Led is evil
The more industrious freedivers started turning up with home built led weights. Smaller and more flat. Elastic belts were already common among spearos that did not want their belts sliding up to their armpits. Freedivers soon tossed their nylon belts (we saw many of those in Ibiza 2002).
The pool also gave birth to the neck weight. Most freedivers in the Lausanne 2005 pool WC swam with feet and hips floating up, creating huge drag. Putting more weight on your hips was not the solution since the problems was at the front part of "the vessel" - the buoyant lungs full of air. Most of Tom Sietas world records were among other things based on full understanding of how to weight himself.
The neck weight followed into the depth disciplines where it lessened form drag and improved freefalling (have you noticed how your legs always want to "fall over" and overtake you).
In those days around 2002-2005 there was lots of talk about new techniques like packing, mouth fill (and the mysterious hands free) and freefalling. Nobody talked about squeeze and everybody feared the black out as a near hospitable incident. But that is another story.

The #1 factor
Then the two most important steps in competitive freediving took place. It started with the understanding that the dive rope was actually quite important and useful (I set my first PB/s in free water back in 1999 - crazy!). Since it is a good idea to be able to pull yourself up in emergency, new sturdy buoys where developed - using car tubes. But the real leap in safety came with the lanyard. The Nordic Deep (longest running depth competition in the world) demanded it before it was in the Aida rules. And above all, what has been and will be the key to getting acceptance to our sport is the anti - ballast system. A weight that can be dropped that brings up the dive line, bottom plate and freediver and all. Nordic Deep used it 2003. Now freedivers were ready to really push it, with safety in place.
Many of these issues surfaced in earnest after Audrey Mestres death and the dare devil attitude that No limit attempts were turning into. After Audrey and other incidents I wrote an article on No limit and its dangers. Soon after Loic Le Ferme was lost to the depth in a No Limit training. Pushing Aida to take a stance on No Limit and other safety issues.
And this new safety, together with new equipment, and new techniques like mouthfill and packing - allowed relative beginners to go really deep early in their career leading to lots of squeeze - but that as well is another story.

The end of the Sphera
Swimming without a mask seemed very silly, or at least strange and scary. The objection was that you will not be able to see. Canadian world champion and creative mind Eric Fattah was more or less furious at the conservative AIDA regulations inhibiting the invention of new equipment. He wanted to swim with water filled swim goggles with apnea lenses. This would enable him not only to save more than a litre of air on his dives, but to as well see underwater. Pure science fiction in those days. Aida eventually voted about it and slightly more than half the members took an accepting stance.
But apnea lenses go far back. Christian Engelbrecht writes:
"Robert Croft is the first credited with inventing contact lenses correcting the light in water for deep freediving back in 1968, instead of using the traditional nose encasing air mask of the 1930's. Via Jacques Mayol, this concept found its way to Umberto Pelizzari's diving team, who with the help of an optician in Rome transformed Croft's hard lenses into soft lenses, reputedly costing 10.000 dollars per set at the time; Using these, Pelizzari set world records in both No Limits and Constant Weight all the way through the 1990's. Later, Canadian Eric Fattah took a pair of hard lenses and fixed them to the inside of a pair of swimming goggles which he filled with water, using these to brake the constant weight world record with a dive of 82 meters in 2001. At a cost of 300 dollars per piece, these Fluid Goggles then saw increasing usage among the elite deep freedivers, and lately Herbert Nitsch, using a variation of his own design, is using fluid goggles to gain world records across all deep disciplines".

Soon AIDA faced other challenges. Like Herbert Nitsch equalization bottle, or the Static version of it (http://www.freediving.biz/features/balloon.html). Soon Aida will have to take a stance on the high tech swimsuits that are forbidden in swimming, and maybe even the Lunocet monofin taking its force from higher up the leg and more mimicking the dolphin tail in its shape (prototypes has not yet been liked by freedivers).

How deep
Regarding depth measurement some were swimming with analogue meters some decade ago, the rich would have the huge Mares Apneist box on their arm. Soon everybody was racing to buy the Suunto D3, specialized for freediving. Sort of cheap but often malfunctioning (but you got a replacement if you complained). Eric Fattah understood the future was in computers and that there is actually no reason to limit the functions when data chips are getting smaller and smaller. The F1 project caused great interest. Price was high and prototypes malfunctioned. Today 2010 I actually met someone diving with one without complains.
Mares challenged Suunto with the heavy stainless steel Mares apneist (less plastic and very masculine). It had the same features and was more reliable, but was never a big seller. Suunto started facing out the D3 in 2008 after suggesting freedivers to buy the more expensive D4. (Myself being an extreme and fetishist freediver I would never use something that actually has scuba functions). Now there is talk about a new freediver gauge from Suunto, but Aeris beat them to it with the F10 that costs as much as a D3 (less considering inflation) and has more functions.

Dive pure
So now that leaves us with only one piece of equipment to be discussed. The noseclip and the presentation of the final solution. Not only do you save air with a noseclip (the air that would have been spent on the mask), you expose your face to water and chill, and thus enhancing oxygen saving dive response. AND your hands are free to use in the ever increasing popular CNF (no fins discipline). Now there is even a category allowing only noseclip, no suit, no other equipment. UFC ultimate freediving competition or unassisted. As pure as, or purer, than the Skandalopetra (hold on to a stone and follow it down).
Who was the first to swim deep without mask? I have not been able to find out, but Natalja Molchaniova was early. And before that saw the futurist Sebastien Murat go to extreme depths with face exposed. Problem is that if you swim head down your sinuses will fill up (Sebastien as Pipin as Musimu uses sinus filling at depth as an equalization method). It is extremely painful for the beginner (yes it is). The nose clip solves the problem if you are not into wet equalization.

Heaven
The noseclip brand to look for has always been French Paradisia. And yes, you have to look. No one really knows where to buy this French make. In Ibiza the guy was hiding on a parking lot in the dark selling this like it was illegal. The price was also high 30 € back then. Performance freediving team got fed up looking for Paradisias and started manufacturing their own. They put a little design into it and made a curve at the base of "the nose" making it come closer. Freedive Trainers International (Martin Stepanek leaving the cooperation with PFT and Kirk Krack) soon had their own version. A little bit sturdier which might be good, since I have seen the PFT one break, but not elegant in any way.
In my opinion the Paradisia still reigns.... until now. In my hand I have a prototype fresh from the factory of Trygons (Greek speargun manufacturer). The owner of Trygons, Alex, has the bad habit of hanging around Herbert, and thus might have been exposed to some nose clip complains. So Alex went to his workshop and out of first class aluminium (normally used for airplanes) he produced a futuristic looking piece. It sure will not break. It is barely heavier than its rivals. It is smaller in its pressing points, and yet covers the essential surface. It has no fixed points, its stops exactly where you want it to stop with the exact pressure. The outsticking part can be angled downwards... The contact surface is not too soft and yet not too rough (I have had sandpaper glued on the insides of my Paradisia, this is not needed with the Trygons).
Some will hate it; most will never want to take it off. And there will be a discussion on how to wear it; some will happily wear it upside down in this world of genetic nose diversity.

The future looks bright for freediving

© Sebastian Naslund
freediving.biz