New Year In The Ocean

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In the journey of life, there are moments that arrive without warning. In that instant, your senses feel as though they’ve been rinsed by crystal-clear seawater, and some dormant awareness deep within is gently awakened. Then, a voice solemnly declares from the void: “Remember this moment. This experience will solidify into an everlasting treasure in your life, never to be forgotten.”

Sitting in the café beside Eel Garden, I gazed for a long time at the sea, blue and utterly still. The tide was out, and the afternoon sun spilled generously across the exposed shallows, scattering dancing shards of light. Divers tucked their fins under their arms, secured their masks, and waded step by step into the deeper sea, treading on a floor of shimmering reflections.

After days of being battered by fierce winds, the Red Sea had finally, briefly, regained its gentleness. Yet I sat there as if struck by a paralysis spell, staring blankly at the water’s surface for two days straight.

“Siddiq, when are you going to the Blue Hole? I want to dive with you.” After much hesitation, I finally picked up my phone and sent the message.

Mohammad, sitting nearby, seemed to see right through the tug-of-war between my desire and my hesitation. He pointed toward the distance, where the water color suddenly darkened within the turquoise: “That’s the small canyon at Eel Garden. Don’t miss it when you get in the water. Swim out through that crack in the coral reef, and you’ll reach the sandy seabed where the garden eels live.”

He didn’t know that all my tension and timidity at that moment stemmed from the invisible “wall” I had hit in the deep water these past few days.

The wind and waves had been terrifyingly strong in the preceding days, but what truly bewildered me underwater was the intense, utterly unfamiliar sensation my body experienced when descending past 30 meters.

As the course advanced, I had to confront the art of ear equalization at greater depths.

In the past, I had relied solely on the Frenzel technique. This requires the freediver, with chest and abdomen completely relaxed, to precisely control the glottis, soft palate, and tongue root—closing the glottis to form an absolutely sealed space at the back of the mouth and nasal cavity, then using the tongue root to forcefully push upward like a piston, driving air into the Eustachian tubes.

However, once depth exceeds 30 meters, according to Boyle’s Law, the residual air in the lungs has been mercilessly compressed to a quarter of its original volume. At this point, Frenzel alone becomes inadequate. In advanced freediver training, one encounters a new technique: Mouthfill.

It is a counter-intuitive yet exquisitely precise physical dialogue: at a shallower depth, pre-emptively draw a large gulp of air from the lungs and pack it tightly into the mouth and throat, then lock the glottis shut, completely severing the connection between the lungs and the mouth. From this moment on, the diver can only puff out their cheeks, sequentially using their cheek muscles, tongue tip, mid-tongue, and finally the tongue root, compressing that precious parcel of air layer by layer like a relay race. If managed properly, this single mouthful of air is enough to escort a diver to depths approaching a hundred meters.

One of my tasks was to tame this minute, intricate physical control.

But at 30 meters beneath the sea, the world grows dim and cold. Although my lung flexibility was decent, and I didn’t feel the legendary “elephant-stomping” pain in my chest, theory crumbled before the sensory assault of reality: plummeting water temperature, instinctively tensing muscles, dried-up ear pressure, and a glottis that leaked air for reasons I couldn’t fathom. My body very honestly assumed a defensive posture of “refusing to descend further.” So, every time I touched that critical line at 32 meters, I would panic and flee, scurrying back to the surface.

New Year’s Eve Bonfire and the Antidote of Relaxation

The diving course was drawing to a close in the blink of an eye, and that heavy checklist of assessments still loomed before me:

Constant Weight with Bi-fins (CWTB): 34m Free Immersion (FIM): 34m Constant Weight No-Fins (CNF): 25m 20m Depth Rescue + Surface Tow 30m Depth Simulation Rescue (pulling an unconscious diver up from 30m via line)

The depth of 34 meters was a mental knot, and the remaining physically exhausting tasks were even more daunting (especially the most difficult: 25m CNF).

My trainer Alice had to leave for Cairo the day after tomorrow. I was very reluctant to see her go. But tomorrow would be our last day of sea training.

With hope looking slim, a strange sense of calm came over me instead.

Rather than anxiously obsessing over the outcome, I decided to focus on honing the process one last time. I reviewed all my dives and resolved to concentrate on only two things the next day:

First, to grind down the rhythm of the Mouthfill. On the evening of December 31st, New Year’s Eve, I held my phone to the side of my face to record video, practicing the Charge again and again, observing the arc of my puffed cheeks until my body thoroughly memorized that sensation of filling my mouth to its absolute limit.

Second, to give my body ten more seconds of chance. I reviewed my dive computer logs for the speed of my freefall. The conclusion relieved me—all I needed to do was, at 32 meters, when the thought of “turning back and fleeing” popped up, to not resist it, to hold my mental ground and calmly count down less than ten seconds in my mind, and perform one more equalization. That was all.

Less than two hours remained until the curtain fell on 2025. I was still lying in bed with my eyes closed, silently rehearsing every detail of the dive in my mind.

Until the sound of a bonfire crackling in the courtyard downstairs rose up, and friends came knocking at the door: “Come on! Let’s say a proper goodbye to this year!”

In this barren desert town, scrap wood was an unadulterated luxury. Mohammad somehow managed to get two large sacks of it, and I naturally took on the role of “firekeeper.”

The heat waves roasted my cheeks, windburned from days at sea. Asmar cut a thick, fresh leaf of aloe and gently applied it for me. The little cat Bamia made a round through the crowd, surveying its territory, before finally choosing the most comfortable pair of thighs, leaping up and curling into a fluffy ball, contentedly squinting its eyes. Mohammad served up his steaming, secret-recipe roast chicken.

Then the door opened, and Seddiq, an Egyptian national freediving record holder with a head of curly hair, joined the New Year’s Eve gathering without any warning.

After listening to my frustrated confession about “Frenzel not being efficient enough, Mouthfill leaking air constantly,” he had me pinch my nose and perform two Frenzels on land.

He leaned in close, carefully observing the muscles in my throat, then straightened up and said calmly:

“There is absolutely nothing wrong with your Frenzel. What you need to do is simply relax. As for the Mouthfill air leak, that is a necessary path everyone who first learns this technique must walk.”

It was like a gust of wind dissipating the fog in my mind. I suddenly realized that I had been trying too hard underwater. Resistance is always futile; relaxation is the true key to the deep sea.

The New Year, Going with the Flow

January 1st, the first day of the new year. The sea surface was calm like a giant mirror, reflecting the rising sun over Dahab.

Walking toward the dive site, I felt a relaxation I hadn’t felt in a long time. Worries about certification, checklists, and physical stamina were all blown away by the morning breeze. Today I wouldn’t look at the depth target; I would only look at the process: fill that mouthful of air, and when fear comes, let my body relax in the water for ten seconds.

The morning assessment began. Entering the water, descending. Every movement was slower, yet remarkably smooth.

Entering freefall again, the world around me grew colder as expected. 30 meters, 32 meters.

That red line which had once forced me back arrived right on schedule. But this time, I didn’t tense up. I simply surrendered myself peacefully, letting gravity carry me deeper.

In that dim depth, I could clearly feel the parcel of air in my mouth. The glottis was sealed tight; cheek muscles compressed inward layer by layer. No straining, no struggling; the ear equalizations came through one after another in a state of utter quiet.

When my hand touched the bottom plate, I was even a bit dazed. There was none of the imagined difficulty. That barrier which had once pinned me down had melted away as naturally as the thin ice on a morning shallow.

Back at the surface, mask off, the sunlight was a bit dazzling. The number on the dive computer quietly stopped at 36 meters.

The wind on the water was gentle. I held the buoy, finally understanding what Seddiq had said last night. The technique had been in my body all along. The only thing I needed to do was allow myself to relax, and then, go with the flow.

A Perfect Starting Point

With the salt still lingering on my skin from the morning, the final afternoon session with Alice arrived as scheduled. This was my trainer Alice’s last lesson before departing for Cairo, and also widely considered the most difficult item—25 meters Constant Weight No-Fins (CNF).

This is the purest yet most physically demanding discipline in freediving.

Stripped of fins, a diver can only rely on arm strokes and frog kicks with the legs to push themselves deeper into the unsupported deep sea. The intense physical movements are a tremendous interference with ear equalization.

Yet standing in the water at that moment, my heart was completely unperturbed. This confidence was a gift from time—starting from the summer of 2025, I had been training no-fins in the pool for a full six months.

Every extension of the arm pull, every perception of water flow from the leg kick, had long been internalized into muscle instinct. At 25 meters, as long as I controlled the rhythm of strokes and equalization, I knew I could complete it with ease.

Sunlight stretched long, gilded shards of light across the water. I performed an extremely relaxed dive. Without the constraint of fins, my skin touched the water’s flow directly, light as if gliding through a weightless night sky.

With every pause and glide of movement, I felt myself steadily sinking deeper. The 25-meter bottom plate became clear in my field of vision. No painful struggle needed; I smoothly touched the bottom and turned.

The subsequent rescue and tow, though physically exhausting, were completed as smoothly as water flowing through a channel.

Returning to shore, Trainer Alice exclaimed in disbelief: “You are incredible, going supernova on the very first day of the new year.”

That six-month-long pool practice and that Red Sea afternoon on New Year’s Day overlapped seamlessly in this moment.

Welcoming a new year in the ocean was truly wonderful. In that instant of breaking the surface and taking a deep breath, I felt I was standing at an entirely new starting point again. I heard a voice in my heart say to me: It’s right now, everything is just right, it simply couldn’t be more perfect.

Encounter at the Blue Hole

My phone screen lit up in the darkening sky above Eel Garden. Siddiq’s reply was concise: “Tomorrow morning, let’s go to the Blue Hole.”

The next morning, at the meeting point, besides Seddiq and his sister, there was also a friend named Michele. After a few words of small talk, I learned that this seemingly casual guy was actually the world record holder in fresh water Constant Weight No-Fins (CNF).

We hopped on motorcycles and headed for the Blue Hole.

Seddiq’s sister climbed onto the back of her brother’s bike with practiced ease, while I swung my leg over Michele’s motorcycle.

The wheels kicked up clouds of dust on the arid dirt road.

Amidst the roar of engines and the howling wind, Michele shouted to me about his life trajectory: he runs a pizza snack stall in the Netherlands. Every year, as soon as winter arrives, he neatly closes up shop, flies to Dahab, and immerses himself completely in the sea, training freediving with single-minded focus.

In the gritty dust and the vibration of the engines, I suddenly felt a wonderful tension—a life lived with lightness and certainty, between the smoky hustle of a pizza stall and the ultimate serenity of the deep sea.

The Magic of the Polaroid and a Birthday by the Sea

Through the yellow sand filling the air, our motorcycles came to a steady stop at the Blue Hole.

The Blue Hole was especially lively today; it happened to be the birthday of Ali, the owner of the Blue Hole café.

Dahab’s freediving community is not large. Almost all the divers training here had tacitly gathered. The seaside was filled with laughter, cheers, and salty embraces.

Michele, like a boy performing magic tricks, pulled a children’s Polaroid camera from his bag and gave it to the Bedouin children who often played near the Blue Hole.

It was a simple camera that could instantly spit out photos. The children were utterly fascinated by this “magic box” that could freeze time in an instant, chirping around us as they pressed the shutter button.

We huddled together, laughing loudly at the camera for a few selfies. As the photo paper gradually developed in the sea breeze, we left these snapshots, still warm with the present moment, for Ali as the most vivid footnote to his birthday.

Daily Life at the Blue Hole and the Scale of the Deep Sea

The party’s liveliness was still ongoing, but Siddiq and Michele had already swiftly switched into diver mode, beginning their routine deep training.

To cope with recovery after deep dives, they had even brought an oxygen tank to inhale oxygen and off-gas nitrogen after surfacing.

While these two masters were preparing to assault the abyss, Seddiq’s sister and I swam to another buoy nearby to begin our FRC (Functional Residual Capacity) warm-up.

Beneath the sea surface not far away was their arena of calm yet extreme trial. Siddiq followed the guide line and gracefully completed a 76-meter Free Immersion (FIM); while Michele, without any fin assistance, completed a 65-meter Constant Weight No-Fins (CNF) dive.

Looking at these two awe-inspiring numbers, I once again confirmed the objectivity and purity of this sport—the deep sea never favors anyone. How deep you can go underwater depends entirely on how honest your control over your own body is.

Acupuncture in the Deep Sea and Pseudo-Relaxation

After finishing the high-intensity dives and oxygen inhalation, Siddiq and Michele swam over to our buoy to check on the diving situation here.

I started several more rounds of 20-meter FRC dives. In this session, I set a clear goal for myself: no Mouthfill throughout, training pure Frenzel only.

Breathing up, exhaling half a breath, entering the water. As depth increased, negative buoyancy began to take over the body.

I closed my eyes and entered freefall, thinking that I had already comprehended last night’s teaching, that my body was now melting softly into the sea like a jellyfish.

Just then, Siddiq, like a soundless deep-sea ghost, suddenly darted out from the water beside me.

During the continued descent, his fingers, like the “acupuncture” in a wuxia novel, precisely jabbed at my neck, then at my back. With each jab, he was using this most direct physical touch to silently send me instructions: “Here, relax. And here, relax.”

The moment he jabbed me, I jolted as if shocked by electricity.

And in that underwater instant, I suddenly realized: the relaxation I thought I had achieved was not real relaxation at all.

My back neck was still unconsciously rigid; my back muscles were still secretly wrestling with the water pressure. Those hidden defense mechanisms in the subconscious had strung my body into a bow not fully drawn but secretly resisting. If not for these few “acupuncture”-like exposures, I might have continued to deceive myself with this self-righteous “pseudo-relaxation” in the deep water zone for a long time.

True relaxation is not a mantra of self-hypnosis in the mind, but a practice that requires spreading every nerve ending wide open and unconditionally surrendering to the ocean.

After several rounds of high-intensity FRC dives, my body’s battery and focus were nearly depleted, but that vigilance toward the deep water had also been worn away.

“Almost done. Last dive, let’s do a full-lung descent.” Siddiq said as he began adjusting the depth of the guide line.

The rope slid into the sea with a rustling sound. When it reached the bottom, he turned around and said to me casually, “All set, 35 meters.”

But I glanced at the color markings on the rope, and the corner of my eye clearly caught the mark belonging to 40 meters. A flash of doubt crossed my mind: Was it 35 meters or 40 meters? Did he make a mistake?

But after just a few seconds, I tossed the question to the back of my mind. Whatever. It was the last dive of the day anyway; dwelling on numbers was meaningless. Just surrender my body.

I lay on the buoy and began the final breathing up. Inhale, exhale, fill myself up. Flip over and enter the water.

What was wonderful was that after so many rounds of FRC stimulation, the depth of this full-lung dive had actually become completely unpressurizing.

I suddenly realized underwater that the so-called “discomfort” previously lodged in my chest was not a physiological limit at all, but merely “unfamiliarity.” Because the brain wasn’t familiar with the sensation of being wrapped by water pressure, it automatically sounded the alarm, giving birth to unknown fear. And now, when the body had “seen the world” at this depth, the fear naturally receded like the tide.

I simply closed my eyes completely, no longer looking at the gradually dimming light around me, and just wholeheartedly felt gravity, enjoying this smooth freefall.

Water currents caressed my cheeks; my body was like a slowly falling feather, steadily sinking into that pool of pure deep blue.

Until the back of my hand touched the hard bottom plate did I open my eyes.

Turn around, begin pulling the rope to ascend.

At the very moment I turned back, Seddiq appeared before me as if by appointment, like an underwater mirror, swimming upward parallel to me.

At great depths, the lungs were still tightly compressed. I remembered what Trainer Alice had repeatedly warned: to avoid lung squeeze injury, when starting the ascent from great depth, one must never yank the rope hard. Instead, one must first transition with small, gentle movements. After ascending some distance and the chest cavity gradually expands, then switch to large-pull rope climbing.

I restrained my instinct to rapidly flee the deep water, tentatively making small movements to switch my hands on the guide line.

And opposite me, Seddiq was actually synchronizing the rope-pulling motion in the water. He didn’t speak, but was using underwater body language to set the rhythm for me—first an extremely tiny hand switch, reminding me to steady the starting pace; as the depth grew shallower bit by bit, the amplitude of his movements gradually opened up, guiding me to magnify my movements along with him.

Supported by a tremendous sense of safety, I penetrated the water layer extremely steadily and surfaced smoothly. With a “plap,” I grabbed the buoy, completed recovery breathing, steadied my mind, and made an “I’m OK” hand signal.

Siddiq looked at me, his face washed by seawater into a smile: “Now, look at your watch. How deep did you dive?”

I looked down. On the screen of the dive computer, an unbelievable number was displayed—41 meters!

The two of us shouted excitedly on the water’s surface, high-fiving with all our might. So that casually spoken “35 meters” was a small deception he had crafted to lift the psychological burden from my shoulders.

Back on shore, we had an incredibly delicious Arab stewed lamb leg at Ali’s café. The fall-off-the-bone tender lamb, accompanied by rich aromas of spices, solidly comforted our stomachs, growling with hunger after being soaked in the sea.

Other freedivers returned one after another. At the Blue Hole in Dahab, if you threw a brick, you’d probably hit several national record holders. Pick any one of them out, and today’s performance would start at 70, 80 meters.

Compared to their unfathomable depths, my 41 meters was but a negligible fraction. But when this group of “gods” who had just returned from the 80-meter abyss heard that I had broken through my bottleneck and achieved a personal best, they got excited as if they themselves had broken records. They ran over with cups in hand, hugging me tightly and laughing as they said to me: “You are the best!”

This enthusiastic atmosphere quickly alerted today’s birthday star—café owner Ali. Hearing that I had achieved a PB (Personal Best), and knowing that I was about to leave the Blue Hole for rock climbing with no time for him to fire up the oven and make me a proper “PB dessert,”

this bearded Bedouin uncle improvised on the spot. He turned and ducked into the back kitchen, fished something resembling a pudding bowl from the fridge, inverted it onto an exotic Egyptian small floral plate, and strode over with large steps.

Without allowing any objection, he pressed down on my hand reaching for the plate, picked up the spoon, and insisted on feeding me himself like coaxing a child.

Amidst the seaside hustle and bustle in the café, he scooped up a spoonful of cool, sweet pudding and stuffed it into my mouth. Then he raised the hand holding the spoon high and led the cheer at the top of his lungs: “PB! Celebrate!”

Then another spoonful: “PB! Celebrate!”

That pudding was almost cloyingly sweet, yet it overlapped seamlessly in this moment with the lamb’s smoky aroma, the salty sea breeze, and these pure, unadulterated people.

I suddenly understood that the ocean’s fatal allure lies not only in its embrace of all depth and unknown, but even more in its ability to wash away all arrogance from the shore. In these waters of the Blue Hole, the deep sea never favors anyone, but it never belittles anyone either. As long as you dare to face your fear and take even one meter more toward the abyss within your heart, you will win the unreserved applause of this sea and these people.