Hawaii's Shallow Water Blackout Bill: What Every Diver Needs to Know About HB 1765 and Freediving Safety

Hawaii is on the verge of passing one of the most significant pieces of spearfishing safety legislation in the United States. House Bill 1765, introduced in the 2026 legislative session, would require every speargun and pole spear sold, leased, or rented in Hawaii to carry a warning label about the dangers of shallow water blackout. The bill is backed by divers, water safety advocates, dive shop owners, and the Department of Land and Natural Resources. If it passes, it could set a precedent that reshapes how the spearfishing industry approaches safety education nationwide.

Whether you dive in Hawaii or anywhere else in the world, this bill highlights a conversation that every diver needs to have — with themselves, their dive buddies, and anyone they introduce to the sport. Shallow water blackout is the leading killer of experienced freedivers and it is almost entirely preventable with the right knowledge.

What Is Hawaii House Bill 1765?

HB 1765 was championed by Niki Roderick, a lifelong competitive diver and the founder of FreediveSafe! Hawaii, a nonprofit that teaches spearfishing safety to young people for free. Through her work, Roderick noticed a disturbing pattern: most people getting into spearfishing have no idea that shallow water blackout even exists. In one recent class of 30 young divers, only two raised their hands when asked if they understood the risk.

The bill proposes a simple but potentially life-saving measure: every new speargun or pole spear sold or rented in Hawaii must carry a label that reads “Danger: spearfishing involves breath-hold diving. Prolonged submersion or improper breathing may cause hypoxia, loss of consciousness, or death. Never dive alone.” The Hawaii Department of Health would be responsible for enforcement and determining any additional languages the warning should be translated into.

The bill has received overwhelming support from the diving community. Byron Kay, owner of Kona Freedivers and Kona Honu Divers on the Big Island, told reporters that dive shops would readily embrace the labels. He pointed out that parents sometimes buy spearfishing gear for their kids without understanding the risks involved. A simple warning label could be the nudge that sends a new diver toward a safety course before they ever enter the water.

Why Shallow Water Blackout Is the Biggest Threat Divers Don't Talk About Enough

Shallow water blackout occurs when a diver loses consciousness due to critically low oxygen levels in the brain, most commonly during the ascent from a dive. It is called “shallow water” blackout because it typically happens in the final 15 feet of the ascent, where the drop in water pressure causes a sudden further reduction in the partial pressure of oxygen in the blood. The diver feels fine one moment and blacks out the next — often without any warning at all.

What makes shallow water blackout so dangerous is that it disproportionately affects experienced divers. Beginners tend to surface earlier because they are less comfortable with breath-hold diving. Experienced divers, on the other hand, have trained themselves to push through the urge to breathe, extending their bottom time and depth — which is exactly what increases the risk. The phrase “I know my limits” is one of the most dangerous sentences in our sport because the nature of blackout is that you do not feel it coming.

In Hawaii alone, more than 50 freedivers have died from shallow water blackout in the last decade. Between 2020 and 2024, 187 Hawaii residents drowned in the ocean, and many were experienced divers and fishermen. The year 2020 was particularly devastating for the spearfishing community, with 13 fatalities in a single year. These are not beginners making reckless mistakes — these are people who loved the ocean and simply did not have the safety education to understand the silent threat lurking in every ascent.

Hyperventilation: The Hidden Trigger Most Divers Get Wrong

The single biggest contributing factor to shallow water blackout is hyperventilation before a dive. Many divers are taught — or teach themselves — to take a series of rapid, deep breaths before submerging, believing it loads them up with extra oxygen. This is a myth, and it is a deadly one. Hyperventilation does not meaningfully increase your blood oxygen levels. What it does is flush carbon dioxide from your blood.

Carbon dioxide is the body's primary trigger for the urge to breathe. When you lower your CO2 levels through hyperventilation, you delay that urge, tricking your body into thinking it has more time than it actually does. Meanwhile, your oxygen is depleting at the same rate it always does. The result is that your oxygen drops to critically low levels before your body ever tells you to surface. By the time you feel the urge to breathe, it may already be too late — and on the way up, the pressure change pushes you over the edge into unconsciousness.

The rule is simple: never hyperventilate before a dive. Take slow, relaxed, diaphragmatic breaths during your surface interval. If you feel the need to rush your breathing between dives, you are not resting long enough. A proper breath-up takes at least two minutes of calm, controlled breathing before your final breath and descent.

The One Rule That Saves Lives: Never Dive Alone

Notice the last line of the proposed Hawaii warning label: “Never dive alone.” This is the single most important safety rule in freediving and spearfishing, and it is the one that gets violated most often. A trained dive buddy who is watching you from the surface during your dive can recognize the signs of a blackout and initiate a rescue within seconds. Without a buddy, a blackout diver slips under the surface and drowns silently. There is no struggle, no splash, and no second chance.

An effective buddy system means one diver is always at the surface watching while the other is down. This is not the same as two divers in the water at the same time doing their own thing in different directions. Real buddy diving is disciplined, focused, and involves direct observation of each other's ascent — the most dangerous phase of the dive. If your buddy surfaces and shows any signs of motor control loss, a blank stare, or does not begin breathing immediately, you need to act fast.

Safety Technology: Recovery Vests and Dive Watches

Beyond proper technique and a reliable buddy system, technology is starting to play a real role in freediving safety. On episode 35 of the SpearFactor Podcast, I spoke with Philip Maechler, the Swiss inventor behind the Sens07vest from Provitatec. The Sens07vest is an automatic recovery device that monitors the diver using sensors and inflates if it detects a blackout or if the diver has been submerged too long. It turns the unconscious diver onto their back to keep their airway clear and brings them to the surface. It is not a replacement for a buddy, but it is an additional layer of protection that could save your life if things go wrong.

Provitatec has announced an updated version of the Sens07 inflator launching in spring 2026 with rechargeable batteries, improved sealing against saltwater corrosion, and the ability to review dive data from past sessions. SpearFactor listeners can still use the promo code SPEARFACTOR10 for a discount at provitatec.com.

Modern freediving watches are also valuable safety tools. A dive computer that tracks your depth, bottom time, and surface interval gives you objective data instead of relying on how you feel in the moment. When you review your dive data at the end of the day, you may be surprised at how much longer or deeper you went compared to what you thought. That gap between perception and reality is exactly where blackout lives.

What Every Diver Should Do Right Now

You do not need to wait for legislation to make yourself safer. Regardless of where you dive, there are steps you can take today to dramatically reduce your risk of shallow water blackout. First, take a formal freediving safety course. Ted Harty at Immersion Freediving offers an entirely free online safety course at freedivingsafety.com that covers the essential knowledge every diver should have. SpearFactor listeners get 15 percent off Ted's paid courses with the promo code spearfactor.

Second, commit to never hyperventilating before a dive. Period. Slow, relaxed breathing is your pre-dive protocol from now on. Third, always dive with a buddy and practice a one-up, one-down system where one diver is always at the surface watching. Fourth, know the signs of a blackout in progress: loss of motor control, twitching, a blank stare, or failure to breathe upon surfacing. If you see any of these signs in your buddy, immediately support their airway above water and begin rescue breathing if needed.

Fifth, learn recovery breathing. After every dive, perform a series of controlled exhale-inhale cycles at the surface before doing anything else. This rapid reoxygenation technique reduces the risk of a surface-level blackout, which is more common than most people realize. Recovery breathing should become as automatic as clearing your mask.

Why This Bill Matters Beyond Hawaii

Hawaii's HB 1765 is not just a local story. If this bill passes, it establishes a model that other states and countries can follow. Spearfishing is growing faster than ever — the global spearfishing market is projected to continue expanding, and social media is bringing thousands of new divers into the sport every year. Many of these newcomers are self-taught and learn from YouTube videos that rarely spend adequate time on safety protocols.

A warning label on a speargun is not going to solve the problem on its own. But it is a starting point. It puts the words “shallow water blackout” in front of someone who might never have heard the term, and that alone could send them to a search engine, a safety course, or a conversation with an experienced diver that changes the trajectory of their diving career — and possibly saves their life.

On the SpearFactor Podcast, I have spoken with multiple guests who have experienced shallow water blackout firsthand or witnessed it take the life of someone they were diving with. These are real stories from real divers, and they all share the same message: it can happen to anyone, at any experience level, on any dive. Safety is not a topic we cover once and move on from. It is the foundation that everything else in this sport is built on.

If you want to go deeper on freediving safety, check out the SpearFactor Spearfishing Master Class at spearfactor.com, which dedicates an entire module to safe diving basics including shallow water blackout recognition, the seven rules of safer diving, and emergency procedures. There is also a free downloadable Emergency Procedures checklist you can print and keep in your dive bag. Stay safe out there, and never stop learning.