Depths of a passion
When the wife of a champion free diver tried to break his record, something went terribly wrong
Audrey Mestre was a world-class athlete in a niche sport so physically and mentally punishing that it counts only a handful of practitioners worldwide. She was a "free diver" --one who tests how deep humans can go underwater or how long they can remain submerged--on a single gulp of air. "No limits" free divers like Mestre go deeper than most. Wrapped around a weighted sled that slides on a cable, they plunge hundreds of feet down, then inflate an air bag that shoots them swiftly back to the surface. In the process, they withstand near-crippling water pressure; their lungs shrink to the size of baseballs; their hearts slow to 20 beats a minute; and their sinus cavities fill with salt water to keep their eardrums from exploding.
With her thick auburn hair, long legs, and shapely figure, Mestre, 28, was a striking poster girl for no-limits diving. And on the morning of Oct. 12, 2002, under leaden skies, in the choppy waters off the Dominican Republic, she sought to set a world record of 561 feet. That is roughly equivalent to descending and ascending a 55-story building--and she would have to do it in the time she could hold her breath, about three minutes. Even more important, it was 29 1/2feet beyond the record claimed by Francisco "Pipin" Ferreras, the Cuban defector who also happened to be her husband.
Ferreras, 42, has for years dominated the sport of free diving, as much because of his personality as his skill. An ornery maverick, he takes pride in being a risk-taker. The French-born Mestre, granddaughter of a renowned spearfisherman, met Ferreras in 1996 in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, while she was studying marine biology. She had sought out the bull-chested Cuban with the shaved head and gap-toothed smile, enthralled by his ability to reach depths once thought unattainable by man. In Mestre, Ferreras had found his soul mate, a vivacious woman who shared his passion for the sea.
At the time they met, Ferreras was the competitive one, regularly smashing records. But in 1997, he persuaded Mestre to try free diving, and she was immediately hooked. Ferreras realized that his beautiful protege was a natural at the sport, and he put aside his own considerable ego to coach her.
Risky business. There was a lot to teach. Accomplished no-limits free divers train hard, running, using weight machines, doing isometrics. They also learn to slow their heart rates by going into a meditative state. And though they're slicing deeply into a dark, wet abyss, they can't afford to panic--panic can kill at those depths. For unlike scuba divers who breathe compressed air and therefore have to return to the surface slowly to avoid decompression sickness, or "the bends," nonbreathing free divers must return to the surface at high speed. For them, the last few feet of the return journey is the riskiest, because as blood that has rushed to the brain to protect it at great depths once again courses to the body's extremities, the drained brain can shut down. But Mestre had never blacked out, so, on the day she set out to top her husband's record, she was characteristically calm. In case of problems, safety divers were posted at intervals down to 295 feet, with one at the ride's bottom, at 561 feet.
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."
This story appears in the August 16, 2004 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.