The ones illustrated on this page are the harpoons and two line-slingers popular in 1954, as reported in the Rex-Hevea catalog of that year. Back then, each had its own name or the name of the person who patented it, as the harpoon of the great champion Raimondo Bucher. They were produced for him by the Siama company, now long defunct. They were often important pieces, designed for scuba diving for large pelagic prey or big groupers clinging to their burrows.
fig. 1
Yet the largest grouper ever catched in Italy wasn't caught by divers equipped with scuba tanks and superguns equipped with special harpoons, but by freediving at depths certainly within the reach of many today. It was 1961, and three young hunters had traveled to the remote little island of Lampione in search of beautiful prey, but they never imagined what awaited them. The grouper was at home, in a large den at a depth of 25 meters. One of them spotted it almost by chance from a crevice and fired. It took hours of diving and gunfire to conquer it and bring it to the surface. Later, at the port of the nearby island of Lampedusa, the scales declared its weight 68 kg, a record never even remotely approached in the italian seas in the future.
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