Spearfishing is a sport that takes an already dangerous activity and adds more risk to your day in the water. While this is not a fully comprehensive list, here are a few safety tips to help keep you and your buddies a little safer out on your day hunting.

• Never load your speargun out of the water - Wait to load your speargun until you are in the water and ready to begin hunting. If you have boat support, do not let a deckhand or fellow diver hand you a loaded speargun.

• Never fire your speargun out of the water - Spearguns are designed to fired in the water, where there is huge amounts of resistance to objects moving through water compared to objects moving through air. A speargun fired out of water can damage the speargun, injure bystanders, and in general be uncontrollable.

• Don’t point your speargun at something you’re not willing to shoot - Much like firearm safety, do not point your speargun at something you’re not willing to shoot or kill. So fight that temptation for that cool action shot with a photographer while spearfishing.

• Finger off the trigger until you’re ready to fire - Again, just like firearm safety, keep your finger off the trigger until you are ready to fire.

• Be aware of what is behind your target - Be aware of other fish and fellow spearos when you are preparing to shoot a fish. This includes the medium behind the fish as well. It is easy to flatten spear tips or get them stuck in the plant life around your target.

• Be aware of rigging - When using floatlines or reels, be aware of the line that is out in the water. Entanglement, especially at depth or fighting a large fish, is an extremely dangerous situation.

• Do not solely rely on the speargun trigger safety device - Most spearguns produced by 20 Below Freediving have a trigger safety device. These safety devices are tested to ensure they work as intended before the speargun leaves the shop. However, trigger safety devices are merely an assistance to you, the diver, and your safe practices and techniques in the water. Do not solely rely on the trigger safety device.