Vintage spearfishing film/video from the 1950s

[Eric Sedletzky]

I came across this on another forum and thought it was relevant to vintage skin diving even though not really scuba related.
Notice the Voit Duck Feet and Voit Viking fins.
The World Spearfishing Competitions of the Past on Vimeo

 

[Fish&beer]

WOW! Not only seeing the old fins but it was cool that some of the free divers were wearing inflatable waist bands for possible surface flotation. I also thought it was an amazing feat for Del Wren to shoot the u/w footage while breath holding up to 3 mins. What a great film to watch, a great find indeed.

 

[knowone]

Those Dacor safety floats are great. The double if you set off both cartriges almost inflates into a beachball.
Some artistic licence.

 

[VooDooGasMan]

ZKY, Thanx indeed it is a great story, I sent to a manager across the water from me at underwatersports, which gary is the owner of, now lives and retired on lopez island in the san juan islands. looked to be alot of fun back then.

Happy Diving

 

[harleydiver1]

WOW! Not only seeing the old fins but it was cool that some of the free divers were wearing inflatable waist bands for possible surface flotation. I also thought it was an amazing feat for Del Wren to shoot the u/w footage while breath holding up to 3 mins. What a great film to watch, a great find indeed.

DEL WREN...TERRY LENTZ & DON BATES WERE TOGETHER OCTOBER 16, 2010 for the "Dive Shack USA" "CARPFEST" spear tournament in Bullhead City, Arizona.

The stories they speak of!

I may still have a couple of those videos that Del put together.

diveshack@npgcable.com

 

[duckbill]

looked to be alot of fun back then.

Yeah, fun, but deadly! Two guys died at one contest alone:shocked2:

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

The only thing that bothers me about that sort of mentallity of an all out kill fest is they weren't after the food, just the trophy. Put that many divers in one area and the object is to kill everything in sight and you know the fish populations were drastically reduced.
I guess back then that's how it was and that sort of competition was perfectly normal.
I don't necessarily agree with spearfishing competitions from then or even now.

What got my attention was the gear (the vintage aspect) and also the skill in freediving they had even back then.
The amount of fish killing and the "oh well" attitude kind of turned my stomach to tell you the truth. That's a hell of a lot of fish killed. He mentioned "a couple thousand pounds" just in the few weeks prior to the meet, holy cow!! leave some for the fishermen who make a living around there!
But besides the killfest, I thought the film had some historic significance so that's why I posted it.

 

[knowone]

My sentiments exactly, but when I witnessed these "Fests" as a boy in the 60's I hadn't yet totally understood the stomach churning aspects of the pyramids of crays and piles of huge fish but it may well go towards the fact that having taken up snorkeling then diving around the same time I have only speared one flounder and that was with a mop stick and a nail.

I know a few from those times and they all seem ashamed and choose to forget and have if still involved in the ocean become prolific conservators.

I did however accept offerings when comps were held under the lighthouse I lived at in more recent times that were proffered as a goodwill gesture by competitors

 

[elmer fudd]

To put things in a little perspective though, these were some of the biggest spearfishing competitions of their day, and despite them spearing obscene amounts of fish, all of them put together probably didn't take in more fish than one small commercial boat in that same time period. Then compare them to a modern factory ship.

 

[duckbill]

Not only that, but those big meets just didn't happen every day. I also would wager they would only hold such meets where the populations of fish were very good to begin with, not where the contestants wouldn't bother to go and be frustrated.

Consider, too, that the video mentioned at least a couple times (IIRC) that the fish were donated to the needy. Actually, it made my stomach kind of hungry seeing all that fresh fish.