“Kimi [Werner] spent much of her childhood living in a shack next to the ocean in a rural part of Maui,” according to MeatEater. “Her father spearfished for dinner most nights… Babysitters were expensive, so… she would dive with her father. She fell in love with it quickly.”
Werner trained with champion Hawaiian spearfishermen, Wayde Hayashi and Kalei Fernandez. They taught her to dive to depths over 150 feet, to hold her breath for four minutes, and above all to be humane and selective about the fish she caught. “Then, in 2008, she decided to put her skills to the test by competing in the U.S. National Spearfishing Championships in Newport, Rhode Island,” Experience Life</i? reported. On competition day, Werner said, “It felt like a moment I had prepared for my whole life.” She was crowned national champion. Although she won more titles during the next two years, she became disenchanted, saying: “I was always defending or proving something instead of being full of curiosity or gratitude.”
In 2013, Werner was on a shark research expedition in the open ocean and recalls, “I saw the head of the biggest great white shark I’ve ever seen about three feet away.” According to Mpora, Werner decided to swim towards the shark to communicate that she was a predator and therefore not on the menu. “I gently reached out and touched her dorsal fin to let her know I was there.” Video of Werner riding the Great White, holding onto its dorsal fin went viral. “People just wanted to oversensationalize it… I just didn’t want to compromise the experience I’d had,” she told HONOLULU Magazine. “Patagonia then picked it up [and made it into a short film called Variables and asked me to be a company ambassador.”
That same year, Werner became the first female and youngest person inducted into the Freediving and Spearfishing Hall of Fame. Since then, she has focused on her legacy through giving talks. As she told Outdoor Project, “I’m an ambassador for Olukai, Patagonia, Yeti, and a few other great outdoors brands who care for the environment and share the same values. My main passions are foraging food straight from the source and sharing stories that make us all feel connected to this earth and one another!”
