Ups and downs for spearfisherman Donovan
The elusive white grouper remained the priority species as it was the only fish that would have guaranteed a top three finish.
Umtentweni’s Donovan Solomon was part of the South African team that competed in the 32nd edition of the Spearfishing World Championships in Sardinia recently.
After three days of flights and a ferry trip Solomon and his teammates arrived on the island to survey the two designated zones over two days to search and become familiar with the location, while locating priority species.
“Ideally in the competition environment I would need to dive as shallow as possible, to reduce the amount of surface interval time that I require to prevent decompression illness. Majority of my ‘hotspots’ were around 40m to 45m,” Solomon said.
The elusive white grouper remained the priority species as it was the only fish that would have guaranteed a top three finish. However, out of 60 participants and over two days only two white grouper were caught.
“Basically for the six weeks leading up to the competition I covered the two areas locating and diving just short of 700 locations. I found about 45 hotspots that held fish and that I had scheduled as competition spots. During the scouting days I dived to a depth of 30m to my deepest dive at 62m,” he said.
“A game of chess had started about three weeks before competition day, and it was absolutely incredible how the other teams followed us around and kept an eye on us from afar and tried to catch us at our hotspots. It was truly stressful and exciting to be able to play this game at this level of competition,” he added.
After three hours of diving and capturing five different species of fish, Solomon withdrew from the competition after succumbing to decompression illness (taravana in freediving) at the end of day one. He was treated on site by doctors on the water which saw him make a full recovery, however he made the decision to end his run there.
After team manager Angelo Spada replaced Solomon, Team SA ended their run with Jaco Blignaut claiming seventh spot (his best individual result at a world championship and the highest placed South African ever in an international event), Gerhard Vosloo 18th, Donovan Solomon 21st and Angelo Spada 36th.
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