After digging deep to go deep, it was time for break. Shelby “Shell” Eisenberg has spent the past two weeks literally decompressing after setting an American freedive record earlier this month in the Grand Cayman.
The 27-year-old Kailua-Kona resident has taken time to celebrate her third record in four years as well as her birthday on May 21, a day that included a hike to the pyroclastic cinder cone of Pu‘u Wa‘awa‘a above Hualalai. Next week, it’s a return to cardio work, doing negative pressure dives in order to stretch her diaphragm.
It’s a dual preparation: One for breaking her own record set on May 13 and the other for a possible trip to Greece in October for the AIDA Team World Championships.
“We’re getting into our nice conditions here in Kona,” Eisenberg said. “I’ll try for the new (U.S.) record here.”
It was some 4,800 miles away from Hawaii Island that Eisenberg broke Ashley Chapman’s 2016 mark of 275.6 feet. Eisenberg’s clean dive to 279 feet set the women’s mark in constant weight at the Deja Blue 9 Freediving Competition.
In a sport where physical pressure on one’s body is always a concern, one that is closely monitored, there was added mental pressure on Eisenberg on her record attempt. It happened on her last chance on the last day of competition, where the 30-second countdown clock had seven seconds left when she made the dive.
With one breath of air, it took Eisenberg 2 minutes and 51 seconds to retrieve a tag at the bottom of the diveline at 279 feet and surface.
Judged to have had a clean protocoll (no signs of overexertion), she received a white card from the AIDA officials that recognized her U.S. record at that depth discipline.
“I had been hoping to do it earlier in the week but hadn’t progressed, so I felt some pressure and was a little nervous,” said Eisenberg, an artist and instructor at Performance Freediving International.“You only have 30 seconds to go and I left at 23. I knew I only had one chance to do it.
“You want to make it count, but at the same time you have to have the confidence to turn around if it’s not going well.”
Things did not go entirely well two days prior to her setting the record. Eisenberg did a dive to 269 feet, but “apparently I had a short blackout when I came up,” she said. “That’s why I say it probably took 50 people for me to achieve this dive. When I came up (and blacked out) there was someone there to keep my face out of the water.
“This is not done alone. You have safety people on the lines, medics, evac (evacuation) boats, judges … this is shared with all of them.”
Eisenberg found freediving as much as it found her. While not having a competitive athletic background, she did enjoy ocean swimming growing up in Santa Cruz, Calif., combining that passion with a marine botany degree at the University of Hawaii.
“I became obsessed with marine life and I enjoyed diving down to look at them,” she said. “Then I wanted to stay down longer and longer.
“I casually got into freediving, had a job as an underwater photographer, then found that there were training programs on the Big Island. I became inspired with what an average person could do. I had no formal swim training, didn’t have the experience such as with scuba diving. I like that an average person can freedive deep and continue doing it for a long time.”
What Eisenberg also enjoys is the competition, with herself as well as other freedivers.
“This sport is very atypical,” she said. “It’s a very cooperative group. You’re competing, but you’re continually helping each other. It’s very friendly and you’re always sharing techniques. Learning to push yourselves in safe environments.”
Her favorite moments have come outside of competition, where Eisenberg has enjoyed freediving with animals, including the giant blue whales off of Mexico during the filming of “Racing Extinction.” Living and working in Kona affords her daily opportunities to enjoy marine life at her doorstep.
Eisenberg’s regimen includes dry-land, ocean and pool training. She has qualified for the U.S. team before but hasn’t been able to go.
The team of three men and three women will be announced around July 4 and “it’s very likely I’ll qualify,” Eisenberg said. “Typically, if you break a record, you get an automatic. It depends on sponsorship.”
Records aside, “What I enjoy is you can do this for a long time,” she said. “There are many people in their 60s who are diving just as deep as I am. As long as you are safe and careful, you can dive deep forever.”
Eisenberg’s other two national records were set in pools: dynamic no fins at 413.4 feet in the Grand Cayman in 2015 and at 433 feet at the Maunalani Resort in 2016.
