Where Is Francisco Ferreras Now? Audrey Mestre Husband Whereabouts In 2022
Mia Phillips
Updated on March 29, 2026
Diver Francisco Ferreras is a well-known Cuban. He is known as “Pippin,” which is his nickname, and for his achievements in deep free diving.
Ferreras is also well-known for marrying the French freediver Audrey Mestre, who set a world record in her sport. During the 1990s, he set a number of World Records, often competing with the Italian Umberto Pelizzari.
In January 2000, Ferreras made his last dive that was recorded. At a depth of 162 meters, it was 12 meters deeper than Pelizzari’s previous record (531 feet)
What’s going on with Francisco Ferreras?
Francisco Ferreras and his wife and their family now live in Miami, Florida. In 2022, he will be 60 years old.
Ferreras is currently happy with his second wife, Juscelina Cacau Melo 2012. His wife is a Canadian who used to be a model on South Beach.
Ferreras lived in Cuba before he became a freediver, but not much is known about that for sure.
Soon after, they started dating, and Mestre ended up getting married four times to the diver. Mestre eventually started doing the sport herself, and not long after, she broke the world record for female divers. But on October 12, 2002, tragedy struck when Mestre tried to beat her husband’s record by more than thirty feet.
Ferreras was born in Matanzas, which is on Cuba’s northern coast. He began free diving when he was 5 years old. His childhood name was “Pipin,” and he added “Ferraras” to it as an adult.
In his books The Dive: A Story of Love and Obsession and Dive The, Ferreras wrote about his life. In his autobiography, he talks about how he met Mestre in 1996. The marine biology student was looking for Ferreras as part of the research she was doing for her thesis.
How Francisco Ferreras and Audrey Mestre Got Together
In 1999, Francisco Ferreras and Audrey Mestre got married. After Mestre died in 2002, they no longer lived together.
After they got married, the couple quickly became regular record-breakers in the sport of freediving, breaking both the men’s and women’s records.
A lot of the criticism from the diving community was aimed at Ferreras because he rushed an organization that didn’t have enough money to try to break a new record that was supposed to happen at a later date. There were too few safety divers, not enough rescue equipment, and no doctors at sea or on land.
In a traditional no-limits free dive, the diver holds on to a weighted sled until they reach the depth they want. Then, they let go of a pressurized air tank, which fills a big balloon and lifts them back to the surface.
How much Francisco Ferreras will make in 2022
Francisco Ferreras has a total worth of 3 million dollars. He has a lot of money because of his career as a diver. The former world champion has also written two books that have done well.
In the same way, it was thought that Audrey Mestre had a net worth of $1.5 million. She was one of the most wealthy divers in the world.
Mestre decided to break the no-limits world record on October 2, 2002. By that time, both he and his partner had already set a number of world records. Her big balloon was supposed to help her get to the surface of the water, but it broke after she went down 171 meters. Mestre died while trying to beat her own record because her dive took longer than expected and she ran out of air.
A year later, Ferreras decided to freedive again to the same depth of 171 meters in honor of his wife.
Life
Ferreras was born in Matanzas, which is on Cuba’s northern coast. He started free-diving when he was 5 years old. “Pipin” was his childhood name, and he added “Ferraras” to it as an adult.
Spearfishing, a sport that not many people do, was where he got his start in the underwater world. Free diving was shown to Pipin by some Italians who were in Cuba at the time. They saw right away that he was talented. He fell in love with the sport and soon realized that when spearfishing and diving for black coral, he often went as deep as the free diving champions. He chose to start competing in the sport, and at the age of 27, he set his first world record. That was just the first of 21 world records that he has broken. From the late 1980s on, he made a name for himself in a type of freediving called “No-Limits.” In November 1989, he set his first known world record at 112 meters (367 feet) depth. Soon after that, he ran away to Italy and later moved to Florida, which is in the United States. During the 1990s, he set a long list of World Records, and he often competed closely with an Italian named Umberto Pelizzari. During this time, Ferreras’ last recorded record dive went to a depth of 162 meters (531 ft) in January 2000. This was 12 meters (39 ft) deeper than Pelizzari’s deepest record dive.
Ocean Men: Extreme Dive, which came out in 2001 and was directed by famous underwater photographer Bob Talbot, was all about the rivalry between Ferreras and Pelizzari.
In 1996, Ferreras started the International Association of Freedivers (IAFD) to compete with the organization AIDA. However, the IAFD didn’t have much success in sports, so it shut down in 2004. During this time, all of Ferreras’ record dives were done within the rules of IAFD.
Having something to do with Audrey Mestre
Ferreras had been married twice before he met Audrey Mestre, who was born in France but lived in Mexico and was also a freediver. They got married in 1999, and they quickly became a record-breaking couple in the sport of freediving, breaking both men’s and women’s records.
Mestre died on October 12, 2002, while trying to break Tanya Streeter’s 160-meter (520-foot) no-limits world record, which she had set just a few weeks earlier on August 17, 2002. At the time, it was both men’s and women’s official AIDA record. Mestre’s setup did not meet freediving safety standards. Most of the criticism from the diving community went to Ferreras, who rushed an organization that didn’t have enough money to try to break a new record that had been planned for a later date. There were too few safety divers, no proper rescue equipment, and no doctors at sea or on land. In a no-limits freedive, the standard way to dive is to hold on to a weighted sled until you reach your target depth. At that point, you open a pressurized air tank, which fills a big balloon that carries the freediver back to the surface. When Mestre reached her target depth of 171 meters on her fatal dive, this air tank was empty (561 ft). Ferreras was in charge of Mestre’s air tank, and he wouldn’t let anyone else on the team check to see if it was full. Mestre wasn’t brought to the surface until nine minutes into her dive. At the surface, she still had a pulse, but there were no doctors around to treat her, so Ferreras tried to revive her in the water for a few minutes without success. Ferreras was the one who used scuba gear to dive down from the surface and find Mestre’s body.
A year after her death, Ferreras did a dive with no limits to reach the same depth as Mestre (561 ft).
Having something to do with Nina Ferreras
Pipin got married to Juscelina Cacau Melo on June 21, 2012, in Miami, Florida. Melo is a Canadian former South Beach model who is also known as Nina Ferreras in the diving world.
The Jump
After Audrey died, Ferreras had Linda Robertson write a book for him called The Dive.
In 2010, James Cameron bought the movie rights and planned to co-produce the movie. In January 2015, it was announced that Oscar-winning actress Jennifer Lawrence would play Audrey Mestre in the movie. Francis Lawrence, director of The Hunger Games, is directing. The movie was meant to come out in 2017, but as of June 2019, nothing has been said.
He was married to Audrey Mestre, who died
Ferreras had been through two failed marriages by the time he met Audrey Mestre in 1996. Mestre was born in France but raised in Mexico, and she was a natural freediver. They got married in 1999, and they quickly became a record-breaking couple in the sport of freediving, breaking both men’s and women’s records.
Mestre died on October 12, 2002, while trying to break the no-limits world record in a way that was widely criticized in freediving circles. He was trying to break both the men’s and women’s records at the same time. Most of the criticism was directed at Ferreras, who had been in charge of all of his and Mestre’s record-breaking efforts for years. In a no-limits freedive, the standard way to dive is to hold on to a weighted sled until you reach your target depth. At that point, you open a pressurized air tank, which fills a big balloon that carries the freediver back to the surface. When Mestre reached her target depth of 171 meters on her fatal dive, this air tank was empty (561 ft).
Mestre wasn’t brought back to the surface until 9 minutes into her dive, which was too late to save her. Ferreras was the one who went down from the surface in SCUBA gear to get Mestre’s dead body. Ferreras did a no-limits dive to match Mestre’s depth of 171 meters a year after she died, supposedly to honor her. However, very few people in the freediving community have accepted this performance as real.
Controversy
Pipin Ferreras is in a lot of trouble. Some people have said that he cheated on many of his no-limits dives by taking a breath mid-dive from a hose that filled the balloon on the sled. Others have named a total of five people who died while diving with Ferreras, not including Mestre, and said that Ferreras did something wrong. Many people have called him proud and cocky and questioned his athletic skills. In the freediving world, he is not as well-known as eg. Umberto Pelizzari, probably because Pelizzari was good at freediving in more than one type of deep diving, especially the more respected type called “Constant Weight.”
In 2004, Ferreras wrote a book called “” in which he talked about his life and career, especially his time with Mestre. It was also criticized for making the zen nature of freediving and the romance between Ferreras and Mestre look too good to be true. Even though the book was criticized, it was said soon after it came out that famous director James Cameron had bought the rights to turn it into a movie called The Dive, which was set to come out in 2008. Cameron had been interested in this story for a long time. On June 16, 2003, he bought the rights to a Sports Illustrated cover caption called “The Deadly Dive” and an article by veteran sports journalist Gary Smith called “The Rapture of the Deep.”
Carlos Serra, a US citizen who was born in Venezuela and worked with Ferreras in the IAFD and helped organize Mestre’s fatal record attempt, wrote a book called The Last Attempt in 2006, which got a lot of praise in and out of the freediving community. In this book, Serra blames Ferreras directly for Mestre’s death, almost to the point of making a criminal charge. Serra said that Ferreras and Mestre were about to get a divorce in October 2002 because Ferreras had been very abusive, possibly because he was jealous of the attention Mestre was getting at his expense. Serra says that Ferreras didn’t fill the sled’s air tank on purpose because he wanted to punish his wife for wanting to leave him. Serra can tell from a number of things that Ferreras may not have meant to kill his wife, but that it was his own careless actions that caused her death.