Roni Essex
Freediver, Spearo, Creator
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Roni Essex
Freediver, Spearo, Creator
Floats and buoys might not be as "sexy" as your carbon fins of your blue water gun, but they are equally as important. Actually, they are more important when it comes to safety. The guys from Diving Sports show us why.
"So the main reason why we use floats is for safety. If you are out with your buddies and somebody gets separated, it's going to be a lot easier to look for a bright orange float and flag, compared to looking for some camo wetsuit hoods! It's going to be the exact same thing if you ever get pulled out to the open ocean and need to be rescued. It’s going to be a lot easier for search and rescue to look for you if you've got one of these, compared to if you don’t. They're also going to allow boats to see where you are. Now, there’s a lot of unqualified captains, so I'm not going to say that this is going to magically protect you, but it is going to allow them to see where you are and hopefully stay away from you. Now, there are also going to be places where legally you have to have a float and they might even have regulations on how big the flag has to be and how far away you're allowed to be from your float while you're spearfishing. So definitely take a look at your local laws and regulations for that.
Another reason why we use these, it's a super great place to hold your fish after you've actually speared them. Some people are going to use stringers to hold their fish and put that around their belt. That's totally fine if you're diving somewhere like here in Vancouver where you don't need to worry about sharks, but if you're diving somewhere tropical where there are sharks, I personally don't recommend that. What I like to do when I'm diving in places with sharks is to put my stringer on the back of my float and use that to hold my fish. I find that it's a lot safer and I have more peace of mind knowing that my fish is farther away from me, compared to being right on me. There are definitely going to be different opinions on if you should keep your fish on you or on your float, that's just personally what I've done while living in places where there are a lot of sharks or traveling to those places.
Besides using your float to hold your fish, it's also super handy to be able to attach any extra spear guns on there, pole spears, or even a bottle of water. We can also use floats in place of a reel. If you're a beginner, I don't really recommend you to use a reel, just because there's a lot of things going on and it can be pretty overwhelming really quickly. So I definitely recommend you to get a float if you're ever diving somewhere super deep and you need to let go of your gun. You can do so knowing that it's attached to your float with your float line and you're not going to lose it. We can also use blue water floats for the same purpose. You can either attach these to your gun using a float line or a breakaway set up and it's going to help you not lose your gun or your fish. Another way that you can use your float is to use a dive anger or a small lead weight at the end of your float line that allows you to drop it and dive around the float as opposed to having it attached to you or your gun the entire time".