The tribe is the Bajau, they can spend 5 hours a day underwater

The picture itself is AI-generated — that's not a real diver, and no one is staying underwater for 5 hours on one breath.

What's true:

The tribe is the Bajau, sea nomads who have lived off the ocean for centuries in Southeast Asia.

In 2018 a study in the journal Cell found they have significantly bigger spleens, which helps prevent hypoxia during long dives by releasing extra blood cells, and identified a gene variant that may be responsible. The variant is in the PDE10A gene.

They really do spend an extraordinary amount of time in the water. Researchers described it as:

"They could spend 4 or 5 hours per day underwater," describing a routine built around repeated breath-hold foraging

Other summaries of the same work say they spend approximately 60% of their days underwater, and when diving in the traditional way they "dive repeatedly for about eight hours a day, spending about 60% of their time underwater".

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The commonly quoted shorthand is that most Bajau can spend 5 hours a day underwater — but that's cumulative, made of hundreds of short freedives of a few minutes each, often to depths of 60+ meters to spear fish.

What's false in the meme:

1.  Not a "new mutant gene." It's not new, it's the result of natural selection over possibly thousands of years living on house boats. It's also not one superpower gene that lets you swim, it's an adaptation that enlarges the spleen and strengthens the dive reflex.

2.  Not 5 hours straight. They can't hold their breath for 5 hours. A very good Bajau diver might hold for 8-13 minutes at a time, and spends 5 hours total in the water throughout the work day.

3.  Not that image. The man with glasses and a nose bubble is an AI render, not a photo of a Bajau diver.

So: Bajau divers really do have a genetic advantage for diving and really do log ∼5 hours underwater per day in total — that part is true. The "new mutant gene to swim underwater for five hours a day" framing and the photo are false.