Freediving: is this a sport – or ‘French existentialist swimming’?

With the Netflix documentary The Deepest Breath wowing audiences, the activity is having its biggest cultural moment since Luc Besson's film The Big Blue. But if freediving wants to break into the mainstream like surfing once did, it has some questions to answer

Unlike the lithe, wetsuited mermen and women in The Deepest Breath, the newly released documentary, frustration was the main note of my first experience of freediving at sea. It was another eternal Mediterranean morning and - in a region off the coast of France near Montpellier where the sediment from the Rhone often clouds the waters - there was even a little visibility down below.

But try as I might, I couldn't get beyond the surface water to break into the big blue below. As soon as I descended more than five or six metres, I was no longer able to blow air through to my left ear and equalise it to the growing pressure of the water around it. Any further down and it was like someone jamming a sharp pencil into my ear canal.