Not many people are fortunate enough to say that their passion, sport, hobby, relaxation, and livelihood are all rolled into one.
Thirty-year-old freediving instructor, spearfisher and entrepreneur Danielle Bachew, the founder of EspearaTT, is one of those rare individuals. The corporate world was not for her. Trading her business attire for a wetsuit, she dived into her new “office” below the ocean.
The young pioneer is the happiest diving into T&T’s waters teeming with sea creatures and emerging from the water with a prized fish catch on the business end of her speargun, which she has now turned into a successful enterprise supplying sustainably sourced seafood to customers. ESpeara Seafood was only launched in October 2023 and eSpeara Charters was launched in 2018.
Speaking to WE magazine from her Santa Cruz home about her journey as a spearfisher and freediver, as a woman in an almost male-dominated field, Bachew said freediving and spearfishing “picked me.”
She added, “It started off when some friends asked me to take them out to dive. It was still a side hustle I did on weekends part-time, and I never thought it could be a full-time business then.
“When I started to work in sales, I understood more about business, as I did environmental science I knew nothing about the business aspect. Then I switched jobs and got my dream job as an environmental adviser at an oil and gas company, my dream life, and my dream family.”
Bachew has a BSc in Biology from the University of the West Indies, St Augustine Campus, and an MSc in Natural Resource & Environmental Management, with a specialisation in Coastal And Marine Resource Management at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, Barbados.
She loved her job, the company and her colleagues, however, Bachew said she was not built for corporate life. But Bachew, the mother of a toddler, said she was fortunate to have the support of her family, friends, and partner.
Everyone who knew her or had been to her classes knew that she should have answered the call of the sea earlier.
Bachew said she had an epiphany and decided to have a “tester” event that would be a real eSpeara charter offering the authentic experience she received as a diver to T&T families.
She wanted the event to be educational, fun-filled, and affordable. So, she included a boat ride on a pirogue, hiking in the nearby land, grilling fish on the beach, catching, cleaning, and cooking seafood, snorkelling tour, teaching people to be comfortable in the ocean, camping skills, building a fire, using smoke for mosquitoes and more marine activities.
Bachew’s event was a success and her clients thoroughly enjoyed themselves. From there, there was no turning back. She faced several challenges along the way as she was probably the only female freediver and spearfisher at that time and had to overcome several prejudices.
Bachew explained that success did not come overnight, it took years of constant perseverance, blood, sweat, actual tears, frustration and sacrifice in the industry to overcome the challenges to get where she is today. She had to work harder and dive harder than many people, often diving while the other male divers rested on the boat, doing multiple dives, sometimes in tough conditions. Bachew felt she had to work harder than her male counterparts.
There were also no female diving suits available at that time which proved challenging for her. Bachew had to customise or adapt wetsuits designed for male divers to wear as there were no proper fitting wetsuits for her. She would often just wear a dive skin. But while being more flexible, it did not offer any warmth, insulation or protection.
Bachew mentioned that there were also preconceived notions, doubts, comments and questions about her ability. Often she would be faced with remarks and some questioned her ability; asking if she caught the fish herself or if someone shot it for her, even though they saw her emerge from the water with a fish still impaled on her spear.
Eventually word of her skill spread among her friends, fellow divers and spearos, and people in the community, and she now dives all over Trinidad’s east, west, north and southeast coasts as well as Tobago.
She is grateful and considers it a privilege to be taught by some of the best and experienced, sustainable divers in the community. Bachew said that it was an opportunity that most “green” divers are denied. Most people learn to dive by getting their gear and then going in the sea and struggling without proper supervision, she said, as there were no real classes or opportunities to learn how to dive or spearfish in those early days in T&T.
Bachew said the reason that she focused on sustainably sourced seafood was that she was an environmentalist. She said spearfishing was the most sustainable form of fishing, a completely selective method with no bycatch, and only limited by various sea conditions. It is the only form of fishing where you can actually see and select the species, environment, and size of your catch, she said.
She and her team started mainly spearfishing barracuda and snapper. After feeding their families if there was a surplus they would sell the fish. They have expanded their catch with varities such as mahi mahi, grouper, lippe, shrimp, pink salmon, and lobster.
Bachew is also trying to raise awareness and educate Trinidadians and tourists on the lionfish as other Caribbean tourist-based islands have done. While the lionfish is an invasive species and its spines are venomous, she said the fish is not poisonous. Once the spines are removed, she added, it is a “good eating” fish that presents absolutely no danger to health as the meat, which is like a mixture of snapper and lobster, is delicious.
Her advice for young entrepreneurs is to follow their instincts and for women to follow their intuition.