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Blue Hole

April 18, 2011 by Steve Mentz Leave a Comment

That’s a picture of a freediver in Dean’s Blue Hole, a 660-foot deep vertical cavern in the Bahamas.  Yesterday’s Times Sports section has a story about Vertical Blue 2011, the world championship, for which the winning dive was 121 meters (nearly 400 feet) at a time of 4:13 underwater without oxygen.  Some amazing stories of nitrogen narcosis, fear, and the limits of what the body can force itself to do.

I am thinking two thoughts about blue holes.

First, freedivers, amazing as they are, remind us how poorly human bodies manage in the ocean.  Four hundred feet is a long way down, but the average depth of the world ocean is around 12,000 feet.  The opening description of the story, in which a crowd urges a just-returned diver to “Breathe, breathe, breathe!” so that his body could recover from his minutes submerged shows what a shock these immersions are to our systems.

Second, the picture above also reminds us that, no matter how deadly the blue is, we love it — or perhaps we love these deep holes because of their  deathly  quiet and nonhuman embrace.  Are freedivers explorers of a post-sustainable future?  Do they provide images of how to live in an uncompromisingly inhospitable natural world?

Here’s a gorgeous YouTube video of former world champion Guillaume Nery doing a free dive in Blue Hole, filmed in one over-four minute breath.   Might be worth writing about someday.

Filed Under: Blue Humanities, Swimming

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About Steve

Steve Mentz
Professor of English
St. John’s University
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Shakespearean. Ecocritic. Swimmer. New book Ocean #objectsobjects Professor at St. John's in NYC. #bluehumanities #pluralizetheanthropocene

Steve Mentz
stevermentzSteve Mentz@stevermentz·
4 May

Today's the day! I'm doing something a bit different in this lecture, shaping my thoughts around the work and intellectual legacy of John Gillis. It'll be recorded, for people who can't be in the room or on the Zoom today in Bern!

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stevermentzSteve Mentz@stevermentz·
2 May

Very excited to be in Bern, and I’m looking forward to the lecture and workshop!

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