I was born on 15th October 1968 into a poor family, my father Roko a carpenter, my mother Iva a shop assistant. I was brought up in the outskirts of Split in a modest bungalow in the Split field, close to the sea. My family lacked almost everything except love. In my early childhood, before I started school, it was mostly my grandmother who looked after me. She is the person I am mostly indebted to for the love of nature and wildlife she instilled in me. My grandma tackled the problem of food shortage by taking what nature had to offer and thus inventing lunches and dinners. She taught me to distinguish between various types of herbs that can be eaten, used as tea, or as a substitute for bread, as a medicine or a balm. Apart from herbs it was also snails, frogs, hedgehogs, birds and tortoises that appeared on the menu. As a five year old she would take me for a seaside walk with a page torn from a newspaper and taught me my first letters. This is where I established my first contact with the vast sea landscapes, tasting limpets, sea snails, shells, anything edible, mostly raw, directly from the sea. My granny was happy to be able to provide me food, unaware of the permanent friendship and everlasting love that was being developed between me and the sea.

I soon got hold of a fishing hook which I used to catch big gobius, wrases ... .  I was so proud to be able to bring it home because I had a feeling I was contributing to the household budget.  I loved the early morning calms when I went hopping from stone to stone carrying prongs in my hands, lurking for an occasional seppia or gobius in the shallows of the cristal blue sea in the area of Trstenik and Duilovo.  I followed shrimps and I let them tickle the palm of my hand, I licked the salt off the smooth pebbles, I teased the crabs and tried to find out in which of the date-shell holes little fish took refuge. I could sit there for hours looking at waves, listening to the sound of the waves, smelling the air and looking at the distance. I can remember the quiet, calm and the happiness, and then I would run home to get ready for school which was three kilometers away. As any other child I was also fascinated by the goregeous shapes and coloures of sea shells. I couldn't wait for the end of the school year to put my mask on , walk through the shallows and use my toes to tumble the stones which served as a refuge for the little crabs and fish. My back was always burned by sun because I couldn't swim. Trying to get to the shells on the sea floor I learned to dive before I could swim. I still remember my first mask. It was white, round, made of rubber, covering the whole face with an opening my father used to fit a plastic tube so I could breath. My nose and my lips were also covered by the mask. I still don't know if it was supposed to be that way, or the mask was simply too big for me. I soon started seeing schoal of striped seabream which, lured by the sediment, would come right next to my feet grubbing about on the bottom in search of food. I tried to catch them with my bare hands but it didn't work ... then I tried walking in the shallow waters, with sea up to my waist, with a hook in my hand, failing again ... which made me start thinking seriously about putting some salt on the fish's tail... I tried with sand :o). I really began longing for a speargun, but I was also fond of different types of weapons in general, in particular guns and explosives. I produced home-made firecrackers, and made desigs for shotguns, one of which, half done, without a butt is still in my grandpa's attick. Luckily, I never tried to shoot from it. :o)

As soon as summer approached I would beg my father to make me a bow and arrow out of umbrella wires or out of a piece of wood, a peg and a pair of elastics which served to launch an iron rod with a pointed tip. This armed, I did manage to catch a couple of those striped seabream that were very busy grubbing about the sand, but most of them remained untouchable, in particular gilthead sea bream which seemed to sneer at me, swimming at a distance of a couple of meters. And then came „the real thing“. For my 13th birthday my dad gave me my first real sperfishing gun packed in an old suitcase. It was a Mares „Medisten“. It had an oval sticker with a host of coulorful flags of different countries among which it was written "Campione del mondo 1968". As if I can see it now. Interior parts were made of metal. I kept it under my bed. I would often take it and hold it in my hand pretending and daydreaming I was catching fish. I couldn't use it because it was autumn, so I had to wait for nine more month to try it out. It was a period full of restlessness. I felt I had something magnificent. Although it was a second-hand spear gun it was like a relic to me. The first summer it was difficult to make me come out of the sea. After a couple of hours I would come out with my lips blue, trembling with cold. I usually caught fish in holes: scorpion fish, wrases, seppias, … but it was a 4.30 kg heavy conger that crowned my first summer efforts, the fact which made me undefinably euphoric and extatic. It was most certainly the moment in which I became infected by spearfishing and developed an addiction for all times. I couldn't then foresee my future development into a sperfisher. I was only when I grew up that I realised that the effort invested in using the hole fishing technique presents the basis of a successful development of a good spearfisher. Without mastering this technique no results can be obtained by applying other techniques, which come later, only as an upgrade. As a high school student,  at the age of sixteen, I saved my poicket money for months in order to buy my first 5 mm wetsuit made by Poliester company. I bought it at a Christmas discount. Having no knowledge whatsoever about wetsuits, their floating, balancing, lead weights, etc. I used it to go diving for the first time in the middle of winter. I travelled to Trogir by bus, and then I walked 4-5 kilometres with the bag on my back to the outer side of the island of Čiovo, opposite the islet of Fumija. After 4 hours of swimming I could hardly take the wetsuit off the swollen, frosen, and red hands and feet because, of course, I had no gloves or socks. . . Sperfishing was forbidden and it was a taboo topic that a very small number of people knew anything about.

After I graduated from high school I served in the Yugoslav people's army for a year, more precisely in the Navy in the small barracks  in Savudrija, situated on a protruding promontory of Istria. Whenever I had time I would jump into the sea, and without any equipment, armed just by a spear gun Mares Ministen, borrowed from an acquaintance from Umag, I would go to catch some brunch. It lasted until one of my commanding officers caught me diving. He confiscated my speargun and my catch and I was sentenced to five days in military prison under the charges of infringement of military discipline. When I returned from the army I enrolled into the faculty of engineering and at the same time took exams in different CMAS categories. In 1991, due to the Croatian Natioanl War of Independence I gave up studies and volunteered in the diving formation of the Croatian Navy. In the same period I started attending my first diving competitions which were still held despite of the war operations, although not without difficulties. As soon I started competing I got my fist medals. I remember talking to and absorbing the experience and knowledge from senior divers whether form the divers in my division or from other active members of the diving milieu, especially those related to the members of the Croatian spearfishing team. It was then I realised there were other spearfishing techniques and that these require arbalete spearguns which launch Tahitiana shaft, and not prongs. War, lack of money, and generally difficult conditions force me to go sperfishing in my free time. At the beginning of 1993. I left the Croatian army and joined Klismar company which specialised in fish farming. I spent two years there as a manager of a seabass fish farm. That was a period characterised by particularly beautiful, although slightly spartan life, in one of the bays of the Primosten and Rogoznica area. Apart form an assistant from a nerby village Zecevo, my only companions were my cat Pis and the balkan hound Tiba. I spent every break between the farm chores to go diving, whether in apnea or scuba diving.

After the laws had changed and spearfishing was liberalised I spent more and more time sperfishing while scuba diving is taking the second place. From 1995. to 1998. I practiced spearfishing with even greater intensity spending 3-4 days a week at or rather under the sea. Following migrations of interesting fish species I got to know well the whole area from Losinj to Prevlaka, fish habitats, habits and the ways the prey moves. At the time I used the arbalete gun, Mares Arbasten 90, with which I discovered the first secrets of „aspetto“ technique. I used that same gun for years until it crumbled apart. It was the gun I caught my first trophy seabass and dentex with, and the gun which, in 1998, got me the status of a full member of the Croatian national sperfishing team.

By the end of 1999 I used a bank loan to establish a shop selling diving equipment. Currently I run a company employing 8 people and at the same time I take part in all important sperfishing events either as a competitor or as a sponsor.

A big THANK YOU to everyone who needed me while I was rushing to embrace the sea!

Dario Marinov