The world cheered when Joseph Dituri beat the world record for living underwater without depressurization.
Now that he’s back on dry land he said he lost something when he was down there.
“I shrunk about half an inch,” Dituri said.
He compared the height he lost to the height astronauts gain when they are in space.
“Astronauts are in tension, so they are basically being flung apart and I’m being compressed together,” Dituri said.
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He told Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsden during a conversation on Florida’s Fourth Estate that he noticed something was different while he was still inside the Jules’ Undersea Lodge in Key Largo.
“Here, I am the tall guy right and I’m constantly scrapping my head on the escape hatch on top, and I was like ‘Hey, I’m not hitting the escape hatch anymore’ and I’m like ‘I must have shrunk’ and then of course there’s no good place to measure yourself. When I get to the surface, I am 72 and a little bit inches. I’m like ‘Maaaan, I was 73!’”
The question now is: Will he get that height back?
“I don’t know. The astronauts do compress back down, so we will see,” he
Florida’s Fourth Estate will be in touch and have an update if Dituri does in fact regain that height.
You can listen to Dituri’s full conversation about what it was like to live underwater for 100 days, who he really wants to inspire and what he hopes to achieve next on Florida’s Fourth Estate.
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