Snorkelling with manatees in Crystal River

Diving that is free sounds like music to a scuba divers ears, except that it’s not about the cost. Freediving is about diving without a scuba unit.

In its simplest form, all you require is a mask, snorkel, a pair of fins, and somewhere to dive.

We recently took a trip to Crystal River, Florida, to snorkel with manatees and since then I have been considering delving into the world of free diving. On a recent trip to San Salvador I went snorkelling everyday and attempted diving down to the bottom. Most of the reefs I was diving at were no deeper than 6m so that meant that I was limited in how far down I could go, I also found that I could only manage a maximum of 41 seconds (not very impressive).  Talking with a friend at dinner he told me that he loved free diving and that after a few lessons was able to improve his breath control significantly. He gave me the contact details of an instructor who is based on Nassau and we have now signed up for a course.

My instructor is Richard Binstock and he will be teaching us FII Level 1. This course is a basic introductory course in freediving and will teach the correct techniques that you would require to dive to depths of up to 20m (66ft). It takes two days and involves one day of pool work.

I am really looking forward to the course. I will be learning some new skills that are very different from my old set of diving skills. Hopefully these new ones will help compliment my old ones and vice versa.