I saw this on Facebook. This happens way too often. I'm sure this very competent father and son team never thought it would happen to them, just as none of us do. Someone said that three others lost their lives free diving last week.
Rest in Peace young diver.
Hurts too much to imagine what that father is going thru...condolences to the entire family.
Someone said that three others lost their lives free diving last week.
Do you know or can you find out who the other divers are?
That's very sad, RIP.
Don
Sad news,Rip.
Do you know or can you find out who the other divers are?
I saw this on George's Facebook page. I looked on some other spearfishing sites but didn't find anything. There was a spearo attacked by a tiger shark on the Big Isle Hawaii. Hope he survives.
I saw this on George's Facebook page. I looked on some other spearfishing sites but didn't find anything. There was a spearo attacked by a tiger shark on the Big Isle Hawaii. Hope he survives.
I think I saw that on video. It looked like he had a big chunk taken out of his upper leg. He was filming himself getting loaded into the rescue
Sad and scary story. My son Franco is just like that kid; he's 16 now and can freedive to 90'. I made him read the story. I'm always telling him the dangers of our sport. To a point that I'm probably boring. But I hope he gets it. At that age we have our balls full of testosterone and our brains full of shit.
RIP Hope his family gets the support they need right now
Heartbreaking. RIP little dude!
I cast no blame in this thought, but where was the father? It seems from what I read that the father and son were out together and that the father were in the proximity when the son went missing. Did they lose each other, or why where they not together when SWB happened?
As mentioned, I cast no blame upon anyone, it is truely tragic and my thoughts goes to his family.
So sad. RIP
I don't know how is the visibility where they used to dive, but when I dive with my son Franco, who is stronger than me even if he doesn't knows it, I finish destroyed, because I have to dive after him every single time he dives (and I want to spearfish too!).
When a kid can dive to 80-90 feet consistently in visibilities of 30-40 feet, the "buddy up" system doesn't work. What I do is that I tell him to let me know EVERY SINGLE TIME he's about to dive. Then, I give him a signal telling that I'm ready. He dives, and when he's like 20' deep, I dive after him and stay at 60-70' watching him.
I he dives without telling me, there's trouble. Too many losses lately and I know he's the perfect candidate.
He knows now that either it is my way or he is not going out with me. Call me a grumpy ass, but I want to die before my kids.
If water is clear is a totally different scenario, but you must always keep an eye on them.
Hey Grumpy Ass.
Ton of respect for you being there watching over your kid,
And I really don't want to be splitting hairs, just wondering about something.
I still have more experience in freediving than in spearing, but SWBs are a shallow water phenomenon (the brain shuts down when the partial oxygen pressure goes below a certain level but at depth, the partial pressure will be above that level). I have read of very, very few instances where people have blacked out at depth. The only ones, I can recall reading about were very deep competition dives where the diver blew an eardrum and in a few instances that led to disorientation and BO.
In competitions and freedving courses normally safety divers meet an ascending dive for the last 10-20 meters or so. Of course, if there is a black out deeper than that, the diver will be tethered to the line.
I am just a tad worried that you wear yourself out, or that with two divers down at the same time, then who is your buddy... But I guess you are worried about entanglements on the bottom.
[EDIT], ah, I should learn to read before I post. You are talking about low viz scenarios.
Yeah, that is tricky, I'll give you that.
I can't even begin to imagine the pain his dad and the rest of the family is going through. I hope the family is strong and that with time, everyone will eventually come out on the other side.
A few days ago, I took the liberty of sharing this sad news over on deeperblue on a thread where a 15-y-o. was asking advice about his first speargun purchase for his first spearing adventures. I wanted to stress the importance of buddying up, starting out with someone experienced and never pushing your limits.
If you dive with a partner you should have a conversation about the level of support your going to provide each other in the water before getting wet. Maybe you watch your buddies every dive or go do your own thing and never cross paths. Regardless you should know what the expectations are.
Glad you read better Gecko. I was talking about low vis scenarios. When is top to bottom is easy. Just watch your buddy from the surface.
I've taught my kids what to do in case anyone blacks out. I'm not a freediving instuctor. Just a little experienced freediver that has saved 3 from death...
for someone that dives 100', 60' is a piece of cake. Of course things can go wrong, but if we think like that, we should just stay home. 
Anyway, there's a lot of info here that should be moved to a dedicated post by the moderator. This one is about this kid that died and how sad it is. I wish peace to his father. I can feel how he feels now.
I always say the same shit. Knowing your limits is what will save you at the end of the day. You should come up without being gassed. If you have to concentrate on your breathing when you surface, you stayed down way too long.
If I had children, I wouldn't let them dive without my supervision. Kids think they are indestructible and it won't happen to them. They don't understand the dangers of the ocean. They do not fear the ocean. Fear is good and what keeps you alive.
Depth is all relative to what you are capable of doing.
I always say the same shit. Knowing your limits is what will save you at the end of the day. You should come up without being gassed. If you have to concentrate on your breathing when you surface, you stayed down way too long.
If I had children, I wouldn't let them dive without my supervision. Kids think they are indestructible and it won't happen to them. They don't understand the dangers of the ocean. They do not fear the ocean. Fear is good and what keeps you alive.
Depth is all relative to what you are capable of doing.
Agreed. As kids we would drop off our canoe holding cinder blocks to the bottom of the lake. Obviously, we really had no idea what the consequences could have been but thankfully made it. Don't know specifics about this 15 year old and why he wasn't being supervised but I have a feeling it could have to do with overconfidence on his part as well as the father. Overconfidence, I think, can affect experienced divers just like the ones beginning to develop their diving abilities. That complacency that sometimes results from experience leads to the accidents like the ones we see almost every month in our community. It's not easy (probably impossible) to take every precaution each time one goes out, but it's absolutely necessary to try to minimize the enormous risk that comes with freedive spearfishing.
Brad
Kid was diving with his dad guys... 4 kids under 21 died that week, we had a livly conversation on my FB page about this topic, the freedivers were all over the shallow water blackout and their dive scenarios, and saying how spearfishing is tarnishing their sports reputation.... WE ARE NOT FREEDIVERS! We are spearfishermen, its not simply shallow water blackout killing these kids its ALL THE OTHER DANGERS THAT GO WITH SPEARFISHING!!! We dont go up and down a line we are hunters, fish drown us, either we fight to hard for one like our friend here did just over a year ago, and he was a bad ass!(tearing up writing that) wish you were here in the conversation. Or we get wrapped, or caught, or towed orrrrrrrr...on and on... we need more discussion on what keeps us down longer than we should as hunters and scenarios like Marco is talking about with his son and low vis. We need spearfishing guidelines, a course on freediving is a great resource but it only cuts half way into our sports safety, and safe practices. WE NEED A SPEARFISHING CERTIFICATION!!!!!! TIRED OF ALL THESE ****ING DEATHS!!!!!!
Shit, that is just way too many...:-( Man, that's a lot of hurt for a lot of people.
I came from the freediving side of things before starting to spear and while that might make me more aware of the dangers of SWB, I would never ever give spearos beef. I mean, who the eff' has the right to say you taint them when you guys do the dying. That's disrespectful to say the least.
The freedivers are prolly right in that clinically speaking it is SWB taking out most of the spearos, but as you point out, what we should focus on is the incidents leading up to that point. Spearos don't often BO on a straight, regular dive - and if they do, then it's fair to say they didn't dive within their own limits. That said, I am kinda worried that straight up BOs could be increasing with the influx of new divers. That is not cool, cuz that isn't that hard to prevent, even when diving alone.
Something else most often tip the scales. Like The Dude points out and like Jon's and many other stories show. But to me, that's not much different than a freediver going too deep, not being relaxed enough, freaking out at the thermocline, using more energy to deal with EQ than intended etc, etc and then BOing on the way up.
The difference is that freedivers train rescues and buddy up. So, a BO is not that huge an issue. They can allow themselves to be reckless in a controlled environment.
In many ways, advanced spearing is so much harder because there are many more things out of our control and if we can work on reigning them in, even ever so slightly we will be much better off.
So, I agree that we need to practice and mentally prepare ourselves for not only rescues and buddying up when we can, but also dealing with all the shit a fish and our greed can throw at us. If we can get better at that, SWBs will be much fewer.
I still have very little big fish experience, so I can't really say I know how to better control anything in those scenarios. But I am working on what I can control right here and right now in preparation for the future.
These days, I am building a gun that will be quite unique. I intend for it to be my proper blue water gun as I am slowly going after bigger fish in the years to come. The gun will be based on an amazingly powerful pneumatic gun that has been out of production for 20-30 years and then I will modify it heavily. First and foremost it will be longer than it ever was while they were on sale. I will put money, time and love into it. It will be mine as much as I can make it mine. In all likelihood there will be none like it in the world.
But I can tell you this - I have been forcing myself, every time I think about that gun, to think "Let Go, Let Go, Let Go!". I need to devaluate that gun in my mind, so I won't be holding on to it when I should be heading up...
Furthermore, I have promised myself I wont go after big fish without proper buddying up.
Lastly, I will try to seek out very experienced divers in the next few years and try to dive with them, too, when possible.
I am sorry, I can't offer real practical tips but I will suck up any little piece of info coming from you guys and do my very best to share it in my circle of friends.
[sorry, if this is derailing the thread - my minds just got going after Dude George's post. Feel free to edit/move/delete]
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