Among my favourite friends at the Two Oceans Aquarium in Cape Town are the white steenbras or pignose grunter (Lithognathus lithognathus) that live in the Kelp Forest exhibit. They seem to prefer one particular window, and every time I pass by they are gathered there, bumping gently against the glass when I raise my hands to greet them. The literature about the exhibit indicates that it’s extremely rare to see such large specimens in the wild, as white steenbras have been under signifcant fishing pressure for decades.
Clare feeding the white steenbras at the Two Oceans Aquarium
I am ready for my close up.
White steenbras face
Today they are reserved for recreational fishermen, and are a very sought after fish (which has led to gross overfishing). They can grow up to 1 metre in length and weigh up to 30 kilograms. They’re fairly solitary fish, but during certain times of the year (such as summer in the south Western Cape) they aggregate into schools. They have seven dark vertical bars on their silver bodies, thick lips and small mouths. They typically feed on white mussels, crabs, sand prawns, and worms. They are endemic to South Africa.
White steenbras spawn in estuaries along the eastern Cape coast, and mass spawning migrations to these areas occur in autumn (March-May). This preference for estuarine spawning (juveniles actually spend up to two years in nearly fresh water before coming out to sea) makes them extremely sensitive to degradation of their spawning locations. Estuaries in Southern Africa have never been well managed.
White steenbras on the Clan Stuart
My first (and so far only) encounter with a school of white steenbras – or indeed, any white steenbras at all – was during a dive on the wreck of the Clan Stuart on new year’s day. We were a fairly large group – seven in total. Fishermen were active on the beach in front of the wreck, so we took care to avoid their lines as we went in. The visibility was maybe three metres, and seconds after reaching the wreck we were surrounded by a large school of very twitchy, good-sized steenbras. They swam around and around us, changing direction at random, and then disappeared. A few minutes later they found us again, and repeated the same agitated behaviour.
From the first moment we encountered them, Tony, Laurence and I (we would later discover) all began to feel incredibly uncomfortable. The fish were behaving as if something was chasing them, and they seemed to be trying to use us as cover. What could be chasing a steenbras? These are large, confident fish.
White steenbras on the Clan Stuart
The feeling of discomfort and anxiety continued for the rest of the dive. Laurence (lost the group and didn’t like the idea of being in the water alone, with poor visiblity and a large predator on the prowl) and two of the other divers (equalisation problems) aborted the dive early, leaving me, Tony and his two students – both tourists – to explore the wreck a little and make our way back to shore. It was probably one of the three least enjoyable dives I’ve ever done.
We’re fairly sure that a great white shark was hunting in the vicinity, spooking the fish. The concern was not so much that it would try to target the divers, but that we’d get in between it and its prey (as happened to Lloyd Skinner), and meet with misfortune that way. I was also concerned about getting munched because that very morning I’d given a sleepy interview on Radio 702 about sharks in False Bay, from the perspective of small business owners. It would be embarrassing to state that sharks don’t explicitly target humans in the water as prey, and then get eaten by one.
In a first for this blog, I’m going to review two books in a single post. They concern (more or less) the same series of events, were written by two men who were close friends for at least part of their lives, and come to wildly different conclusions about what actually transpired and why.
The event in question was the death of French-born freediver Audrey Mestre on 12 October 2002, at the age of 28 (here is a New York Times article on the incident). She was attempting to break freediving a record set by her husband and coach, Francisco “Pipín” Ferreras, in the controversial No Limits discipline of the sport, which entails the diver riding a weighted sled down a line to the required depth, and then inflating a lift bag which rockets them back to the surface.
The freediving disciplines recognised by AIDA, the most well-respected body regulating the sport, mainly involve breath-holding while swimming – down a line with or without fins, or in a swimming pool – or remaining stationary underwater. The challenges are the obvious breath holding, but also (in the depth disciplines) equalising the air spaces in the body.
No Limits is more dangerous than the other disciplines because the use of the sled enables the diver to reach incredible depths at great speed. To return to the surface (even faster than the descent in many cases) he or she must rely on an error-prone sequence of actions. The diver may not be able to successfully release herself from the sled and inflate the lift bag, or a mechanical failure could lead to prolonged time at depth or a slower ascent than planned, and ultimately drowning. Furthermore, it becomes more and more difficult to obtain support divers (on scuba, trimix or other mixed gases) qualified and capable of operating at the depths these dives can reach.
The lack of physical effort on the part of the freediver involved in getting to and from the desired depth has led some critics to comment that the only way these divers will discover the physical limit beyond which a human being cannot descend will be by dying (when their bodies can no longer withstand the crushing pressure exerted by the ocean). Many of the participants in this sport have suffered strokes, partial paralysis, decompression sickness, blackouts, convulsions and even suspected brain damage as a result both of the rapid pressure changes they experience, and of depriving their bodies of oxygen for so long.
The Last Attempt – Carlos Serra
The Last Attempt
Carlos Serra was part of the team of safety divers, organisers and support providers who worked with Ferreras on several of his and his wife’s world record attempts. He and Ferreras also ran the short-lived freediving body IAFD (International Association of Freedivers), a competitor to AIDA, which was dealt its death-blow by the drowning of Mestre.
Serra paints a disturbing picture of Ferreras, as an egomaniacal sociopath who completely controlled his wife and pushed her far beyond what she was comfortable doing. He suggests that Ferreras had put in place a bizarre and elaborate plan for his wife’s record attempt to fail, and for himself to rescue her (to wide acclaim, of course). The damage caused to his ego by her then breaking his record a few days later would be softened by the fact that he would first be hailed by the world’s press as her brave rescuer. He would also have punished her for requesting a divorce a few days earlier, and for her perceived insubordination in planning to leave him.
The allegations are compelling – there are a number of pieces of evidence that indicate that, if Ferreras was not criminally negligent (for example, he did not fill the pony bottle of compressed air that was to inflate Mestre’s lift bag and bring her back to the surface), he deliberately sabotaged her attempt to break his record. The rescue did not go as planned, and by the time he brought her to the surface she had been submerged for nearly nine minutes and her lungs were full of water.
Serra wrote this book himself, and it shows. He’s a native Spanish speaker, and his English is at best broken, and at worst appalling. His spelling is novel and inconsistent. I was charmed, however, by some obvious transliterations of Spanish idioms. The resulting effort rings with honesty, and his deep friendship with and care for Audrey Mestre lends credibility to this account.
Ferreras published his version of events in 2004, two years before Serra’s book came out. It was heavily ghost-written – for example, I find it hard to believe that a Spanish-speaking Cuban who didn’t finish school knows who John James Adubon was – and at times reads like a cheesy romance. It’s very beautifully produced, and perhaps half the book comprises both colour and black and white photographs of Ferreras and Mestre underwater, posing uncomfortably on the beach in various small and tight outfits (this seems to be a very important part of being a professional freediver) and lollygagging on the surface before and after dives.
Ferreras constantly protests his love for Mestre, and while repeatedly acknowledging his vicious temper and out of control ego, denies that he ever pushed her in her freediving efforts. He claims that the impetus to go deeper came from her, and unsurprisingly does not give any hint that he controlled her, regulated her movements, or (as Serra alleges) cheated on her and occasionally beat her up. A goodly portion of the book is devoted to his life story, growing up in Cuba and the defecting to the USA. We are also frequently reminded (even on the cover and spine of the book) of his own freediving achievements and other admirable qualities.
It’s not hard to figure out what actually happened. The entire dive – before, during and after – was captured on video from several angles, and it’s clear that the cylinder of air intended to lift Mestre from depth was not filled. The cable on which the sled descended and the lift bag ascended a short distance (after one of the support divers had partially filled it from his breathing mix) was twisted, which slowed her down at a critical point on the delayed ascent. There were not enough support divers to provide midwater assistance – not nearly enough – and the nearest thing to a doctor on hand was a local dentist watching from a nearby boat. Her husband opened her airway while he was bringing her to the surface, further flooding her lungs (as an aside, Serra prevented Ferreras from acting as the deep support diver – his scuba skills are sub par to say the least, and he has been bent more times than most of us have had breakfast). There was also no back-up or bail-out plan should Mestre get into trouble on the way down or up.
What is hard to figure out is exactly who was to blame. However, whether the narcissist Ferreras himself is solely culpable here, and went so far as to deliberately endanger his wife beyond what she was already risking, or whether the entire team caused Mestre’s death is almost a moot point. If Ferreras was as out of control, slapdash and filled with machismo as Serra alleges, the members of his support team – some of whom had been with him for 15 years and had witnessed the deaths of at least two of his safety divers on other record attempts – were morally obligated to refuse to participate instead of being swayed by Ferreras’ awesome temper and magnetic personality. He was not risking his own life in this attempt – it was the life of his wife that was on the line. Without a team of safety divers and organisers – hard to assemble at the best of times given the extreme nature of the sport – Ferreras would have been unable to operate and Audrey Mestre may still have been alive today.
This article from Outside Magazine suggests that Serra’s description of Ferreras’ character aren’t entirely baseless (and it was written about five years before the death of Mestre). It also suggests that Ferreras has an on-off relationship with the truth and enjoys embellishing his own life history and prowess, something that should be borne in mind when reading his book. Do not read only one of these books – I would strongly recommend that you read both, one after the other. I’m not sure if it’ll help you figure out the truth, but at least you’ll have heard both sides of this tragic story.
If you want to see how beautiful freediving can be – and it can be very beautiful and transcendent – watch this video of current world record holder William Trubridge diving to 101 metres without fins, and then swimming back up. The discipline he’s participating in here is called Constant Weight Without Fins.
I’ve been wanting to arrange a chamber dive for a while. Hyperbaric chambers are like large geysers that can be pressurised to higher than atmospheric pressure. They are used in medical applications – breathing oxygen-rich gas at high pressure assists with all manner of complaints – and of course, in diving medicine for the treatment of decompression sickness. They are also used in commercial diver training.
Checking out the chamber
A chamber dive doesn’t involve water, scuba gear or buddy checks. It simulates the experience of breathing compressed air from a cylinder at the bottom of the ocean by putting you in a sealed metal chamber, pumping air into it to the required pressure, and decompressing you slowly after leaving you there for a while. It’s perfectly safe. There’s an intercom so the chamber operator can hear you at all times, and we were supplied with a rubber mallet for knocking on the chamber wall in emergencies while the pressure was being adjusted (which is a noisy process, like sitting inside a jet engine).
Goot settles in inside the chamber
The chamber we visited is on campus at the University of Cape Town and is used for commercial diver training. Eight of us did a chamber dive to 50 metres (in two groups of four). This is 10 metres deeper than Tony and I are qualified to dive in the ocean (with a Deep specialty qualification), and 20 metres deeper than an Advanced diver is qualified to go. An Open Water diver can go to 18 metres. The only requirement for this dive was an entry-level dive qualification, so Open Water was fine.
Paul the chamber operator at the controls
Paul, the chamber operator, checked that none of us had any plates, pins or bolts in our bodies. It turns out that both Goot and Tami are semi-bionic, and they were told to move the affected limb (or jaw, as the case may be) to ensure blood flow throughout the process. Nitrogen bubbles would be more prone to form around a screw or other metal fixture interrupting the natural shape of the bone. We were told to sit with our legs as straight as possible, arms uncrossed, to ensure that blood circulates well throughout the dive. He warned us that if we have a panic attack at 50 metres there’s nothing to do except sit on the affected diver, because once the chamber is pressurised it cannot be depressurised quickly without serious – life-threatening – risk to the occupants. For this reason we had a stop on the way down, at 9 metres, to check that everyone was still happy.
It's crowded in there - Bernita, Sophie, Tracy and Goot do their dive
The chamber is pressurised to six atmospheres by pumping air into it. The pressurisation was done quickly – it took two minutes (with a brief stop at 9 metres to check that we were all right) to take us down to 50 metres. We had to equalise like MAD, literally every couple of seconds, and the chamber got very very hot inside as the air was pumped in. Boyle’s law at work… Constant volume, increasing pressure!
Starting the ascent
We spent about eight minutes at 50 metres. It was an intensely strange sensation. I felt the same light-headed hot scalp feeling that I experienced last time I was seriously narcosed, in Smitswinkel Bay, but magnified to the point that I felt drowsy and woozy and quite chilled. Our voices sounded as though we’d been inhaling helium, and EVERYTHING was very funny. I had a very nice feeling of well-being but wasn’t really interested in complicated conversations.
We had our dive computers with us in a bucket of water, and checked them periodically to see what they were telling us. Tony had his Mares Nemo Wide set on nitrox 32%, and it was flashing at him that we were perilously close to the maximum depth at which it’s safe to breathe that mixture. As expected, it gave us more bottom time than the computers that were set on air before it went into deco.
I distinctly remember trying to interpret the array of numbers on the screen of one of the dive computers, and handing it back to Tony and saying vaguely, “I don’t understand what all these numbers mean” – VERY odd for me because my entire job revolves around the complex manipulation of numbers, and I have a great fondness for statistics of all kinds!
Still feeling rather jolly, and hot - emerging from the chamber
As the chamber was depressurised, we experienced Boyle’s law in the opposite (very welcome) direction: the air cooled rapidly and mist formed to such an extent that at times I couldn’t see Tami, who was a metre away from me. There was a little bit of coughing from irritated lungs at this point!
The first group degassed by spending 5 minutes at 9 metres, 5 minutes at 6 metres, and 10 minutes at 3 metres. This is an extremely conservative decompression schedule and fulfilled all deco obligations plus more after the bottom time that was experienced. All our dive computers would have allowed us to ascend long before Paul let us out of the chamber! The second group, in which Tony and I were, had an even more conservative decompression schedule because of the particular age and physical profile of our group, and we spent 5 minutes at 9 metres, 10 minutes at 6 metres and a full 15 minutes at 3 metres.
Tracy, Goot, Sophie, Tami, Bernita, me and Cecil - Tony took the picture
Dive date: 8 March 2011
Air temperature: 26-31 degrees (inside the chamber)
