Ferreras had two defunct marriages behind him when in 1996, he met French-born Mexican-national Audrey Mestre who turned out to be a natural freediver herself. In 1999 they married, and quickly the two became a regular record-breaking couple in the sport of freediving, dividing men and women's records between them.

On October 12, 2002 Mestre died in a scandalized attempt to break the no-limits world record (this attempt trying for both men and women's record) in a setup that was widely criticized within freediving circuits. Much of the critique went to Ferreras who had organized all of his and Mestre's record attempts for years. In a no-limits freedive, the standard diving method is holding on to a weighted sled to the target depth, and there open a pressurized air tank that fills a large inflatable balloon which carries the freediver back to the surface. On Mestre's fatal dive, this air tank was empty when Mestre reached her target depth of 171 meters (561 ft). Mestre was not recovered to the surface until nine minutes into her dive, and at that point it was too late to revive her. It was Ferreras who departed from the surface in SCUBA gear and salvaged Mestre's passed out body. A year after her death, Ferreras completed a no-limits dive to match Mestre's depth of 171 meters, allegedly to honor her, but very few within freediving circuits have acknowledged the validity of this performance.