In case you want to skip to the good parts: 0:34, 0:53, 2:26, 2:58, 4:19.

I did not look to see who GoPro used, I just assumed that they used models, because they had used Italian superstar model, Roberta Mancino (apparently a badass skydiver/wingsuiter), in their promo for the underwater dive housing.

For the promo video of the Hero 3, however, GoPro tried to get it right by the using best in the business: Performance Freediving International Instructors Kirk Krack, Mandy-Rae Krack, Ashliegh Baird and Erin Magee. They are literally the best, ever. In many disciplines. Check out their extraordinarily humbling bios here.

I was wrong to assume that GoPro would use anyone less than the top athletes in the sport, but I stand by my opinion that the underwater footage would have looked more graceful had they used a butterflier instead of a freediver.

What difference does it make?

The main difference is that when you are freediving for depth, you aren’t necessarily going for speed. Certainly the faster you get down the better, but you have to factor in the cost of O₂. If you get down to 100 meters and have no air to get back up, it is a bit of a problem. So big kicks and long glides are very important.

When you are only allowed to kick 15m horizontally in a pool, it is a completely different game. You are taking the fewest kicks in the shortest amount of time. This is achieved by making sure your body movement is connected from the tips of your fingers to the tips of your toes.

In the video, the freedivers are using their heads to initiate their kick/body wave. This causes the wave of their body to have very high amplitude (see 2:29). Which means more energy is going up and down/back and forth (depending on the perspective) instead of forward.

If they were to maintain a good head alignment and initiate the kick with their shoulders and arms as a unit, their hips would rotate to set their legs in a good kicking position causing the the amplitude of their body wave to decrease and their forward motion to increase.

Better Streamline = Higher Efficiency = Faster

It is true that GoPro used the top athletes in their sport to achieve some incredible freedive footage, but this video was a promo for a camera and not a world championship freedive competition. For the purposes of a GoPro promo, a better streamline would make for more elegant footage. Next time GoPro makes a video that features monofinners underwater, make sure to include at least one Olympic swimmer (Phelps, Lochte, Coughlin, Franklin…etc). If they are unavailable, give me a call. I’ll fly with you.

So on this rare night, with a bit of a south swell hitting Big Beach there was only one thing we could do: Blue Moon Big Beach Body Surf.

The plan was to hit big beach and with the moon was high overhead, shoot some sick night time moonlit body surf shots. I was not sure whether this was even possible given the GoPro’s difficulty in low light situations, but I was not going to not blue moon body surf.

While waiting for the moon to get to the right spot, I decided to timelapse the moon rise, just to see what it would look like. It is not great and about 15 minutes into the timelapse, a park ranger on an ATV drove down the beach and kicked us off. It was barely 8 o’clock, but I guess as Big Beach is a state park, they have a closing time.

At 10 seconds in, you can see the lights from the ATV.

While we got kicked out, barely having started, we did get some waves and an idea. It looks like you could do some incredible looking timelapse of a full moon, if you light up the foreground and have the moon rising in the background. I think maybe a beach bonfire would provide some great light for that, and it has been added to the list of ideas to try out.

We went to Makena for some blue moon big beach body surfing and left with an idea. Not a bad night.

Last week, I went out to work on some breaches off of Kamaole III Beach Park (more like Kamaole III Breach Park). I brought my roommate Chris along to GoPro my attempts for analysis. I asked Mike Shelby, Assistant Women’s Swimming Coach at Bowling Green State University and former 18-24 year-old Masters national record holder in the 50 butterfly, for some feedback. This is what he had to say:

First off, I appreciate you asking my opinion on this.
Secondly, I think this is really cool.
Third, my first thought was the other guy started deeper than you did, which would allow him to get to a higher speed than you did. As a result, he would hit the surface at a higher speed, and probably be able to get out of the water more than you.
Fourth, it might be harder for you to get all the way out of the water because you’re a little heavier than the other dude.
Fifth, I think you’re kicking is fine, maybe get a little deeper, but that might be hard. I’ve never tried doing what you’re doing, but I imagine kicking all the way through the surface (similar to kicking through the breakout in swimming–having that last kick really propel you forward through the surface) is really important to really make sure that you’re maintaining your speed the entire ascension. So, I would work on kicking one last powerful kick as late into the whole thing as possible to ensure that you’re maintaining your speed throughout.

Before I got a chance to ask him, I also got some quick twitter feedback from former Kast-a-way Swimwear blogger and current IHEARTDIVING  and Stellar Neophyte blogger, Eric Teske:

Lookin good, that counts but high jump style wud b cool “@travelinmike: I just uploaded “Breach Attempts 2″ on Vimeo: vimeo.com/47646146”

— Eric Teske (@EricTeske) August 16, 2012

What do you guys think? Does this count as a breach? How would you go about getting more height on the exit? Please leave feedback in the comments!

Back when I was in Washington DC, I worked on a magazine about the state of the world’s sea turtles called SWoT Report. One of my responsibilities was to look for awards that our project might qualify for. It did not matter what the award was, big or small, because if we won, we would then be an award winning publication.

A few years later I have found myself with a video made for fun and a contest that it fits perfectly. Specifically, Outdoor Photographer and Sony’s Art of Expression contest.

I entered my video, “Torpedoing Big Beach.” It tells the story of a great day body surfing at Big Beach. Was this an important story to tell? No. Are there better stories in the contest? Yes. Are they told better? I am not so sure. How do you know what these people are looking for?

OP posted 4 video tips from Sony Artisan David McLain who is also a judge in the competition. He mentions that the most powerful stories are the ones told without words. McLain has spent most of his career shooting still photography for magazines, but as SLRs have gained the ability to shoot motion, he has gotten into video. It makes sense that he is not into dialog. He has never had to think about it before.

Based on that, my video is a shoe in.

The judges have made their decision, but will not be releasing the results until September. The winner of the judges’ choice gets a sick Sony VG20 HD camcorder. This entire month, the videos and photos are open for people’s choice voting. To become the People’s Choice, I need your help. Please help me become an award winning film maker by voting for “Torpedoing Big Beach.”

A south swell came through last week and hit Big Beach pretty hard. For those of you that have never been, Big Beach is on the south shore of Maui and it can be a very heavy shore break. It has a nice sandy bottom, so it is ideal for body surfing because, when you inevitably get crushed by a wave and smashed into the bottom, it doesn’t hurt that bad…

I recently got a GoPro with dive housing (which I will talk about at greater length in a future post) and we took it out for a few sessions at Big Beach. This is my first usable GoPro footage. No color correction. Just clips and music. Look out for some monofin body surfing (first time ever in the world, anywhere), some big falls, and music by Joseph Anthony Camerlengo and mary lynn.

Please watch in fullscreen in HD when possible.

It is difficult to tell people what they will need when they are moving to/visiting Maui. I guess it depends on who you are. I moved here with an army issue duffel bag (12 tee shirts, 3 pairs board shorts, 3 pairs cotton shorts, jeans, 2 button down shirts, 1 pair flip flops, bike multitool, gerber multitool) a laptop and a guitar.

The one item that no one told me to bring, probably because it seems obvious to anyone here, is a daypack. Many days out here are spent far away from food, water or dry towels, and the last thing you want to do is to have to go back for something. When coming to Maui you need to bring a daypack.

Now, a Maui daypack does not probably contain all of the same things that a Tacoma daypack or a Columbus daypack might. The following are the 5 things I try not to leave home without:


sunglasses
I cannot leave my house without my polarized sunglasses. When you work on the water they are an absolutely necessity for your health and sanity. I brought my Costa Del Mar Zanes with me from the mainland. I loved those sunglasses for a lot of reasons, but a big one was that not many people in Maui had ever heard of them and they served as a bonding point with our southern guests. Maui Jim is king on Maui just as Costa Del Mar is king in Georgia and Florida, and most of the south for that matter. About a month ago, I lost my Zanes to the trade winds and the mighty Pacific. I ended up making the switch to Maui Jim’s Peahis. So far so good. They wrap around my face and do not slip down my nose. The lenses are unreal and I got a great deal. I guess I have become a Maui Jim man.

swimsuit
A day without getting wet out here is an odd day. So many of the hikes here involve rain, streams and waterfalls that even terrestrial adventures often require a swimsuit. There’s nothing worse than forgetting your suit and having to rock wet shorts for the rest of the day, except for getting to the beach and looking at amazing waves while you stay dry. On Maui you can walk into a grocery store with nothing but a swimsuit on. No shirt, no shoes, no problem is the way here. People even have “dress boardies” for going out. Don’t leave home without a suit.

waterbottle
Another obvious item. I have had my Klean Kanteen since I moved away from Columbus. It’s become something of a security blanket to the point where I feel kind of anxious when I do not have it with me. The only time I feel okay without it is when I have a hydration bladder in my backpack on longer hikes.

mask and snorkel
You never know when you will want to get a better look under the water be it fresh water spring or unexplored reef. Always need a mask and snorkel. One of my favorite stops on the Road to Hana includes a cave with a fresh water spring. I could spend hours exploring all of the chambers, but hyperthermia might get to me before I make it that far.

waterproof pelican case
This has become something of a man purse for me. A necessity for someone that works on a boat. It can hold my phone, wallet, cash, stamps…any small item that should stay dry.

Honorable mention:
sunscreen
dive light
first aid kit
foul weather jacket
camera

What’s in your daypack? Share in the comments below!

John and I shot a couple short clips of my initial attempts at the breach.

I after analyzing the video a few things come to mind. This fin is super flexible. Check out the 0:14 mark. It bends almost in half. If you look at the Mauricio Fernandez video you’ll see his fin seems a bit more rigid. I tried to find his fin on the Finspirit website and this is all that I could find. It is light on specs but seems like you can get one made out of carbon fiber. The one on the website is not the same as his but his does have some black in it which leads me to believe he’s got some carbon fiber on that bad boy.

Where this becomes a problem is on exiting the water. It looks like I am having trouble figuring out how to time my last kick before pulling my legs out of the water. If I pull out too soon, I sacrifice all power on the last kick and am not able to kick out. If I take a final kick with full power, I am stuck in an awkward position for pulling out and I end up just falling straight back. It seems like these problems could be solved if my fin was less flexible, but that currently is not an option.

What this means for me:

I need to get slimmer. I need to get stronger. I probably need to decrease the amplitude of my kicks and kick a few more times. I need to get as much power out of these kicks as possible as quickly as possible and I need to get a full kick to exit the water instead of shortening the final kick to pull out.