Today’s lead story brings to mind a Bruce Springsteen chorus. I’m going down, down, down, down. I’m going down, down, down, down. I’m going down, down, down, down. I’m going down, down, down, down. In the song, going down is perceived, as it often is, as a negative. But for freedivers, it’s a goal, even if that trek is much more ominous than the one traveled by Springsteen’s protagonist. Which brings us to Vertical Blue, “the Wimbledon of freediving … For all the complex techniques required to succeed, the objective is remarkably simple: Go as deep as you can go on one breath and return to the surface without passing out or dying.” Sink into this beautifully written deep dive by Daniel Riley in GQ: The Secrets of The World’s Greatest Freediver. “Today, there is one diver who goes the deepest, who blends the physical and metaphysical like no one else in the sport. Watching the 34-year-old Russian Alexey Molchanov dive can be dangerously disorienting. Seemingly anyone else attempting what he does would die. It is like watching the world’s best rock climber scale a sheer face with ease, only the inverse. That’s one way to think of what he’s doing: Free Solo but for drowning. Free Solo but down. And no one alive goes down like Alexey Molchanov.” (That’s what sea said.)

+ While we’re down here, let’s check out the Ocean Photographer of the Year 2021 winners.