Keeping Spearfishing Sustainable
Spearfishing has an image problem, and we understand why. Done badly, it can be wasteful and reckless. Done well, it's one of the most selective and low-impact ways a person can ever put food on a plate. The difference is entirely in how it's practised — and that's where we start every conversation.
Luke's first memory of the sea is being handed a spear sling by his father at around five years old. What his father taught him that day wasn't really about catching fish. It was about respect: for the water, for the animal, and for the food the sea provides. That principle still runs through everything we do. A spearfisher who respects the ocean takes only what they'll eat, and leaves the rest to keep the system alive.
Unlike a net, a spear chooses. You see the fish before you decide. You can pass over the small ones, avoid the protected species, and ignore anything you don't intend to eat. There's no bycatch, no trawled seabed, no nets lost to the deep. One diver, one breath, one considered shot. When it's done with knowledge, the footprint is close to nothing.
But knowledge is the key word. Knowing local seasons. Knowing which species are under pressure and leaving them be. Knowing the legal sizes and the closed areas. Knowing, honestly, when not to take the shot at all — because patience underwater is not a weakness, it's the whole craft. Most of spearfishing is waiting, watching, reading the reef. The shot is the smallest part.
We're upfront with the freedivers who get curious about it, and many do. It's a natural next step: the same breath-hold skills, the same calm, now applied to understanding fish behaviour and moving without disturbing the water. We run cross-over sessions for certified freedivers who want to learn it the right way — slowly, selectively, with the rules and the ethics built in from the first dive.
And then there's the part that closes the loop. A fish taken in the morning becomes dinner that evening, often shared around a table with whoever's staying with us. There's a kind of honesty in eating something you understood, watched and took yourself, rather than something wrapped in plastic with no story attached. It changes how you think about every meal.
Sustainable spearfishing isn't a marketing line for us. It's the only version worth teaching. Take less, know more, respect the water — and the sea keeps giving, season after season.
