In April, Ryan Sweeny and a friend went spearfishing for white sea bass in kelp beds off the North County coast.
They held a contest to see who could land the biggest fish. When the friend scored first with a 48-pounder, it was game on. Sweeny remembers diving down through a kelp forest so dense it was like trying to swim through a salad. After a couple of attempts, he spotted a suitable target hovering at a depth of perhaps 30 feet. He took aim, squeezed the trigger, and hooked up. The sea bass surged and ran the line in the reel attached to his speargun, and that’s when the trouble began.
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“It started towing me through the kelp. I thought, if I get stuck in here, I’ll be dead. We’d be talking body recovery at that point.”
As a spearfisherman, Sweeny represents a fringe minority of the sport. Most spearfishermen depend on scuba tanks for air, but Sweeny is a free diver. In its simplest terms, free diving is an extreme form of snorkeling, one of the most physically challenging forms of underwater hunting. That’s because free divers hold their breath for two minutes or more and plumb depths below 100 feet. According to statistics, free diving is the second most deadly of adventure sports. You can run out of breath and drown. You can also get eaten by a shark.
But in the majority of cases, what kills a free diver is not a toothy predator but a phenomenon called shallow-water blackout. Most of the time, shallow-water blackout happens within a few feet of the surface, or even after a diver surfaces — hence the name. The Diver Alert Network claims that up to 40 people die each year around the world from such free-diving accidents, more than half in the United States, and most of those in the warm waters off Florida. But it happens here, too. In October 2010, a 25-year-old man from Rancho Peñasquitos drowned near Mariner’s Point in Mission Bay while free diving for lobster at night.
Deadly or not, free diving has mushroomed in popularity over the past decade. The attraction is this: unencumbered by scuba tanks, which are bulky and loud and release clouds of air bubbles, the vastly quieter free diver gets much closer to sea life.
Sweeny’s bass did in fact hang him up 40 feet down in the kelp, and the symptoms of hypoxemia — the medical term for oxygen deprivation — set in quickly.
“I started to get dizzy, started to see lights. I started to go numb and have contractions.”
With his dive knife, Sweeny chopped at the stalks that gripped his legs and torso until, finally, on the doorstep of losing consciousness, he got free and kicked his way to the surface. When Sweeny was sufficiently recovered, he reeled in the fish still struggling at the end of his line.
“Fifty pounds,” he says. “I won.”
Free diving is divided into two different camps: sportsmen and competitive deep divers. Free-dive photographers or spearfishermen comprise the bulk of the sportsmen. They rarely stay down for more than a minute and a half and prefer to work above the 100-foot level, a depth that your average competitive free diver would scoff at. The world record is just over 700 feet, down and back, on one breath.
They held a contest to see who could land the biggest fish. When the friend scored first with a 48-pounder, it was game on. Sweeny remembers diving down through a kelp forest so dense it was like trying to swim through a salad. After a couple of attempts, he spotted a suitable target hovering at a depth of perhaps 30 feet. He took aim, squeezed the trigger, and hooked up. The sea bass surged and ran the line in the reel attached to his speargun, and that’s when the trouble began.
Watch the Video
“It started towing me through the kelp. I thought, if I get stuck in here, I’ll be dead. We’d be talking body recovery at that point.”
As a spearfisherman, Sweeny represents a fringe minority of the sport. Most spearfishermen depend on scuba tanks for air, but Sweeny is a free diver. In its simplest terms, free diving is an extreme form of snorkeling, one of the most physically challenging forms of underwater hunting. That’s because free divers hold their breath for two minutes or more and plumb depths below 100 feet. According to statistics, free diving is the second most deadly of adventure sports. You can run out of breath and drown. You can also get eaten by a shark.
But in the majority of cases, what kills a free diver is not a toothy predator but a phenomenon called shallow-water blackout. Most of the time, shallow-water blackout happens within a few feet of the surface, or even after a diver surfaces — hence the name. The Diver Alert Network claims that up to 40 people die each year around the world from such free-diving accidents, more than half in the United States, and most of those in the warm waters off Florida. But it happens here, too. In October 2010, a 25-year-old man from Rancho Peñasquitos drowned near Mariner’s Point in Mission Bay while free diving for lobster at night.
Deadly or not, free diving has mushroomed in popularity over the past decade. The attraction is this: unencumbered by scuba tanks, which are bulky and loud and release clouds of air bubbles, the vastly quieter free diver gets much closer to sea life.
Sweeny’s bass did in fact hang him up 40 feet down in the kelp, and the symptoms of hypoxemia — the medical term for oxygen deprivation — set in quickly.
“I started to get dizzy, started to see lights. I started to go numb and have contractions.”
With his dive knife, Sweeny chopped at the stalks that gripped his legs and torso until, finally, on the doorstep of losing consciousness, he got free and kicked his way to the surface. When Sweeny was sufficiently recovered, he reeled in the fish still struggling at the end of his line.
“Fifty pounds,” he says. “I won.”
Free diving is divided into two different camps: sportsmen and competitive deep divers. Free-dive photographers or spearfishermen comprise the bulk of the sportsmen. They rarely stay down for more than a minute and a half and prefer to work above the 100-foot level, a depth that your average competitive free diver would scoff at. The world record is just over 700 feet, down and back, on one breath.