Spearfishing in Australia and New Zealand

This is a practical subject that most international spearfishing material treats vaguely, and where the Australian and New Zealand practice is explicit.

THE PRINCIPLE. A speared fish is a distressed, bleeding, erratically moving animal, which is the most effective possible signal to a large predator. Everything about how a catch is handled follows from wanting that signal to be as far from the diver as practical and out of the water as soon as practical.

WHAT THAT MEANS. Fish go onto a float line or into a boat rather than onto the diver's belt. They are removed from the water promptly rather than towed. A stringer trailing from a diver's waist puts the signal at the diver's body, and is not the practice here.

WHAT ELSE FOLLOWS. Awareness of what has arrived, and the willingness to leave. Divers here generally regard leaving the water as a normal response to a shark's behaviour changing rather than as an overreaction, and that norm is the useful part.

AND A PROPORTION POINT, which matters because this subject attracts exaggeration in both directions. Shark incidents involving spearfishers are rare in absolute terms. They are also not so rare that the practice above is unnecessary, and the practice costs a diver nothing. FishingHQ's position is that the hazard is real, manageable, and not the largest risk in the activity — the largest risk remains blackout, and blackout kills far more divers than sharks do.

Australia's fisheries rules are set principally by states and territories, with Commonwealth involvement offshore and for some species, and with marine parks at both state and federal level carrying their own zoning. Different zones within one marine park can carry entirely different conditions. New Zealand manages fisheries nationally with regional variation and its own network of marine reserves.

Spearfishing-specific provisions are common in both countries and are frequently different from the rules for other methods — restrictions on equipment, on the use of underwater breathing apparatus, on particular species and on particular areas.

The useful general lesson from this region, which transfers everywhere, is that a MARINE PARK IS NOT ONE RULE. Zoning within a park is normal, boundaries are specific, and the conditions in one zone say nothing about the next.

Spearfishing rules here vary by country, by region, by site and by species, and they change. Nothing on this page states what is currently permitted anywhere. Check the current position with the national fisheries or marine authority, the protected-area manager where one applies, and a local club or federation, who will usually know the site-level detail a national statement does not carry.