Jacques Mayol

Jacques Mayol, born April 1, 1927, in Shanghai, China, and died December 22, 2001, in Capoliveri, on the island of Elba, Italy, was a French freediver whose story inspired the film The Big Blue (1988).

Jacques Mayol grew up in Shanghai, in the French Concession, where his father was an architect. In the summer, the family would often travel to Karatsu, Japan, via the Shanghai-Nagasaki shipping line. It was there that he learned to dive at the age of six. He was fascinated by the “ama,” Japanese freedivers who dived for shellfish. It was also in the Nanatsugama caves that he encountered his first dolphin when he was ten years old. In the late 1930s, Japanese militarism drove Westerners away. Jacques Mayol would not return to Karatsu until 1971.

In 1939, he settled with his family in Marseille, where he was stranded due to World War II. With his brother, Pierre Mayol, he often went diving, using masks fashioned from truck inner tubes and a homemade speargun to catch a few fish. At seventeen, he decided to join the air force in Morocco but returned to Marseille in 1945. He then spent his time in the Calanques of Marseille with Albert Falco, who later became the captain of Jacques-Yves Cousteau’s Calypso. Drawn to Sweden, Jacques Mayol moved there in 1948, where he married a Danish woman, Vibeke Boje Wadsholt (or Vicky), a few years later. They had a daughter (Dottie) and a son (Jean-Jacques/Pedro), and divorced in 1957.

The family then settled in Miami (USA), where in 1955 Mayol was hired as a diver to clean the aquariums at a local water park, the Seaquarium. He spent a lot of time with a female dolphin named Clown, the mother of Flipper, the star of the famous 1960s television series. Observing her like a student observes a teacher, he managed to improve his freediving skills. In 1966, he met the Italian Enzo Maiorca in the Bahamas, breaking his personal best with a dive to 60 meters. He became the first diver in the world to reach a depth of 100 meters on a single breath, in November 1976, in the waters off the island of Elba, and then reached 105 meters in 1983, a feat that would remain iconic for many years. He was interested in the physiology of diving, practiced gymnastics, yoga, and meditation, seeking to better understand how the human body adapts to immersion. When he dived, Mayol surprised scientists because his heart rate could drop from 70 to 20 beats per minute; this bradycardia should have caused him to faint.

Jacques Mayol, who paved the way for many freedivers, conceived of diving not as a simple sport, but as a physical and spiritual experience.

In 1983, he met Luc Besson, who presented him with his film project, The Big Blue. The fictionalized character of Jacques Mayol was portrayed by Jean-Marc Barr. His rivalry with Enzo Maiorca (named Enzo Molinari in the film and played by Jean Reno) is a recurring theme.

According to Umberto Pelizzari, he was consumed by loneliness and had been depressed for several months. He took his own life on December 22, 2001, at his home in Calone on the island of Elba, where he had lived for over thirty years. His ashes were scattered off the coast of Tuscany.