John Daines set the record for African freediving and is one of the most influential people who helped to develop this sport in South Africa. Liza-May Pieters talked to him about how he first started freediving and how he feels about sharks.
John Daines is the owner of Cape Town Freediving, a freediving school in Muizenberg. John currently holds the continental freediving record. His continental record currently stands at 150 metres in a single breath of air. PHOTO: Liza-May Pieters
“Free diving as a whole changes your life. It changes your lifestyle because in order to free dive, you need to have both mind and body awareness that you don’t necessarily have in other sports,” says John Daines, the African record holder for freediving.
Freediving is a sport in which people explore underwater areas without any scuba equipment, explains Daines. “That means you basically hold your breath for as long as you are under water.”
Daines’ continental record currently stands at 150 metres in a single breath of air. This means that he dived 150m under the water and came back up, without using any equipment.
‘Pretoria-boy’ in the ocean
Daines grew up in Pretoria and is a self proclaimed “Pretoria-boy”. “I grew up away from the ocean and did not have a lot of interaction with the ocean growing up,” he explains.
“After school I moved to the United Kingdom (UK) to work in marketing,” he says. “The UK is very dark, gloomy and a little bit depressing. I used to run to deal with all of that.”
Daines hurt his knee and was forced to stop running and was desperately looking for another way to release his emotions. He then stumbled across freediving while browsing on an adventure sport website and decided to give it a try.
John Danes started Cape Town freediving 10 years ago. John is the African freedive record holder and owns a freediving school called Cape Town freediving. PHOTO: Liza-May Pieters
“So I basically started freediving in a UK pool. It’s not very romantic, most people expect some sort of magical story with a dolphin,” he says.
“I was first only into sport free diving, which has nothing to do with the ocean. It is basically about overcoming boundaries and improving your athleticism and mental strength.” Sport freediving takes place in a pool where you test how much distance you can cover in a single breath of air. “If you are freediving for some sort of record, it will happen in a pool,” he says.
Despite spending his first years doing sport freediving, John slowly started falling in love with the water. “There is something magical when you are freediving in the ocean and you interact with the sea creatures and the kelp. It is a whole other world that you don’t know about.”
“After I fell in love with freediving, I fell in love with a woman from Duhab in Egypt who owned a freediving school and she taught me how the business works,” says John. “The relationship did not last, but it did encourage me to start Cape Town freediving.”
John came to Cape town for the first time 14 years ago. He started Cape Town freediving four years later.
“I have freedived in a lot of places: Egypt, the Philippines and the Mediterranean. There is really nothing like freediving in Cape Town. It is by far the best and most beautiful place to be if you are a freedive fanatic,” says John.
No fear around sharks
One of his favourite memories was when he took students out into the ocean to freedive and they were suddenly surrounded by sharks.
“Sharks are amazing creatures and there is not really any need to be scared of them,” he says. The sharks that are typically found at Muizenberg are not man-eating and they will not typically go for a human, he explains.
“Great white sharks are the ones who would bite humans, but they all emigrated to Durban after the orcas started killing them for their livers a few years ago,” he says. “You do not really find great white sharks here anymore, it is much different than a few years ago,” claims John.
One of the reasons why John fell in love with the ocean was because of his interaction with sea creatures. “It is amazing when you are underwater and see the kelp in all their different colours,” says John. “While the kelp is still underwater, it is completely edible,” he explains.
John Daines is the owner of Cape Town Freediving, a freediving school in Muizenberg. Daines also works as a freediving instructor at the school and explains that one of his favourite freediving memories is when he took his students out into the ocean and they were suddenly surrounded by sharks. PHOTO: Liza-May Pieters
Mental agility
When you are freediving you have additional water pressure on your lungs, compressing them to a size that they are not meant to be, John explains. “They’re getting so small that scientists believe that they would collapse at a certain depth, which they don’t because of this funky thing called an mammalian dive response. ”
During a mammalian dive response, blood shifts away from your arms and legs and pull up to your core, where it wraps around your lungs to avoid it from collapsing, he explains.
“Because you are exposing your lungs to this immense pressure, you need to be as relaxed as possible, because if you stiffen up you will cause damage to your lungs,” he says “You’re trying to think of as little as possible, but still stay in the moment so that you can do the certain tasks that you need to do.”
He explains that anything that is out of balance with your body will become clear when you are freediving. “If you are not eating a healthy diet, you’ll start blacking out when other people aren’t blacking out,” he says. “If you are feeling very stressed, you will not be able to hold your breath very long and that will impact your freediving ability.”
“Freediving is a deeply sensory experience for me. The beauty of the underwater world I witness through sight, the subtle sensations I become so attuned to,” said Kate Arnott, a freediver who works with John.
“In a world driven by escapism, nothing makes me feel as free and as one with the world around me as freediving. It is a dance with the mastery of not only my physical but also my mental body. It is where I go to come home,” says freediving instructor Marina Mynhardt.
“Freediving forces you to be in the moment,” says John. “It is like coming home.”