The ocean is such a vast place, with many either curious or terrified to explore its depths - but what exactly happens to our body when free diving?
No breathing equipment is used in free diving and people instead rely on breath-holding until resurfacing from the water.
A video has recently gone viral on Reddit where a free diver has explained the physics of it all.
Essentially, the deeper you dive the higher the pressure and while we all float on the surface, there is a depth at which humans begin to sink.
At the start of the clip, a man holds a lifeline rope with the question in a bubble which reads: "At what depth do I start sinking underwater?"
He then goes on to demonstrate himself at different depths while holding the rope as a point of reference, at 16ft underwater the man can float and rise to the surface, by 32ft he can do the same but a "little less".
By 40ft, he is "perfectly neutral" but this soon changes when he gets to 50ft as the freediver starts to sink at this point.
The sinking gets even more definitive at 65ft as the rate at which the man plummets increases.
from woahthatsinteresting
"If you descend only 10m into the ocean, you are subjected to another additional atmosphere of pressure: that’s twice as much pressure as you’ve been used to at the surface," Kevin Fong explained in his article " Free divers have long defied science – and we still don’t really understand how they go so deep."
"And for every 10m beyond you get another atmosphere of pressure. That starts to manipulate your body, your anatomy and your physiology in quite profound ways, which actually make the endeavour of diving into the deep ocean uniquely difficult."
He added that this can "compress you and shrink the air-containing spaces in your body" and also alters "your physiology" as well as "the way the gases act within your bloodstream" and "how they act on everything, including your nervous system."
Meanwhile, people have shared their astonishment in the comments section of the viral explainer video on Reddit.
One person said: "WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU SINK WHEN YOU GO DEEPER WHAT THE F***".
"I had no idea this was a thing and I just became slightly more afraid of the ocean," another person wrote.
Someone else added: "Such a simple thing to give me nightmares."
"Well I wasn't scared of water before now I'm terrified thanks," a fourth person commented.
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