# life: Sea Nomads freediving skills (they free dive up to 70 meters deep)

<< Understanding the physiology and genetics of human hypoxia tolerance  has important medical implications, but this phenomenon has thus far only been investigated in high-altitude human populations. Another system, yet to be explored, is humans who engage in breath-hold diving. The indigenous Bajau people (“Sea Nomads”) of Southeast Asia live a subsistence lifestyle based on breath-hold diving and are renowned for their extraordinary breath-holding abilities >>

<< the Bajau, and possibly other diving populations, provide a new opportunity to study human adaptation to hypoxia tolerance >>

Melissa A. Ilardo, Ida Moltke, et al. Physiological and Genetic Adaptations to Diving in Sea Nomads.
Cell. 2018; 173 (3): 569 - 80.e15. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2018.03.054. Apr 19, 2018.

http://www.cell.com/cell/abstract/S0092-8674(18)30386-6

<< Members of the Bajau can dive up to 70 meters with nothing more than a set of weights and a pair of wooden goggles >>

<< As they never dive competitively it is uncertain exactly how long the Bajau can remain underwater, but one of them told researcher Melissa Ilardo that he had once dived for 13 minutes consecutively >>

University of Cambridge. Genetic adaptations to diving discovered in humans for the first time. Apr 19, 2018.

https://m.phys.org/news/2018-04-genetic-humans.html