Welcome to the diving spearing forum!

Josh thought it would be a good idea to have a separate forum for all you diving and spearing nuts.

Enjoy!

Hopefully this will be more organized, with all the abalone and spearfishing information under their own heading, instead of peppered through 'general' 'newbie' and 'tips'.

As far as I know, this is the first open forum specifically for central and northern california on this subject and hopefully it will enhance the safety, success and enjoyment of these activities.  

As far as OT items go, I think all gear/technique is relevant, and most places these activities are done are on reefs/flats within kayak range and also relevant.  Offshore spearing albacore would not be relevant to kayaking, so would be OT, and more a thing to discuss on spearboard anyway since that's attempted in socal too.

Good hunting,
-Josh

Glad to see this section added. I am interested in getting into spearfishing so I might be asking some questions in the coming months.

Good idea.  Thanks guys.

John

Can we get a tutorial on both spearfishing and/or abdiving?  I've picked up bits of info here and there but never really found anything specifically pertaining to norcal and don't have time to wade through another message board searching for info.  Its definitely something I'd like to try but would like a little primer on gear or what to expect, physical conditioning...etc... So if anyone has time to write something up it'd be much appreciated.

I'll try to work something up.

However, your main safety factor is having a buddy nearby.  Since you're diving with a buddy, just find one that knows what they're doing and soak up the info while you're out there.  

Here's what I already wrote on gear:

Most dive shops rent 7mm wetsuits, but they do this because people like to scuba dive with them. At 30ft the pressure is doubled and the bubbles in the neoprene shrink to half their original size - making the material half as thick and half as good at insulating.

I freedive with a 3mm farmer john and jacket and that keeps me as warm as I'd be with a 7mm 2 piece at 30ft down. 95% of the time you're at the surface and the 30 seconds you're on the bottom isn't enough to get cold, besides you're generating heat by swimming. Wearing this thin suit allows me to get by with a 12lb weightbelt, compared to a 28lb weightbelt with a 7mm suit. That right there is a HUGE difference in comfort. Also, as you go down and the neoprene compresses, you lose bouyancy - with a thick suit your bouyancy will change dramatically between the surface and 20ft down. The difference is probably between 8 and 3lbs of negative bouyancy at 20ft. The wetsuit crushing effect also causes your weight belt to slide upwards (to your armpits unless you've got a beergut to stop it) a thinner suit reduces this tendency, and a rubber strechy belt eliminates it entirely.

Last, get a low volume mask. I got mine at spearfishinggear.com when I got my speargun, because it was only $20 and I wanted to see what a low volume mask was like. Now I won't use anything else. It prevents the mask from sucking your eyeballs out as you go down - which forces you to exhale through your nose to equalize it - but then you have to push the air out of the mask again as you go up. That's just more junk to distract you and burn your O2 when you should be sizing up abalone or lining up on a lingcod. There's no drawback to low-volume masks, and I don't even know why they still make the high-volume boxy masks. Black skirted masks reduce the light in the mask to the light from stuff you can actually see - your pupils get bigger and you'll see better. It gets dark quickly with depth. The difference is like looking through a window into a lighted room when it's dark out, or doing the same when it's sunny out.

Snorkels are snorkels, they don't need to be fancy or expensive.  Just make sure the tube is rigid and not flex-tube so it points upwards reliably.

That'll get you properly set up - just add a gun or abalone iron.   I'd suggest renting stuff before buying it.  That way you'll know if a certain thickness wetsuit is comfortable, ect.  IME the washout rate is pretty high too, some people are too hyper or claustrophobic to be successful.  Renting lets you see how you do before investing a lot into it.

Freediving has an array of risks involved.  Most risks can be reduced with propper equipment, judgement and practice.  Roughly in order of likelyhood (concern) are: entanglement, fatigue, shallow water blackout, and animal attack.

Abalone diving and spearfishing tends to be best in areas of kelp.  This produces a risk of entanglement in the kelp - fortunately kelp is slippery and brittle.  Usually it slides off fine, and if it catches it can be broken by bending it in half.  A far more sinister scenario is entanglement in fishing line - this requires a knife or linecutter to get free and is the main reason why a knife is reccomended safety gear.  Practice getting the knife out of it's sheath so that knife retrieval is automatic in an emergency.  Avoid entanglement by keeping your gear streamlined to prevent stuff from hooking on kelp/line.  Dropping the weight belt may free you if that is the point of entanglement.

If you get tired fighting choppy seas, too much weight, too long a swim from shore or hypothermia, you're at risk of drowning.  Simply abort to the kayak or float.  Dropping the weight belt may be the best option if you are being pummeled and it's a long swim to safety.

Shallow water blackout is a phenomenon where, after a deep dive, the oxygen is actually drawn out of your blood/cells by the decreasing pressure in the last 15ft to the surface.  This results in blackout just before reaching the surface to several seconds after - some victims get a breath in before blacking out and wake back up.  Others don't.  Fortunately this tends to happen in areas with clearer, deeper water where a diver may underestimate how deep they are and head up too late.  It's rare in CA, and rare among beginners, but it still happens.  Mitigate this by weighting yourself to float above 15-20ft, and if you are unsure of making it to the surface - undo your weight belt buckle so that it'll drop if you black out.

Last, you may bump into agressive pinnepeds or sharks.  Dive in areas away from seal haulouts and put your fish aboard the kayak immediately.  I hop aboard the kayak to un-string the fish and re-string (but not reload) my gun.  Generally avoid areas where you might cast a line were you fishing for a large, pelagic, seal-eating fish.  Attacks are most common in the autumn.  Sharks don't seem to be all that interested in eating people, attacks are more common in areas with poor visibility where the shark may not be able to see what he's biting.   Just remember that you are 10-20x more likely to die of something else out there.

General rules of thumb:

Never load or fire your gun out of the water.

Dive with a buddy he'll hopefully be able to help in an emergency - a good way to buddy dive is to share a gun.  One man up, one man down.  The guy at the surface has nothing to do but make sure the guy on the bottom gets up safely.  

If in doubt, drop the weight belt.  Carry a spare in the kayak so you will be less hesitant (use the spare to retrieve the original).  Some people attach a small buoy to their weight belt so that the buoy is deployed if they drop it.  

Your equipment would appreciate being safe too.  The diving equivalent of a leash is a floatline.  The floatline prevents loss of dropped gear, and acts as a marker that allows you to find a specific spot again, or your dive partner to follow it to find you underwater.  Don't attach it to yourself.

Any kayaking scuba divers out there?  I'd sure like to learn how to from my yak.  Aqua Safaris in SC says they will teach me the advanced course from my kayak, hoping to do so in October.

Pete

Lots of good info pro_spark. I have one clarification and one alternate opinion.
You probably don't want to drop your belt when in heavy kelp. Doing so leaves you "stuck" on the surface where the kelp spreads out and it is difficult to make progress.  (Course, if you're in such trouble that you need to drop your belt, you probably can't make progress anyways. )
I have never dropped a belt deliberately, but came close to losing my belt a couple of times. I have found a few belts, though. (see Classifieds

I thought all snorkels similar until I tried one of the new-fangled ones. (At least is was new-fangled in the mid 90s when I tried it. Now it's probably not fangled at all.) I think it's called an "Impulse."  The difference is how effortless it is to clear and how dry it stays.  I say it's WELL worth the extra cash.

vanim

I dove off of an inflatable once.  Worked alright.  Got BCD/regs recently and intend to dive off my yak fairly often now.  I'm stoked to dive some of my favorite spots and see what the bottom is like and whatnot to gain a better understanding of how to fish it.  Mainly you just put all your stuff together and dump it in the tankwell.  Having a weight integrated BC helps because you can inflate it and take it off at the surface to get back aboard.  I wear something like 42lbs of lead for scuba, and that's a major drag to be hauling around.

I'm also going to take my wife and another friend scuba diving through the abalone beds before sending them in with freediving gear.  I think giving them a chance to see how everything looks without the pressure of freediving will boost their confidence and make them more comfortable freediving after the abalone.

Getting abalone is relatively easy with the help of a kayak.  Abalone live from intertidal areas down to 60ft depths, but since you can only freedive for them, about 2/3 of the abalone are in de facto reserves since few people can freedive past 20 feet or so.  Scuba diving in 40 feet up north will reveal more hubcap abalone than you could shake a stick at.  

Most people shore-dive for abalone with a float.  These guys are at a disadvantage compared to kayakers because they'll already be tired once they're over the reef, and their range is limited.  Ideally you should paddle to an area that's 20' or less, and too far for shoredivers to swim to.  The density and grade of abalone will be better in these areas.  The open ocean can have worse conditions than the protected coves, so use good judgement in picking a spot.  Make sure it's remote, AND safe.  

You can tie off to some kelp, or deploy an anchor if there isn't any kelp on the surface.

You are required to have an iron and a guage, I've got an iron with an integrated guage on the handle and I love the thing because it takes alot less fiddling.  I attach my floatline to the iron so that I can set it next to an abalone and come right back to it (or a buddy that's having trouble finding them can come right back to it).  Using a floatline adds at least 5' to your maximum working depth by letting you identify and pop the abalone on consecutive dives, and you'll never lose your iron (like I said, I like my iron).

Popping the abalone off the rock can be tricky, sometimes you could pick them up with your bare hands, but others wedge themselves into a crevice so tightly that they're impossible to remove.  Any sizeable cut on an abalone will kill it, so you need to pick an abalone that is legal and removeable.  Measure the ab by holding the iron up in front of it - but don't touch the abalone or it'll clamp down on the rock.  Satisfied that it's legal and as big as you'd like, quickly slide the tip of the iron under the foot and pull back on the handle to pry it off the rock.  The abalone will clamp down as soon as you touch it, so you have to be quick.  I like to line up the iron and pound it home with the palm of my other hand and pull imediately when it stops going further under the ab.  Abalone have a mantle of eyes and gills and other giblets between the foot and shell.  Care should be taken not to stick the iron under the mantle and above the foot, you'll just be evicerating the abalone with no chance of popping it free.  The best bet is to attack the abalone at a point where you can see the foot to avoid this since you don't know how the rock under the abalone is shaped.  Throw them in your cockpit as you catch them.  They don't run away very fast.

Once you've got your abalone the law requires they be left in the shell until they are about to be eaten so don't clean them and put them in a cooler.  Just throw them in whole with some cooler ice or a plastic bottle filled with ice and they'll stay alive until you get home as long as they aren't exposed to fresh water.  Refer to the recipie section for info on how to cook them.

Promethe, lots of good advice. I especially agree with the low volume mask and float line use.
     I would not share a gun with someone, however. When I'm carrying a loaded speargun I try to stay far away from other divers. A pole would probably be OK. Also, a line attached to a weight belt sounds like an entanglement issue. Last year in La Jolla I got kelp wrapped around me in shallow water while I was looking at lobsters. I was about 3' from the surface and stopped dead. I panicked and fought my way up; I should have used my knife. Scary.
     I used to do a lot of kayak tank diving. That's what I bought my kayak for. My Nomad is actually built for diving. It can carry 2 full size tanks in the back hatch. We used to go out with 2 tanks, our ab stuff, and lunch including a thermos of soup! I may have to try that soup thing again for fishing... We did a couple of trips to the Pinnacles at Monterey and a couple to Lobos Rocks further south. Whew! A lot of work.
     What I will say about tank-Kayak diving is: start in calmer water and work up to the good spots. You WILL lose stuff. Have tie-offs rigged for things like your tank/BC, your tank without a BC, gun or pole; definitely everything that you will put on or shed prior to and after diving. I prefer fastex buckles so you're not trying to unlatch things with gloves on. Put your mask on after you get the tank on. Get a flag and anchor for your boat. You can tie to kelp too, but tie to a bunch. Make sure tanks won't roll around inside your yak; that can flip you. Guess how I know all this stuff! Ask Mike fo advice, he tank dives from his yak a lot. Enjoy!
   PS - Can someone tell me how to do the Quote thing? Thanks.

I thought for a while about how to write the buoy/weightbelt bit.  It strikes me as being a hazard too, which is why I carry a spare instead.  However I weighed the increased willingness to drop the belt in a tight spot over the small likelyhood of getting tangled.  Seems to me it might be a wash.  Most people drown with the weightbelt on, so it seems that any measure that would reduce the hesitation to drop it could save lives.  

I haven't tried the 2 guys 1 gun thing yet, but it seems like a good strategy for safety to me.  Just keep the gun pointing down.  The water up here is so murky, that usually when spearfishing or abalone diving I can't see my partner, which reduces the safety aspect of diving with a buddy considerably.  Your chances of shark attack are cut in half, but that's about it.  Having common gear forces you to stay within regular contact.

I have had some big messes of shot line,float line, reel line, gun; and halibut wrapping it all around me. A yellow tail or WSB would tow you and the whole mess to the bottom like nothing. Maybe a large halibut too. I decided to forego the reel this year and just use the float line. It seems much more manageable.
    Terry Maas' solution to the weight belt thing is to always bring an extra one.
    I'm scared of spear guns since that guy accidently shot and paralyzed his friend while kayak diving in Monterey a few years ago. Low viz, murky conditions as well as a long bottom time or excitement about a big fish or whatever, can lead to disorientation which might result in someone forgetting to come up with the gun pointed down, or the safety off. When I buddy spear-fish (as you may have noticed Promethe), I keep my distance; but I'm always keeping an eye on my buddy's location so that I know generally where to look for him if he doesn't surface. Not perfect, I know, but a compromise.
     When I'm buddy ab diving, I don't mind doing the taking-turns thing right next to each other (as long as I'm not packing).

I always use a pole spear. It's easier to reload after a shot - no line, no threading...also, the risks of accidentally spearing yourself or your buddy are pretty minimal. When diving with my brother, I usually look to see where he is before I go down, although we have bumped into each other on murky days a few times. I've had SCUBA divers swim under me numerous times which I've found to be RUDE, ANNOYING, and DANGEROUS, but as long as I keep an eye on their frothing bubbles, I can avoid a collision...