Blue Planet Divers on Koh Lanta, one of Thailand's best islands for great scuba diving, will be offering freediving lessons from the beginning of the new dive season in October

That's free diving as in diving without scuba gear The Big Blue style, not getting scuba lessons for free! Freediving (also known as apnea) has been getting an increasing profile in the last few years with the world records set by the likes of Umberto Pelizzari and Tanya Streeter.

If you want to try freediving, there are beginners courses already been offered in the UK (see Free Diving - A Beginners Guide) - but it's probably a lot more fun to try out in sunny Thailand.

Blue Planet Divers on Koh Lanta, Thailand will be offering free diving courses from October. Here's what they say: "Blue Planet will offer Freediving (apnea) courses from the International organization AIDA recognized in over 40 countries. Blue Planet is the only dive center that will offer this type of diving activity in Thailand. Francois Gautier, Instructor trainer for the past 7 years and main organizer for all AIDA competitions, joins the team to teach all courses - from beginners to Instructor training. A great pleasure for us all !"

There's a full page of information about free diving and the free diving courses offered by Blue Planet Divers on their website.

I've scuba dived a couple of times with Blue Planet Divers and always enjoyed being on their boat - it was while diving with them that I had my near mystical experience seeing 5 manta rays and a whale shark in one dive - detailed in my piece about Scuba Diving on Koh Lanta. I'll be interested to hear how their freediving venture progresses.

Ever wondered what it's like to try free diving? Turns out learning how to hold your breath for a long time is just the start of it.

Journalist Kate Rew gives an interesting account of trying free diving for the first time, deep within the glamourous confines of the 30 metres deep submarine escape tank in Gosport, England. The tank training is part of a comprehensive free diving course run by a company called Deeper Blue, who also organise trips for free divers to Egypt.

Freediving is a peculiar sport and this is its first skill: being able to stay under the water for long periods on just one lungful of air. Many fish stop at 25 metres but champion freedivers go to more than 150m, a depth at which water pressure compresses lungs to the size of a fist and they fill with blood plasma.

It sounds hellish, but it allows you to explore underwater without the noise and bulk of scuba kit and so get far closer to the fish. I'm on a new weekend course just outside Portsmouth run by Deeper Blue. It is designed to teach the basics of the sport, and those who take to it can move on to the company's longer courses in Dahab, Egypt. Real devotees talk about the sport in almost spiritual terms. 'It gets cold and dark down there,' says Emma Farrell, the freediver running the course. 'It turns you in on yourself. It's a bit like an acid trip - whatever your normal mindset is, is intensified.'

You can read the full article in The Observer.

Funnily enough, I met Kate on a diving press trip in Borneo a couple of years ago - she's the one in the photo at Mataking.

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