Atlas of Skills / Adventure

Spearfishing

Hold your breath, stalk the reef or the open blue, and take a single clean shot, the oldest hunt on Earth done on lungs alone.

People have speared fish since the Palaeolithic, but the sport of hunting on one breath took off in the 1920s on the Mediterranean coast of France and Italy, by swimmers wearing only watertight goggles. It helped bring in the modern diving mask, fins and snorkel; the Frenchman Louis de Corlieu, who had shown a first prototype to naval officers in 1914, patented his swimfins in April 1933. In Antibes, the American writer Guy Gilpatric hunted the same water and in 1938 published The Compleat Goggler, held to be the first full guide to the sport; he drew Jacques-Yves Cousteau and Hans Hass into it. Today the craft is most alive where its champions come from: at the 2025 World Championship in Brazil, Tahiti’s Dell Lamartinière and Taina Orth won both individual titles, and Spain took the men’s team gold.

Gold credential: CMAS Spearfishing grades / national federation licence + freediving certification · CMAS (spearfishing commission) / national federations

Ordered by community strength — not by who pays

Where the community gathers

PlaceSeasonLevelHow longLanguage
Kona, Big IslandApr-OctBeginner -> Advanceda weekendEnglish
Côte d'Azur (Cassis to Antibes)May-OctBeginner -> Competitionmonths–yearsFrench
Cabo San Lucas / Sea of CortezMay-NovIntermediate -> Advanced2–4 weeksEnglish
Where the world comes
Strong living community

Learn bluewater hunting where the drop-off into deep blue is minutes from shore.

Season: Apr-Oct · Beginner -> Advanced

Three operators, and all three sell private charters and one-to-one tours: good instruction, no bench. You would be alone with a guide rather than among people learning the same thing. Nothing outside those operators establishes a community here, and nobody of ours has been.

Deep blue water and a steep drop-off minutes from shore make Kona one of the world's classrooms for bluewater pelagic hunting.

Living sceneMecca

Taster — a weekend

The full sheet on Kona, Big Island →All 2 schools and the course and what it costs.

★ Best place to go
Birthplace of the discipline

Learn on the coast where sport spearfishing took off in the 1920s.

Season: May-Oct · Beginner -> Competition

Clubs rather than schools, which is the difference that matters: the FFESSM-affiliated associations on this coast are volunteer bodies whose members train and qualify together, and the state diploma at Antibes has a cohort by definition. The Fédération Française de Pêche Sportive en Apnée ran a French Cup round off Sainte-Maxime on 25 April 2026 — 22 two-person teams, its own regional league, selling nothing.

Modern sport spearfishing took off on this French-Italian Mediterranean coast in the 1920s, and the hunt helped bring in the modern mask, fins and snorkel.

BirthplaceHeritage

Mastery track — months–years

The full sheet on Côte d'Azur (Cassis to Antibes) →All 3 schools and the course and what it costs.

A deep dive
Strong living community

Learn to hunt wahoo, tuna and dorado in the warm blue of the Marlin Capital of the World.

Season: May-Nov · Intermediate -> Advanced

One operator, selling charters, and the record holds nothing else — no club, no federation round, nobody counted. The same caveat as Kona applies and matters more with one boat: a private guide is instruction without anyone beside you.

The 'Marlin Capital of the World' opens onto wahoo, tuna and dorado in warm blue water, a proving ground for serious bluewater hunters.

Living scene

Deep-dive — 2–4 weeks

The full sheet on Cabo San Lucas / Sea of Cortez →The school and the course and what it costs.

Write me a note about this one — how you'd love to learn it, and where.

If this box never loads, the same note reaches me at arnaudcallier@pm.me.

Catalogued, not checked

Ten more places we know of, and nobody has checked any of them

Listing five places would tell you this craft happens in five places, and it does not. These are the rest we know of. Nobody has checked any of them. No school here is vetted, no teacher named, nothing graded — this is the lowest state on the map, and we would rather print it than let a short list read as a complete one. A line each, and what the place is known for. If you have been to one, or know a school or an instructor there, the line will take a note — it comes to me, and it is how a place stops being a line and starts being checked.

  • Sardinia, Italy
    Rocky Tyrrhenian coast with one of Europe's deepest-rooted breath-hold hunting cultures.
  • Dalmatian islands, Croatia
    Clear Adriatic water, strict permit rules, and a serious domestic scene.
  • The Cyclades, Greece
    Island coastlines where spearfishing is ordinary practice rather than a holiday activity.
  • Azores, Portugal
    Mid-Atlantic pelagic hunting, weather-dependent and for experienced divers.
  • Cape Verde, Cape Verde
    Warm Atlantic bluewater with wahoo and tuna close to the islands.
  • Coiba & the Pacific coast, Panama
    Remote bluewater reached by boat, with strong protection rules around the park.
  • Cape Town & the Cape peninsula, South Africa
    Cold, tough Atlantic conditions and a demanding local tradition.
  • Northland, New Zealand
    A national spearfishing culture with well-defined size and bag limits.
  • Exmouth, Western Australia, Australia
    Ningaloo's edge, where reef and bluewater meet within a short run.
  • Florida Keys, United States
    Shallow reef and wreck hunting under tightly enforced seasonal rules.
If this one pulls you

Close to this on the map

Grouped by hand, not by an algorithm — same hands, same instinct, a different craft. Drag, or use the arrows.

Why you can trust this map

How a place gets on here, and what we do when it stops being true

There is a real difference between a school that teaches you and a good-looking website, and too much of the internet is the second kind. Four instruments do the work, and every one of them is visible on the page you are already on.

  • We grade it in public, and publish what is missing. The Measure is five plain questions, not a score: is there a teacher we can name, can a stranger get in, will you be learning beside other people, is the craft alive in the place, and is there enough there to keep you going for years. An empty dot tells you which one we could not answer and why. A craft nobody has graded shows no meter at all, because an absence is not a zero.
  • We print what we checked and did NOT list. Every swept craft carries the places we looked at and turned down, each with its reason. That list is the part no marketplace prints, because a rejection is where the money is.
  • The claims are read back to their sources every night. A robot re-reads every link we publish against the school's own page each night, and every price and course name we have written a test for. page. When one stops matching three nights running, it is flagged for a human — and an entry that cannot be confirmed comes off. It is never softened.
  • Where we are not neutral, we say so above the recommendation. We run one paid week a year, with one teacher. His entry says that before it says anything good about him, and prints the way to reach him without us, at his prices.
  • Nothing here has been stood in yet. An open sheet means desk research, carefully done. No place on this map has been visited and dated by us. When one is, the check will carry a name and a date — and until then, the grade says so in the dots it leaves empty.
  • Nobody pays to be here, and nobody can pay to be left off. No commission, no listing fee, no tourist board. The order is the strength of the community, never the size of the wallet.
Before you trust any school — mine or anyone else's — ask these five things
  1. Who actually teaches it? Can you find them by name, with a track record you can check yourself?
  2. Is the craft alive in that place, or is the school the only thing there? A real scene has more than one good option.
  3. What exactly do you walk away with — a recognised qualification, or a certificate they printed themselves? Ask which.
  4. Can you speak to someone who did the course? A real person, not a testimonial on their own page.
  5. What happens on a bad day — weather, an injury, a teacher who doesn't show? A serious place has an honest answer.

If a place dodges these, that's your answer. It costs you nothing to ask, and it tells you everything.

This is the short version. The full method is here — the six questions, in order, for any craft anywhere.