«I love Montecristo intensely, this truly wild island in the Mediterranean, this natural reserve protected from the dirty hands of the Technological Man. It represents, for me, a symbol of purity and virginity, a welcoming oasis in the middle of that desert which is the way of life of our type of civilization ». It is November 22, 1976 when Jacques Mayol, a legendary freediver pluri-primatist, wrote these words. He is the Dolphin Man, a definition that is sewn onto his skin, and which will give the title to his book published in 1979 (Homo Delphinus) by Giunti Editore, then republished in 2002 by the same publishing house. Those "dirty hands of the Technological Man" today, after almost half a century, weigh like a boulder on the consciences of the Planet.
Mayol, in some way forerunner and precursor of that environmentalist sensitivity that will characterize public opinion to this day, tells of Montecristo while on the beach of Pareti in Capoliveri, where he has lived for years, on the Island of Elba. He reveals that the land that emerged in the blue where he trains is his good luck charm, "a sign of good luck" in the four years of deep diving experiments. Today, 20 years after his death, the precious ethical, philosophical and human teaching of the great philosopher of the depths is increasingly topical.
THE EXPLORER. The eternal rival of Enzo Maiorca and teacher of Umberto Pellizzari, was a true intellectual of the submerged Blue, a philosopher of the abyss like no other, explorer of the human being, of his aquatic abilities and of his origins. A lifelong research that led him to discover the ancient bond of man with the other animals of the water planet, in particular the dolphins «those mischievous children of the sea, our brothers», writes Mayol. Together with Mallorca, it helped to dispel how erroneously, up to the mid-1960s, was held regarding the human limits of descent. That is, beyond a certain depth (over 40 meters), our chest would be crushed by hydrostatic pressure. Mayol, observing marine mammals, realizes that this is not the case and so thanks also to his sporting performances, he pushes medical research to discover the so-called bloodshift, the blood slip, that physiological reaction that unites man with aquatic mammals: in practice the '' increase in the volume of blood (incompressible like all liquids) in the alveolar capillaries, avoids the crushing of the chest. It will be the dolphins who will teach him the secrets of freediving, the voluntary (or involuntary) interruption of breathing. Among all his beloved teacher-sister. It was called Clown. "The dolphin, or should I say Clown, the dolphin, because it was, as you will see, a female in the broadest sense of the word," he says in the book.
