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.
Scuba spearfishing, and why it is treated separately
Explainer · Last reviewed 2026-08-27
Using compressed air removes the constraint that limits what breath-hold spearfishing can take — which is why it is regulated separately almost everywhere and why the two are treated as different activities rather than as one with better equipment.
Safety
Barotrauma and pressure injury — Can cause serious injury or death
Taking fish on compressed air introduces the whole decompression and pulmonary barotrauma picture that breath-hold diving does not have, and it does so in a person whose attention is on hunting rather than on their gas, depth and ascent rate. It is also prohibited or heavily restricted in a great many jurisdictions.
What reduces it: FishingHQ does not cover taking fish on breathing apparatus, and this record exists to say so rather than to describe it. Diving on air is a separately trained and separately certified activity, and whether it may be combined with spearfishing where you are is a question for the local authority rather than for a website.
Precautions that always apply here
- Never spearfish or freedive alone.
- Dive one up, one down: one diver down, one on the surface actively watching, every single dive.
- Tell somebody where you are going and when you expect to be back.
Almost every jurisdiction that addresses spearfishing addresses these two things separately, and understanding why is more useful than knowing any particular rule.
THE CONSTRAINT THAT DEFINES BREATH-HOLD SPEARFISHING. A diver has one breath. That single fact limits time at depth, limits how long a fish can be waited for, limits how much of a reef can be worked, limits depth, and limits how many fish a session produces. The limit is physiological and it applies equally to everybody.
WHAT COMPRESSED AIR REMOVES. All of it. A diver on a tank can wait indefinitely at depth, work systematically through structure, reach depths that exclude breath-hold divers entirely, and remain in a productive area for as long as the gas lasts.
SO THE DIFFERENCE IS NOT EQUIPMENT PREFERENCE. It is a difference in how much a given diver can remove from a given piece of ground, and it is large. That is the reason for the regulatory distinction, and it is a fisheries-management reason rather than a safety one or a traditional one.
THE THREE ARGUMENTS THAT ARE MADE, KEPT APART.
THE MANAGEMENT ARGUMENT, above: effort and catchability rise sharply, particularly for deep, site-attached, slow-growing species that breath-hold diving cannot reach. This is the argument regulators act on.
THE ETHICAL ARGUMENT, made within the diving community: that the breath-hold constraint is what makes the activity a hunt rather than a harvest, and that removing it changes what the activity is. This is a practitioner position, widely held and not universal, and FishingHQ records it as that rather than as a finding.
THE SAFETY ARGUMENT, which is real but points differently: breath-hold and compressed-air diving have almost opposite risk profiles, and a spearfisher's habits — task focus, breath-holding, rapid ascents — are actively dangerous on a tank. Combining hunting with scuba is not a simplification of either.
WHERE THE RULES ALLOW IT, and in some places they do, the activity is frequently subject to its own licensing, depth limits, species restrictions and catch limits, precisely because the management arithmetic differs.
What this record does not contain
No technique, no equipment guidance, no configuration advice, and nothing that would help anybody do it.
That is not squeamishness. Compressed-air diving is a trained discipline with its own qualification structure, its own decompression physiology and its own emergency procedures, and none of it belongs on a fishing platform. Somebody intending to dive on a tank learns that from a diver training agency, in a course, in the water.
AND NO STATEMENT ABOUT WHERE IT IS OR IS NOT PERMITTED. The position varies by country, region and protected area, it is one of the most commonly revised provisions in spearfishing regulation, and it sometimes differs for residents and visitors or for commercial and recreational divers. FishingHQ does not maintain it.
ONE PRACTICAL NOTE THAT IS WORTH HAVING. In places where recreational spearfishing on compressed air is restricted, the restriction frequently extends to CARRYING a speargun while on a tank, or to being in possession of both on the same vessel, rather than only to the act of shooting. That is a structural feature of how these rules are commonly drafted, it surprises people, and it is a reason to read the actual provision rather than a summary of it.
WHAT A READER SHOULD TAKE FROM THIS PAGE. That the distinction is about how much can be removed rather than about tradition or purity; that the two activities have different and largely incompatible safety models; and that the rules are separate and must be checked separately.
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 spearfishing standards exclude the use of compressed air or other breathing apparatus, and that national federations maintain rules within that structure.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 breath-hold and compressed-air diving have distinct risk profiles and that practice does not transfer between them.States this directlyPassage read and verified
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
Why almost every jurisdiction addressing spearfishing addresses the two separately.
- CMAS technical and sporting standards for underwater activities — Confédération Mondiale des Activités Subaquatiques (Standards body)Relied on for: That international spearfishing standards exclude breathing apparatus and that national federations maintain rules within that structure.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
How this compares
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.
What spearfishing is, and what it demands
The definition and its boundary case.
- CMAS technical and sporting standards for underwater activities — Confédération Mondiale des Activités Subaquatiques (Standards body)Relied on for: That international spearfishing standards exclude breathing apparatus and that national federations maintain rules within that structure.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.
Selectivity and what it is used for
The argument regulators actually act on, kept apart from the ethical one.
- 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.
Check the rules before you fish
Fishing laws, bylaws, access rules, seasons, bait restrictions and permitted methods vary by location and can change. Check the current rules from the relevant authority and the water you intend to fish before fishing.
Check with:
- Current national or regional law for where you are fishing
- Current local bylaws
- The relevant fisheries authority
- The landowner, club or fishery whose water it is
- Any restrictions specific to the species or the method you intend to use
Sources for this page
- CMAS technical and sporting standards for underwater activities — Confédération Mondiale des Activités Subaquatiques (Standards body)Relied on for: International standards excluding breathing apparatus from spearfishing.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
- Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries — Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome, 1995 (Standards body)Relied on for: Management concern with fishing effort, gear capability and selectivity in relation to stock health.Background and mechanism onlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
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