Freediving is one of the most dangerous sports in the world and it gets even more dangerous when a diver loses his flipper and nearly his flashlight.

That is what happened to a freediver named Diego as he made his way down Jacob’s Well, a natural spring in southern Texas.

Freedivers hold their breath while they descend underwater with the help of a weighted diving belt and flippers. Essentially, the freediver is scuba diving, but without the air tank.

Diego was trying to freedive in the 140-foot deep, clear blue waters at Jacob’s Well when disaster struck.

As he tried to get into the well’s third chamber, about 100 feet below the surface, Diego lost one of his flippers. As he struggled to push off the wall, his flashlight nearly fell off his wrist.

Amazingly, Diego didn’t panic as he turned around, found the chamber’s exit, and cut off his weight belt, which allowed him to safely rise to the surface.

If Diego hadn’t been so calm, cool and collected, he probably would have died because without his flipper he wouldn’t have been able to reach the surface while still wearing his weight belt.

Diego’s dangerous descent into Jacob’s Well is fairly typical of the notoriously dangerous spot.

Besides the inherent dangers of freediving, Jacob’s Well has its own unique dangers including a false exit, a passageway that looks like it reaches the surface but doesn’t, which is one of the reasons why eight people have died at the site.