Extreme Sport of Free Diving

March 6 -- It seems almost comical to slap a label on him. So simplistic, so Barnum-esque to call him "The Human Fish." But how else to describe Francisco "Pipin" Ferreras and all the marvelous things he can do with just one very deep breath of air?

We've all tried to hold our breath for as long as we can. How long did you last? Thirty seconds? A minute? And how long can you do it under water? And how deep were you? The bottom of a 10-foot pool, with the pressure on your ears nearly unbearable?

Please, no foolhardy machismo here. Your claims will pale by comparison to what Pipin can do: stay under water for several minutes. And by under water, I mean deep under water. Almost 500 feet.

It's called free diving. It's part extreme sport, part quest for inner peace.

Pushing His Body to the Limit

Pipin rides down on an 80-pound weight that plunges him down to the equivalent of a 50-story skyscraper. As he descends, amazing things happen to his body: His heart rate slows to just 14 beats a minute. That's barely a pulse. Each of his lungs, normally the size of a football, shrinks to the size of a potato. Blood surges from his extremities to his heart and brain. In short, he's pushing his body to the limit.

It's pretty much what happens naturally to marine mammals. The "marine mammal response" is what Pipin calls it. And he insists humans can do it too; the ability, he says, is buried deep within us. He believes we evolved from the sea and, he says, everyone of us, after all, spent our first nine months of life "underwater," swaddled in amniotic fluid.

"You're going back into the aquatic memory that every human being has," says Pipin.

There is, say free divers, a sense of euphoria way down there — a little like floating in outer space, and so peaceful they'd rather stay under. But of course they can't. So to make it to the surface before he runs out of that single swallow of air, Pipin inflates a balloon that will quickly carry him up — sort of like an express elevator.