Blue Earth Village: Freediving, Resilience, and Pufferfish Art

[The ominous photo below is not AI generated, it's not even staged. Patricia and Wayan were just doing their practice and I took this picture on my crappy phone. Amed was a ghost town and it seemed that the only foreigners left in Amed were a small handful of passionate freedivers and scuba instructors.]

Blue Earth Village in Amed, Bali wasn’t born from a master plan or glossy investor pitch. It emerged organically — the result of the Apneista Freediving family joining forces with Ibu Wayan, a resilient local woman with a passion for food and hospitality. It has always been brutally under-financed. For two years, a wealthy investor effectively held the project to ransom, only to pull out after deciding the return on investment wasn’t fast enough. We survived by pooling our savings and taking on the design and supervision of the building work ourselves, working only with local daily workers.

The project came to life during a time of great upheaval, when Mount Agung shook the island awake in late 2017. As ash clouded the skies and tourism disappeared overnight, many chose to flee. But we stayed — Amed has been our home since 2010. We kept building, fingers crossed, and slowly transformed our space into a place to breathe, to connect, and to remind each other that community matters more than chaos or competition.

Mont Agung eruption view from Blue Earth Village, 2017

Our logo is a nod to one of nature’s most unlikely artists: the Japanese pufferfish. This tiny creature spends 24 hours carving intricate mandalas in the sand to attract a mate — delicate masterpieces that are soon washed away by the tides. It felt like the perfect metaphor for our project: a labor of love, shaped with care and vulnerability, knowing the forces of nature may one day sweep it clean. You can witness this remarkable artist in action in David Attenborough’s stunning documentary.

It’s a reminder of the beauty in impermanence — to pour your heart into something fleeting, to create because the act of creating is meaningful in itself. That’s the philosophy we try to live by.

We’ve always shared a deep synergy with Apneista and the global freediving community. In fact, we built a 25-meter, 2-meter-deep pool from old shipping containers, right here on site. Since then, we’ve welcomed everyone from world-class freedivers to curious beginners — all drawn by Amed’s easy-access coral reefs, shipwrecks, and rich marine life. Blue Earth has become their unofficial clubhouse: a place to train, share knowledge and celebrate love of the deep blue. But freediving isn’t just about depth — it’s about presence. About slowing down. About surrendering.

Now, we come full circle with the Ocean Roots Festival, held for the first time this July 7–13, 2025. We’re excited — this isn’t just another event, but a celebration of everything we’ve weathered and the blossoming of a long-held dream. We hope you'll help us grow Ocean Roots into a twice-yearly gathering that nurtures resilience and connection — with the deeper self, with each other, and with this beautiful blue planet that is our only home.