Forbidden areas and species for spearfishing in Morocco

A spearfishing authorisation does not hold everywhere or for everything. Here is where you do not dive and what you do not shoot in Morocco, separating what comes from a text from what is only reported to us.

Areas where you do not dive

• Ports, channels and anchorages. Port basins, access channels, the approaches to installations and to vessels at anchor. The figure quoted is 500 m; the logic is not up for debate: a diver in a channel is invisible.
• Supervised beaches, in season. A speargun among swimmers is an accident and a fine. Around 300 m is quoted; in practice, go somewhere else.
• Military zones and official residences. Naval bases, surveillance installations, palaces and royal residences on the coast. You do not go near them.
• Aquaculture farms. Cages and shellfish lines are a concession and private property.
• Marine protected areas. Al Hoceima National Park and the Jbel Moussa area are reported to us as forbidden or tightly controlled. Ask the site manager before going.
• Areas under biological rest. The administration periodically closes areas by order. This is the point to re-check before each season.
• Wrecks. Hunting above a wreck is no problem; bringing something up is. Submerged heritage belongs to the State.

Species you never shoot

• Bluefin tuna. A species under a strict international quota: no framework provides for its capture by a recreational diver.
• Spiny lobsters and lobsters carrying eggs, whatever their size. Turn the animal over before deciding. Some delegations are reported to forbid all crustaceans to divers: check locally.
• The monk seal, marine turtles, dolphins and other cetaceans: capture and disturbance prohibited.
• Red coral: harvesting falls under a licensing regime; collecting it while diving is poaching.
• The noble pen shell and angel sharks: critically endangered, protected by the Barcelona Convention.

Species closed part of the year

• Dusky grouper: closed in July and August according to clubs and practitioners, with no text found. The detail is in our article on the grouper closure.
• Octopus: closed during its biological rest periods, several times a year, on dates set by order that change every year.

What we ask you to leave, with no text requiring it

• The brown meagre: sedentary and gregarious, a group once found can be emptied in a season. Near Threatened according to the IUCN, protected in several Mediterranean countries.
• Fish only just at the legal size. The 1988 order was written for commercial fishing: a fish at the minimum size has often never spawned. The sizes are in the legal sizes table.

And the rest

The number of fish per day, the flagged buoy, the minimum age: those are other rules, several of them still to be checked. They are all on the Regulations page, with the texts and what is missing. For the authorisation itself, see our guide to the spearfishing permit.