freeshafting means the shaft is attached to nothing. you just shoot barbed shafts with well placed shots. the fish has a hard time coming off the shaft without the line anchoring it, so it cant tear off as easy,(or so is the idea anyway) there is no such thing as a "blue water freeshaft" gun . freeshafting guns are for bottom hunting only. alot of florida guys freeshaft. i dont know why. maybe the shallow water? i dont know. especially scuba guys,( we have alot of scuba spearos here, almost ALL the older guys,(45 and up) do scuba , and a large percentage of them freeshaft. i dont know how they do it. mostly though- if you are freeshafting, you use fat spears-8mm, and the fish struggles when hit, you swim over and grab the non barb end of the spear, if he runs, you reload and shoot again (hence xtra spears) the fat spears make it hard for small fish to run at all, plus the impact force knocks them out a little more. scuba guys take alot of point blank shots on big fish in holes and such, so the extra shots may be more valuable than a line. deathstick makes a quick line system that you can clip to a freeshaft, turning it into a line shaft,( if you see a big fish and have the time.) but, yes, they do lose alot of shafts. but they have multiple shots with very fast reloading. pretty much useless to freedivers in deep water.