US National Record-Shell Eisenberg-CWT 85 meters

Grand Cayman, May 13, 2018, Deja Blue 9 

Shell Eisenberg broke the Women’s Freediving National Record in Constant Weight (CWT) at Deja Blue 9, with a clean dive to 85m/ 279 feet. The previous record was held by Ashley Chapman, 84m/ 276 feet, which she set in 2016. 

Shell, a resident of Kona, Hawaii, dove down to 85 meters and back up, on one breath of air, with a dive time of 2 minutes and 51 seconds. By retrieving a tag at the bottom of the diveline and surfacing with a clean protocol, meaning she showed no signs of overexertion, she was awarded a white card by the official AIDA judges, which earned her the new National Record for this Depth Discipline.

She was surrounded by Deja Blue crew, fellow athletes and friends. Shell said “I’ve been training hard for this record for a while now and I can’t believe it came together in the 11th hour on the last day of Deja Blue 9 Freediving Competition. Though one performs the dive by themselves, a dive like this takes dozens of supporters including safety freedivers and divers, surface coaches, training partners, and more. No achievement like this can be done alone and I couldn’t be more grateful to everyone who helped me reach this new depth—it’s beautiful down there!”

This is the 3rd National Record for Eisenberg, who also broke the Pool US Records in Dynamic No Fins (DNF): 125m set in Grand Cayman, 2015 and 132m set in Kamuela, HI 2016.

Shell, a Freediving Instructor in Kona, Hawaii, is also an accomplished artist, who uses her artwork to help sponsor freediving competition expenses. 

CWT= Constant Weight with Monofin. Diver must descend and surface with the same weight, which can be no weight, a neck weight and/ or weight belt. A monofin is used in this, one of three, depth discipline, to propel the diver to her/ his announced depth.

Trivia: Kurt Chambers’ US National Record for CWT 101m, had a Dive Time of 2 minutes 52 seconds.

{photo credit: Francesca Koe} {written by: Dor Croston for USA Freediving}