Whether powered by jet packs or taking the capabilities of the human body to whole new depths (literally,) these water gadgets and activities multiply the fun and danger of more conventional water sports like surfing and wake boarding. A shockingly realistic shark-shaped personal watercraft jumps out of the water, an Iron Man suit propels you high up into the air and a water ‘wing’ lets you fly beneath the surface.

Seabreacher

Designed to look like sailfish, killer whales, sharks and other large sea creatures, the Seabreacher is actually a two-person underwater vehicle dubbing itself “the ultimate diving machine.” It looks pretty insane when it bursts up out of the water in a dramatic leap, and has likely terrified more than a few nearby boaters when spotted doing so in the wild. An acrylic canopy and underwater view ports give the pilot and passenger a nearly 360-degree view as they ‘fly’ through the water. The dorsal fin acts like a snorkel during the 5-10 second periods in which you dive below the surface to a depth of 5-6 feet.

Water Wing for Flying Underwater

Have you ever gone wakeboarding and wished that you could dive below the surface of the water temporarily while being pulled behind the boat? A device called the Subwing makes that possible with a twistable joint in the center of a fiberglass or carbon fiber board towed behind a boat. Just angle the board so you dip under the water and stay under for as long as you like, using the bend in the board to steer, before popping back up.

JetSurf

Add a jet ski engine to a surfboard and what you get is a JetSurf, an ultralight carbon and kevlar board that can reach a top speed of 35mph and carry a 3-liter fuel tank that’ll take you on a 45-mile trip. It weighs about 30 pounds, it’s fairly compact and it floats. The experience is intended to be a sort of super-powered version of surfing. The prices start at $12K.

Deep Freediving

Free diving is incredibly dangerous and strikingly beautiful to watch, as evidenced by this video of fearless diver Guillame Néry reaching the bottom of the world’s deepest salt water blue hole attests. Dean’s Blue Hole is an amazing 603 feet deep. Free divers are able to hold their breath for far longer than most people, relying on the capacity of their own lungs rather than breathing apparatus like scuba gear. It’s undoubtedly exhilarating, and there are dozens of things that can go terribly wrong. The world’s greatest free diver, Natalia Molchanova, disappeared in the Balearic Sea in 2015 after failing to surface from a recreational dive. It’s likely that she was swept away by a strong underwater current.

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Radical Aquatic Recreation 10 Extreme Water Sports

Swimming? Gazing at pretty marine life? That’s boring – compared to the bizarre and amazing things that some adventurous divers choose to do underwater. Why simply scuba dive when you could be ball dancing, playing a musical instrument, putting on a fashion show, carving a pumpkin, swallowing a sword or enjoying a fine meal? These 15 events and gatherings draw hundreds of people to the bottoms of pools and the ocean floor for strange submerged activities.

Underwater Dining for 500

(images via: lilo mag)

500 people set the Guinness World Record for the largest underwater dinner party in 2010, enjoying a meal of smoked salmon, vegetables and toffee apple while decked out in formal finery. The event took place at the swimming pool of the Park Club in west London, and the food was prepared in jelly to keep it from disintegrating in the water. Each bite was quite a process: guests had to remove their aqua lungs from their mouths, slip in the food, replace the aqua lung and press a button that purges water so they could breathe and swallow.

Key West Underwater Music Festival

(images via: lower keys chamber of commerce)

Musical instruments shaped like stingrays, starfish and sharks – not to mention over 500 divers and snorkelers – made their way to the bottom of the ocean for the 27th annual Underwater Music Festivals in the Florida Keys last summer, and in July 2012, they’re set to do it again. The event, which takes place beside America’s only living coral barrier reef, celebrates the marine life that the reef supports.

Underwater Chess

(images via: live in curacao)

Underwater chess is actually a thing. Not only is it an annual event in Curacao, where master chess players engage in tournaments on the sea floor, but chess enthusiasts sometimes even set up their boards in swimming pools. The 2008 event in Curacao was nearly derailed by a curious stingray.

Oxfam Climate Change Event

(images via: stop climate chaos)

Rising sea levels caused by global warming could mean that many coastal cities will be underwater within decades. To call attention to this troubling fact and mark the 100-day countdown to the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference in 2009, Oxfam International organized an unusual display at the Sea Life Aquarium in London. An ‘average family’ sat in a submerged living room next to a ticking clock that served as a reminder of how little time we may have left.

South Korea Underwater Fashion Show

A department store in South Korea held the world’s first underwater show of traditional Korean fashion in August 2010. The Underwater Hanbok fashion show had models twirling in brightly colored fabrics, performing water aerobics.

36-Hour Underwater Card Game

(images via: metro)

Scuba divers played a card game underwater for 36 hours straight in a bid to set a world record. The 16 divers worked in shifts so they could change oxygen tanks.

Mad Hatter Tea Party at the Great Barrier Reef

(images via: hungeree)

The Mad Hatter’s tea party got that much more chaotic when a pair of divers took to the floor of the Great Barrier Reef Oceanarium at the Sydney Aquarium in May 2012. The event was part of a fundraising drive called Australia’s Biggest Morning Tea, which supports cancer research. Another underwater tea party was organized at England’s Deep Aquarium in Hull to celebrate its 10th birthday.

Underwater Hockey

(images via: wikimedia commons)

Underwater hockey isn’t just an occasional stunt that people pull for photo ops – it’s an actual sport of its own. Of course, it’s not exactly spectator-friendly, but that’s not really the point. Players strap on their masks, snorkels and fins and use sticks to shoot pucks into goals, just like the land-based version of the sport, but there’s no contact involved.

Submerged Pumpkin Carving

(images via: south carolina aquarium Facebook)

Why carve pumpkins underwater? When you’re a diving enthusiast, it just makes Halloween that much more fun. Competitions are held every year all over the United States including Florida, South Carolina and Nevada. Contestants take their pumpkins about 30 feet under the surface and compete against each other to carve the most impressive jack o’lantern – no easy task, considering that pumpkins are buoyant until you get them hollowed out.

Underwater Olympics

(images via: barbary coast divers)

Underwater World in Qingdao City, China held ‘Underwater Olympics’ in 2010 to mark the Chinese New Year. The events included fencing, shooting, cycling and gymnastics. Fencing competitors had to fight while balanced on a steel cable.

Underwater Biking

(images via:  cairo cyclists)

An Egyptian cyclist named Yasser brought his bicycle underwater and attempted to ride it along the ocean floor, with mixed results. Yasser wore his normal diving equipment and biking shoes, fighting to keep the bike from simply floating up. Yasser says, “The overall experience was so great. I enjoy diving in general, but having alien objects with you makes it more interesting.”

Submerged Sword Swallowing

(images via: underwater times)

Sword swallower Dan Meyer became the first person in America to swallow a solid steel sword while underwater – in a tank of live sharks and stingrays – in 2007. The stunt took place at Ripley’s Aquarium in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and needless to say, it was a bit dangerous. The event was part of the aquarium’s “Pirates, Predators of the Sea” exhibit. Meyer swallowed a 30-inch-long sword while submerged 15 feet underwater with more than 80 sharks and stingrays swimming all around him. He wasn’t oblivious to the risks, of course – Meyer has previously been hospitalized with a punctured stomach after swallowing five swords at once.

Underwater Dancing

(images via: reuters)

Seventy-four scuba divers danced gracefully – if slowly – in a bid to set the world record for an underwater dance class at Sydney’s Olympic Park Aquatic Center in 2006. Divers strapped on scuba gear and danced simultaneously for ten minutes on the bottom of the pool.

Underwater Weddings

(images via: crusoe’s retreat)

Once a contender for the weirdest location to get married, underwater weddings have grown a lot more popular over the years as water-loving couples choose to garble “I do” into their scuba mouthpieces. The Guinness World Record was set in June 2010 when 261 divers took part in a marriage ceremony off the coast of Italy.

Underwater Tennis (With a Shark)

(images via: dunlop)

Sports brand Dunlop set a man versus shark tennis match on the bottom of the London Aquarium to show off its biomimetic tennis range, including an Aeroskin racket inspired by sharkskin.

Anyone who’s already familiar with parkour – the jaw-dropping urban sport that involves astonishing acrobatics including gravity-defying jumps – probably stared in disbelief at a video showing a trio of parkour enthusiasts scaling buildings and bridges with the help of hooked ladders. Created as an ad for a sports drink, the video undoubtedly sparked many people to google the dubious new sport of ‘pomparkour’.

So what’s got people up in arms about it? As it turns out, pomparkour is the fictional creation of advertising agency BBDO for ‘V Energy‘, a guarana concoction from New Zealand. And conveniently left out of the video is the fact that these guys are professional stuntmen equipped with safety ropes which were edited out of the final video (check out proof below).

Around the same time the video debuted, a blog about the sport materialized, featuring a few photos and a small amount of info. A Wikipedia article on pomparkour also appeared, but was quickly flagged as a hoax or at the very least, mere self-serving advertisement.

So is it a fictional sport, or just a rad new form of parkour in its infancy? Time will tell whether serious practicers of parkour will embrace this offshoot and pull some ladder play into their movements. Even with safety ropes, the guys in the ad perform some breathtaking stunts, earning quite a bit of well-deserved attention.

It is one thing to watch amazing tricks or stunts performed in a closed venue for a captive audience. It is quite another to see unusual sports practiced in a busy and unpredictable urban setting. Here are some extreme city sports you aren’t likely to see in a sports stadium, starting with an incredible urban parachute landing under a bridge to a Paris city street-surfer in a full body suit covered in 31 roller wheels.

(Check out our complete collection of Urban Exploration Tips, Tricks and Guides.)

Extreme Urban Parachuting: the initial camera shots are a little disorienting, but once this parachuter swoops under a bridge at a high landing speed the scene becomes frighteningly clear. And to prove it’s not a fake: watch for the follow-up shot from a above trailing his progress on the way down.

Extreme Street Rollerblading: watch as Paris resident Jean-Yves Blondeau takes on the streets, sidewalks and tunnels of Paris. Armed with 31 rollerballs and an armored body suit, Blondeau flips between riding on his feet, back and front as he passs shocked pedestrians and cruises at speeds up to 50 miles per hour.

Extreme City Cycling: check out this guy as he sneaks his way into the incredibly packed Holland Tunnel in New York City. He not only evades detection and passes cars in the tunnel, but he even manages to flaunt his success at the end by asking a cop a question as he exits.

Extreme Bike Tricking: every object in the urban environment seems to be an obstacle-in-waiting for these industrious bikers. Their ability to trick and balance is almost as impressive as the variety of benches, stairs and other street furniture they adapt to their own purposes.

Extreme Building Jumping: this best-of video features parkour and free running experts and novices from around the world, doing tricks and jumps off of everything imaginable. Of course, they make these incredible tricks look a great deal easier than they are.

Extreme Freestyle Motorcycling: Julian Dupont seems to feel comfortable biking up, down and around just about anything. Impressive as his work is on a predefined stunt course, it is all the more amazing when seen in the city streets and on high-flying bridge supports hundreds of feet in the air.

Mass City Skateboarding: it would have been too easy to include another skateboard tricking video. Instead, take an inside look as hordes of skateboards take to the streets on Go Skateboarding Day in New York City. As you can see, the police aren’t entirely pleased.