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Enchante Gallardo is USA's deepest woman in CWTB. In a recent podcast with Dive In she spoke about her amazing freediving journey as well as about her future plans. Here are the 5 things you should know about one of the world's most passionate freedivers.
"Accomplishing things that I think I would never accomplish is something that I am very proud of in my career. They have definitely been times along the journey where I am in the water, doing dives and I’m like “why am I doing this, it feels horrible, I don’t want to do this anymore”. That actually happened at the first competition in Mexico, I was doing my warm-up and I think I had like a million contractions down to -12 m, it was dark, there were all these elite divers, and deep in my head I was thinking “can I just pull out of this competition? But I kept going with it, did another dive, didn’t make it but I did better than I thought I would. The next day I kept trying and I think that as I started meeting more people within the competition, it helped me to feel a little more comfortable and started settling into the environment. But that really taught me a lot about perseverance. That sometimes things aren’t going to feel great, and that sometimes they might actually suck. But it doesn’t mean that you should give up. Because if I had given up then I wouldn’t have accomplished what I did. You just gotta stick with it".
"The ideal training conditions that I’ve experienced this far would be in Dominica. You have that nice bay oil Soufriere where you could swim out for about 7 minutes, and you’re right on the platform and you have about -130m of depth. The visibility is pretty good and the water is warm all year round, although I was a little cold in January"!
"It’s nice on the descent because you start to sink a lot faster. Because of the density of the water, you don’t have to wear as much weight. Some divers don’t wear any weights and I think I wore like a 2-pound neck weight. So obviously the less weight you wear down, the less weight you have to come up with. I actually really enjoy diving in freshwater. It was a little bit weird during the first couple of dives, but I like it, I like wearing less weight for sure. The buoyancy of the saltwater when you are coming though is nice"!
"I have already submitted registration for Vertical Blue in the Bahamas in July. Luckily I got an invitation for 2020 but due to the pandemic, it was canceled and postponed to this year. I am planning to do that one unless something drastic changes in the next few months. I am so excited for Vertical Blue! I always wanted to go and compete there as it is none of the biggest freediving competitions in one of the best diving spots in the world".
"Diving is my therapy, I would consider it my second home. It makes anything that happens in life feel ok. Also, the marine life in the ocean is pretty amazing. I had the opportunity to go to Baja in February which was amazing. I don’t know if you have heard Jacques Cousteau saying that the Sea of Cortes is like “the aquarium of the world”? It truly is, it’s insane. It feels like a dream that this actually exists. But it is also like a reality check. How the things that we do actually impact the marine ecosystem and the environment".