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 seve...