Heart of the Nation: Coral Bay 6701
It looks like freediver Katja Loerz is swimming through a silver hoop, right? In fact, it’s nothing of the sort...
It looks like a silver hoop that she’s swimming through, doesn’t it? In fact it’s not a solid object – or even an object at all. It’s a “bubble ring” created by freediver Katja Loerz with her own breath: a curious, circular tube of air that grows in circumference and thins as it rises, becoming ever more fragile. It takes skill to blow a bubble ring (her instructions are below, should you wish to try), and even more skill to then manoeuvre your body through it, as Loerz is doing here with mermaid-like grace. “If you touch the ring, it breaks instantly,” she says.
The 21-year-old German backpacker lobbed in Coral Bay, WA, during a gap year that has turned into three, including stints as an au pair in Sydney and a FIFO kitchen hand in the Pilbara mines. She meant to stay in Coral Bay for only a night or two, but was so enamoured of the place – you can swim out to Ningaloo Reef from its dazzling white beaches – that she stayed for six months. Resident photographer Daniel Nicholson befriended her, and introduced her to freediving; it turned out she was a natural. “I just feel calm underwater,” she says. “It’s like floating in space.”
Loerz and Nicholson shared many adventures at Coral Bay, freediving with whale sharks, manta rays and humpback whales – and making cool images with bubble rings. “I taught myself how to do it after seeing videos on Instagram,” she says. Her tips? Lie on your back on the seabed; puff your cheeks and poke your tongue out, as if blowing a raspberry; then quickly expel that air in your cheeks while simultaneously drawing your tongue back in. Voilà, a bubble ring is born. Or not. “It takes a lot of practice,” she says.
Loerz has since moved on – she’s now a dive guide at Jurien Bay, north of Perth – but Nicholson, 31, is still in the thrall of Coral Bay, working as a photographer on the tourist dive boats while studying remotely for a degree in marine science. He, too, intended to stay only a few nights on his travels. “A year and a half later, I’m still here!”