Spearfishing around the world

pasific — Sat, 04 Jul 2015 15:08:25 GMT

Spearfishing in Japan

Hello, I am a Japanese spearfisherman Yoshiaki Minagawa. Now I will introduce the Japanese spearfishing.

There are a lot of notable features in Japanese spearfishing and
marine environment among the world. I introduce some of these. At first,
geologically, we have 34000km coastline, it is the 6^th longest coastline a country has in the world.
Japan is a small island country but surrounded by the ocean and has a
lot of islands. Secondly, diversity of marine environment and marine
life are so vast.
Roughly speaking we have 2 different areas.
One is the temperate zone in the northern part and the other the subtropical zone in the southwest part.
Marine environment and fishes in these areas are quiet different in
the northern part the shore is rocky or sandy beach and there are
temperate fishes such as sea bass, amberjack and sea bream but in the
southern part is surrounded by coral reef mostly and there are a lot of
colorful tropical fishes and big game fishes such as Giant trevally and dogtooth tuna.

The temperate zone

The subtropical zone

Now I live in a southern most island of Japan and do spearfishing in subtropical corral sea.

Thirdly, equipments for spearfishing in Japan are really different
from those in other country where spearfishing is popular. We are not
supposed to use spear gun. Because Japanese regulations about marine recreations are rather complicated.
So we use a pole spear to avoid troubles. We just want to enjoy spearfishing.
Generally speaking in Japanese Spearfishing, we use very long pole spear and dive with breath hold diving, swim from the shore. In some limited places and situation, we can use speargun and boats.
Long pole spear is with a slip tip. Rubber band loaded hand and hold
by hand to shoot it. When the chance comes, loose the hand then it is
fired.
It sounds so primitive but this equipment is effective more
than you imagine. There are a lot of types of pole spears; Material,
size, type of tip. I introduce the pole spear which serious
spearfishermen use commonly. The total length of pole spear is about 4m.
It is separable two peaces, with two 1.8m carbon or stainless pipes.
40cm stainless shaft is attached on the front part of pipe, to put the
slip tip on it. Slip tip lined to the pipe.
Rubber to shoot out the pole spear is single straight 13-16mm diameter or circler 9-11mm diameter.
Other Equipments (fins, masks and wet suites) we use from European or
US maker mostly such as Omer, Mares, Cressi-sub, Beuchat, Picasso,
Riffe, etc.
Most of Japanese makers don’t make equipments for freediving like
long fins, mask with low volume and wet suites for freediving. Speaking
of Italian maker, the Omer products are very popular in Japanese spearfishermen.

I explain how we dive roughly. We dive 8 to 15m deep mostly, some
divers go down to 20-25m but not many. Divers who can go down to 30m are
really few.
Compare with European divers, Japanese divers dive much shallower. One of the reason, we see fishes anywhere if we don’t
limit target fishes. We can enjoy spearfishing in any depth and any
situation.

I introduce marine environment and fishes.
In the temperate zone, visibility of water is about 5m to 15m, water
temperature is around 13 centigrade in winter and around 25 in summer.
In the subtropical zone, visibility is about 10m to 25m, water
temperature is around 20 centigrade in winter and around 28 in summer.
Our target fishes are below.
Basis of choice are good to eat, size of fishes, difficulty, gracefulness of figure and so on.
In the temperate zone:

“Akahata” Epinephelus fasciatus

“Ishidai” Oplegnathus fasciatus

“Buri” Seriola quinqueradiata
In the subtropical zone:

“Budai” Chlorurus microrhinos

“Hata” (left) Epinephelus fuscoguttatus, “Rohnin aji” (right) Caranx ignobilis

“Iso-maguro” Gymnosarda unicolor
The spearfishing is very minor recreation in Japan.
The number of spearfisherman is very few. Nobody count it exactly, I
think it may be less than 5000 all over the Japan. There is no magazine,
no websites like “I love pesca sub” providing fine articles regularly,
and no certain club.
Shops selling spearfishing equipments are really few either. I will show you a story about how we spend a day for spearfishing.
Wake up early in the morning and grab gears and bring in the large
cooler box and jump in the car. We care about fish preserving, we
prepare a big ice blocks in the cooler box.
We drive a car on the road along the shore scouting good location
with big expectation for catches of fishes in our mind. Find the
location, we need to walk down the trail to the shore. Because good
location is rocky shore and it is steep usually.
We stop the car and put the wet suites on and grab gears and walk down to the shore. Bringing long fins, long pole spear and weights is not easy. When the trail is long, we are like an
ascetic. At the shore, wave is violently breaking, we find the good
place to jumped in and out from the water.
Once we jump in we move away from the shore quickly.
We swim to open sea where bottom is about 10-15m, swimming around
surface and look for good rock at the bottom or look around pelagic
fishes coming in. We shoot pelagic fishes and fishes near the rock or in the cave both with long pole spear. It needs skills
and experience. We enjoy processes to develop these too.
Waiting for fishes coming in at the bottom or top of the rock,
chasing after the fish slowly, look into sledges and caves. We do some
way depend on situation and fishes we want to get.
After spearfishing, we hold home party and cook fishes and eat with our friends and family.
First of all “Sashimi” is the way eating fresh raw fishes, with soy source and “Wasabi” spice. But we also grill it, boil
it and make the soup from heads and bones. We have a lot of ways to cook
fishes. Japanese spearfisherman loves to cook and eat fishes.
Now we have some problems about doing spearfishing openly in Japan.
But apart from problems, I want to keep introducing attractions of
Japanese spearfishing. I hope the situation will be better and all spearfishermen in Japan can do spearfishing with no concern.
Yoshiaki Minagawa
Adjustment: M.N. Petruso, L. La Manna

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pasific — Thu, 24 Apr 2014 10:03:11 GMT

This is in most part a private community for spearfishers and fishermans
mostly content is hidden instead you not well known person to us .

.. anyway this topic are open for all english french spanish or italian spoken, is you have somethin to say or ask
about our site, spearfishing, fishing ,yachting etc , u can do it here or open new topic ... welcome feel free

seatrophy

Spearfishing around the world

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