Earlier this year, while spending some time in Mexico’s Baja California, I took my underwater photo film camera and met up with the freediving legend that is Carlos Coste. We spent the day freediving in the Sea of Cortez between La Paz and Espiritu Santo Island. As an ocean conservationist and avid freediver myself, I wanted to find out what makes this man tick. I wanted to find out what connects him to the ocean so much that he chooses to spend almost every day of his life in it which resulted in him diving 100m below the surface on one single breath.

Carlos was born in Caracas, Venezuela. After starting apnea and freediving training in 1996, he achieved his first national record in 1998. In October 2002, he broke a two-time world record in one week, his first official world record. In 2003, he became the first human in history to achieve a free immersion dive of more than 100m – a Guinness World Record. In 2004, he went on to become the first person to reach 102m in constant weight immersion in Cyprus. But the reason I wanted to spend time with Carlos in the water was not to try to find out what his secret recipe is for achieving these records. I wanted to find out where this deep connection with the ocean came from, and how freedivers can channel this connection towards conservation in a time where our oceans need it most.

Carlos was a non-traditional kid and while the rest of the Venezuelan kids all wanted to become professional soccer players, Carlos was more interested and curious about the ocean. It was, however, only in his late teenage years that he found out about freediving in his university’s underwater activity club. It was love at first practice for him and he immediately realised that this was more than just a sport. At this point, freediving wasn’t yet  recognised as a professional sport in Venezuela. It was simply a skill that a handful of people had. Carlos was so passionate about this new sport that he took it upon himself to push it as a professional sport and a career. Thus, he started club at the university with the first competitions of its kind.