Jacques Mayol

Jacques Mayol (born April 1, 1927 in Shanghai , † December 22, 2001 in Capoliveri on Elba ) was a French freediver . As he swam a lot with dolphins, both professionally and privately , he was also known as a dolphin man .

Life

Jacques Mayol was the son of a French architect and grew up in China. During his summer vacation in Japan, he swam with dolphins for the first time as a boy. He also watched the Japanese Ama divers harvest oysters with underwater apnea diving.

Mayol was the first diver to reach a depth of more than 100 meters without a breathing apparatus on November 23, 1976. He held several world records in apnea diving. These performances were an inspiration for Luc Besson's diving drama Im Rausch deriefen ( Le Grand Bleu / The Big Blue ).

His diving technique was less based on muscle training and maximizing air storage for the descent, but more on psychological preparation and concentration on the dive. Mayol visited the Kaivalyadhama Yoga Research Institute in Lonavla ( Pune District ) in Maharashtra in the 1960s to learn the breathing techniques and physical exercises of Pranayama Yoga from the doctor Mukund Bhole. He was the first diver to introduce yoga to apnea diving.

Early on, Mayol combined his passion for diving with his interest in underwater archeology and in legendary, lost cultures. In the Mediterranean Sea , off the coast of Marseille , he examined a suspected ruin complex in the shallows of Veyron, undertook diving excursions to the Bimini Road ( Bahamas ) and to underwater sites near the Canary Islands and to the Yonaguni Monument in the East China Sea .

In the 1990s Mayol was a role model and friend for the world-class apnoist Umberto Pelizzari , and Mayol moved into retirement near him on the island of Elba over the Mediterranean coast.

In 2000 he published his biography Homo Delphinus: The Dolphin Within Man.

As he got older, Pelizzari began to notice he became more and more depressed, which eventually led to Mayol's suicide by hanging just before Christmas 2001 in his apartment. The depression began after the violent death of his second (German) wife Gerda during a robbery in a supermarket in Gainesville (Florida) , where she was stabbed by a junkie in January 1975 and Jacques Mayol himself was seriously injured. He left a son and a daughter from his first marriage. His ashes were scattered off the coast of Tuscany .

In his memory, a memorial was sunk off the coast of his place of residence on Elba, where he lived for 30 years. This monument is located at a depth of approx. 16 m in the southeast of Elba.

Movie

Jacques Mayol, Dolphin Man. With one breath into the depth. (OT: Jacques Mayol - L'homme dauphin. ) Documentary, France, Greece, 2017, 58:03 min., Book: Yuri Averof and Lefteris Charitos, director: Lefteris Charitos, German speaker: Philipp Moog , production: Anemon Productions, Storyline entertainment, Les Films du Balibari, arte France, Wowow , Greek Film Center, ERT , first broadcast: September 30, 2017 on arte, table of contents by ARD .

Web links

Biography of Dieter Wunderlich
Diving legend commits suicide. In: BBC , December 24, 2001, obituary.
Jacques Mayol: Intoxication of the Deep. In: arte , September 18, 2017.
I Cerchi nel grande blu di Jacques Mayol. In: Mare magazine, April 5, 2012, (Italian).

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b ^c Film content: Jacques Mayol, Dolphin Man. With one breath into the depth. In: ARD / arte , September 30, 2017.
^ Jacques Mayol: L'uomo delfino. Storia e fascino dell'apnea , ISBN 978-88-09-02938-5 , p. 119.
↑ Jacques Mayol - Atlantisforschung.de. In: Atlantisforschung.de. Retrieved March 8, 2020 .
↑ Jacques Mayol: Intoxication of the Deep. In: arte , September 18, 2017.
^ Robert Charroux , Das Rätsel der Anden , Verlag Goldmann (TB series 'Grenzwissenschaften'), 1979, chap. "Pierre Vogel finds a sunken city" and "Homer's Basilea"
↑ Jaques Mayol - Lost World of Okinawa. ( Memento of March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ). In: Idelson Gnocchi Publisher .
↑ Jacques Mayol, Enrico Amaducci, Steven Sachs: Homo Delphinus: The Dolphin Within Man. Idelson-Gnocchi Publishers, Reddick, FL 2000, ISBN 1-928649-03-3 .

personal data
SURNAME	Mayol, Jacques
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	French apnea diver
DATE OF BIRTH	April 1, 1927
PLACE OF BIRTH	Shanghai
DATE OF DEATH	December 22, 2001
Place of death	Capoliveri

[arte-1] Film content: Jacques Mayol, Dolphin Man. With one breath into the depth. In: ARD / arte , September 30, 2017.

[2] Jacques Mayol: L'uomo delfino. Storia e fascino dell'apnea , ISBN 978-88-09-02938-5 , p. 119.

[3] Jacques Mayol - Atlantisforschung.de. In: Atlantisforschung.de. Retrieved March 8, 2020 .

[4] Jacques Mayol: Intoxication of the Deep. In: arte , September 18, 2017.

[5] Robert Charroux , Das Rätsel der Anden , Verlag Goldmann (TB series 'Grenzwissenschaften'), 1979, chap. "Pierre Vogel finds a sunken city" and "Homer's Basilea"

[6] Jaques Mayol - Lost World of Okinawa. ( Memento of March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ). In: Idelson Gnocchi Publisher .

[7] Jacques Mayol, Enrico Amaducci, Steven Sachs: Homo Delphinus: The Dolphin Within Man. Idelson-Gnocchi Publishers, Reddick, FL 2000, ISBN 1-928649-03-3 .