The Birth of Drifters Freediving
Kingfish, Harbinger Reef and Some Epic Teamwork
Some names just stick. Drifters Freediving wasn’t something we brainstormed - it was something we lived into existence.
It all started at Harbinger Reef, a name that means a sign of things to come. And this place lived up to it. A remote system of bommies off the northwest tip of King Island, where the ocean doesn’t play nice. Swirling currents ripping at 6 knots. Unmarked pinnacles waiting to capsize the unwary. Marine life everywhere.
It’s the kind of place that only lets you in when conditions align perfectly. On this trip, we had a rare 12-hour window—no swell, no wind, just enough time to guess the slack tide at this beast of a location.
But even with perfect conditions, this wasn’t a trip you take lightly. You need the right crew.
The Captain
At the helm - Captain Mark Spisbah. The most experienced salt dog out there, years at sea etched into his face like navigational charts. He lives for this kind of adventure.
Mark guided Singapore (his boat) through bommies where the seafloor shot up from 70m to 20m to nearly breaking the surface. He read the currents like a book, dropping Brenton and I in the exact spot for a single drift past a pinnacle - then scooped us up at the other end like clockwork.
The Ultimate Dive Buddy
In the water, Brenton and I are a tight unit. Out here, fish come second—we come first. It’s all about trust, communication, and knowing that no matter what, we’ve got each other’s backs.
This whole video is from Brenton’s perspective. Before the dive, we had all agreed—one good fish would be enough for the next few days and no fish is worth a life.
Brenton dived first on a school of Blue Warehou but passed, giving me my turn. At the back of the school, I spotted a few Kingfish and waited for them to edge closer and the right shot to present itself.
As soon as Brenton surfaced, he was locked in, watching, staying close, ready to step in if needed.
Landing a Kingfish in six knots of current is no joke. The fish did what Kingfish do, diving straight for the reef and tangling my shooting line and shaft in the bull kelp.
Just getting to it was a battle with the current pulling me in the opposite direction. I had to play it just right - pull too hard and risk tearing the shaft out, let off too much and lose the fish entirely. Even getting my knife out was a struggle as I had to stop swimming just to reach for it.
Through it all, Brenton was there, calmly watching and backing me up and sending stoke every step of the way. That’s the kind of dive buddy you want. Someone who’s stoked for your success but, more importantly, makes sure you get to tell the story after.
The very next dive? A mako shark buzzed me at 20m. That big black eye locked onto mine, staring, inquisitive, "What are you doing here?". That moment is etched in my mind forever. But that’s a story for another day.
Later that night, with our fish on ice and a few hours of motoring ahead to our next anchorage, we reflected on it all. The right crew. The right conditions. The flow of it all—drifting from one experience to the next.
That’s when it hit us. We weren’t just freedivers. We were drifters.
And, let’s be real. If we started freediving full-time, plenty of people would call us drifters anyway.
With a laugh around that, Drifters Freediving was born.
