bluewater hunting and freediving
Iaon Pohlit had no idea his line was wrapped around his neck until he reviewed the video later.
Photo by Nick Dumong
The line pulled the buckle, now on his back, so tight that he could not loosen it. When we recovered his equipment, we found his 7-millimeter spear badly bent and stuck in the wreck.
Nick was a young diver—-just 21 years old— with a lot of potential. He was also aware of his limitations in deep water. I believe he died not because he stayed down too long, but because he was unable to free himself from his float line. Had I tried to bring him up on the first dive, I would definitely have blacked out. Had I not seen Gyula come up with Nick, two people would have died.
With the popularity of personal video cameras, several scary and compelling stories of line tangles have made this issue very real with a first-person perspective. Here is one such story from Tanc Sade:
I spotted a 60-pound white seabass swimming directly underneath me, I dropped down and took what I thought was a very solid head shot. The fish took barely any line which( wrongly) had me suspect he was out for the count. I took a half-breath to make a quick retrieval and as I motioned to place my hands in its gills the fish lit up. In retrospect I should have backed away and made a second attempt later. I made the error of riding out my breath-hold to subdue the fish. What I didn’ t realize, as I was trying to get my hands in its gills, was the fish was spinning me in circles and subsequently causing the clear 200-pound mono line to cinch my fins and a kelp stalk together. By the time I had subdued the fish and began to make my way to the surface, I realized I was trapped, a mere threefeet from the surface. At this point I thought I was simply wrapped in kelp— thinking nothing a few kicks couldn’ t handle. However, on closer inspection I saw the clear mono line was holding me down. Luckily, I was calmheaded enough to use my freediving training to slow down, assess the situation, and wiggle myself free enough to steal a breath from the
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