Spearfishing History

[Danny.c]

Just a few good vids I found interesting and thought I should share.

 

[Danny.c]

 

[Pinniped72]

It always amazes me how those men did what they did, their fins look like my kiefer swim fins! They are obviously in good physical condition and/or are excellent watermen like the old school big wave surfers, no technology, no tows etc. I honestly believe that we wont see their kind again, how can we with carbon fibre fins and freediving science, I love watching surfing documentaries about the pioneers, the men are just real men, no ifs or buts!

 

[Andrew Fogarty]

Makes me feel inspired by their ability. Thanks Danny.c

 

[Danny.c]

No f**ks given back then,Even though I was never there,they were the good old days for sure.

 

[foxfish]

Great video, not much respect for the fish even after they were dead but that was the way in the day!
There were two European championships held where I live, I did spectate both the weigh ins but I cant really remember the details as I was just a teenager.
I think the years were 1970 & 1978, I do know there were some incredible catches with one guy, Italian I think, who caught two fish on one breath and both fish beat our locale record!
There were load of huge catches, many competitors having to make two journey to carry their fish up the beach!

 

[Bill McIntyre]

I just discovered this thread. Most of these guys were way before my time, but I noticed that the editor of the World Championships video was Denis Kerwin. In 1961 I used to dive with a Marine Corps Staff Sergeant by that name in Hawaii. I know he was into underwater filming with a Super 8 in a case, so I assume that its the same guy.

 

[Bill McIntyre]

Now I watched the Hawaii Sonny Tanabe video. I used to use one of those hinge guns when I lived in Hawaii.

 

[Danny.c]

Now I watched the Hawaii Sonny Tanabe video. I used to use one of those hinge guns when I lived in Hawaii.

I'm tipping you would be a good bloke to have a yarn with down the pub Bill.

 

[Bill McIntyre]

I excel at yarns in the pub, and they get better and better as the evening goes on.

In fact I've found that the older I get, the better I was.

 

[DRW]

I honestly believe that we wont see their kind again, how can we with carbon fibre fins and freediving science, I love watching surfing documentaries about the pioneers, the men are just real men, no ifs or buts!

There are still scuba divers around dedicated to keeping "double-hose" diving alive by contributing to vintage diving websites (e.g. Vintage Double Hose and and participating in dives using only pre-1975 equipment. There's no reason why something similar shouldn't exist for anyone interested in vintage freediving and underwater hunting with traditional fins, masks, snorkels and suits. Not everyone in the world is enthusiastic about what passes for the latest breathhold diving technology here in the West; some countries (e.g. Russia and Japan) have continued using more traditional designs and materials in underwater swimming equipment. I've been visiting many Russian-language breathhold diving forums lately and they appear to be still populated by underwater swimmers doing remarkable feats using what some people here in the West may dismiss as "obsolete" gear.

 

[Bill McIntyre]

The San Diego Freedivers club has held a spearfishing meet for the last couple of years in which divers must restrict their equipment to that worn in "the good old days." I don't recall what sort of guns they could use, but they couldn't wear wet suits, had to use small Churchill Duck Feet, etc.

 

[DRW]

Good for the club, acknowledging diving equipment history in a practical way. The difficulty, of course, is defining what era within the "good old days" is being enacted. I've seen an online scan of a February 1961 issue of the "Santa Cruz (California) Sentinel" containing a report by an underwater hunter who wrote: "For warmer clamming, abalone picking I tried out a new outfit the other day that I think will be a great hit locally, especially with the clammers and abalone hunters. It was a dry skin diving suit made by Perfect World Products called Totes that you can wear over your clothes. I spent considerable time in the ocean wearing the outfit and didn’t feel cold at all. And believe me, the water is cold. The only exposed parts of my body were hands and face, which did get kind of cold, but the rest of my body was quite comfortable. And my clothes remained completely dry. "

So back then the available equipment wasn't always quite as "minimalist" as we think it was. The http://www.vintagedoublehose.com/forum/ website provides access to a library of diving gear catalogues dating back to the 1950s. It's amazing how many types of fins, masks, snorkels and suits, not to mention guns, were available even in the earliest days, many of the designs still around today.

 

[Bill McIntyre]

That guy seems to have been describing an early dry suit. I first saw one when I was probably about 12 years old, maybe in 1951. A guy had just returned from the Korean War where he served in the US Navy Underwater Demolition Teams, and was one of the few scuba divers in the Tampa Bay, Florida area. My grandfather and father ran fishing boats, and this guy made a deal with my grandfather to take him out to the channel markers marking the ship channel and they would split the money from sale of the fish. I got to come along as deck hand. The diver wore a Perrelli dry suit, which was basically like inner tube rubber. It just kept him dry, and he wore wool underwear underneath it for warmth.

The goal was jewfish, now called goliath grouper. He had a Champion arbalete and a Cressi rubber gun. The Cressi was like a pneumatic, but instead of compressing air you were stretching a rubber sleeve, sort of like a condom, inside the barrel. Both guns we're rigged with steel cable. He would go down and shoot a fish, bring the gun up to where we could grab it, and we would hand him the other gun to go shoot another fish while we boated the previous one. I forget how many fish he took, but it was a bunch. This trip was one of the things that made me want to be a diver.

 

[DRW]

What a wonderful introduction for a young person to diving! By the way, Pirelli's range of drysuits was among the earliest developed and they saw plenty of military and civilian use. This from an old Pirelli catalogue:

The suit mentioned in the newspaper article about abalone hunting is a Totes, made in Ohio and sold between 1958 and the mid 1960s. This from the front cover of a Florida magazine in 1960:

Totes suits were not just used by "skin and scuba divers" but also by water-skiers and cavers. Equipment back then often served multiple purposes, while today's gear seems to become more and more specialised and focused on a single activity.

 

[DRW]

Just to complete the picture, Soviet spearfishermen often used a similar design of drysuit manufactured by a company in Estonia, the Baltic state that was once a constituent republic of the USSR:

Online research suggests that the suit, known as a "Tegur", was in production from the early 1970s to the demise of the USSR in the early 1990s. The manufacturer sponsored an annual underwater hunting competition in the Bay of Tallinn and according to the firm's literature, the suit was also intended for use in powerboat racing, water skiing and fishing. Russian spearfishing forums as well as books on the subject published in the new millennium indicate that the suit continues to have a following, particularly when it is used during harsh Russian winters. Its advocates are also adept at on-the-spot repairs of punctures in the suit.