Diving since 1995, 37 year old Matti Pyykkö has always remembered water as playing a big part of his child hood. Spending all his time living close to a big open air swimming pool, doing basic free diving-swimming for many years, but he always had a lot of problems with his ears which has been a challenging issue that he has had, affecting the possibilities to prove he can reach the top level of spear fishing.

Matti Pyykkö is an avid underwater videographer and spear fishermen from Finland. He has been able to dive some of the most beautiful places in the world one of the regions he frequently visits is a small group of islands situated within the Arctic Circle. Here he dives in harsh conditions with very low temperatures; using a7mm wetsuit and green water with a visibility of 8-15 meters, in order to hunt his favored fish the Arctic Cod and Pollock.

The Arctic Cod are one of the most common and economically important marine fishes in Finland. Found extensively in the northern reaches of the Atlantic Ocean, there are two main types: the migratory, oceanic cod and the non-migratory coastal cod. The coastal cod is a typical bottom-dwelling fish, whereas the migratory cod is more pelagic.

Pollack fish are usually caught as a by catch of cod fishing because they like the same underwater environments. This specie is pelagic at depths of up to 200m but In general prefers warmer water and is found migrating out to deeper waters in the winter. 

Always being interested in the Spanish language and culture he studied at Bellas Artes Madrids Art University as an exchange student where, with luck he met the Spanish national team divers at Kristiansundcup at Norway. Because Matti could speak Spanish, he forced them to invite him to Mallorca. The next three years Matti was visiting 2-3 times a year at Mallorca and fishing with the legends of spear fishing. José Almengual and many other gurus from that rock island. He really didn’t understand at that time what kind of legends these guys were. Matti has many times told his spear fishing youngsters that if they could study and speak Spanish, the spear fishing culture would offer much more.

After some years at the Brazil world championships Matti met his future soul mate in spearing Joseba Kerejeta. Joseba was part of the Spanish team and Matti was really down with Joseba’s attitude of life and good will. In the beginning of 2000 they travelled together at Myanmar, Eritrea and Pacific. These had been some of the most memorial trips which have been documented and posted onto Matti’s youtube channel. In the last few years Matti and Joseba have gone separate ways with Joseba concentrating in competing and Matti more focused in movie making and enjoy the spearing. Next winter he is starting to make a film of their trip to the Pacific Ocean.

At the moment Matti spear fishes 2-3 times a week. Mostly in west coast of Finland where he is specialized in White Fish (silk fish) hunting. They range from 500 grams to 2 kilograms and are very fast and difficult to catch. You find them mostly swimming in the shallows but sometimes you can find them in deeper water
Matti’s big dream and obsession is to create troops against worldwide overfishing.