SPEARFISHING NEWS..........

On Wednesday 5th October, 05, I had two close encounters with the "endangered" species Grey Nurse Shark.

There was not much action so I decided to burley up for snapper at Black Rock. There were no GNS at this particular spot, we speared 2 fish and I burleyed them up. Finished cutting up the fish and the snapper were darting in to pick off the bits. I dived down and as I was swimming down a GNS came off the bottom and made a straight line for me, I backed away and started to surface, followed by the GNS. I had to fend it off with the gun and it swam down and stayed on the bottom. I had no fish on me, it was about 10 minutes since I had finished cutting up the fish.

I speared a nice snapper and we got out to the water and went to Fish Rock. I dived over the side. No GNS in sight and I had 15m visibility. Large school of Kingfish swam up to me on the second dive and I put a spear into one about 15kg but it was not a kill shot. The fish came alive and was fighting it, I managed to keep it off the bottom, but I ran out of breath so I let it go. On the way up I noticed the kingfish is heading up as well. This was odd? Recovered my rig on the surface and I started to pull up the fish and I look down and I see 6 GNS on the bottom. The biggest one is chasing the kingfish. No wonder it headed off the bottom! I watched in fascination as finally the GNS grabbed the fish and started to shake its head to rip off a chunk. They have holding teeth not cutting teeth. So it took a while, finally it took out a chunk, killing the fish and it floated to the surface.

I gave the nurse a bit of distance between me and the dead fish. So I watched the nurse come up straight up to the kingfish. I am thinking more fish to the nurse but the nurse swam straight pass it and made a straight line for me. I was backing off, it came right up and I used my fins to kick it away, it veered off, made a circle and again swam pass the fish ad made another straight line for me. After the first pass I had retrieved my gun and when the GNS came at me I poked it hard on the nose and it took off for the bottom, 26m away.
I left the water bewildered but not chewed.

If I didn't have 30 years of experience in spearfishing in either encounter I could have panicked, got bitten or speared the shark involved. We have to note that these are large predators on the top of the food chain. It is quite understandable how a less experienced person could panic and try to protect himself. It is quite unnerving when a large predator makes an aggressive action towards you in his environment.

One of the main reasons we wanted to design t-shirt logos was to promote spearfishing as a sport that has ecological virtues. If you are a spearfisher, you already know that. Unfortunately the sport is often portrayed, unfairly, as being damaging to the environment by the media and by certain environmental groups. Unless the public are given all the facts they are only able to pass judgement by what information they have.

We want to encourage people on the street to stop and think for a minute!

Spearfishing does not create by-catch. A diver can see what he is targeting, whether it is edible, legal sized etc. Unlike other types of fishing it does not kill several fish to catch the one that can become dinner.

Spearfishing does not leave paraphanalia in or on the shores of our oceans. We do not leave fishing line, nets, hooks, or sinkers behind to be potenially harmful to marine life. If a spearo' does accidentally loose a fin or a shaft, you can be sure he'll (she'll) do all he can to retrieve it because of the financial cost.

Spearfishing takes skill developed through commitment over many years. A spearo' is only competitive to catch larger pelagic fish and game species after many years of practice. Even then a diver can spend many hours in the water without a fish. It takes a trained spearo' to manage the breath-holds necessary to reach depths and to have bottom time to hunt.

The decline of fishstocks in our oceans is a concern for all of us who love the sea. LIke any environmental issue the problem is complex with many impacting factors. Unfortunately spearfishing is a soft target. We do not have funds to carry out research or to fight legally for our right to fish in particular areas. We do not contribute to the country's primary industry and we don't have commercial interests at stake. We just want to enjoy our sport. Regulatory bodies need to be publicly seen to be active in protecting our ocean envirnment. We feel that unjustly regulating amateur fishing and amateur spearfishing is one way that, this can be achieved.

Commercial fishing has to take prime responsiblity and at last some measures are being put into action to try to address the millions of tonnes of by-catch that happens each year in this industry. Ironically it is a multi million dollar industry that has had little accountablity in the past, primarily due to the difficulty of enforcing regulations. Trawlers have a mighty big office for officials to oversee.

The benefits of a diet rich in seafood is well known, so the tonnage of fish required for human consumption is increasing and will continue to do so as the world population increases. The wild stocks cannot sustain this level of demand. Aquaculture is beginning to take hold with countries like Japan investing into the farming of various fish & seafood varieties. It is however still a science that needs quite a bit of research as some species don't survive very well in a controlled envirnment.

Commercial dive charters also need some regulatory measures particularly in breeding areas or those of critcal habitat. The numbers of scuba divers who swarm onto a small area, continuously, cause harm by scaring away fish stocks. This impression that scuba is silent and uneffectual has not considered the noise breathing via air tanks makes. Scuba divers often swim along the ocean floor stirring up sediment and crushing, aIbeit accidentally, small sealife and habitat. Numbers of scuba divers should be limited and this needs to be enforced. Fish Rock on the North coast of NSW often has 100 scuba divers visit its small area in one day.

It needs to be said that there are dive charter operators that are very much aware of these issues and take measures to minimise impact, eg by enforcing drift diving and limiting numbers.