Safety Angels

A  Glimpse into the world of Freediving Competition Deep Safety
Text by Tams Signe
Images by Alice Cattaneo & Matt Stow

“Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Official top. Plus one. Plus two. Plus three-“

Having taken her final breath, packing every last drop of air into her lungs, the athlete rolls over, submerging her airways, and begins her competition dive. As she disappears into the azure depths, the platform operator’s countdown is replaced by her depth readings off the sonar display. Around the line, the safety team becomes hyper-focused. Tasked with escorting her safely to the surface, our role in this performance is critical. If anything goes wrong, we will be the ones to intervene, protecting her airways and returning her to the surface, where we will support and revive her if needed. The first safety with the scooter will meet her at -40m, and the second and third safety will meet her at -30m and -20m, respectively.

Deep competition dives can be over four minutes long, amplifying the risk of both hypoxia and nitrogen narcosis for the diver. Timing of safety dives is critical: dive too soon, and you’re going to be waiting at depth for the diver to appear from below, extending your own dive and putting yourself as well as the athlete at risk; too late, and you won’t get to the designated depth in time, leaving the athlete alone on a part of the ascent where they’re expecting to see the safety diver, and reaching the riskiest part of their dive.

Although the competitor is doing a much deeper dive than the safeties, the risk profiles of their dives are very different: the athlete wears a lanyard connecting them to the main line at all times, and a counter ballast system is in place that will be activated immediately should the diver not appear from depth at the announced time, bringing them back to the surface. The safeties are self-reliant: they are not attached to anything, diving well into negative buoyancy where they will wait for the diver, relying only on their own judgment and ability to keep them safe.

This particular dive has an announced length of just under three and a half minutes. The athlete in question is one of the deepest women in the world and always exhibits impeccable form. We have watched her collect white cards for indomitable performances time and again, executing competition dives with clockwork precision, which gives us no reason to question her announced dive time. Newer competitors might make less accurate announcements than those of the pros, and we use experience to adjust our safety dives accordingly, but the sharp end of the field is reliable, their announcements honed to the second through weeks and months of training and calculation. Although the depth is over 100m, this dive is only two metres deeper than her last successful attempt and should be uneventful. With an estimated 90 seconds of the dive remaining, first safety dives with the scooter to meet her at -40m.

I am on second safety. Breathing up to dive, I keep one ear out of the water so that I can cross-check my forecast of her depth against the callouts of the sonar. As first safety descends, something feels off: she is still deeper than she should be, and her ascent rate feels excruciatingly slow.On a textbook dive, I should depart 20 seconds after first, but I decide to hold off 10 seconds to create a bit more safety margin, because she is slow today. Anything that increases my heart rate at this point is simply going to make the dive more challenging, so as I slide below the surface and start finning down, I focus on nothing but the very moment I’m in. Perfect streamlining. Gentle finning. Don’t rush – that generates CO2. Become even more calm dropping. Passing through -15m, I glance down, hoping to see the ok sign from my teammate deep below me indicating that the diver is in sight, but there is none. He is suspended below, waiting. I tuck my chin back in and keep finning. A couple of seconds later, another glance reveals no change. She’s late.

As I freefall through -25 m, I know that this is going to be a long dive, not only for the athlete but for all of us. I let myself sink a little past -30m before rotating to a head-up position. I can see first safety below me, and a speck appears in the depths below him. She is on her way, moving upward through the water column at a glacial pace. As she creeps towards the surface, he closes in, the scooter blipping intermittently as he gives tiny bursts of power to synchronise his ascent with hers. His proximity communicates concern: if the athlete looks strong and lucid, we give them space; if their body language indicates distress, we move closer so that, should intervention become necessary, there is no delay in responding.

I join the formation, assessing both the athlete and safety. She looks stable, albeit a little spaced out; he, however, looks stressed and indicates to me that he is out of air. A quick exchange of sign language tells me that I must watch the athlete because he may abort the dive and head to the surface.

We could be in a complex scenario at a moment’s notice. If the athlete requires assistance, I will help her, but that means that my eyes are no longer on him; if he needs help, third safety will need to get involved, assisting him while I watch the athlete. This is not standard protocol, but the situation is dynamic, and we will do what needs to be done for the best possible outcome for everyone.

Only 20m to go, but the surface feels a million miles away and time expands. Eventually, we emerge. As the near-hypoxic athlete manages a shaky surface protocol, clearly affected by the unplanned additional 30 seconds of dive time, I watch my teammate like a hawk as we both do strong recovery breaths and position myself close to him in case he needs help. He is ok, only because he is an exceptionally strong, wellexperienced safety diver who stays icy calm under pressure. It’s one of the reasons he’s on my list of favourites to be on duty with. We have a full conversation through quick eye contact and a flicker of the eyebrows without a word being spoken.

That was intense, and it’s six minutes to the next dive. Time to reset and dive again. A question that doesn’t get asked enough is ‘Who safeties the safeties?’ Earlier in my career, it felt as though we were on our own, but as I garnered experience and was involved in more and more rescues, I learnt the principle of no blind spots from my mentors. The role doesn’t begin and end with competition dives: it requires constant awareness of everything going on in the water at all times – a gruelling always-on mentality that demands a particular type of mental grit that few have.

Good safeties are resilient, reliable, strong divers; great safeties are all that, with an additional nearsupernatural level of awareness of the threedimensional environment and the ability to forecast major and minor issues before they materialise. This includes subconscious monitoring of everyone on the team, and seeing risk unfold and preparing to act. It’s not for the faint of heart. The million-dollar question is obvious: what is the motivation to join the ranks of these seemingly mad divers who are prepared to put themselves between those at the thin end of the competitive wedge and potential disaster?

It’s certainly not the paycheck – a financially successful competition means perhaps breaking even with careful budgeting. Routine dives can go bad in seconds, and the escalation of an emergency has seen more than one safety diver go well beyond the call of duty and act outside of his required parameters to save a diver in the moment, ignoring the potentially catastrophic consequences to him- or herself. After a gruelling week on duty with long hours in the water and dive accretion that both exhausts my body and frays my nervous system, the answer is elusive, but once large quantities of steak and chocolate have been consumed in between recovery naps, the pull to get back in the ocean and look after my friends returns.

Time and again, I reach the same conclusion: it’s a calling, and can’t be ignored. In the words of photographer extraordinaire Daan Verhoeven, “As a former safety diver myself, I might be prejudiced, but I reckon the safeties tend to be the most fun bunch, as they’re all there for the love of the sport, and we all have a screw loose as we’re not fazed at all by watching our friends blackout. But I think that’s an interesting screw to have untightened.” Anyway, it would seem rude if those affectionately referred to as safety angels didn’t show up when duty called, wouldn’t it?