Spearfishing World Records...Part 1

Alot of us have aspirations to break one spearfishing world record or another. Indeed to see a world record fish is not an easy task, much less spear a world record fish, that would be quite an accomplishment!

What does spearfishing a world record fish entail? Where do I find a world record fish? Who hold the spearfishing world records? How many world record spearfish categories are their? Who catagorizes the spearfishing world records? If I spearfish a potential world record fish to whom do I submit it? and how do I submit my world record?

All legit questions, and we'll try and get them answered for you. But before, let me hook you up with a couple of very valuable links that may answer many of your questions regarding a potential world record. Basically we have two groups http://iusarecords.com/records.php and http://www.freedive.net/ibsrc/index.htm

An excert from IUSA says "The International Underwater Spearfishing Association (IUSA) was formed in 1950 to promote spearfishing and to assist in scientific and spearfishing competitive efforts. As part of this task, the IUSA became the certifying body and custodian of the spearfishing world records. The IUSA has certified over 60 records for a variety of fish from bluewater species to smaller and less sought after fish. Through their forty-six years of existence, the IUSA has seen diver's skill and technology change from the Hawaiian slings of the Pinder Brothers to the high-tech equipment and super-powered spearguns of today's freedivers." and "...The mission of the International Underwater Spearfishing Association is to promote ethical, safe and sportsmanlike spearfishing practices, to encourage and support a sense of environmental responsibility among divers, to establish uniform regulations for the compilation of world spearfishing records, to provide basic spearfishing guidelines for use in other spearfishing activities, and to participate in educational and scientific programs. ..."

and from IBSRC"An international group agreed to formulate an organization for the certification of world records-the IBSRC. Two main goals emerged. The first goal was to establish a committee to evaluate each country's historical records and combine them into a worldwide registry. Eligible fish are bluewater species such as tuna, marlin, wahoo and sailfish. To keep the committee international, these species must be available to divers on more than one continent, thus yellowtail (kingfish) made the list but white seabass (mulloway) did not... The other goal was to establish and publicize a set of rules by which future records would be judged." and "The mission of The International Bluewater Spearfishing Records Committee (IBSRC) is to promote ethical, safe and sporting spearfishing practices, to establish uniform regulations for the compilation of world-bluewater gamefish records, and to provide basic spearfishing guidelines for use in bluewater contests and any other bluewater spearfishing activities worldwide."

So you see both of these entities have similiar goals/objectives main difference is the latter deals with specific pelagics.

Now IUSA (which has a broader scope of species and thus records) has a few categories one is
20th Century Records, that is records on or before December 31, 1996. obviousely this list is closed. The other is the 21th Century Records these records were opened on January 1, 1997. This is the list you want to submit your new records to. And finally, World these are world records that are derived from both the 20th Century and the 21st Century record lists.

Stay tuned for Part 2 "The Records"

Till next spearfishing report, tight bands, straight shafts, and smooooooooth triggers!

Tone
http://www.settingsteelspeargear.com/