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.
Why spearfishing is never a solo activity
Explainer · Last reviewed 2026-08-17
A blackout is survivable if somebody competent is watching and is close enough to reach you, and is otherwise almost always fatal — which makes the buddy the single load-bearing component of the entire safety system.
Safety
Shallow water blackout and breath-hold loss of consciousness — Can cause serious injury or death
A diver who blacks out goes limp without signalling and drowns within minutes. Alone, the outcome is almost always fatal; with a competent buddy watching, it is usually survivable.
What reduces it: One-up-one-down buddy rotation with active observation through the ascent and the thirty seconds after surfacing, a plan agreed before entry, and freediving training with a recognised body.
The case for never diving alone is not general caution. It is that the principal way spearfishing kills people is silent, produces no struggle, and lasts a few minutes — and that a competent person within a few seconds' reach converts it from a fatality into an incident.
A diver who blacks out does not thrash. They go limp. If they are at the surface they float face-down and stop breathing; if they are ascending they may reach the surface unconscious and sink again. There is no shout, no splash and no signal, which is why the difference between a buddy who is WATCHING and a buddy who is nearby is the whole of it.
The uncomfortable corollary: two people spearfishing in the same bay are usually not buddies. They are two people diving alone in proximity. Effective buddying is an arrangement in which one person is on the surface with eyes on the other for the whole of the dive AND for the thirty seconds after they surface, which is when a large share of blackouts happen.
This page states the requirement and explains the mechanism. Everything else in the spearfishing safety family — weighting, conditions, entanglement, equalisation — assumes it, because each of those hazards has a recovery path only if somebody is there.
- 1. The descent. The surface diver has eyes on from before the other leaves the surface.
- 2. Bottom time. The watch does not lapse because nothing appears to be happening.
- 3. The ascent, and the part of the dive where blackout most often occurs — near the surface, on the way up, with the dive apparently over.
- 4. Recovery on the surface. The diver is on the surface and is not yet safe; the watch continues until they are breathing normally and talking.
One up, one down: why the surface watch outlasts the dive
Safety system · Draft — not yet checked against an external reference
This drawing has not been checked against any reference outside FishingHQ. It is a schematic of what the surrounding text describes, and the text is what carries the detail.
Describe this diagram in words
A schematic of two spearfishers over the course of one dive, with time running from left to right. A horizontal line across the upper part of the figure is the water surface. Below it, a single curved track shows one diver's dive: down from the surface on the left, level along the bottom through the middle of the figure, and back up to the surface on the right. Four numbered markers sit on that track — one on the descent, two on the bottom, three on the ascent, and four on the surface after the dive has finished. Above the surface line a long horizontal bracket, with an upright tick at each end, shows the second diver's watch from the surface. Four short vertical lines drop from that bracket to the dive track, showing that the watch is continuous through the descent, the bottom time, the ascent and the recovery. The bracket begins level with the start of the dive and, crucially, ENDS WELL TO THE RIGHT of the point at which the dive track returns to the surface: the watch outlasts the dive. Three lines of text at the foot of the figure state that breath-hold blackout is silent and gives no warning, that it happens most often at stages three and four — the ascent and the first moments at the surface — and that a watching buddy is the only warning system there is.
How this drawing was produced
Drawn in Programme 59 as the first non-tackle figure in the catalogue. It states no depth, no time and no recovery interval, because those are training decisions an instructor makes for an individual and this catalogue does not hold them — the drawing carries the RELATIONSHIP between the two divers and the prose carries everything else. RENDERED AND INSPECTED. The watch bracket deliberately extends past the point where the dive profile returns to the surface, and the gap between those two ends is the entire argument of the figure; an earlier layout ended both at the same x and the diagram said nothing prose did not.
What effective buddying actually involves
ONE UP, ONE DOWN. One diver in the water hunting, one at the surface observing. They alternate. Recognised freediving training bodies teach this as the default structure, and its whole purpose is that somebody is always in a position to intervene immediately.
ACTIVE OBSERVATION rather than presence. The surface diver watches the descent, the bottom time and — critically — the ascent and the period after surfacing. A buddy looking at their own gear during your ascent is not buddying.
THE THIRTY SECONDS AFTER SURFACING. Blackout frequently occurs at or just after the surface, because the pressure drop on ascent lowers the partial pressure of oxygen in the lungs sharply at exactly the moment the diver believes the dive is over. A buddy who turns away when your head appears has stopped watching at the most dangerous moment.
PROXIMITY. Close enough to reach the diver in seconds. In current or poor visibility that distance shrinks considerably.
A PLAN MADE BEFORE ENTERING THE WATER: who dives first, how long the rotation is, what the recall signal is, where the exit is, and what would end the session.
Authoritative guidance
Stated by a fisheries authority, scientific institute or recognised angling body. Authoritative, but summarising rather than demonstrating.
- AIDA International freediving education and safety standards — AIDA International (Water-safety or diver-training authority)Relied on for: Freediving education standards including the one-up-one-down buddy structure and surface observation of the diver through ascent and recovery.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: Guidance on freediving safety, hypoxia and the buddy system as the primary mitigation for shallow-water blackout.States this directlyPassage read and verified
Why experience makes this more important rather than less
The intuition is that a beginner needs a buddy and an experienced diver does not. It is exactly backwards.
Blackout risk rises with the length and depth of the dive, and experienced divers do longer, deeper dives. They are also more likely to be diving at the edge of their capability, more likely to extend a dive for a fish, and more likely to be diving in conditions a beginner would decline.
The fatality record in freediving and spearfishing is not dominated by novices. It contains a great many competent, fit, experienced people who were alone, and whose competence is exactly what allowed them to reach the state in which they blacked out.
This is why 'I know my limits' is not a safety system. Blackout happens without the diver noticing they are approaching it — that is its defining property — so the judgement being relied on is the one thing the hazard removes.
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: Hypoxic blackout risk factors, including its occurrence among experienced divers and the absence of reliable subjective warning.States this directlyPassage read and verified
What FishingHQ will not do here
This platform does not publish a rescue protocol beyond what recognised training organisations teach, and it does not attempt to substitute for a course.
The reason is specific. Recovering an unconscious diver — airway management, removing a weight belt and mask in the water, rescue breaths, getting a limp adult to shore — is a physical skill that cannot be acquired from prose. A reader who has read about it and not practised it is a reader who believes they can do something they cannot.
So the recommendation is unqualified and is the only unqualified recommendation in this family: take a freediving course before you spearfish, and take it with a recognised body. It teaches the buddy structure, the rescue, and — most usefully — what your own limits actually are, measured rather than guessed.
Authoritative guidance
Stated by a fisheries authority, scientific institute or recognised angling body. Authoritative, but summarising rather than demonstrating.
- AIDA International freediving education and safety standards — AIDA International (Water-safety or diver-training authority)Relied on for: Training standards for freediving safety and rescue skills.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 and incident reporting, including the role of training and buddy practice.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
Where to go next
Where it matters
- Aspetto (waiting)Waiting techniques produce long static dives, which is the profile that most rewards an attentive surface buddy.
- Boat divingA boat is not a buddy. Somebody on deck watching a float is not watching a diver's ascent.
- Shore divingShore diving is where solo diving is most tempting and least survivable, because nobody ashore knows the diver is in difficulty.
- SpearfishingThe single non-negotiable of the discipline, stated as its own record.
What these connections rest on (4)
Authoritative guidance — 4 connections
Stated by a fisheries authority, scientific institute or recognised angling body. Authoritative, but summarising rather than demonstrating.
Aspetto (waiting)
Technique changes the dive profile and therefore the observation requirement.
- AIDA International freediving education and safety standards — AIDA International (Water-safety or diver-training authority)Relied on for: Freediving education standards establishing the one-up-one-down buddy structure and surface observation through ascent and recovery.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
Boat diving
The commonest false substitute for buddying.
- AIDA International freediving education and safety standards — AIDA International (Water-safety or diver-training authority)Relied on for: Freediving education standards establishing the one-up-one-down buddy structure and surface observation through ascent and recovery.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
Shore diving
The discipline record is where a reader meets the decision to dive alone.
- AIDA International freediving education and safety standards — AIDA International (Water-safety or diver-training authority)Relied on for: Freediving education standards establishing the one-up-one-down buddy structure and surface observation through ascent and recovery.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
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
How this compares
- Breath-hold physiology for spearfishersEvery mechanism on the physiology page has a recovery path only if somebody is there.
- The Moroccan Mediterranean coastThe safety posture is deliberately not restated per country, because a per-country version is a version somebody can weaken. Never alone, a competent buddy actually watching, and formal training first.
What these connections rest on (2)
Authoritative guidance — 1 connection
Stated by a fisheries authority, scientific institute or recognised angling body. Authoritative, but summarising rather than demonstrating.
Breath-hold physiology for spearfishers
The physiology explains why the buddy is the load-bearing component.
- AIDA International freediving education and safety standards — AIDA International (Water-safety or diver-training authority)Relied on for: Freediving education standards establishing the one-up-one-down buddy structure and surface observation through ascent and recovery.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.
The Moroccan Mediterranean coast
Two records a reader would reasonably weigh against one another, joined where the comparison teaches something about both. This is also how the geography hierarchy is expressed, because the model has no containment predicate.
- General angling website restatements of established technique — Various (Credible secondary source)Relied on for: Widely restated angling practice and belief, recorded as practitioner consensus rather than as tested fact.Background and mechanism onlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
- Sea Angler — Bauer Media (Specialist angling publication)Relied on for: Contemporary sea angling practice as reported and restated by practitioners, including shore and boat technique and tackle convention.Background and mechanism onlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
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 guidance, hypoxia and shallow-water blackout.Background and mechanism onlyPassage read and verified
How FishingHQ labels evidence is explained in the evidence policy.