Atlas of Skills / Adventure

Freediving

Drop on a single breath into the blue, slow your heart, and learn the discipline of going deep on nothing but your lungs and your nerve.

Long before it was a sport, sponge divers rode a stone weight, the skandalopetra, as deep as thirty metres on one breath. The sport of going deep was born in Italy. In 1949, off Capri, Raimondo Bucher descended to 29 metres before a commission, and in 1950, answering a challenge from the Neapolitan Underwater Club, he reached 30 metres, the first official freediving world record. Enzo Maiorca of Syracuse reached 50 metres in 1961, and his rivalry with Jacques Mayol inspired the film The Big Blue. Today the sport’s deepest divers still gather each July at Dean’s Blue Hole in the Bahamas, 202 metres deep, for William Trubridge’s Vertical Blue, where in 2025 Alenka Artnik equalled the deepest constant-weight dive ever made by a woman, 123 metres on a monofin.

Gold credential: AIDA 1-4 / Molchanovs Wave 1-3 -> Instructor · AIDA / Molchanovs / Apnea Academy / SSI

The craft in depth →Where it came from, what is true and what is sold, on its own page. The places come first.

The overall on this craft ↓What a trip can honestly give you, and what the days are like. The places come first.

Ordered by community strength — not by who pays

Where the community gathers

PlaceSeasonLevelHow long
Dahab (Red Sea)Year-roundBeginner -> Instructora month+
Dean's Blue Hole, Long IslandApr-JulBeginner -> Advanced / Competitiona weekend
Kalamata & the ManiMay-OctBeginner -> Competitiona weekend
The Italian MediterraneanJun-OctBeginner -> Instructorabout a week
★ Best place to go
Strong living community

Learn to find depth in the current-free Blue Hole, flat, deep and warm all year, where the world's freedivers find their cohort.

Season: Year-round · Beginner -> Instructor

The strongest bench on this craft: three schools on one bay running month-long intensives, so the people next to you are there for weeks and not days. ⚠ And the least documented of the four — nobody outside the sport has written about Dahab, so all of it rests on what those three schools publish about themselves.

Flat, deep and warm all year, the current-free Blue Hole is the global base where the world's freedivers go to find depth and find their cohort.

Living sceneMecca

Immersion — a month+

The full sheet on Dahab (Red Sea) →All 3 schools, the course and what it costs, and how the days run.

Where the world comes
Strong living community

A 202m shaft steps from the beach, where Trubridge's Vertical Blue is held and world records fall.

Season: Apr-Jul · Beginner -> Advanced / Competition

Two operations on one hole, and one of them is invitation-only — so what you would meet is a competition field rather than a class, with William Trubridge named and teaching. Nothing outside the sport has designated the place, and nobody has counted who is here outside the meet.

A 202m sapphire shaft steps from the beach, where Trubridge's invite-only Vertical Blue is the most prestigious meet on Earth and world records fall.

Living sceneMeccaNamed mastersRecord holder

With William Trubridge (Vertical Blue) · Taster — a weekend

The full sheet on Dean's Blue Hole, Long Island →The school, the course and what it costs, who teaches, and how the days run.

Record holder
Strong living community

Learn on the Mediterranean's premier competition depth-line, in the bay that hosted the 2024 CMAS Depth World Championship.

Season: May-Oct · Beginner -> Competition

One school, and a world championship: CMAS held its 8th Freediving Depth World Championship in this bay from 2 to 13 October 2024, organised by nobody who teaches here. The company is the competition line — you share a rope with people going considerably deeper than you, which is a particular kind of room to learn in.

Host of the 2024 CMAS Depth World Championship, Kalamata's deep sheltered bay has become the Mediterranean's premier competition depth-line.

Living sceneRecord holder

Taster — a weekend

The full sheet on Kalamata & the Mani →The school, the course and what it costs, and how the days run.

Where it began
Birthplace of the discipline

Learn apnea at the source, in the Mediterranean that bred Mayol, Maiorca and Pelizzari.

Season: Jun-Oct · Beginner -> Instructor

The one entry on this craft with a teacher we can name: Umberto Pelizzari, in the water that produced Mayol and Maiorca. What the record does not hold is a cohort — the Academy runs courses and trains instructors rather than keeping a bay full of divers, and no outside body has designated anything here.

The Mediterranean that bred Mayol, Maiorca and Pelizzari is where competitive apnea was born, and the Apnea Academy lineage still teaches it at the source.

BirthplaceNamed mastersVerified schoolsUnbroken lineageHeritage

With Umberto Pelizzari (Apnea Academy) · Starter — about a week

The full sheet on The Italian Mediterranean →All 2 schools, the course and what it costs, who teaches, and how the days run.

Write me a note about this one — how you'd love to learn it, and where.

If this box never loads, the same note reaches me at arnaudcallier@pm.me.

Catalogued, not checked

Ten more places we know of, and nobody has checked any of them

Listing five places would tell you this craft happens in five places, and it does not. These are the rest we know of. Nobody has checked any of them. No school here is vetted, no teacher named, nothing graded — this is the lowest state on the map, and we would rather print it than let a short list read as a complete one. A line each, and what the place is known for. If you have been to one, or know a school or an instructor there, the line will take a note — it comes to me, and it is how a place stops being a line and starts being checked.

  • Amed & Nusa Penida, Bali, Indonesia
    Warm, deep water close to shore and a large year-round instructor community.
  • Panglao, Bohol, Philippines
    A cheap, warm training base with deep water minutes from the beach.
  • Koh Tao, Thailand
    High-volume, low-cost courses; the easiest place in the world to get certified, and the least selective.
  • Roatán, Honduras
    Caribbean walls dropping straight off the reef, with a small permanent freediving scene.
  • Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt
    The Red Sea's other base, less concentrated than Dahab and easier to reach.
  • Tenerife & La Palma, Canary Islands, Spain
    Deep Atlantic water within Europe, usable all winter.
  • Gozo, Malta
    Blue-hole and cave diving in the Mediterranean, on a short flight from most of Europe.
  • Villefranche & Nice, France
    Deep water immediately off a city shoreline, where French apnea clubs train.
  • Sardinia, Italy
    Clear Tyrrhenian water and a strong domestic apnea culture.
  • Limassol & Cyprus, Cyprus
    Warm water into late autumn, with an established competition line.
If this one pulls you

Freediving — the overall

What you can realistically reach: A beginner course (2–3 days) realistically takes you to a calm 16–20 m on a single breath, because the limit at this stage is relaxation and technique, not years of training. Instructor level is weeks of work, not days.

This is the craft, not one school's version of it. What each place does with it is on that place's own sheet.

The long read

Freediving in depth →

Its history, what nobody tells you, what is true and what is sold, what to read next, and how we checked it. A page of its own.

If this one pulls you

Close to this on the map

Grouped by hand, not by an algorithm — same hands, same instinct, a different craft. Drag, or use the arrows.

Why you can trust this map

How a place gets on here, and what we do when it stops being true

There is a real difference between a school that teaches you and a good-looking website, and too much of the internet is the second kind. Four instruments do the work, and every one of them is visible on the page you are already on.

  • We grade it in public, and publish what is missing. The Measure is five plain questions, not a score: is there a teacher we can name, can a stranger get in, will you be learning beside other people, is the craft alive in the place, and is there enough there to keep you going for years. An empty dot tells you which one we could not answer and why. A craft nobody has graded shows no meter at all, because an absence is not a zero.
  • We print what we checked and did NOT list. Every swept craft carries the places we looked at and turned down, each with its reason. That list is the part no marketplace prints, because a rejection is where the money is.
  • The claims are read back to their sources every night. A robot re-reads every link we publish against the school's own page each night, and every price and course name we have written a test for. page. When one stops matching three nights running, it is flagged for a human — and an entry that cannot be confirmed comes off. It is never softened.
  • Where we are not neutral, we say so above the recommendation. We run one paid week a year, with one teacher. His entry says that before it says anything good about him, and prints the way to reach him without us, at his prices.
  • Nothing here has been stood in yet. An open sheet means desk research, carefully done. No place on this map has been visited and dated by us. When one is, the check will carry a name and a date — and until then, the grade says so in the dots it leaves empty.
  • Nobody pays to be here, and nobody can pay to be left off. No commission, no listing fee, no tourist board. The order is the strength of the community, never the size of the wallet.
Before you trust any school — mine or anyone else's — ask these five things
  1. Who actually teaches it? Can you find them by name, with a track record you can check yourself?
  2. Is the craft alive in that place, or is the school the only thing there? A real scene has more than one good option.
  3. What exactly do you walk away with — a recognised qualification, or a certificate they printed themselves? Ask which.
  4. Can you speak to someone who did the course? A real person, not a testimonial on their own page.
  5. What happens on a bad day — weather, an injury, a teacher who doesn't show? A serious place has an honest answer.

If a place dodges these, that's your answer. It costs you nothing to ask, and it tells you everything.

This is the short version. The full method is here — the six questions, in order, for any craft anywhere.