There’s a growing concern in the spearfishing community: the rise of a “go deeper, stay longer” mentality, particularly among newer and younger spearfishers. This mindset is often influenced by social media, YouTube channels, and online videos showcasing extreme dives and deep catches.
While impressive, deep, prolonged dives don’t always equal better fish — and pushing limits without experience can lead to serious injury or death.
🚫 Spearfishing ≠ Competitive Freediving
It’s important to understand the difference:
| Spearfishing | Competitive Freediving |
| Involves hunting, fish behaviour, reading the environment | Focuses on depth, duration, and personal records |
| Repeated dives over hours (aerobic activity) | Usually one deep dive per session (anaerobic activity) |
| Requires surface awareness, boat traffic, currents | Controlled environments with full safety protocols |
| Emphasises safety, strategy, and sustainability | Emphasises personal performance goals |
Mixing the two without proper knowledge is dangerous. Using competitive freediving techniques (like hyperventilation or skipping recovery times) in spearfishing greatly increases your risk of blackout and decompression sickness (DCS), especially at depth.
📢 What Needs to Change
To keep our sport safe and sustainable, spearfishers — especially beginners — must shift their focus:
- Learn the skills of a hunter, not a freediving athlete.
- Focus on technique, fish behaviour, reading signs, and safe dive practices.
- Recognise that shallow water, well-dived, yields great fish.
✅ What Training Should Look Like
Training programs should bring the focus back to real spearfishing skills, not just freediving numbers. Good training courses should:
- Emphasise conservative diving, based on shared knowledge from experienced spearos.
- Start with basic, safety-first education, not advanced freediving.
- Avoid glorifying deep diving as the measure of success.
- Standardise training across clubs and regions.
- Encourage clubs to appoint a Safety or Training Officer to support newer members.
- Reinforce the principles of Safe – Sustainable – Selective Spearfishing.
⚠️ Deep Diving Risks
Adapted from Erez Beatus (freediving expert):
- Competitive freedivers may follow a 1:3 dive-to-rest ratio (e.g., 1 minute dive = 3 minutes rest), but this doesn’t account for the repetitive nature of spearfishing.
- Spearfishing is an aerobic activity — but deep spearing (40m+) is dangerous, even with good surface intervals.
- At such depths, your dive time just to reach the bottom can exceed 80 seconds, with additional time spent fighting fish, returning to the surface, and staying composed.
- Deep diving increases risks of DCS, blackout, fatigue, dehydration, and error — especially after repeated dives.
- Social media stunts like the “145 Club” and “spearing at 61m” may look exciting, but they set a dangerous and unrealistic standard for everyday divers.
🐟 The Better Way
You don’t need to dive deep to get quality fish. Many of the best spearos consistently land great catches in shallower water by:
- Understanding local fish behaviour
- Learning to approach without spooking fish
- Reading conditions and finding productive ground
This is the culture we need to build — smart, safe, and sustainable spearfishing.
SPEARSAFE CONTENTS
Australian Underwater Federation - Spearfishing 