed me,” she said. “I realized what humans are capable of and how deep we’re actually capable of diving and it just kind of blew me away.”
The first day, Bourke didn’t get very far down because she didn’t know how to equalize her ears, a technique that prevents the ear drums from bursting. The next day, Bourke learned how to do it and then freedove down more than 60 feet, astounding her instructor.
“I just never imagined being able to dive 20 meters with no equipment,” Bourke said. “It felt like being free and I just knew I wanted to do this forever … It changed my life.”
Without oxygen?!
Bourke is now the deepest woman in Australia, having just broken a national record after reaching 81 meters (531 feet) in two minutes and 40 seconds at Vertical Blue. Known as the Wimbledon of freediving, Vertical Blue is held annually in the Bahamas and limited to 40 top athletes.
Bourke won a silver medal for a 65-meter dive with no fins and placed fourth overall. Last year, Bourke won second place in the non-fin diving event at the Freediving World Championship.
Bourke’s detailed TikTok post about her championship dive has more than 4 million views, while her post last month at Dean’s Blue Hole in the Bahamas has well over 10 million. Since she began educating people about her sport on the app in 2021, she’s gained more than 150,000 followers who have endless questions and comments.
“Nope, just nope,” one user wrote. Another incredulous viewer asked, “Is this without oxygen?!”
Bourke and other freedivers are used to the shock.
“It’s not as high risk or dangerous as people believe it to be,” particularly in competitions where safety teams are closely monitoring athletes, Bourke said.
But, “freediving on your own is extremely dangerous.”
“I think it can be a reasonably safe sport if you do it in the right way and if you never freedive on your own,” she said. “If go out on your own, then you’re kind of playing Russian roulette with your life.”
The risks
Two primary things can go wrong during a free dive: lung squeezes and blackouts, said Leigh Baker, a respiratory therapist who treats athletes at Vertical Blue and supervises the cardiopulmonary department at a Seattle-area hospital.
Blackouts typically happen when divers returning to the surface simply run out of oxygen. Lung squeezes happen when blood leeches from the circulatory system into airways. Both conditions carry a serious risk of death but are also treatable if not too severe.
Although competitions and dives involving safety teams are inherently less risky, tragedy still strikes.
In 2017, 39-year-old Irish safety diver Stephen Keenan died while accompanying Italian freediving world champion Alessia Zecchini to the surface after she freedove to an arch 180 feet underwater at Egypt’s Blue Hole. Keenan was 20 seconds late to their underwater meeting spot, and Zecchini was 10 seconds early. In the ensuing confusion, Keenan was underwater too long and is believed to have used his dying breaths to save Zecchini, according to “The Deepest Breath.”
In 2015, 53-year-old Natalia Molchanova of Russia, once hailed as the world’s best freediver, disappeared while teaching a private lesson in waters off Formentera in Spain; she was never seen again (Her son is a world-champion diver still competing).
In 2013, 32-year-old Nicholas Mevoli of Brooklyn, New York, died while competing at Vertical Blue. He had dived 68 meters down, paused and went another 4 meters down before turning back and losing consciousness just after resurfacing, according to The New York Times.
Athletes and safety team members say the sport has gotten safer.
At Vertical Blue, for instance, Baker has the authority to pull an athlete who faces a heightened risk of death, like if they’ve recently had multiple blackouts.
The first day of this year’s competition, 11 of the 37 athletes participating had a lung squeeze or a blackout, she said, adding that everyone was ultimately OK. While that high of a number is unusual, she said, the first day of competition often sees the most injuries.
“It was a bit of carnage,” she said. “The athletes like to make a show on the first day, get a world record, pump their muscles a little bit. Like, ‘Watch out, world, here I am.”
Doping scandal
In addition to fighting its reputation for danger, freediving is also facing challenges involving athletes using banned substances.
In early July just before Vertical Blue, three Croatian athletes were banned from the event and future Vertical Blue competitions after organizers found four performance-enhancing drugs in their luggage, the organization announced on its YouTube page.
The competition adheres to World Anti-Doping Agency standards, and the athletes had signed an agreement saying they would follow all doping policies and procedures, organizers said.
William Trubridge, a world-record-holding New Zealand freediver and one of the sport’s most vocal ambassadors, wrote in 2021 that doping was creeping into their world.
“Anyone who looks for quick shortcuts towards some fancied grail may gain short-term acclaim, perhaps an additional sponsor or two, but the subterfuge and pretense would likely haunt their days,” he said. “Doping is a cancer, that once it takes hold in any sport is very difficult to displace. Let’s not let that happen to our beautiful practice of freediving.”
Drugs that could help freedivers include beta blockers, which slow the heart rate and therefore decreases the body’s demand for oxygen, Baker said, adding that such tricks put athletes at more risk.
“Not only does it put the diver in danger but when the diver has a situation way down deep and those safety divers have to go pick them up and bring them up, four or five people are working hard and they can they can squeeze or they can black out,” she said. “It can just really go bad very quickly.”
Olympic dreams
Although there are challenges, the sport is gaining momentum and interest.
Bourke said she hopes that momentum continues. And who knows, maybe one day she can call herself an Olympian.
“It is kind of a crazy sport … but I’m sure it’s only a matter of time,” she said.
