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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.

Which equipment failures end a dive, and which end a session

Explainer · Last reviewed 2026-08-17

The same catalogue describes a torn glove and a jammed quick release, and a reader has no way to tell which one means get out of the water — this record is the ladder that separates them.

Safety

Drowning and immersion — Can cause serious injury or death

Failures in the buoyancy and release kit — a weight belt that will not release, a float that has lost air, a suit that has lost enough buoyancy to change the balance the weighting was set for — remove the margin that keeps an unconscious or exhausted diver at the surface. That margin is the difference between a blackout that is survived and one that is not.

What reduces it: Treat any failure affecting buoyancy, release or visibility as an immediate end to the session rather than a fault to work around. Check the quick release works before every entry, by operating it. Weight so that you are positively buoyant at the surface with lungs empty, and have that checked by somebody who has been trained to check it.

Worse when:

  • Alone, or separated from a buddy who cannot see you
  • In cold water, where the time available before incapacity is much shorter
  • At the end of a session, when everybody is tired and the temptation to finish is strongest

Entanglement — Can cause serious injury or death

A rigging failure that puts loose line around a diver — a jammed reel paying out, a float line that has looped, a breakaway that has not released — becomes an entanglement, and an entanglement on a breath-hold is a time-limited emergency in which there is no option to stop and think.

What reduces it: Carry a cutting tool reachable with either hand and locatable without looking, and treat losing it as dive-ending in itself. Keep lines short and tidy. Signal early rather than after trying to solve it, and drop the gun or the fish rather than working the problem.

Hypothermia — Can cause injury needing treatment

Suit damage that flushes continuously accelerates heat loss, and cold impairs the judgement a breath-hold diver's safety depends on before it produces obvious symptoms. A diver who feels merely uncomfortable may already be making worse decisions.

What reduces it: Treat a suit tear in cold water as dive-ending rather than as discomfort, and end a session at the first shiver rather than at the point where it is undeniable.

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.
  • Carry a charged phone in a waterproof case, or another means of calling for help.

Spearfishing equipment fails constantly and almost none of it matters. A page that treats every failure with the same seriousness teaches a reader that the warnings are boilerplate, which is the specific way a safety culture stops working.

SO THE FAILURES SORT INTO THREE CLASSES, and the class is decided by ONE QUESTION: what does this failure do to your ability to get to the surface and be seen there?

ANNOYING. The dive is worse and the day continues. A fogging mask, a lost glove, a stringer that will not clip, a shaft with a rounded notch, a fin strap that has to be re-seated, a gun that will not hold a fish well today. These cost fish and comfort. They cost nothing that matters.

DIVE-ENDING. The session stops, in an orderly way, now. A failure in the loaded parts of the gun, a suspect crimp or cable in a tip assembly, a reel that has jammed with line out, a float that has lost buoyancy, a suit torn enough to flush continuously in cold water, a lost or unreachable cutting tool. None of these will drown a diver in the next minute. All of them have removed a margin the rest of the system was assuming, and the correct response is to get out, deal with it, and come back.

LIFE-THREATENING. Surface now, signal, and get help. A weight belt that will not release. Entanglement. Loss of buoyancy at the surface. Separation from your buddy in conditions where you cannot regain contact. A float line that cannot be freed with a fish on it. These are not failures to work around in the water and they are not problems to be solved at depth.

THE PATTERN WORTH CARRYING AWAY: equipment that helps you catch fish fails in the annoying class. Equipment that keeps you floating, visible, connected or free fails in the life-threatening class. Almost every item in the second group is one a diver could dive without and frequently does.

The three classes, and the one question that sorts them

The sorting question is not 'how expensive is this' and not 'how annoying is this'. It is: DOES THIS FAILURE AFFECT GETTING TO THE SURFACE, STAYING ON IT, OR BEING FOUND THERE?

Run the whole kit list through that question and it separates cleanly, and the separation is not the one a reader would guess from how much each item costs.

THE GUN IS MOSTLY IN THE ANNOYING CLASS. A gun that will not shoot, will not hold a fish, has a rounded notch or a hardened band is a diver who is not catching anything. It has no bearing on surfacing. The single exception is a mechanism that has become unreliable while loaded — a gun that may fire when it is not meant to is a stored-energy device pointed at people, and that is dive-ending immediately rather than at the end of the session.

THE SUIT AND THE FINS ARE IN THE MIDDLE, AND TEMPERATURE DECIDES WHICH WAY. A torn glove in warm water is annoying. The same tear in ten-degree water accelerates a heat loss that ends in impaired judgement, and impaired judgement is how a breath-hold decision goes wrong. A broken fin strap in calm water beside a beach is annoying; the same strap on a diver being carried along a rock coast by swell is a diver who has lost the ability to swim against water that is moving them.

THE BUOYANCY AND VISIBILITY KIT IS ALWAYS SERIOUS. A weight belt that will not release, a float that has lost its air, a suit that has lost enough buoyancy to change the balance the weighting was set for — every one of these attacks the thing that keeps an unconscious diver at the surface, which is the single mechanism that turns a blackout into a rescue rather than a fatality.

THE LINE KIT IS SERIOUS BECAUSE OF WHAT IT DOES WHEN IT FAILS, not because of what it stops doing. A snapped shooting line loses a fish. A tangled float line around a diver with a fish on the other end is an entanglement, and entanglement on a breath-hold is a time-limited emergency. This is why the cutting tool is the item whose absence is dive-ending on its own: it is not equipment, it is the answer to a category of failure.

AND THE BUDDY IS THE ONE 'COMPONENT' WHOSE FAILURE IS ALWAYS IN THE TOP CLASS. Losing contact is not an inconvenience to be resolved when convenient. It is the loss of the only measure that addresses the hazard that actually kills freedivers, and the response is to stop diving and re-establish contact on the surface.

Authoritative guidance

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

  • DAN guidance on freediving safety, hypoxia and shallow-water blackout — Divers Alert Network (Water-safety or diver-training authority)Relied on for: Freediving safety practice: hypoxic blackout and its absence of warning symptoms, surface supervision, and the management of equipment failure and entanglement on a breath-hold.States this directlyPassage read and verified
  • BSAC diving safety guidance and annual incident report — British Sub-Aqua Club (Water-safety or diver-training authority)Relied on for: Diving safety guidance covering buddy protocol, entanglement, equipment failure in the water and the incident patterns behind both.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
  • CMAS technical and sporting standards for underwater activities — Confédération Mondiale des Activités Subaquatiques (Standards body)Relied on for: Technical and sporting standards for underwater activities, including spearfishing conduct, equipment practice and the safety expectations set by the international underwater federation.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly

What to do in the water, and the two things not to do

The response to a failure is decided before it happens, because the moment it happens is the worst moment to be deciding.

FOR THE ANNOYING CLASS: finish the dive, fix it on the surface or accept it. Nothing here justifies a rushed ascent, and a diver who bolts for the surface every time a mask fogs has traded a small problem for the one genuinely dangerous ascent behaviour.

FOR THE DIVE-ENDING CLASS: SURFACE NORMALLY AND END THE SESSION. Not the next dive, not after this spot. The temptation is always to continue with a reduced margin, and continuing is the decision that reads badly afterwards. Signal to your buddy, swim in or return to the boat, and treat the gear on land where you can see it.

FOR THE LIFE-THREATENING CLASS THERE ARE TWO RULES AND THEY ARE BOTH ABOUT NOT SOLVING IT ALONE. Signal early rather than after trying to fix it, because the person who can help you is on the surface and cannot see a problem you have not communicated. And drop what can be dropped: a weight belt, a gun, a fish, a float, a catch bag. Every one of those is replaceable and the arithmetic is not close.

THE FIRST THING NOT TO DO IS DIAGNOSE AT DEPTH. Any problem that can be inspected at the surface should be, and the reflex to look at what has gone wrong while still on the bottom of a breath-hold is the reflex that turns a gear problem into an oxygen problem.

THE SECOND IS TO TREAT A CHECK AS A SUBSTITUTE FOR A DECISION. A pre-dive inspection reduces how often this page is needed and it does not eliminate it, and a diver who has checked everything is exactly as obliged to get out when something fails as one who has not. The check is not a credit that can be spent later.

AND THE HONEST NOTE ABOUT CHECKLISTS. FishingHQ deliberately does not publish a ticked spearfishing readiness checklist that outputs 'ready', because a feeling of readiness produced by a website is precisely what a breath-hold diver must not have. The inspection lists in this catalogue describe what to look at and what failure looks like; the judgement about whether to get in the water belongs to a trained diver standing in front of the conditions.

Spearfishing is regulated differently in every jurisdiction and frequently differently within one — on equipment, on areas, on seasons, on species, on minimum sizes, on the use of any breathing apparatus and on who may do it at all. Those rules change. Check the current rules with the authority for the water you are diving before you go.

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 covering buddy protocol, entanglement, equipment failure in the water and the incident patterns behind both.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: Freediving safety practice: hypoxic blackout and its absence of warning symptoms, surface supervision, and the management of equipment failure and entanglement on a breath-hold.States this directlyPassage read and verified
  • General angling website restatements of established technique — Various (Credible secondary source)Relied on for: Widely restated descriptions of established spearfishing practice and equipment convention, recorded as practitioner consensus rather than as scholarship.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.

    • DAN guidance on freediving safety, hypoxia and shallow-water blackout — Divers Alert Network (Water-safety or diver-training authority)Relied on for: Freediving and breath-hold spearfishing safety practice, including the supervision requirement that applies across the discipline rather than to particular equipment.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 discipline definition 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 (3)

Practitioner consensus — 3 connections

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.

  • An equipment maintenance checklist

    One record resolves a question the other raises and cannot answer alone.

    • DAN guidance on freediving safety, hypoxia and shallow-water blackout — Divers Alert Network (Water-safety or diver-training authority)Relied on for: Freediving and breath-hold spearfishing safety practice, including the supervision requirement that applies across the discipline rather than to particular equipment.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 discipline definition set out by the international underwater federation.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly

  • Reel jams, clips and the rigging that fails quietly

    One record resolves a question the other raises and cannot answer alone.

    • DAN guidance on freediving safety, hypoxia and shallow-water blackout — Divers Alert Network (Water-safety or diver-training authority)Relied on for: Freediving and breath-hold spearfishing safety practice, including the supervision requirement that applies across the discipline rather than to particular equipment.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 discipline definition set out by the international underwater federation.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly

  • Suit tears, fin straps and personal kit that fails mid-session

    One record resolves a question the other raises and cannot answer alone.

    • DAN guidance on freediving safety, hypoxia and shallow-water blackout — Divers Alert Network (Water-safety or diver-training authority)Relied on for: Freediving and breath-hold spearfishing safety practice, including the supervision requirement that applies across the discipline rather than to particular equipment.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 discipline definition set out by the international underwater federation.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly

How this compares

What these connections rest on (1)

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.

  • A pre-dive safety checklist

    A comparison a diver is genuinely choosing between, joining two records that resolve one another.

    • DAN guidance on freediving safety, hypoxia and shallow-water blackout — Divers Alert Network (Water-safety or diver-training authority)Relied on for: Freediving and breath-hold spearfishing safety practice, including the supervision requirement that applies across the discipline rather than to particular equipment.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 discipline definition set out by the international underwater federation.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.

  • Breath-hold blackout

    A safety topic that applies to this record specifically rather than to the discipline generally.

    • DAN guidance on freediving safety, hypoxia and shallow-water blackout — Divers Alert Network (Water-safety or diver-training authority)Relied on for: Freediving and breath-hold spearfishing safety practice, including the supervision requirement that applies across the discipline rather than to particular equipment.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 discipline definition set out by the international underwater federation.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly

Rules and access

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.

  • Licences and permission

    A link to a rule CONCEPT rather than to a rule. The record already renders the regulatory-variance notice by its own declaration; this edge says WHICH rules bear on it, which turns a generic warning into a route to the body that holds the current answer.

    • Environment Agency fisheries management, byelaws and rod licensing information — Environment Agency (Government fisheries body)Relied on for: Freshwater and transitional-water fisheries management, the structure of licensing, close seasons and byelaws, and the measures applied to gear, bait, retention and fish movement.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
    • Angling Trust guidance for anglers — Angling Trust (Angling or fisheries organisation)Relied on for: Guidance to anglers on fishery rules and conditions of access, including the restrictions individual waters and authorities set.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly

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

  • DAN guidance on freediving safety, hypoxia and shallow-water blackout — Divers Alert Network (Water-safety or diver-training authority)Relied on for: Freediving safety practice: hypoxic blackout and its absence of warning symptoms, surface supervision, and the management of equipment failure and entanglement on a breath-hold.States this directlyPassage read and verified
  • BSAC diving safety guidance and annual incident report — British Sub-Aqua Club (Water-safety or diver-training authority)Relied on for: Diving safety guidance covering buddy protocol, entanglement, equipment failure in the water and the incident patterns behind both.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
  • CMAS technical and sporting standards for underwater activities — Confédération Mondiale des Activités Subaquatiques (Standards body)Relied on for: Technical and sporting standards for underwater activities, including spearfishing conduct, equipment practice and the safety expectations set by the international underwater federation.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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