Progressive Spearfishing

Cruising 11' planks, to skating by on twin-fins, to busting airs on paper thin shortboards- this is the evolution of surfing in just the last 50 years.  Bring Gidget and Greg Knoll in a time machine to the modern area, and they wouldn't even recognize the sport.  It's like they'd be looking at the same field and a similar ball, but the rules of the game would be entirely different.  Spearfishing, too, has undergone some changes over time (as chronicled by Sonny Tanabe's new book- which I still haven't seen).  Yesterday, while commuting home from Kahana, Mike Hatcher and I had an introspective and insightful discussion of just what progress has been made in the sport, and where it's headed in the future.

The conversation precipitated from a comment Mike made.  We were diving a relatively rarely visited spot, and he said something to the effect of, "Man, imagine if we could have been diving this spot years ago.  It's too bad, we just came along in the wrong era."  I countered, saying that we're simply doing what everyone else currently does (catching uhus at a fairly hard area to dive).  There are miles of coastline and a literal ocean full of deeper ledges that we don't explore.  Fifteen years in the future, after someone has paved the way at these spots, someone will probably come along and make a comment like, "Man, if only we were here fifteen years ago..."

But we began to discuss what is "progressive" in diving.  What will the future be?  Is it visual media, like photos and video?  More competitive spearfishing?  A return of active dive clubs?  Deeper diving?  Bigger fish?  More bluewater?  Better reef divers?  Truthfully, I'd like to see advances in all these areas.

In the end, I think I came up with the answer.  Although my answer is patently obvious, don't mistake it for sarcasm.  The answer is, the future of spearfishing lies wherever the best spearfishermen take it.  So where are you headed?