Posts by Dan

Yes. Not sure about the distance, I have one wrap of line and it's a 130cm. I got as close as I could but it was further than I'd have liked. Still I felt pretty confident about the shot. A lot of that confidence came from the gun and light shaft, as this was only the 2nd time I ever used this gun. So far never missed yet.

Thanks for the nice comments guys. The fish in my avatar was actually bigger than this one. It's all about how you take the pic, I'm 6ft tall so I tend to make fish look less impressive than they are. I have to thank Alan for the nice pic.

Steven, there was a 4ft dirty layer with particles on top. But getting down it didn't clear up much. It was the sort of weird vis that distorts everything. Or maybe it was my eyes.

This fish was not shot with aspetto. I did make a good approach (evidently), he was on the move but like I said before looked like he was attached to his home. And a nice home it was, now on my GPS. There was a big black there too and we spent too much time trying to find him inside. But the entrances were too small to see in. Maybe next time with a better breath hold, although not likely to have so little current again soon at that spot.

Quote from sdeisen

Forget you guys back to the bikini section indeed

We don't like to be reminded, but we need to be reminded.

I wasn't sure how Sergio would feel about this trip down memory lane so I wasn't going to post about his accidents. But he told me it's ok so here's something closer to home, for you guys who think it only happens on the internetz.

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After changing the oil on his boat engine today he took the boat out for a quick test run with his brother and of course while out there did some fishing. He got a hog so the gun was fired once and then loaded in the water. The gun was only purchased 3 weeks ago BTW. For a reason unknown to me (I forgot to ask) he got on the boat with the gun loaded, I've never seen him do this before, if I did I would have said something. The gun has 2 standard length 5/8 bands and a single flopper 57" 9/32 shaft. Pantoja sat on the rear gunwale and proceeded to unload the gun.

He put the butt on his hip, grabbed the first band to unload it and the gun fired. As we all know due to the length of the C3X the point of the spear is much further than the head of the person loading therefore it's impossible to shoot oneself in the head. Quite different than a pneumatic speargun where if one does not pay attention the point can end up exactly under the jaw as it's reaching loaded position.

The spear hit the end of the mono and ricochet point first to his head. The spear entered at the hairline, was deflected by the cranium, exited under the eye brow passing over the eye and entered again above the cheek (I don't remember if it was the left or the right eye). In the shock of the moment Pantoja didn't know what happened but he said that when he opened his eye he could see the shaft directly in front of it. His brother ran over and grabbed the shaft so the weight of it would not tear the skin. Upon inspection the flopper did not completely pass under the skin and Pantoja decided to pull the spear out on the spot.

There was a lot of bleeding and I think he used a rag to put pressure on the wound while his brother drove the boat home. When I spoke to him he was just getting underway to the hospital.

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A couple of weeks after this accident Pantoja brought over the gun to inspect the mech. He didn't bother cleaning his own blood off the spear. I thought it would add drama to the report so I took a pic. At a later point the gun misfired again with a different spear, this time in the water. Since the gun was only recently bought the conclusion was that the mech was faulty. Riffe replaced it. Sergio got hurt only because he had the loaded gun out of the water.

This next accident was much more serious. Original thread here http://spearfishing.world/safe…45-pantojas-accident.html

Quote from Dan

I pulled out of that trip the night before due to not feeling rested. Pantoja took three divers out on his boat. They hit a school of mangroves but wend back to the dock because one of the divers who wasn't feeling well. After dropping him off they returned to the same spot, anchored and Pantoja proceeded to put up the dive flag. Unknown to him one of the divers placed a speargun in the fin bucket. This is a square plastic trash can that we fastened to the back of the seat and is supposed to be for fins only.

The speargun was a Rob Allen with a tricut point spear, and was placed with the spear pointing up and sideways. Pantoja was standing on the seat raising the dive flag over the canopy. After raising the flag he jumped down and onto the spear. The spear struck the lower ribs on the right side, traveled upwards along them and penetrated between the upper ribs going into the lung. Sergio made an instant decision to remove it. The spear was embedded past the flopper so to remove it he had to twist it the same way we do to get it out of a fish. Then they sped back to the dock which was two or three miles away. It is my understanding that Sergio had to drive the boat himself at some point and also dock it. During all this emergency assistance was called and he was air lifted by helicopter from Haulover park to Jackson hospital.

The spear penetrated the lung and the lung collapsed. Sergio had a tube put into the lung which was sucking out the blood accumulating there. I went to visit him the next day and it was obvious he was in a lot of pain. He was in a hospital bed with very limited movement and a tube in his chest for a week.

I see him pretty normal now except for the psychological strain of not being able to do what he loves. There is little information about the time it takes for a lung to recuperate fully from such a thing. The affects of diving and pressure could possibly cause it to collapse again and make things even worse than the effects of the accident in the first place. Common sense dictates to wait as long as possible before putting the lung through the exertions of deep diving.

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Ha! nice catch, didn't see it

Sunday 10/6/2013 with Pantoja, Alan and Manny. Nice conditions flat seas, little current, vis not so good but we could just make out bottom structure in 50ft and stay on it. Still rash guard temperature, I was comfortable in the new Speardiver Lycra suit + 3mm vest. Not much fish wise. But managed this beautiful 10lb mutton who was reluctant to leave his home, and Pantoja shot a hefty jack.

The chlorine in city water takes care of most waterborne pathogens How does chlorine added to drinking water kill bacteria and other harmful organisms? Why doesn't it harm us?: Scientific American I don't know what viruses you'd expect to be in water that wouldn't be in the ambient environment.

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By Michael LaForgia
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
WEST PALM BEACH —

The trauma surgeon had worked his share of gunshot and knife wounds and, once, had pulled a metal post out of a guy's chest. But what he saw when he looked down at 16-year-old Connor McKee on Tuesday was something new.

The teenager, who was boating with his friends in the Lake Worth Inlet that afternoon, had gotten shot through the neck with a spear gun. Paramedics had loaded McKee, a rising junior at Suncoast High School who lived on Singer Island, into an ambulance and sped toward St. Mary's Medical Center.

Dr. Ahmed Elhaddad and his team had scrambled to get ready.

Now the bleeding teen was on a gurney in front of him, awake and surprisingly calm, Elhaddad thought. The spear looked about two and a half feet-long and protruded from just above McKee's left collarbone. It had traveled through his chest cavity, and the tip was "tenting" the skin of his back.

"It was actually worse than I thought," Elhaddad recalled Friday. "We worked very fast."

The first thing they had to do was cut the spear down to a more manageable size. Backed up by nurses Jeffrey Green and Terry Bushway, Elhaddad tried a bolt cutter, but the spear shaft was a quarter-inch thick and so hard it broke the cutter's blade. Elhaddad called for a bigger one and lopped off about 12 inches of the metal rod.

They wheeled McKee into an operating room. The surgeon made a roughly 24-inch incision, beginning at the sternum and cutting down, to open his chest. Peering at the teenager's organs, Elhaddad realized how lucky McKee had been. The spear had missed his carotid artery by about seven millimeters, had pierced his left lung and passed just behind his heart.

The surgeon cut out a small piece of McKee's lung and used a grasper to pull the spear out with the lung tissue still attached. The whole thing took about an hour.

As Elhaddad recalled all this Friday afternoon, McKee was resting in a room at St. Mary's. He was listed in good condition. Palm Beach County Sheriff's investigators said he apparently was the victim of an accident; they said his friend, a fellow 16-year-old, inadvertently shot him with a spear gun as a boat driven by a third 16-year-old towed them near Palm Beach Shores.

"Normally somebody struck with that type of object doesn't make it," Elhaddad said. "A few more millimeters, and he wouldn't be here."

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A Brazilian fisherman who accidentally fired a harpoon through his own face survived with minimal brain damage -- and didn't bother to seek medical attention for more than 10 hours.

Bruno Barcellos de Souza Coutinho, 34, was cleaning his fishing gear when the speargun discharged, sending the foot-long weapon approximately six inches into his skull, according to Hospital Santa Teresa.

Instead of rushing to the hospital, de Souza Coutinho apparently thought he would relax and let the wound heal, prompting his aunt to call the fire department.

De Souza Coutinho was completely lucid when he arrived at the hospital, despite having had a small spear pierce his left eye, crush his skull and lodge itself in his brain millimeters from vital arteries, according to Gawker. He underwent emergency surgery Monday and lost all vision in his left eye due to the mishap.

He remains in the hospital's intensive care unit, and will know to seek medical attention the next time he manages to survive a near-fatal harpoon accident.

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I use filtered water, Propur gravity filter with ProOne-D filters, so far no problems. I find that burning sensation is caused by water that's too warm. For me 15 seconds in the microwave is perfect.

True Facts About The Angler Fish - YouTube

Housing lens or camera lens?

I don't have time now to do these tests. I'm sure this information will be available online soon enough.

If Gopro statements about the hero3+ are to be taken at face value, then just the low light improvement will be worth it for our application. You can read about the other specs and decide if they're important enough.

I haven't heard anything about a hero4.

Quote from Hardline

I am surprised they decreased the waterproof rating on the new cases.

I think there are more people that attach the gopro to remote control helicopters and planes, their heads, bikes, cars etc. than there are divers who'll take it deeper than 40m. I'm sure all those other users welcome the - lighter camera.

Just got my hands on the new Gopro HERO3+. There are a bunch of new features which can be discussed in this thread. The most obvious one that should be mentioned is the new housing. It's a little smaller and more compact than the previous HERO3 housing. Looks like Gopro chose to up-sell the previous standard HERO3 housing as an optional HERO3+ Dive housing to those who want to feel safe diving with the Gopro.

I think buying the HERO3 dive housing is a must for spearfishing videos. Not necessarily because of the higher underwater rating, 60m versus the new housing with a stated 40m depth rating. But because the new housing doesn't have the secondary latch, without which the housing door can potentially open from the speargun recoil (if mounted on a speargun). You'd have to resort to a backup solution like a zip-tie or rubber band around the housing latch.

GoPro HERO3+ cameras are available from www.FreediveStore.com with a free diving accessory included.

GoPro HERO3+ new housing

Marco, how long after deploying the FAD do you start to see good fish on it?

Very sad. Rest in peace. Condolences to the family.

Be well Don.

Nicely done Ihab. How is the roller pin fixed in place?

Welcome to Speardiver.

Nice fish.

Water's getting colder?

Thanks for the vid. Nice music. Never seen a lobster escape so slow

Please post a close up picture of the rod in the plastic piece on the belt. I would like to see how it's held in there. Is this piece originally meant to be used as a stringer? Who makes it? Thanks.

Beautiful place. Thanks for the pics.