Freediving ain’t for the faint-of-heart. A big part of it is training your mind to ignore the signals your body is giving it—but a big part of it, as well, is being an incredible athlete.
Georgina Miller is just that. On a recent trip to Cyprus, she took the opportunity to explore one of the world’s most famous wrecks, the Zenobia, on a single breath of air. The ship capsized and sank to the bottom of the Mediterranean back in June of 1980 on her maiden voyage. While the ship lies in about 138 feet of water, the bridge where Miller enters it sits around 85-feet — still a lung-busting depth.
“Every time I do a dive into an overhang environment, like a cave or a wreck, there is a moment, just before entering, where I either commit to the dive or bail out,” writes Daan Verhoeven, an underwater photographer from the Netherlands. “This little ‘speed bump’ is one of the many things I like about wreck diving, and it turns out Georgina has them too — we have quite a few outtakes where either of us bail on the dive. Entering a wreck at 26 meters is thrilling and more than a bit daunting, and the idea I had for this movie required us to do it over and over again. So besides outtakes of aborted attempts, there are also many takes of George coming back up with a huge grin on her face after successfully taking the speed bump.”
