About
An independent record of spearfishing law
Spearo Map answers one question — is spearfishing legal here, and under what rules — for 222 countries and territories, from the text of the law itself rather than from hearsay.
What this is
The core of the site is a dataset: one machine-readable record per country holding the legal status, licence and equipment rules, closed seasons, protected zones, and 1,690 verbatim provisions of law, each carrying a link to the source it was taken from. The map, the country pages and the zone pages are all views of that one dataset.
Why it exists
Spearfishing law is scattered across fisheries acts, marine-park decrees, port-authority orders and national gazettes, usually in a language the visiting diver does not read. The answers circulating in forums and dive-shop lore are often out of date or simply wrong, and getting it wrong can mean a fine, confiscated gear or a criminal record. This dataset exists so the actual provision — in its own words, with a link — is one click away.
What the data covers
Every coastal state and territory, plus landlocked countries whose inland waters are regulated: legality, licences, seasons, equipment, catch limits, rules for foreigners and residents, the responsible authorities, and 2,818 named zones where a specific rule applies. It does not cover boat, customs or travel rules, and it is not legal advice.
How it is funded
This is a small independent project, not a company or an institution. It is free to use and has no paywall. It is funded by advertising and by paid directory listings for dive shops, charters and schools — those are marked wherever they appear, and a paid listing never changes what the legal record says.
Who publishes this
Andrii Sukhanov
Founder and maintainer
A spearfisher in Tenerife, in the Canary Islands — a 95 cm gun, in water that is closed by default and lawful only inside the named zonas acotadas, one of the stricter regimes in this dataset. Spearfishing Map started there: the rules that decide whether a dive is legal sit in government gazettes in dozens of languages, so they were collected into one machine-readable record per country, each quote kept verbatim beside the source it came from. By trade a software developer working on data and API products, among them INCI API.
Read on
The methodology page sets out exactly how a record is researched, verified and corrected — including what gets rejected and what is still missing. If you have found an error, the contact page is the fastest way to reach us.
