Maiorca was probably best known for the inspiration of the Enzo character played by actor Jean Reno in Luc Besson's 1988 film, 'The Big Blue'. His rivalry with Jacques Mayol was immortalised in this film and is the foundation on which competitive freediving was born.

Whilst 'The Big Blue' highlighted freediving it has been reported that Maiorca was unhappy with Reno's portrayal. Maiorca felt he had been stereotyped as a mafioso-style uneducated Sicilian, hence he got the film banned in Italy for 24 years. In 2002 the contested scenes were deleted and an edited version was issued.

A great Sicilian, an explorer of the seas, who revolutionised the world of freediving. Italian Interior Minister Angelino Alfano

Maiorca was born on 21st June 1931. The Sicilian newspaper 'Il Giornale di Sicilia' reported that Maiorca learnt to swim when he was 4 years-old. We believe he was the first man to dive to 50 metres / 164 feet on a lungful of air.

"I was breaking records step by step. I obeyed the doctors and didn't dive deeper than 160 feet," Diver magazine quoted him as saying in an interview on its website.

"And as I progressed I was learning more and coming to realise that the doctors were building walls based on beliefs that were wrong. Even Aristotle claimed a man could dive no deeper than 30 feet," he said.

"The film The Big Blue didn't do justice to the depths of his character, for Enzo was a soft-spoken conservationist, poet and faithful family man." William Trubridge