Rapture of the Deep.

SKIN diving accidents; SKIN divers; FERRERAS, Pipin; MESTRE, Audrey; SKIN diving; DEEP diving; DIVING; SPORTS accidents

Focuses on Pipín Ferraras, a free diver, whose wife died when the two were free diving. Yes, we could start by asking how it happens that the last thing a man in the midst of such grief should be doing becomes his only way out of it and why--here, today, a few billion years into the evolution of life on earth -- we have come to this, the ritualized risking of death: extreme sports. Who could Audrey Mestre turn to and tell what was stirring inside her? Coming to Cabo San Lucas, the poster said, to attempt another world-record dive, just a few hours' drive away. Audrey watched, close up, as he slid into the water and ventilated to prepare for his dive, his lungs and windpipe producing the sound of a bicycle tire being pumped with air: in with the oxygen he'd need to last for nearly three minutes and the 858 feet of water, round-trip, he hoped to cover. She knew by heart the religion's history, how man for centuries had been diving for sponge and fish and pearls until Raimondo Bucher, a Hungarian air force officer naturalized as an Italian citizen, dived 30 meters on a dare in 1949.