Early Valentine’s Day Guinness World Record set for longest underwater smooch

Valentine’s Day did not go down without a record-breaking smooch. A couple sealed the holiday a bit earlier, on February 4, with an underwater kiss that broke the Guinness World Record for the longest underwater snog.

The kiss lasted four minutes and six seconds, smashing the previous record by 42 seconds. An Italian couple held the previous record for the last 13 years.

Beth Neale, from South Africa, and her Canadian fiance, Miles Cloutier were the new record-breaking couple. According to the Straits Times, the engaged couple were freediving on holiday in the Maldives.

Despite practising the kiss for three years, the couple said the smooch was more challenging than they expected. As they are used to freediving, they normally practise going as deep as they can on a single breath.

Cloutier said that the longer you’re in the breath hold, the higher the level of discomfort rises, so it was a bit disorientating. Neal, his fiance, is a four-time South African freediving champion who has set records in her country as well as African continental records.

“It was very interesting for me because I’m a freediving instructor. And all the things I tell my students, I wasn’t able to follow myself for the first time in my life.”

She says the secret to the successful smooch was putting on her underwater earphones and listening to rapper Eminem’s songs ‘Lose Yourself’, to help her make it through the final seconds.

She said she wanted to take on the challenge to inspire others to share the couple’s love of all things underwater.

“Through sharing our underwater love story, we hope to inspire others to fall in love with the magic and wonder of the underwater world.”

The record-breaking moment was accomplished at the LUX South Ari Atoll resort pool, which is about a three-hour ferry ride from the capital of Male in the Indian Ocean.