The ocean is in my veins

Joshua Beneventi · Founder & Instructor · AIDA Profile ↗

Roots

My grandmother's family came to San Diego from Pico in the Azores. My great-grandfather worked whaling and on boats his whole life before settling here to fish tuna. My uncles, my grandfather — they all worked the tuna boats at some point. On the other side, my grandfather used to freedive for abalone right here in La Jolla and bodysurfed his whole life. The ocean wasn't something anyone in my family chose. It was just what we did.

I grew up in Point Loma and Ocean Beach, four blocks from the water. Sunset Cliffs was where I went when I needed to feel something or stop feeling something. In high school I was spearfishing off Point Loma with friends. Eventually I picked up a longboard. The water was always there, pulling me back.

The first freediving club in the United States was founded in La Jolla in 1939 — by people who probably weren't that different from the people in my family. Watermen. Fishermen. People who understood that the ocean gives you something you can't get on land. Almost a century later, La Jolla Freedive Club exists because that pull never went away.

Finding freediving

In 2023, after years of traveling and a period living in a Thai forest monastery, I found myself with nothing on my calendar for the first time in my life. No plan, no obligations, no next thing. So I asked a question I'd never given myself permission to ask: what have I always wanted to do but never made time for?

Freediving.

I flew to Tioman Island in Malaysia and took my first course at Freedive Tioman with Stella Abbas — the Malaysian national record holder. I stayed for a month, mostly wrestling with equalization, which humbled me completely. At some point Stella said something that changed everything: “I think this sport is for you. You should pursue it further.” I asked her where to go. She said Dahab — the Mecca of freediving. So I went.

With Stella Abbas at the Blue Hole, Dahab — reunited after Tioman

Dahab

Dahab is a small town on the Red Sea coast of Egypt's Sinai Peninsula. It's where the world's best freedivers train, and it's where I fell completely in love with this sport. I completed my AIDA 3 with Pieter Van Veen, trained at the Lighthouse, dove the Blue Hole, and found a community of people who understood what I was only beginning to feel — that freediving isn't just an activity. It's a practice.

I came back to the States and trained with Harry Chamas at Freedive Passion in La Ventana, Baja California — one of the top coaching facilities in the world. Then, in 2025, I went back to Dahab for three months. I completed my AIDA 4 and earned my AIDA Instructor and Youth Instructor certifications under Khaled El Gammal — Egypt's deepest freediver, the first Egyptian to break 100 meters on a single breath, and a 13-time national record holder. Training under Khaled at the Lighthouse and the Blue Hole gave me something no textbook could — an understanding of what it means to hold space for someone at the edge of what they think they're capable of.

With Khaled El Gammal at the Lighthouse, Dahab

With Khaled and Hannah at the Blue Hole, Dahab

Back home

I came back to San Diego in September 2025 and put my line in the water at La Jolla Shores. I'm now the only AIDA-certified freediving instructor in San Diego — for both adults and kids.

La Jolla Freedive Club is the thing I wish had existed when I was growing up here. A crew. A training structure. A place where a kid learning to hold their breath and an adult working on equalization are both welcome and both pushed. Not a certification mill. A community.

Post-session with the Saturday crew

One of the things I care most about is creating access to the ocean for young people. Too many kids grow up near the coast without ever developing a real relationship with the water. That's why Camp Garibaldi exists — to give kids the tools to be genuinely confident in the ocean, not just comfortable. Breath control, water safety, freediving fundamentals, all through a methodology that builds internal composure before external skills. Watching a kid go from nervous about waves to duck diving on their own is the best part of what I do.

Poolside breathing drills

Post-session at Mission Bay

The philosophy

I see freediving as an embodied practice — not just a sport. When you hold your breath and descend into dark water, you're working with surrender, with fear, with the unknown. You're confronting your own nervous system and learning to find calm inside discomfort. That's not just a diving skill. That's a life skill.

But we don't sit around talking about it. We train like athletes. Breathing drills, CO2 tables, equalization work, safety protocols, progressive depth exposure. The science is rigorous. The methodology is structured. And underneath all of it is a simple belief: when you learn to control your breath, everything else follows.

For a deeper exploration of this philosophy, read The Depths of Thought: Freediving, Forms, and the Return to Origin — written during my instructor training in Dahab.