USA SPEARFISHING
What is
the World Spearfishing Championship?
C.M.A.S. (Confederation Mondiale des
Activities Subaquatiques) sponsors a World Spearfishing Championship every two
years and usually limits participation to the top 20 of its member countries.
CMAS is a worldwide organization for underwater sports currently and has
approximately 35 countries as members. Each World Spearfishing Championship is
typically held at a different dive location around the World, i.e. Iquique,
Chile in 2004, Sines, Portugal in 2006 and Santa Margarita Island, Venezuela in
2008. This year it will be held in Mali Losinj, Croatia on the 14th
through the 19th of September 2010.
What happens at a World Spearfishing Championship?
The Worlds are a 2-day championship where divers harvest fish for about 7 hours
per day. Each day, the diving is done at a different location. Typically, 20-25
teams qualify to compete at the World Championships. And because too many teams
want to participate at the Worlds, sometimes there are regional qualifiers for
the World Championships per Continent. The America’s Qualifier is the
Pan-American Spearfishing Championship lastly hosted at Isla Margarita,
Venezuela
in November 2009 for the 2010 Worlds. The World Championships are boat-based
meets and each team is allowed to have three divers hunting. The Championships
are run somewhat like a mini-Olympics where there are opening ceremonies and a
big closing banquet. It is not uncommon for thousands of people to attend the
opening ceremony where each team has their own national uniform. At the opening
event there is a parade of Nations where each country carries their nations’
flag.
Why are we asking for donations?
These Championships are not about just having great freediving and spearfishing
talent as all the U.S. divers have an extreme high degree of talent. It is about
preparation and having enough resources (time and money) to be successful. The
Worlds top teams in these Championships will spend months training at the site,
finding fishy locations (scouting) and understanding everything about the
tournament area. Let’s say, the Italian team, always one of the top teams brings
10 divers to the World site and spends 60 days diving there in preparation.
That’s 600 full diver days in the water. You can have all the 100 foot freedive
capable divers you want, but without scouting time to hunt miles and miles of
coastline, you will not break the top 5 teams. The U.S. has never hosted a
Worlds, but our top divers have previously won individual honors and finished
2nd multiple times. Our U.S. divers can hang with the very best. Our biggest
challenges are the time and money aspect.
We seem to "work" more than the rest of the World!
Thanks for reading and we all sincerely appreciate your support!