Depths of a passion
When the wife of a champion free diver tried to break his record, something went terribly wrong
But when she reached that depth, something went horribly wrong. According to a report by the International Association of Free Divers, her husband's organization, which oversaw the dive, rough weather on the surface had caused the cable that she was to ride to the top to bow, and, perhaps most important, the lift bag that was to shoot her to the top did not fully inflate. She ascended far too slowly, and lost consciousness. Eventually, bottom safety diver Pascal Bernabe managed to get Mestre to 295 feet and hand her to Ferreras, who had donned a tank and dived in to look for his wife. Three minutes was as long as she could last without oxygen. When Ferreras finally got her to the surface, she had been submerged 8 minutes, 48 seconds.
It seemed an accident of tragic proportions. But a year after the incident, Carlos Serra, a key member of Mestre's team, the onetime president of his diving association, and a man Ferreras has likened to a brother, accused Ferreras of not filling the so-called pony tank that was employed to fill the air bag. "I don't believe for a second it was a mishap," Serra says. Keeping the pony tank filled was Ferreras's job, he says, and three times that morning Ferreras was asked if he had filled it, and he said he had. "I'm sure the tank wasn't filled because he didn't want it filled," Serra says. Serra further claims that the Ferreras-Mestre marriage was troubled and that a jealous Ferreras did not want to lose his record to his wife.
Ferreras strongly denies any culpability in the tragedy, dismissing Serra's contentions as "sick." Indeed, he says the tank was Serra's responsibility. "My statement is clear: The person in charge [of the entire operation] was Carlos." Moreover, he says, his marriage was sound, and though the relationship was at times tempestuous, he says, it never lacked in love. "We never talked about divorce," he says.
As to the tanks, Ferreras says his team always operated without specific duties, and filling the tank was a chore everyone and no one assumed. Ferreras says he checked the tank the morning of the dive by opening the valve and feeling the air hiss out. He said he was asked only if he had checked the tank, not filled it. Later, he says, diver Orlando "Tata" Lanza yelled up to the boat, asking if anyone had filled the tank. A voice rang back, "Yes." "To this day," Ferreras says, "we don't know who answered." "Mistakes were made," Ferreras concedes in his book about the tragedy, The Dive: A Story of Love and Obsession. "But I am not sure that anyone else could have done any better. Not with more divers. Not with more rules and regulations."
Tribute. All this controversy comes at a time when Ferreras, despite his continuing grief, should be riding high. His book was just published, and in the works is a film version by Oscar-winning director James Cameron of Titanic fame. Cameron was on hand filming off the coast of Mexico last October 12, the anniversary of Mestre's death, when Ferreras dived to 557.8 feet in a tribute to Mestre, who had reached that same mark three days before her death. Cameron, a free diver himself, hopes to begin filming Ferreras's story in two years. "Do you think I would make a movie about the guy if I thought he was a fraud?"
Ferreras, meanwhile, is preparing for a record 600-foot dive later this year off the coast of Italy, and he says he won't retire until he hits 200 meters, or 656 feet. "This is the life we chose, or the life that chose us," he says. "It's all about risk, about living on the edge."
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