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Before you spearfish — this comes first

  • Get proper instruction before you spearfish. A recognised freediving or spearfishing course teaches the things that actually kill people in this sport, and reading about them is not the same as being taught them.
  • Dive with a buddy, and dive one up, one down — one diver in the water, one on the surface watching them, every dive. A breath-hold blackout is silent and gives no warning; a watching buddy is the difference between an incident and a fatality.
  • Stay inside your own training and experience. Depth and breath-hold times are personal, they change day to day, and nobody else's numbers apply to you.
  • Understand the conditions before you enter the water: visibility, current, swell, tide, boat traffic and your exit. Conditions decide whether a dive is reasonable far more often than skill does.
  • Use equipment you have been shown how to use, check it before every session, and be visible — a marked float and line are how boat traffic knows you are there.
  • Never extend a dive for a fish. No catch is worth pushing a breath-hold, and the urge to take one more second is exactly what a blackout feels like from the inside — which is to say, like nothing at all.

Controlling a fish after the shot

Explainer · Last reviewed 2026-08-27

The seconds after a shot are the most dangerous in the dive and the most likely to lose the fish — and the two problems have the same solution, which is line management rather than strength.

Safety

Entanglement — Can cause serious injury or death

A shot fish running into structure or kelp can wrap a shooting or float line around it, or around the diver, while the diver is on a finite breath and focused on the fish rather than on their own state.

What reduces it: Transferring the fish to a surface float rather than holding it, a cutting tool reachable with either hand, surfacing before dealing with a tangle, abandoning gun and line rather than extending a breath-hold, and a buddy watching the period after the shot specifically.

Line under tension — Can cause serious injury or death

A large fish can tow a diver downwards or away from their exit or boat, and a loop of loaded line around a limb transmits that force to the diver.

What reduces it: Keeping line clear of the body at all times, using a configuration that can be released, releasing rather than resisting, and never fighting a fish that is taking the diver somewhere they did not choose to go.

A shot fish is a strong animal attached to a diver by a line, and everything that goes wrong in this discipline short of blackout tends to happen in the next thirty seconds.

WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENS. A fish that is not immediately immobilised will run, and where it runs is decided by its escape strategy rather than by the diver. A reef fish runs for structure. A pelagic fish runs for open water and depth. A fish in kelp runs into kelp. Each of those creates a different problem, and none of them is solved by pulling harder.

THE THREE FAILURES, IN ORDER OF SERIOUSNESS.

ENTANGLEMENT. Line under load, a diver on one breath, and a fish wrapping that line around structure. This is the failure that kills, and it is why a cutting tool that can be reached with either hand is equipment rather than an accessory, and why the correct response to a line that cannot be freed is to let go of the equipment.

BEING TOWED. A large fish can move a diver, downwards or away from the exit or away from the boat. A diver committed to a fish while their air is running out is making a trade they did not consciously agree to.

LOSING THE FISH. Least important of the three and the one most people plan for. A fish tears off because the shot placement was poor, because it was pulled against the direction the shaft entered, or because it was fought rather than let run against a float.

WHY A FLOAT LINE IS THE ANSWER TO ALL THREE. Transferring the fish's power to a surface float rather than to the diver means the fish tires against buoyancy instead of against a person on a finite breath; the diver can surface and breathe while the fish is still attached; and the diver is not the anchor point when something wraps.

The rule that comes before all the technique

NO FISH IS WORTH A BREATH.

It reads like a slogan and it is the operative safety instruction on this page. The situations that kill divers here are all versions of the same decision: a diver who would have surfaced, staying down a few seconds longer because the fish is nearly free, or nearly untangled, or nearly landed.

What follows from it:

SURFACE FIRST, THEN DEAL WITH IT. A fish held on a float line is still there after a breath. A diver who has run their oxygen down to sort out a tangle may not be.

LET GO. Of the gun, of the line, of the fish. All three are replaceable and the practice of abandoning them is worth rehearsing rather than discovering.

DO NOT FOLLOW A FISH INTO A HOLE OR UNDER A LEDGE. This is the specific version of the rule that is most often broken, because the fish is visible and close and the diver is already there.

AND THE BUDDY IS WATCHING THIS PART. The moments after a shot are when a diver is most task-focused and least aware of their own state, which is precisely when somebody watching from the surface is doing the most useful work of the day.

Authoritative guidance

Stated by a fisheries authority, scientific institute or recognised angling body. Authoritative, but summarising rather than demonstrating.

  • BSAC diving safety guidance and annual incident report — British Sub-Aqua Club (Water-safety or diver-training authority)Relied on for: Diving safety guidance on entanglement, on abandoning equipment rather than extending a dive, and on buddy supervision.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
  • DAN guidance on freediving safety, hypoxia and shallow-water blackout — Divers Alert Network (Water-safety or diver-training authority)Relied on for: That hypoxic blackout follows from extending a breath-hold and gives no usable warning.States this directlyPassage read and verified

Why a wounded fish that escapes is a welfare problem, not a bad day

A fish that is hit and gets away is the one outcome this discipline has no answer for, and it deserves to be stated plainly rather than left out.

There is no release in spearfishing, so there is also no recovery. A fish that tears off carries the wound. Some survive it; some do not; nobody can tell which from the surface, and FishingHQ is not aware of evidence that would let anybody put a figure on it. The honest description is that this is an unresolved cost of the method rather than a rare accident.

WHAT REDUCES IT is entirely upstream of the moment it happens.

SHOT DISCIPLINE. Taking shots inside a range where placement is reliable, and not taking marginal ones. This is the single largest factor and it is a decision made before the trigger.

EQUIPMENT MATCHED TO THE FISH. A gun and shaft with enough energy for the size of fish being hunted, and a line and float system that will hold it.

DECLINING SHOTS AT ANGLES THAT DO NOT WORK. Head-on, tail-on, and through-the-tail shots hold badly.

AND NOT SHOOTING AT ALL when the fish is unidentified, out of range, or moving too fast to place a shot. The habit of not taking the shot is the same habit the identification family asks for, arriving at the same place from a different direction.

A diver who takes fewer, better shots kills fewer fish they never recover. That is a statement about the method, not a moral instruction.

Unresolved

FishingHQ looked into this and could not settle it. The open question is recorded here rather than being papered over.

  • Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries — Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome, 1995 (Standards body)Relied on for: The expectation that fishing operations minimise waste and the catch of organisms that are not landed.Background and mechanism onlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly

Where to go next

Where it matters

What these connections rest on (1)

Authoritative guidance — 1 connection

Stated by a fisheries authority, scientific institute or recognised angling body. Authoritative, but summarising rather than demonstrating.

  • Spearfishing

    A membership assertion rather than a topical one: this record teaches the discipline or its equipment, so the discipline's mandatory safety posture applies to it.

    • CMAS technical and sporting standards for underwater activities — Confédération Mondiale des Activités Subaquatiques (Standards body)Relied on for: Breath-hold spearfishing as a defined discipline with its own technical, equipment and safety standards, set out by the international underwater federation.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
    • DAN guidance on freediving safety, hypoxia and shallow-water blackout — Divers Alert Network (Water-safety or diver-training authority)Relied on for: That the safety requirements of breath-hold diving apply across the discipline rather than to particular equipment or techniques within it.States this directlyPassage read and verified

    The moment where most of this discipline's non-hypoxic incidents happen.

    • BSAC diving safety guidance and annual incident report — British Sub-Aqua Club (Water-safety or diver-training authority)Relied on for: Diving safety guidance on planning, conditions assessment, buddy protocol, entanglement and equipment handling.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly

Related reading

What these connections rest on (2)

Authoritative guidance — 2 connections

Stated by a fisheries authority, scientific institute or recognised angling body. Authoritative, but summarising rather than demonstrating.

  • Catch handling and dispatch in spearfishing

    The two halves of what happens between the shot and the float.

    • BSAC diving safety guidance and annual incident report — British Sub-Aqua Club (Water-safety or diver-training authority)Relied on for: Diving safety guidance on planning, conditions assessment, buddy protocol, entanglement and equipment handling.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly

  • Reels, float lines and breakaway systems

    The equipment answer to the problem this record describes.

    • BSAC diving safety guidance and annual incident report — British Sub-Aqua Club (Water-safety or diver-training authority)Relied on for: Diving safety guidance on planning, conditions assessment, buddy protocol, entanglement and equipment handling.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly

Safety reading

What these connections rest on (1)

Authoritative guidance — 1 connection

Stated by a fisheries authority, scientific institute or recognised angling body. Authoritative, but summarising rather than demonstrating.

  • Entanglement while breath-hold diving

    The specific hazard the post-shot period creates, linked to the record that treats it in full.

    • BSAC diving safety guidance and annual incident report — British Sub-Aqua Club (Water-safety or diver-training authority)Relied on for: Diving safety guidance on planning, conditions assessment, buddy protocol, entanglement and equipment handling.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly

Sources for this page

  • BSAC diving safety guidance and annual incident report — British Sub-Aqua Club (Water-safety or diver-training authority)Relied on for: Entanglement, line management and equipment abandonment in diving safety practice.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly

How FishingHQ labels evidence is explained in the evidence policy.

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