My Attitude to Spearfishing

My attitude to spearfishing

I eat meat, I eat fish and my father was a gun collector, hunter and fisherman. So I was socialised from an early age with the knowledge that if you eat meat or fish, an animal had to die for it. I like to eat meat and fish, but it doesn't have to be every day and I've even deliberately given up meat and fish for a month.

But if you decide to eat meat and/or fish, then you should at least be concerned that the animal had a dignified life and was killed without fear, stress and pain. For this reason, I buy organic whenever possible and source my beef directly from the farmer.

We all know that overfishing of the oceans is a major problem and that industrial fishing causes great ecological damage. Commercial fish farming in aquafarms, long praised as a solution to overfishing, is also ecologically questionable and is in no way inferior to factory farming as a cause of antibiotic resistance.

To cut a long story short: If we have now decided to eat fish, then fish shot with a speargun is probably the most ecological and "hunter-killed" fish you can eat!

Anyone who still thinks that you take a speargun, dive down with it, choose a fish of a suitable size, aim, pull the trigger and then bring home a fresh fish to treat yourself and your family and friends to a feast has the wrong idea. In particular, this idea in no way applies to spearfishing in the Mediterranean. The fish that you see around you when freediving or spearfishing are all smaller peaceful fish and of no culinary interest. Spearfishers are after the predatory fish. However, they hide in their caves, watch their territory and realise exactly whether you are a harmless freediver or a spearfisher. So you lie there unnoticed, hidden behind stones flat on the bottom, and try to lure the predatory fish out of their caves. If the spearfisher then succeeds in luring a predatory fish close enough to itself (e.g. with snapping sounds), only then can you even think about firing a shot. Whether you actually hit the fish then depends on a few other factors.

On my last holiday in Italy between Christmas and New Year, not only did I not catch a single fish on 5 dives, I didn't even see a fish of a suitable species and size. Of course I'm a beginner and spearfishing dilettante, but I'm not quite such a complete beginner. The spearfishing life is just tough and I'm glad I don't have to make a living from what I shoot myself.