Safety
The topics too substantial for a warning box. Immersion and cold water shock kill more anglers than everything else combined, and these pages describe what actually happens and what reduces it.
Boat safety for anglers
Small-boat angling adds engine failure, exposure and distance from shore to every existing hazard, and the measures that address it are decided before leaving rather than afterwards.Breath-hold blackout
The mechanism that kills freedivers and spearfishers: a loss of consciousness that arrives without any warning the diver can detect.Buoyancy aids for anglers
A buoyancy aid removes the need to swim during the minute when cold water shock makes swimming unreliable, which is the minute that decides most immersion outcomes.Coastal fly fishing: the safety problem you bring with you
The coastal fly angler stands in the water, on unstable ground, facing away from the sea, with loose line round their legs and their attention on a fish. No other shore discipline combines those four things.Cold water shock and immersion
Falling into cold water incapacitates strong swimmers within a minute, and it does so long before hypothermia becomes relevant.Dangerous animals where you fish
In temperate Europe the answer to 'what is dangerous here' is the water. Across much of the world it is an animal, and the two most lethal of them are found exactly where people fish.Entanglement while breath-hold diving
Being caught on a breath-hold is a time-limited emergency, and the response has to be already in place before it happens.Fishing alone
Fishing alone does not create hazards; it removes the person who would otherwise raise the alarm, which multiplies the consequence of every other hazard.Handling fish safely
Teeth, spines, gill covers and venom — knowing which local species have what, before you catch one rather than afterwards.Hook injuries
The commonest angling injury by a wide margin, almost never serious — and with one exception that always is.Kayak fishing: cold water, offshore wind and getting back on
Three things account for most kayak-fishing incidents — the water temperature, the direction of the wind, and whether the paddler has ever practised getting back on. None of them is equipment.Night fishing safety
Darkness does not add new hazards so much as remove the cues that let anglers avoid the existing ones, and it does so at the time of day when help is furthest away.Overhead power lines and carbon rods
A carbon rod raised near an overhead line can conduct at a distance without touching it, and the outcome is usually fatal — which is why the rule is about looking up before setting up.Rock platform and cliff safety
Rock and ledge marks put anglers on wet, uneven ground beside deep water with waves that arrive unevenly — the combination behind a disproportionate share of shore-angling deaths.Sharks and spearfishing
Spearfishing changes a diver's relationship with sharks because struggling fish and blood are exactly what interests them — and the management is about the catch rather than about the shark.Shore entry and exit for divers
The water at the edge is where energy concentrates and where a diver is least mobile, and exits are worse than entries because the diver is tired.Sun, dehydration and fatigue
Water reflects ultraviolet light and removes shade, and long sessions degrade judgement slowly enough that the person affected is the last to notice.Surface markers and boat traffic
A diver at the surface is almost invisible from a boat, and a surface marker buoy is the difference between being seen and being run over.The spearfishing buddy system
One diver down and one watching the surface, close enough to reach them and attentive enough to notice — because blackout is silent and a diver alone does not recover from it.Tides and being cut off
The tide closes your exit long before it reaches where you are standing, and this is the commonest way a coastal session becomes a rescue.Training and courses
The one piece of spearfishing equipment that cannot be bought secondhand — and the only intervention that reliably changes what happens when something goes wrong.Venomous and spined fish
A large number of ordinary angling species carry spines that puncture, and a smaller number deliver venom through them — where hot water immersion is the established first response.Wading safely
Wading is the most dangerous routine activity in angling, and moving water needs very little depth to take a person off their feet.Weather, lightning and open water
An angler on open water or an open bank holding a long carbon rod is a poor place to be in a thunderstorm, and the decision that matters is made before the storm arrives.
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