Cheating death in the deep

William Trubridge will attempt to dive to a world record 84m at Dean's Blue Hole in the Bahamas. Photo / Richard Robinson

Freediver William Trubridge, once the 'world's deepest man', will this year attempt to descend to even greater depths for a new world record

Every day, William Trubridge thinks about dying.

He's a fit, talented young New Zealander, living between the Bahamas and Italy, teaching people to share the activity he's passionate about, and swimming every day in some of the world's bluest, clearest water.

But Trubridge is a freediver, and that means it's a dark idyll.

Death can never be far from his thoughts.

Freediving is essentially scuba without all the gear. In nothing but a pair of togs - or a wetsuit if it's chilly - Trubridge strides into the water, takes several breaths as calmly as he can, makes a little duck-dive and and begins swimming downwards.

After the first 20 metres or so, Trubridge's body loses its buoyancy and the sea starts pulling him down.

He no longer needs to swim, he just plummets into the darkness headfirst, arms flat by his sides. Everything is silent. Inside his head, Trubridge sings to himself, or counts.

Down, down he goes. Sometimes there's a voice in his head, whispering.

"Today's not the day," it says, or "You're mad, this is mad, you've gone too far."

On the surface, his supporters are waiting in scuba gear, ready to dive down and rescue him should he lose consciousness.

Then, suddenly, Trubridge stops.

He somersaults and begins swimming back up again. It's agony at first - he's so deep, and so heavy, that every stroke requires massive effort. It's a graceful breastroke, his long limbs arcing his body upwards.

To the fish, and the scuba diver holding a video camera nearby, there's no indication Trubridge's body is starving for oxygen; no sign of panic, no urgency on his face.

As he gets closer to the surface, he becomes more buoyant, lessening the intensity of each stroke.

Eventually, after four or five minutes without a breath, he bursts through the surface, gulping air into his lungs, hanging on to an inflatable ring and - if he has set a new world record - beaming with delight.

"You have to accept the idea, while you're descending, that if you keep going down, it will kill you. On the way down you have to completely accept that idea, that you're killing yourself," 28-year-old Trubridge says on a brilliant Auckland day.

"Without wanting to sound too morbid, it's like taking as big a step as you dare to the underworld across that line. When you turn around at the bottom and come back up, your will to live has to match equally the extent to which you have been prepared to kill yourself."

He's sitting in a cafe in Newmarket, wearing shorts and a T-shirt, gazing into the middle-distance.

"It's about the balance between life and death," he says.

For a while, Trubridge was officially the world's deepest man - in an athletic sense as well as a philosophical one.