“It came to a point when I was at negative buoyancy, so I was sinking,” says Kimi. “I could either touch her or quickly turn around and swim to the surface. I gently reached out and touched her dorsal fin to let her know I was there. It was the most beautiful moment, we were just swimming in slow motion.”

Kimi didn’t release the video footage immediately because she didn’t want to encourage people to ride sharks. However, days later, the video was leaked onto the internet and it went viral. Kimi quickly became known as “the woman who rode on the back of a shark” – but there’s far more to her story than you might think.

The 36 year-old grew up in Hawaii, swimming in the ocean and watching her dad go spearfishing for food. Kimi would pick what she wanted for dinner and her dad would dive down and catch it for her.

“You need to be so present and alert in the water, because you’re frickin’ hunting while holding your breath”

But it wasn’t easy trying to make a living as an artist and spearfishing. “I had all these voices going through my head, saying ‘you’re a screw up, why the hell are you going diving today when you should be working?’ But the minute I got in the water, it all just melted away. I was just completely present and I came out feeling a million times better.”

At first very few people took Kimi’s passion seriously and she struggled to find diving partners. But when she started bringing fish she’d caught to friend’s barbecues, people started to take notice. Kimi was taken under the wing of two super elite champion Hawaiian spearfishermen, Wayde Hayashi and Kalei Fernandez. They trained her to dive to depths of 159ft and hold her breath for up to 4 minutes and 45 seconds.

Wayde and Kalei taught Kimi to be humane and selective about the fish she caught. “I watch people all the time aggressively swimming after fish with their spear guns and it never works,” says Kimi. “A fish can swim a lot faster than you. Now it knows you want to eat it, it’s going to take off.”

“Kimi tickles the octopus, assesses whether it’s a keeper or not and then crunches her teeth down on its brain, right between the eyes”

She wasn’t a sponsored athlete at this point. She fundraised enough money to get to Rhode Island on the east coast of America, just four days before the competition started, only to find the conditions were nothing like Hawaii.

“I would dive down and see a layer of green and think that’s the bottom. But then I’d go straight through it. I’d see a layer of brown and go straight through that as well. I honestly didn’t think I would ever find the bottom.”

But if there is one thing freediving has taught Kimi, it is how to stay calm in stressful situations. “My dad always told me the absolute worst thing you can do is panic. I just stay as calm as I can while I figure out what to do. Just slowing down and assessing situations has definitely saved my life.”

“Everything in life that I’ve really cared about, I’ve been told no probably 100 times before anybody ever said yes”

Eventually she did find the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean and the visibility was a lot clearer, thanks to mussels filtering the water. Four days later, she won the National Championships and came first in every category she was eligible to place in, including Rookie of the Year.

When she arrived back in Hawaii, Kimi was treated like a mini-hero and thrust into the public eye. Magazines wanted to shoot photos of her for their front cover, she was bombarded with interviews. Kimi admits it was great at first. Her art was finally starting to sell, she was competing in competitions all over the world and being paid to do it – but after a few years diving just didn’t have that same magic anymore.

“Competing changed what diving meant to me. When I went hunting on my own, I couldn’t stop my brain thinking of fish as points. That wasn’t the reason why my dad taught me to dive.” She realised the only way to keep that passion alive was to walk away from competing entirely.

Kimi retuned to spearfishing, but this time just to catch a couple of fish and eat them with her friends and family on the beach. She began travelling the world – from Thailand to the Arctic Circle – learning how other people cook fish and manage their natural resources.

“Hunting is sacred for me. It keeps me completely honest and accountable. If I’m going to eat a fish, then I’m going to kill it with my own two hands. We all kill innocent animals every single day. You might not have a spear in your hand, but as long as you are eating anything that comes from animals, you are killing animals. You’re just paying someone else to do the dirty work.”

“I used to buy a piece of meat from the store and not really care if I didn’t finish it off. Hunting taught me that’s the wrong attitude to have. When I catch a fish, I’m really selective about who I share it with. I try not to waste a single morsel. If every single human ate the whole animal, not just the prime cuts, we would live in a much more sustainable world.”

She began sharing her experiences on social media and gained a whole new following of people who were interest in Kimi’s love of the ocean, the environment and living sustainably off the land. “People could relate a lot more to that than chasing trophies” she says.

Not only did she not lose her spearfishing career, but she gained new sponsors who cared about her values of eating locally and sustainably too. She became a Patagonia ambassador and now travels the world sharing her environmental messages.

“Everything in life that I’ve really cared about, I’ve been told no probably 100 times before anybody ever said yes. If you really want to change your life, you need to change it. You can’t just wish and hope. If you’re passionate enough, you’ll get there.”

Watch Kimi Werner’s inspirational TED Talk here.

Read the rest of the features from Mpora’s Fear Issue here

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