Spearfishing

Spearfishing has become in the last few years one of my favorite pastimes. It began as an ethical experiment about the consumption of fish and led to me spending a even more of my time in the sea, starting to learn how to free-dive and spend a fortune on diving gear!

I have been a pescetarian (eating fish but not meat) for about 15 years and found myself getting annoyed by people that profess to love animals and yet eat them all the time without giving the slightest thought to the suffering these animals undergo. I thought that if most people had to kill their own lambs to eat it might change their perspective. Then it dawned on me that I quite happily did the same with fish (i've never liked the cruelty of fishing) and the more research I did into commercial fishing the more horrified I became by waste, the greed, the thoughtlessness and destruction caused worldwide by the industry.

I looked into my options and decided that spearfishing was the most ethical way of catching fish and I resolved that if I couldn't stomach catching a preparing my own fish I would become a full vegetarian. So I made myself a pole spear from a bamboo pole, some bungee cord and the tip of an old kitchen knife and began learning to hunt down my own dinner.

I quickly managed to catch my first fish and realised that although the spearing process looks more brutal than other forms of fishing, you quickly reel the fish in and kill it with a knife so it's suffering is swiftly cut short. Furthermore there is little or no by-catch, a spear-fisherman selects his target by eye so hardly ever takes undersized fish or other harms other sealife by mistake. Indeed 90% of your time spearfishing is spent finning around enjoying the undersea world.

I upgraded my pole spear to a spear gun and began learning the finer points of my new hobby. It wasn't long before I was kitted out with a weight belt, a proper spearfishing wet-suit and was able to catch a large percentage of the fish I eat myself.