The Deep Dive — Luna’s Echo

Twilight zone · sunlight fades

Midnight zone · total darkness

40 m

A recreational scuba diver

About as deep as a holiday diver goes, even with a full tank of air on their back.

214 m

The human freediving record

Herbert Nitsch’s “no limits” dive in 2007: one breath, pulled down by a weighted sled. For most whales this is still the shallow end.

300–315 m

Bottlenose dolphin & blue whale

Two very different animals at the same depth. Trained bottlenose dolphins have reached about 300 m. Blue whales usually feed at around 200 m, but the deepest dive measured in tagged blue whales was 315 m.

767 m

Orca

Orcinus orca

The deepest killer whale dive on record, measured with a tag near Marion Island in the Southern Ocean.

1,800 m +

Narwhal

Monodon monoceros

In winter, narwhals dive to the bottom of Baffin Bay, more than 1,800 m down, to hunt Greenland halibut beneath the sea ice. Then they have to find their way back to a crack in the ice to breathe.

~2,000 m

Sperm whale

Physeter macrocephalus

Hunts squid in total darkness by echolocation. Most dives go to 400–1,200 m and last around 45 minutes, but dives to around 2,000 m have been measured.

2,992 m

Cuvier’s beaked whale

Ziphius cavirostris

The deepest-diving mammal known. One tagged off California reached almost 3 km, and another held its breath for 3 hours and 42 minutes.

~3,800 m

The wreck of the Titanic

No cetacean has been recorded this deep. Only submersibles come down here.

Time to breathe

Every one of these animals has to make it all the way back up on the same breath. Lesson 2 of Module 1 explains how they do it.

Read “Built for water”