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 Nicholas Mevoli, who lived in the city's Brooklyn borough, died
around 2 p.m. off the coast of the Bahamas' Long Island, about 164
miles (265 kilometers) southeast of the capital of Nassau, officials
said. His body was flown to Nassau, where an autopsy was expected.
The Switzerland-based Association Internationale pour le
Développement de l'Apnée, or AIDA, a worldwide federation for
breath-holding diving, released a statement Sunday saying Mevoli
reached the 72-meter depth of the no fins dive, swam back to the
surface but had difficulty breathing while completing surface
protocol and lost consciousness.
"Nick appears to have suffered from a depth-related injury to his
lungs," the AIDA statement said.
Freedivers, unlike scuba divers, enter the water without air tanks,
regulators and hoses and swim to various depths relying entirely on
the air held in their lungs.
Mevoli's uncle, Paul Mevoli, said Sunday his nephew was a free
spirit who grew up loving swimming and got hooked on diving as an
8-year-old boy on trips to the Florida Keys, where he would
spearfish and dive for lobsters.
"Nobody could do what he did under the water," said Paul Mevoli, 55,
a dentist in St. Petersburg, Fla.
It would take Nicholas Mevoli about 2 minutes and 45 seconds to dive
down and back up 300 feet (91.4 meters) of water in just one breath,
his uncle said.
"He was very talented," said Paul Mevoli. "Even the people in the
freediving world couldn't believe his skill."
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Nicholas Mevoli was a Florida native who worked
in the television industry in New York and was writing a
screenplay about a young man on a boat and his adventures in the
Florida Keys, his uncle said.
William Trubridge, organizer of the tournament, said Mevoli was
trying to break a record for the deepest "Constant No Fins"
freedive at the International Free Diving Competition, a
nine-day contest that organizers say brought 56 divers from 21
countries. They were competing for a $20,000 prize as they tried
to see who could dive the deepest without fins.
The event was canceled after Mevoli's death, Trubridge said.
Mevoli was an accomplished freediver, winning or placing highly
in various international freediving tournaments, including the
top prize in the Deja Blue competition in Curaçao earlier this
year and a silver medal in constant no fins at the AIDA Depth
World Championship in Greece, according to the AIDA.
The Bahamas competition took place at Dean's Blue Hole, which at
663 feet (202 meters), is considered the world's deepest
underwater sinkhole in seawater.
[Associated
Press; JAKE PEARSON]
Associated Press writer
Trenton Daniel in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, contributed to this report.
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