Spearfishing
Also known as: spearing, blue water hunting
Hunting fish on a breath hold, filmed in poor visibility with one hand occupied and a strong argument for restraint in what gets published.
Updated
What it means
Spearfishing combines breath-hold diving with a weapon. The diver descends on one breath, waits near the bottom or in open water, and the moment that matters is brief, silent and happens at an unpredictable distance from wherever the camera is pointing.
The water is rarely clear where the fish are. Visibility is frequently a few metres, which removes most of the framing options and makes anything beyond close range a grey shape.
One hand is already busy. A gun occupies the hand a camera would otherwise be in, which is why a Head strap and other worn mounts dominate here more than in any other underwater discipline, and why a handheld housing is almost never seen on a hunting dive.
How it works in practice
A mask or head mount is the practical answer. A camera on the head follows the eyes and leaves both hands free, which is the only arrangement that works while hunting.
Lighting is usually impractical and a filter is not. A Red filter restores what the depth took without adding anything to carry, and it works in the shallow water this happens in.
The approach is the shot rather than the result, and it is worth filming from the first descent. A fish seen, stalked and closed on tells a story, where the moment of the shot is brief and considerably less interesting on screen.
What to watch out for
The ethics are a publishing decision rather than a filming one. Footage of a kill reaches an audience that may not share the context, and a Community guidelines finding is a real possibility.
Visibility ruins more clips than anything else. A subject at five metres in murky water is a shape, and no grading or Sharpening recovers detail the water scattered.
Breath-hold limits the camera as much as the diver. Nobody is adjusting settings at depth on a single breath, so everything is decided at the surface and left alone.
How RawClip handles it
Underwater clips are graded for the colour shift during assembly, which handles the murk as far as anything can. The approach sequences tend to score better than the brief moment at the end, since continuous movement reads more clearly than a single instant.