Robert Croft

Robert Arthur Croft (19 July 1934 to 9 January 2026) was an American freediver who in 1967 became the first person to freedive beyond 200 feet. He worked as a US Navy diving instructor at the submarine escape training tank at the Naval Submarine Base New London in Groton, Connecticut, where long hours in the 118 foot tank let him extend his breath hold to more than six minutes. Competing with Jacques Mayol and Enzo Maiorca, he set three depth records over eighteen months, at 212 feet in 1967 and at 217 and 240 feet in 1968, and then retired from freediving. He is credited with inventing air packing, also called lung packing.