The extreme sport of freediving is literally breathtaking. Using only the air in their lungs, competitive divers descend as far as they can below the ocean’s surface — for up to four or five minutes. They’re hundreds of feet into total blackness, as water squeezes their lungs with 10 times the pressure they’d feel on the surface.
The new documentary “The Deepest Breath” tells how Stephen Keenan died in 2017 while rescuing fellow freediver Alessia Zecchini.
People are drawn to the extreme sport partly because of its meditative quality, director Laura McGann tells KCRW. “You're down there, you're holding your breath, there's nothing around you other than water and blue. You really have to sit with yourself. And so there is definitely a spiritual side to it, poetic side to it as well.”
Divers also feel a physical high. At 30 meters beneath the ocean, the pressure pushes the human body downward, so people must relax and clear their mind to conserve oxygen. The phenomenon is known as freefall, she says. “[They] just wait until they hit the point that they're ready to turn around and come back up. And that's pretty special.”
However, the biggest risk occurs as swimmers return to the surface and their bodies have to acclimate to the pressure shift. “When you're going down, your lungs are compressed, so they get down to the size of your fist. But when you're coming back up, they expand to their normal size. And that's when your brain realizes, ‘I don't have the oxygen that I thought I did.’ And it can just turn itself off.”
But if divers don’t black out during their ascension, their first breath back on the surface can produce a high.
Stephen Keenan (left) passed away while helping Alessia Zecchini (right) conquer the Blue Hole in Egypt. Credit: Netflix.
Stephen Keenan, who hailed from Dublin, discovered the sport during a trip in Egypt. Unlike many of his friends, he didn’t want to settle down, and instead traveled the world. A safety diver by trade, he met Alessia Zecchini when she was attending his school of diving in Dahab.
He helped her train for the Blue Hole — a 100-meter cylindrical sinkhole located 10 meters off the coast of Dahab. About 50 meters down, it contains the sport’s ultimate challenge called “the arch.”
McGann says they trained for weeks, meticulously planning the dive. “She had just broken the record 104 meters, so on paper, it seemed like it was going to be no problem at all.”
However, the planning didn’t entirely cover what would happen during the actual dive. McGann says Keenan timed Zecchini as she was swimming near the sea surface, not accounting for the added pressure she was going to face when 50 meters below.
Keenan was also supposed to meet Zecchini at the exit of the arch, providing her with rope to return to the surface. But he started his dive 10-20 seconds late.
“She couldn't see Stephen. And then when he did get down to the exit of the arch, he saw her further away, and he had to sprint to her. Obviously, Stephen knew that she was in trouble. And so the way he swims to her is just not like any other freediving footage I've seen. … He was quite panicked. And he got to her and he swerved in front of her, and he helped her up.”
Zecchini was able to ascend safely, but Keenan blacked out in the water.
She was 25 years old when Keenan died. “To have to carry it for the rest of your life, there's an awful lot of guilt. Of course, there's an awful lot of grief, there’s an awful lot of loss. … I really wanted to show that in the film because this isn't something that Alessia has just stepped up out of and gotten on with her life.”
Today, McGann says Zecchini still dives and breaks freediving records.
“This is her battle now for her life — trying to live the way he encouraged her to live, which is to be happy and to believe in herself. And that's what she does, and that's what's keeping her going. It's incredible. … The way she has been able to turn this into something that she can live with — I don't know if I'd be able to do it. She's really impressive.”