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We all know that old saying: “do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life!”. Wouldn't it be great to do what you love every day and get paid for doing it?
Well, it's possible to turn freediving into a career, and there are more ways than one! Lily Crespy explains.
The most obvious way of course is to become an instructor and to teach freediving as a profession. With an ever-growing demand, long waiting lists in freediving clubs around the world, there are definitely many future students waiting to find their perfect instructor, and that could be you!
If that sounds appealing to you, make sure you dedicate plenty of time to your own diving and progression first, so you acquire an instructor-level technique and are confident with long and deep breath-holds before you even sign up for your instructor course. Any instructor candidate should be able to dive comfortably to a range of 40 to 50 meters deep, hold their breath for over 4 minutes, and swim 90 meters dynamic, all of that with great technique, bi-fins, and mask, and should be capable of doing those performances on any given day (i.e., even if it's wavy, even if there wasn't time to do a 30-minute stretching routine before, and even if you don't get more than two minutes of breathe-up time before your dive).
Once you feel ready, take time to ask around for recommendations on which instructor trainer to go with. The instructor trainer is more important than the teaching system, the price, or the geographical location where you will take your course. Make sure it's someone experienced, with strong credentials, a good reputation in the freediving community, and great recommendations.
You're ready to go! The instructor course is a challenging course, but also extremely rewarding! You will learn how to teach skills, how to organize your courses, how to run a classroom session, how to keep your students safe at all times, you will learn about students' psychology, common mistakes, and how to fix them. It is an intense and challenging course, but you will learn more there than in any other freediving course that you did so far!
That's it, now jump in and start teaching! Trust me there is nothing quite like the feeling of transmitting your passion to others, seeing students come up with a huge smile on their face after a successful dive, or hearing them tell you they are hooked and want to sign up for the next level after their course!
Another way of making a living through freediving is to become an underwater photographer. This means you should of course enjoy photography and be good at it already. Hopefully, you have some knowledge and experience on land, because when you're holding your breath, you don't really have time to fiddle around with your camera to decide on the correct aperture or shutter speed – these things should already feel automatic for you. Even better if you already tried taking pictures while scuba-diving.
Of course, you will need to invest quite a lot of money on photography gear: from the camera to the lenses, and the expensive underwater casing and domes, let's be honest, it is quite a budget. But see it as an investment, and if you take good care of your kit, it will last you for years, if not for your whole life. Ask around for recommendations on brands and models. Don't rush, take your time to hunt around on photography forums, or even asking professional photographers: you never know, they might want to upgrade their kit and you could find the perfect starter-pack ready to go for a great price!
The amazing advantage of taking underwater pictures while freediving is that without a scuba tank, you are much freer to move around in all directions, quick to adjust your position to get the shot, and you don't have to worry too much about coming up too fast or breaking your neutral buoyancy while you get lost in what you're doing – guess what, in freediving, it doesn't matter! Also, you are not making bubbles or noise, which means you can get much closer to wildlife to capture the super-cool shots nobody else would get with a tank!
A good idea is probably to take a course with someone who is already an underwater photographer, and preferably someone already doing it on breath-hold. They will give you all the tips that you learn only through years of experience, like how to adjust your weighting, how to do a duck-dive with camera in hand, how to deal with equalization, what you need to beware of in terms of lighting, safety, position in the water, how to edit underwater pictures, etc.
In the same line of work, you can also decide to market yourself as an underwater model or mermaid. From professional photo and video shoots for advertising brands, music videos, to being a mermaid for kids' parties or working as an attraction in a big aquarium, there are plenty of opportunities in this field and not many people with the skills to do it. Beware, this requires a strong breath-hold, sinuses made of steel, and an ability to look relaxed and natural while holding your breath without any facial equipment.
Another very cool way to earn money as a freediver is also to work as a guide for freediving safaris. Organizing day-trips or week- or month-long safaris to see and freedive with wild animals such as dolphins, whales, orcas, sharks and all the other cool creatures of the sea, is something that is very much in demand among freedivers and underwater photographers and videographers of all levels. You need of course good knowledge of the dive spot, the period of the year when is best to go. You will also need strong connections locally with boat captains, dive schools, travel agents, and more in order to organize your trip smoothly, efficiently, at the lowest possible cost, and to have the highest chance of spotting wildlife with your customers.
Once you have done the background research and work, all that's left is to pick a date, advertise, get the bookings, meet your customers on-site, then cross your fingers that the stars will align to give you all the underwater encounters and memories of a lifetime.
If you have some design or engineering skills, you can also use your freediving knowledge to start a new brand of freediving equipment. Who better than an experienced freediver to know what freedivers out there need and want? It takes a lot of creativity, time, and money of course to invest in creating the perfect product. But if you have THE revolutionary idea, this could be the first step on the road to great success.
Finally, you can of course decide to make a living out of freediving as an athlete. If you have the talent and the motivation and dedication to work hard and reach top-level then you could earn a living through sponsorships and get to train freediving year-round as a job! So grab your carbon fins, put your wetsuit on and start training my friend!