Lost gear, and what a shaft leaves behind
Explainer · Last reviewed 2026-08-27
Spearfishing loses very little gear compared with most methods, and what it does lose is different in kind — a shaft and a length of line rather than something that goes on fishing without anybody holding it.
Safety
Entanglement — Can cause injury needing treatment
Recovering discarded net or line puts a breath-hold diver into contact with exactly the material that entangles, sometimes under tension and often in poor visibility, while committed to a finite breath.
What reduces it: Taking only what can be removed safely within a dive already being made, never cutting into a mass whose extent is not visible, leaving tensioned or heavy gear to divers with air, carrying a cutting tool reachable with either hand, and having a buddy watching.
Lost fishing gear is one of the larger marine pollution problems there is, and this is a place where spearfishing's record is genuinely good. Saying so is not advocacy provided the comparison is made properly.
WHAT MAKES LOST GEAR HARMFUL is mostly that it keeps working. Nets, traps and lines that are still deployed continue to catch and kill after nobody is tending them — ghost fishing — and monofilament in particular persists for a very long time and entangles wildlife for as long as it stays where it fell.
WHAT A SPEARFISHER LOSES is a shaft, occasionally a whole gun, sometimes a length of shooting line or float line. A shaft on the seabed is metal that corrodes; it does not fish. A short length of line is a genuine entanglement hazard, and it is the part that matters.
WHY THE VOLUME IS LOW. The diver is present. Gear is attached, visible, and usually retrievable, and a diver who loses something frequently knows exactly where. There is no gear left set overnight and nothing deployed out of sight.
SO THE HONEST COMPARISON is that spearfishing contributes little to the ghost-gear problem, contributes something to the line-in-the-environment problem, and — this is the part usually left out — is one of the few activities whose practitioners are in a position to remove other people's.
AND THE PART THAT IS NOT ABOUT POLLUTION. A shaft fired and not recovered may have hit a fish that then dies elsewhere. That is a welfare and waste cost rather than a litter one, and it is covered where it belongs, with shot discipline.
Retrieval, and the thing divers are unusually able to do
A spearfisher spends hours looking closely at the seabed in exactly the places lost tackle collects — reef edges, gullies, wrecks, snaggy ground. Very few people are in that position.
Removing discarded line, hooks, leads and net when it is safe to do so is a genuine and unglamorous contribution, and it is the one environmental claim this vertical can make without qualification, because it is about an action rather than about a method.
THE SAFETY QUALIFICATIONS ARE REAL, THOUGH, and they come first. Net is an entanglement hazard, and net that is snagged and under tension is worse. A diver on one breath should not be cutting into a mass of monofilament they cannot see the extent of. Heavy items should not be lifted by a diver managing their own buoyancy. And nothing here is worth extending a dive for.
So the practice is: take what can be taken safely on a breath you were making anyway, mark or note what cannot, and treat large or tensioned net as a job for people with air and equipment.
One further note. Some lost gear is not litter — a set pot, a marked line, working gear belonging to somebody — and removing it is theft rather than cleanup. The distinction is usually obvious and occasionally not.
Authoritative guidance
Stated by a fisheries authority, scientific institute or recognised angling body. Authoritative, but summarising rather than demonstrating.
- Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries — Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome, 1995 (Standards body)Relied on for: The expectation that lost and abandoned gear is minimised, and the recognition of its continuing effects.States this directlyCitation 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 guidance on entanglement and on handling net and line underwater.States this directlyCitation 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
An environmental comparison that is favourable and is worth making accurately.
- Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries — Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome, 1995 (Standards body)Relied on for: Expectations for gear selectivity, minimising waste and lost gear, and managing total removal from a stock.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 hazard of the one environmental action this vertical can genuinely take.
- 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
Environment and conservation
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.
Discarded line and lost tackle
The environmental record and the method-specific version of it.
- Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries — Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome, 1995 (Standards body)Relied on for: Expectations for gear selectivity, minimising waste and lost gear, and managing total removal from a stock.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
- Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries — Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome, 1995 (Standards body)Relied on for: Lost and abandoned fishing gear and the responsibilities around it.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
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