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.
Loaded speargun handling
Explainer · Last reviewed 2026-08-27
A loaded speargun is the only thing in fishing that behaves like a firearm, and the handling rules are the firearm rules for the same reason: the injuries are penetrating and they happen to companions.
Safety
Knives and cutting tools — Can cause serious injury or death
A loaded speargun discharged accidentally drives a metal shaft with enough energy to cause a serious penetrating injury. Most incidents occur during loading, when the muzzle is nearest the diver's own hand or foot, and at the surface or in boats where a loaded gun is near other people.
What reduces it: Treating every gun as loaded, loading only in the water with the muzzle down and away, unloading before leaving the water every time, keeping the finger off the trigger until the shot, knowing where the buddy is before shooting, and inspecting bands, wishbones and mechanism for wear.
A speargun stores enough energy to drive a metal shaft through a large fish at range. What that means out of the water is that it will drive a shaft through a person, and spearfishing injuries of this kind are overwhelmingly caused by a gun that somebody believed was safe.
THE RULES ARE THE FIREARM RULES, and they transfer without modification.
TREAT EVERY GUN AS LOADED. Not because people are careless, but because the loaded state of a band gun is not always obvious at a glance and the cost of being wrong is not recoverable.
NEVER POINT IT AT ANYTHING YOU ARE NOT WILLING TO DESTROY. This includes your own hand and foot while loading, which is where a large share of injuries actually occur.
KEEP THE TRIGGER FINGER OFF THE TRIGGER until the shot is being taken. The safety catch is a mechanical device that can fail, be knocked off, or be forgotten; it is not the mechanism that keeps people safe.
KNOW WHAT IS BEHIND THE TARGET. A missed shaft carries. Rock, another diver, a boat hull.
WHERE THE INJURIES ACTUALLY HAPPEN.
LOADING AND UNLOADING, which is when the muzzle is closest to the diver's own body and when hands are on the bands.
AT THE SURFACE AND IN BOATS, where several people are close together, the gun is often still loaded, and somebody is climbing.
AT ENTRY AND EXIT, when hands are occupied with something else.
AND ONE THAT IS SPECIFIC TO THIS DISCIPLINE: pointing a loaded gun at a buddy in order to gesture with it. It happens because a diver forgets they are holding a weapon rather than a tool, which is exactly what these rules exist to prevent.
Loading and unloading, which is where the hands are
Loading a band gun means pulling elastic under considerable tension while the muzzle is close to the body, and unloading means releasing it under control. Both are the moments to slow down.
WHAT REDUCES THE RISK.
LOAD IN THE WATER, AT THE SURFACE, MUZZLE POINTED DOWN AND AWAY. Not on the beach, not in the boat, not on the way in. A gun that is only loaded once the diver is in position spends far less of its life loaded.
USE A LOADING PAD OR CHEST GRIP so the butt is against the body rather than the muzzle, and so the hand pulling the band is not travelling towards the muzzle.
CHECK THE SHAFT IS SEATED and the line is clear before the last band goes on. A shaft that is not properly engaged with the mechanism is the classic accidental discharge.
UNLOAD BEFORE LEAVING THE WATER. Every time, including when it is inconvenient, including when the entry is awkward, and including when you expect to get straight back in. Carrying a loaded gun up a beach or handing one into a boat is the most avoidable risk in the discipline.
AND INSPECT THE GEAR. Perished bands, worn wishbones, a damaged mechanism and a bent shaft all fail unpredictably, and the failure of a component under tension is itself an injury mechanism. This belongs with maintenance and is repeated here because it is a safety matter rather than a performance one.
Authoritative guidance
Stated by a fisheries authority, scientific institute or recognised angling body. Authoritative, but summarising rather than demonstrating.
- CMAS technical and sporting standards for underwater activities — Confédération Mondiale des Activités Subaquatiques (Standards body)Relied on for: That international federations maintain technical and conduct standards for spearfishing equipment and its handling.Background and mechanism onlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
- BSAC diving safety guidance and annual incident report — British Sub-Aqua Club (Water-safety or diver-training authority)Relied on for: Diving safety practice around equipment handling at the surface and in boats.Background and mechanism onlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
Around other people, and around yourself
The buddy system puts two people in the water together, and that is entirely correct — and it means there is always somebody in front of the gun who is not a fish.
WHAT GOOD PRACTICE LOOKS LIKE. Knowing where your buddy is before taking a shot, and not taking one where you do not. Surfacing with the muzzle down and away. Never swimming towards somebody with the gun ahead of you. Passing a gun into a boat unloaded, muzzle first, to somebody who has it before you let go.
AND SHOOTING INTO HOLES, which deserves its own note. A shaft fired into a cave or under a ledge can ricochet off rock. The diver is close, the space is confined, and the shaft comes back into it. This is one of several reasons hole hunting is treated as the technique with the least margin.
A WORD ABOUT SAFETY CATCHES. They are worth using and they are not a substitute for muzzle discipline. A catch is a small mechanical part in salt water, and the entire firearm-handling tradition exists because mechanical safeties are the second line rather than the first.
AND THE HONEST FRAMING. This page is not a warning about a rare exotic hazard. It is the mundane one: most divers will never be involved in a speargun injury, most of the ones that happen are to the diver's own hand or foot during loading, and almost all of them were preventable by a rule that costs nothing to follow.
Authoritative guidance
Stated by a fisheries authority, scientific institute or recognised angling body. Authoritative, but summarising rather than demonstrating.
- CMAS technical and sporting standards for underwater activities — Confédération Mondiale des Activités Subaquatiques (Standards body)Relied on for: Conduct standards for spearfishing including equipment handling in the presence of other water users.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
A hazard the catalogue described nowhere, on the one piece of equipment that can kill a companion.
- 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
Gear this affects
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.
Spearguns
The equipment record and the handling discipline it requires.
- 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
Practitioner consensus — 1 connection
Widely and independently recommended by experienced anglers and specialist sources. This is real angling knowledge, not proof: controlled evidence for it is limited, and FishingHQ records it as convention rather than as a demonstrated effect.
Spearguns
An explainer carrying a mechanism the equipment record depends on.
- DAN guidance on freediving safety, hypoxia and shallow-water blackout — Divers Alert Network (Water-safety or diver-training authority)Relied on for: Freediving safety guidance including weighting, positive buoyancy at the surface, the buddy system and the management of entanglement and equipment failure.States this directlyPassage read and verified
- CMAS technical and sporting standards for underwater activities — Confédération Mondiale des Activités Subaquatiques (Standards body)Relied on for: Breath-hold diving safety practice and equipment expectations set out by the international underwater federation.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
Related 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.
Corrosion, maintenance and pre-dive inspection
Where maintenance stops being about performance and becomes about safety.
- 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
More explainer
Not related to this page — just the rest of the section, because this record connects to very little and a short page should still lead somewhere.
Sources for this page
- CMAS technical and sporting standards for underwater activities — Confédération Mondiale des Activités Subaquatiques (Standards body)Relied on for: International standards and conduct rules for spearfishing equipment.Background and mechanism onlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
How FishingHQ labels evidence is explained in the evidence policy.