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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.
