As a child, Etrella Navarro never harbored aspirations to swim deep into the ocean’s abyss. She was simply exercising in a pool six years ago when freediving instructor Aharon Solomons scouted her. When he witnessed her ease — Navarro, thanks to her swim-coach father, learned to stay afloat as a 1-year-old — he mentioned that learning to equalize her ears would make her a freedive champion. Navarro immediately began training. Three months later, she broke a record for Mexico, her home country. This past May, at the Vertical Blue competition in the Bahamas, she set another: Powered only by a monofin, she dived 240 feet into the deep, dense blue.

Q: When you freedive, what do you think about?

Navarro: It depends. Before the Vertical Blue competition started, I did a night dive on scuba in Dean’s Blue Hole. Even during the day, the site is very dark because it’s walled in. The night I was diving, bioluminescence filled the sea. I kept moving my hands to activate it, and it was like I was creating stars underwater. And overhead, the sky was full of stars. So as I competed in Dean’s Blue Hole during the day, I was recalling those images, those stars. It felt like I was diving though the universe.

Q: You’re often deep in the ocean, all alone. What’s that like?

Navarro: When your lungs become depressed [from pressure] and you become heavier, you don’t need to swim. That is the freefall. It’s the most relaxed part of any dive, and it’s the part I enjoy the most because I’m at my most relaxed. I feel connected to my body and to the ocean. The water inside my body and the water outside become one. And the skin just vanishes, so to speak.

Q: That sounds peaceful. Is freediving ever not peaceful for you?

Navarro: About 80 percent of the time, I’m fearful before a deep dive. The first time I went to 230 feet, I kept thinking how far that is — it’s the same height as a building. I thought about how I was going to that depth by myself, into darkness. To control the fear, I said to myself: “It’s just a number, and the number doesn’t matter. You are just going into the ocean, like you usually do, and you know how to do this.” Besides, I’ve learned that once my face is in the water, the fear disappears.

Q: You spend so much time freediving, and yet, you also scuba dive. Why?

Navarro: With freediving, you have just a couple of minutes underwater. But with scuba, you have an hour or so before you have to go up again. For me, scuba is like going into an underwater garden. You have so much time to admire the sea fans and soft corals, which look like trees of color — of red, of purple. When I freedive, it’s like a dive into myself, but when I scuba, it’s a dive into nature.

Q: What do you find most challenging about modeling underwater?

Navarro: To be in a photo with a coral reef, it needs to be behind you, and you face the camera. So you have to pretend. You show the camera all that happiness from seeing the reef, even though you’re not looking at it. It’s a challenge not to turn toward all that beauty.

Q: What has been your favorite underwater encounter?

Navarro: There’s a place in Mexico’s Revillagigedo Islands [in the Pacific Ocean] that I really love called Roca Partida. It’s surrounded by sharks and mantas. I was scuba diving at 60 feet, and this manta stayed near me for 40 minutes — almost the entire dive! I think it liked the bubbles on its ventral area. When I had to head back to the boat, the manta followed me to the surface. Perhaps it wanted to keep playing. I took off my equipment, staying shallow at 15 feet. The manta liked the company so much that even after I surfaced, it stayed. It was an amazing experience.

Q: You’ve mentioned that being in the ocean makes you feel like a kid again. How so?

Navarro: When I was young, I played outside. At that age, everything was new. And everything was surprising. Now, as an adult, being underwater is like that — it’s a totally different world. So much of what happens underwater feels so new that I feel that sensation — like I’m a kid again filled with wonder.

Shining Star

Competitive freediving aside, Estrella Navarro has gotten her feet wet in a variety of fields. She works as an underwater and fashion model, with spots on magazine covers and the runway as 2008 Miss Baja Sur on her resume. Navarro is also a published marine biologist who focused on shark biology and ecology after earning a degree from the Autonomous University of Baja California.

Want to see the magical world of freediving? Check out these videos: Freediving in Space | Freediving off South Florida