SCUBA spearfishing

Ok I'll bite.

I agree with you on the fact that scuba spearfishing is not for me. I don't feel agile or stealthy and I personally don't think it is as challenging.

Thats probably where your reasoning falls apart. I agree that fish in SFL waters are overfished but I would venture to say (I can't really back this up) that most spear fisherman in this area are free diving not using scuba to harvest fish. The hardest fished areas are the reef between 15 and 60 ft. And like you mentioned this a range that many weekend warriors can reach without much skill which makes it very easy for people who are not scuba certified and don't have their own scuba gear. Both are pretty big limitations on how many people are actually scuba diving.

The current regulations still need to change. Even if scuba spearing was dramatically more effective than freediving the regulations should be set up in such a way that a diver could catch the limit and the species still be sustainable. This is currently not the case. If you want to say that people disregard limits you would be correct but I doubt you could say that either scuba or freedivers were any more likely to do this. I have seen some pretty gross pics from both parties. Enforcement is really lacking and there is a lack of information on what limits are needed to help fish. For instance red snapper in the Gulf.

The other issue that is completely ignored in your statement is the relative impact of recreational spearfisherman on the fish populations. The biggest impact on fish species is by far commercial fishing. Their catch numbers dwarf recreational numbers not to mention that spearfishing only makes up a small portion of recreational fishing and scuba spearfishing an even smaller subset of spearfishermen.

If your argument were simply that scuba spearfishing should not be allowed because it is not fair you would find a very heated debate, but there would be pros and cons for both sides. (I won't go there)

However, your argument seems to be that eliminating scuba spearfishing will restore fish populations to their glory days and in that regard I think you are incorrect. My retort would be that scuba spearfishing makes up a very small portion of the total fish catch. Far too small to have a significant impact on the overall health of the fisheries.

:plusone:everything Xan said.

Chase, whatever my personal feelings are about spearfishing on scuba, I must disagree with you. I'm not involved with fighting anti spearfishing legislation, other than providing a forum where information can be shared and divers can be made aware of and organize to fight the proposed legislation. But I understand the it's the scuba spearfishermen who spearhead the resistance, and have been doing so for years. Additionally any ground gained against spearfishing in any form, ultimately weakens our position and brings freedive spearfishing closer to being banned, so we have to stick together with the scuba speardivers.

I think this is a good topic. I also think that freedive spearfishermen stating publicly that scuba spearfishing should be banned for whatever reasons, is damaging to all of us. I'm inclined to ask you to pull this thread. But I'll wait to see if others agree with me.

I think commercial fishing is second on the list. In my opinion pollution is the main problem. If you ever fly over Port Everglades look down to the water as it enters the ocean and you'll see what I mean. I can assure you it's not rain water. I'm sure it's the same at every other port. This is an issue we can't fix, we don't have the backing, or the funding. The government doesn't really care enough to fix the problem. They'll just put a band aid on the whole thing and keep the environmentalist at ease......for a little while.

Yes, commercial fishing is far more impactful (read detrimental) to fish populations than recreational fishing.

You are correct when you say that if fish are not allowed to breed they will eventually become extinct. On this point, if it was determined that a certain species reached maturity at 12" and grew at a rate of roughly 1" per year and reproduce one time per year. Then making the minimum length greater than 18" should allow this particular fish to reproduce about 6 times. If fish are being harvested before they are allowed to breed it needs to be changed. Now for a fish that doesn't grow much beyond it mature size then you would need to determine its rate of reproduction and make sure the bag limit is well below its reproductive rate.

Another issue I see with your argument is that scuba divers can venture significantly deeper than freedivers. A basic open water certification certifies a diver to 60 ft. Not very deep. Advanced open water to 130'. Anything beyond that you are into technical diving and the risks become so high that very few would risk the complications that spearfishing adds. Now you might say that most divers can't free dive to those depths and you would be correct but that does not prevent divers from fishing those depths. I can personally touch just past 100' but I have fished wrecks that sit in 140'. If you use chum and other attractors you can harvest fish in these depths. Having worked in a dive shop there are not that many people that venture much beyond 80-100 ft on scuba.

It's a complicated subject and honestly the people making the rules are usually the worst informed. They are politicians who are influenced heavily by commercial interests and rely on imperfect science that does not accurately reflect what the people on the water are experiencing.

I also agree that human pollution is possibly the most detrimental force to the entire planet not just fish but as you mentioned it is so far out of are control I was not really considering it.

I strongly believe than a "no take" period during each species spawning would bring back their population. But it must be a "no take" for everyone; commercial, recreational, speardivers, scuba. EVERYONE. I won't mind stop taking one species for a 3 month period each year if it turns into more nice fish later.

Quote from Marco

I strongly believe than a "no take" period during each species spawning would bring back their population. But it must be a "no take" for everyone; commercial, recreational, speardivers, scuba. EVERYONE. I won't mind stop taking one species for a 3 month period each year if it turns into more nice fish later.

I would second that idea

Quote from Marco

I strongly believe than a "no take" period during each species spawning would bring back their population. But it must be a "no take" for everyone; commercial, recreational, speardivers, scuba. EVERYONE. I won't mind stop taking one species for a 3 month period each year if it turns into more nice fish later.

You're right Marco. And the problem, as you probably see in Venezuela as I see here and I saw in the Philippines, is enforcement.
You can have all the laws in place but if there are not boats or officers out there patrolling and at the marinas checking coolers coming in, laws don't mean squat.

Scuba or free diving…we should stick together. I've read figures where spearfishing is less than 2% of the total number taken from the wild.

My personal take? I've done both…much more free diving. Scuba is hard. If you go beyond 130 feet or so, you can't be chasing fish down as they go deep. You'll get so narced breathing hard you won't know up or down. You only have about 15 minutes before deco on air. If you do two or three dives per day, you're only killing fish for ….30 minutes if you're lucky.. Free diving, I'm in the water for 4-6 hours.

I dive the Northern Gulf, and there are far more scuba divers than there are free divers. I see them every time I go and I can tell you that I kill just as many fish as they do. Scuba is not an advantage to me, it just allows more people to participate in diving because it doesn't require the physical ability and practice.

I compare it to this;
I love archery. I started bowhunting when I was a teen. Not many bowhunters back then, and all bows were recurves, the compound was not available. As soon a compound bows came out, lots of people started bowhunting because the equipment made it easy to become proficient at 20 to 25 yards. I still hunt with a recurve bow, but that's my choice. A couple of years ago, it was made legal to hunt with a crossbow during bow season, and more people were bow hunting. Some guys shooting compound bows started raising hell saying "that's not a bow and it shouldn't be allowed". I still kill deer during bow season, just as many as the guys with compound bows and crossbows.

Quote from Dan

:plusone:everything Xan said.

Chase, whatever my personal feelings are about spearfishing on scuba, I must disagree with you. I'm not involved with fighting anti spearfishing legislation, other than providing a forum where information can be shared and divers can be made aware of and organize to fight the proposed legislation. But I understand the it's the scuba spearfishermen who spearhead the resistance, and have been doing so for years. Additionally any ground gained against spearfishing in any form, ultimately weakens our position and brings freedive spearfishing closer to being banned, so we have to stick together with the scuba speardivers.

I think this is a good topic. I also think that freedive spearfishermen stating publicly that scuba spearfishing should be banned for whatever reasons, is damaging to all of us. I'm inclined to ask you to pull this thread. But I'll wait to see if others agree with me.

I am with Dan here as well, became educated and a learned call.

Here in West Oz we are one of the last states in Australia which still allow spearfing on scuba. It comes up for discussion fairly regularly when Fisheries are reviewing the state of our fishery and proposing new laws. Fisheries statistics, mainly from boat ramp surveys, show that less than 1% of our fish are taken by spearfishing, with a very small proportion of that from scuba. Based on that data, scuba spearfishing remains legal.

What they have done here though is introduced tight daily bag limits (2 prized demersals and 3 prized pelagics) and a 2 month closed season to prized demersals every year. With these measures it really doesn't matter how you are catching your feed of fish, when you come home with two fish there is a pretty good chance you have left some behind.

Like others have said, having the scuba community on side during these periods of debate has been a huge blessing for us freedivers. In other states of Australia the call for marine parks comes most loudly from scuba diving charter operators and clubs. When half of their members are extracting either crays or fish the scuba divers tend to leave us alone.

Enforcement here is pretty tight too, and penalties are severe.

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Quote from Chase

Scuba on the other hand offers no fair chance for the fish, IMHO. Ya ya, "the bubbles scare the fish"... Whatever. Scuba leaves the fish no real place to retreat to and spawn and get it's numbers back up. Most free divers cannot go past 60' on average. Im talking weekend warriors. The more serious free divers are hunting in 80-100'. But, the free divers going to those depths are a lot less common. Any beer drinking pop belly Billy Bob can slap on an air tank, equalize on descent, and basically sit at depth neutralizing anything (100'-120'?).
Chase

Happened across this briefly even though its old i want to put my two cents in where I see fit.

I refuse to freedive due to my inexperience with it and the fact that I feel extremely uncomfortable being limited strictly by the air held in my lungs. Ive gotten down to 50 feet before but I wont touch freedive spearfishing ever again.

Sitting at depth between 110 and 120 is completely wrong and not the case. If I wanted to do as such Id probably be bent several times over now. as far as bubbles spooking fish, i can gladly show you a 15 minute clip of me doing a lap around a wreck in 150 feet of water and getting schooled by about 10 different black grouper, none of which i shot at or landed in that dive. Most SCUBA divers Ive met stick to shallow depths and do a bunch of sightseeing and photo stuff and have no interest in going to the depths I go to.

For the SCUBA diving I do, before I even hit the water everything is calculated and followed to a T and executed with damn near precision every time I go down and come back up. Shallow for me on scuba is 90 feet. I typically exceed 130 feet on any given trip, usually going down between 120-170 feet down where there is no room for error AT ALL. Hell, Ive been past 200 before too.

More often then not I come back up fishless from deep dives unless I get the drop on a nice fish that gives me a good shot. I dont chase fish down or over exert myself at depth as its a good way to F*** up royally and put myself in a world of hurt.

Typically my drops last 15 to 20 minutes and its enough to shoot one or two quality fish. I dive wrecks. I dont go in them. sometimes ill dive the reef but deep.

I follow my computer and usually get the hell out of dodge before I end up in decompression which can sometimes be double your time spent on the bottom on a deep dive. I cant just sit my ass on the bottom in 110 ft and fling shafts around at everything that gets close for an hour, Ill end up dead with an empty tank.

Simply put for me as a scuba shooter and the small circle of other shooters I dive with, we arent "fat ol billy bobs" strapping on a tank and sitting on the bottom filling stringers til they cant close. Over the course of a great day we'll put 3 or 4 fish per person in the boat stretched out over 4 dives. other then that we dont kill everything we see. some days only one person gets one or two fish.

Not to say there arent shithead amateurs out there blasting away at every legal fish they see in 40 feet of water tank diving (theres plenty of snorkelers that do it too, BTDT just like almost everyone that gets into diving and spearing)

If you really want to get pissed, take a walk by the head boats when they get back and watch them dump out trashcans and coolers of barely legal yellowtail, mangos, porgies, grunts, triggers, etc for all their customers. Id start talking commercial spearing since I do that sometimes but I wont touch that as its at an opposity end of the spectrum.

So just to clarify, Im sharing my side of the story with scuba shooting since thats all I do and its what I love. The few people I dive with all respect our resources just as much as anyone else would. And I will tell you some of the wrecks that I dive on in the area have huge populations of extremely healthy big fish that stay down that deep for a damn good reason. and I see them time and time again on the same spots.

In México scuba spearfishing is banned and still the fish populations is decreasing at a startling rate. Commercial fishing and harvesting should be blamed.

The simple diver (even in numbers) has far less impact than other larger factors.

Those mentioned already.

But free diver or the scuba folks get blamed more.

All of us are small fry. And yes I do understand that us divers can do too much harvesting in one spot and that needs to be managed.

We take pictures of a big fish, post it. Visibility. Even getting in to the water and leaving we are spotted. and lots of us.

Let's take a commercial operation, Are they posting all the fish they get in pictures. I don't see the largest fish caught records in commercial market, Most tons of fish taken in a day. etc.

Let me google "spearefishing" and go image and see who I see.... the freaking divers....

Lets try "fish kills" no divers in there but lots of fish.

Lets try "commercial fishing" no divers there, and sure there are lots of fish.

Take 100 divers , best of the best, in their life time , they couldn't fill even a quarter of one of those boats on a day run.

Just apples and oranges on limiting divers over others. Most of us just shoot what we can eat.

I guess my main point is I get the free diving scuba deal. but together we are just a bug on the windshield of a Mac truck.

Disregarding the whole scuba vs freediver thread objective, (back in the day a good freediver could take more fish than a scuba spearo, ask Don Paul). ONE of the main factors of spearfishermen being targeted is that spearfishermen are an easy legislative target. Meaning we are small in number, we are not organized, we do not pay off the legislators, we are highly visible, we are frequently targeted (and fined) by FWC and others, we have no voice in DC. Shall I go on? City polluters and commercial fishing organizations are NOT "easy legislative targets" for legislators to attack.
just my opinion

What is needed is actual research and FACTS, don't want the whole red snapper ordeal on our east coast fish.

I can only speak for my favorite fish to shoot which is hogfish, the size limit NEEDS to go up on these, at 12" most hogs are just barely entering maturity and haven't even bred yet.