Rolling in the deep

Amelia de los Rios may be the best proof yet that mermaids exist.

How else can you explain the fact that she can hold her breath underwater for more than six minutes or swim to depths of 150 feet?

"Ever since I was little it’s never been hard to do stuff underwater," said de los Rios, who was born in Colombia and is now a U.S. citizen.

"Among my friends I could hold my breath the longest, but I didn’t think it was that much."

With just a couple of months of formal training over the summer, de los Rios, 32, has gone from working as — what else? — a mermaid at the Pacific Beach Hotel’s 280,000-gallon Oceanarium to earning a spot on the U.S. national freediving team that will compete at the world championships this week in Nice, France.

Her coach, former U.S. freediving champion Craig Gentry, said de los Rios has a lot of natural ability, and he predicts that by next year she will have climbed to the No. 2 spot in the world among female freedivers.

"It’s still early in her training and it takes a while to develop the mental mindset," he said. "But I’m very impressed with her raw talent. She’ll be around for a while."

De los Rios became a scuba divemaster at age 16. Two years ago, while working as a diver cleaning the tank and feeding the 400 fish and rays in the Waikiki hotel’s three-story aquarium, she persuaded her employer to let the women on the staff dress up as mermaids and swim around the tank, entertaining diners at the Oceanarium Restaurant.

"We started doing it twice or three times a week and I got used to holding my breath. I always wanted to last longer underwater," she said.

Looking to increase her "breath hold," de los Rios spent three weeks in the Philippines studying with an American freediving instructor in June. On the second day of classes, she was able to hold her breath for 5 minutes, 50 seconds while motionless in the water, what’s known as a "static" breath hold. (She has since improved to more than 6 minutes.)

On her first dive using a monofin, a fluke-like swimming fin, she reached a depth of 45 meters (about 150 feet).

She began looking around for others who enjoy the extreme sport and connected with former world-record holder Annabel Edwards of Kona, which in turn led her to Gentry.

"I didn’t know any technical stuff until a couple months ago. I just knew that I could hold my breath for long, but that was to be a mermaid, not to go to competitions," de los Rios said.

Gentry is president of the U.S. Freediving Association and a retired Navy man who works with Performance Freediving International to train U.S. Army Special Forces Green Berets and Red Bull-sponsored big-wave surfers.

He said there are only about five serious competitors in Hawaii, which some might find surprising considering the popularity of spearfishing in the islands.

"Freedivers are different from spearfishers because they are extremists. It takes a lot of hard work and discipline. It’s self-inflicted torture," Gentry said. "You have to develop a strong will to stay submerged."

THE FREEDIVING team competition involves three disciplines: static apnea (timed breath holding), dynamic apnea (swimming underwater for distance), and constant weight apnea (diving for depth; "constant weight" means that divers are not allowed to drop any diving weights during the attempt).

Constant weight is the only discipline that is tested in the ocean, and for nondivers it plugs into almost every fear involving water.

Divers follow a line into the deep, under their own power, retrieve a tag from the line and surface — all without using the line for assistance. Gentry said as a general rule freedivers travel at a rate of 1 meter per second; so, for example, it takes 60 seconds to hit 60 meters, and another 60 seconds to return to the surface.

The constant weight apnea world record for men is 125 meters (410 feet); for women, 101 meters (331 feet).

De los Rios smiles as she explains the appeal of free-diving and what it feels like to find yourself more than 100 feet below the surface and unable to inflate your lungs because of the crushing external pressure.

"It gets dark and cold. Imagine as if something is standing on your chest and you also feel like there is no air. … You can’t push air out. Your diaphragm is pushed up so far, there is no air. It’s like a vacuum."

Because the body is under so much stress, the slightest movement can result in a tracheal tear, one of the most common injuries for competitive freedivers.

"It’s sort of fascinating. You have to concentrate so much, and any sudden movement, or even a little movement, is not good. I would love to look up to see how scary it is but you can’t," she said.

"It’s fun to see how far you can go. I guess because everything is under your control and it’s not very hard. A lot of it is doing a lot of nothing, not using energy or oxygen, toughing it out. It doesn’t feel very nice but I have to delay that feeling and stay underwater for as long as I can."

Even when discussing blackouts caused from oxygen deprivation, de los Rios seems unconcerned about the danger.

"It isn’t scary because it happens at the surface. The only thing you need is somebody there to hold you so you don’t drown, and a couple seconds later you’re OK."

GENTRY said safety and careful preparation are paramount in freediving. In addition to the physical conditioning needed to achieve the right fitness level and lean muscle mass to reduce the body’s need for oxygen while underwater, training focuses on stretching lung capacity and anaerobic drills to accustom the body to extremely low levels of oxygen and high levels of carbon dioxide. Elite divers also must master special techniques for packing air into their lungs before a dive and increasing chest flexibility.

But even then, a free-diver’s success is determined more by mental conditioning, he said.

"The biggest mental game is remaining calm when your body is doing everything it can to come up and breathe," Gentry said. "It’s a lot of mental control, taking control of your heart rate and shutting down just short of suffocating yourself."

The Pacific Beach Hotel allows de los Rios to practice in the Oceanarium, where she works with Gentry on "depth adapation training." The hotel is sponsoring her trip to the world championships in France and paid for her equipment.

She said she also trains in private pools and other hotel pools, but is sometimes asked to leave because "people get freaked out" at the sight of a motionless body submerged for minutes as a time.

As a mermaid at the Pacific Beach Hotel, de los Rios wears a costume with a silicon monofin built into the tail. There are two scuba regulators at mid-depth to allow the mermaids to snatch a breath in between gliding around the tank, throwing shakas to restaurant guests and posing for photos. The mermaid shows last 20 minutes, during which time they do not surface.

When she’s not in the tank, de los Rios is surfing, teaching Spanish at the Myron B. Thompson Academy or attending classes at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where she is working toward a teaching certificate.

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 Watch a video of Amelia de los Rios training at the Pacific Beach Hotel’s Oceanarium

>> To support the U.S. freediving team, email info@supportteamusa.org.