Watersports are for everyone. It’s a message former national freediving record-holder and speech-language pathologist Shivani Goberdhan helped spread across Hawaii, which she has brought back to her home country. Now based in Tobago, she’s championing and assisting with the involvement of people with disabilities in some of her favourite disciplines.
If her name sounds familiar, she made headlines in 2019 after setting this country’s first two freediving records at the Caribbean Cup in Honduras. Originally from south Trinidad, she completed the constant weight category (35m) in a minute and 20 seconds, and constant weight with fins (38m) in a minute and 25 seconds.
While living in Hawaii, even as she managed her mainstay of being a speech-language pathologist, she continued to explore the ocean through surfing, paddling, surfski, and many other disciplines.
But she recognised that whenever she told her clients—and other people with disabilities—about her adventures, they often had the same response: I wish I could do that too.
“I’ve been working for over a decade with people with all kinds of disabilities—children, then adults,” she told WE Life and Culture. “They felt like there was no way they would ever experience that. They just already decided for themselves that they won’t because they had some kind of a difference.”
And while it made her sad, she also became determined to find spaces where they could fulfil that dream.
“I was fortunate to discover a community in which they were taking people with all kinds of disabilities into the water. My mentors, actually, were people who were paralysed who were avid surfers, and they were the ones who showed me how to approach disabilities in the water,” she explained.
“And it took me witnessing it myself, witnessing people who were completely blind, who have one limb, who were paralysed from the neck down, paralysed from the waist down, who had autism, Down syndrome… Seeing these people completely free in the water was amazing.”
After this eye-opening experience, she was even more excited to share the news with her clients who felt it was impossible.
And she didn’t stop there—she also took a course in France on how to teach freediving to people with disabilities.
With joy in her voice, she recalled successfully coaching and helping a friend who was paralysed from the waist down to swim independently.
“I took her from not being able to swim more than like two to three strokes to doing lap swimming on her own. She takes herself to the pool; she goes on scuba diving trips all over the world now.”
But as she did more research into such initiatives in T&T and realised they were scarce, she decided she also wanted to give back to her home country. She has now relocated to Tobago to do just that.
“The ocean belongs to everybody. I’ve been living from island to island in Hawaii, and, to me, these people have the exact same right to the ocean that I do, and these people are citizens and they are residents in the exact same capacity as I am in. So if we’ve been able to figure out these tanks and these apparatuses to help us swim, there’s got to be some way that we can mould the technology to help these people as well.”
In 2023, Pigeon Point Beach in Tobago was in the spotlight for offering wheelchair floats for disabled people to experience the water.
Goberdhan also brought over a similar accessibility wheelchair to the island. “This chair has been through an incredible journey,” she wrote on Instagram. “From Day At the Beach events (in Hawaii)... to being fixed up, to a friendly blessing and last dip in the Pacific.”
She joked that it left customs officers in T&T “scratching their heads” before it was put on the ferry to Tobago. This beach wheelchair will present opportunities to locals and their families, not only to enjoy more beaches, but also to build a community, build water skills and explore possibilities of more adventurous ocean activities.”
She has also since launched Meet Me on The Water—a movement to empower communities with knowledge and skills to access and stay safe in the water.
And in addition to people with disabilities, she also hosts a weekly meet-up exclusively for women to have a safe space to learn and train for watersports.
“I also want it to be known that women are so capable in the water at all levels. There are pockets over here where there are women who are doing things in the water, and I want women to feel like they can be vulnerable and curious and empowered.”
She praised several of the teams she has met in T&T so far, including the Kayak Centre in Trinidad and dragon boat racers in Tobago.
She is also working on getting a specific surfski shipped to T&T to attempt a trip between the two islands. Why, you ask? Well, in Hawaii, people doing something like this is an everyday occurrence.
“Over there, it’s never ‘why,’ it’s ‘when’. It’s so normal to go into the open ocean and do like ten-mile paddles, 15-mile paddles. Everyone is working up to the exact same races that are crossing channels… And it’s because of that, there’s so much more of a love for the ocean, a respect for the ocean,” she said.
She launched a GoFundMe campaign titled From Hawai’i to Trinidad: Inspiring Ocean Journeys to help raise money to get the equipment here, and to continue providing more accessibility opportunities in the country for people with both cognitive and physical disabilities. Another piece of equipment the funds will be used for is a SUPSquatch, which is a giant inflatable paddleboard used for water therapy.
“When you’re underwater, everybody’s equal. Everybody has the same visual limitations; we all need masks, everyone can hear the same thing, and our bodies essentially move the same underwater. And it’s just the only place where she feels like we’re equal and free at the same time,” she concluded.
Those interested in her journey can connect with her via Instagram at shiver.metimbers and meetmeonthewater, or on her website meetmeonthewater.com.
