Hawaiian free diver Kimi Werner unseated Californian Amanda Ernst as the women’s national spearfishing champion Thursday in Newport.

Werner, 28, shot three tautog and two striped bass — including a 33-pounder — during the U.S. National Spear Fishing Championship at King’s Beach. A native of Maui now living on Oahu, Werner said the water off Newport was murky, compared with her home waters, but it was clearer than she had expected.

Nonetheless, she used a 90-centimeter gun instead of her usual 75-centimeter gun because of limited visibility, she said. She fished off Land’s End, where the current and breeze were milder than what she is accustomed to.

Werner was also a member of Hawaii’s mixed team, which took first place. Her partner was Andre Tamasese.

Ernst, 18, shot three tautog. Though she saw bluefish while scouting earlier in the week, she saw only blackfish and undersize scup yesterday.

She fished with her father, Bill Ernst of Malibu. They had only one anchor between them, so they shared it and stayed together. “I’m a typical father,” Bill Ernst said. “I still worry about her.”

In team competition, a squad from Palm Beach, Fla. was the overall winner with a mixed bag of fish.

Massachusetts Freedivers edged out Rhode Island Freedivers by .8 pounds to take second place. Justin Allen, one of the Bay State divers, was the men’s champion.

The Rhode Island team scored 140 points with a variety of stripers, bluefish, blackfish, triggerfish, and scup.

Diving for Rhode Island were world record holder Dave Hochman, Jay Moore and John Murphy. The event’s rules followed Rhode Island fishing regulations, but added 2 inches to each minimum size limit. One point was awarded per fish and per pound. The maximum weight to count toward scoring was 15 pounds. The maximum points per fish were 16, so a 15-pound striper was worth the same number of points as a much heavier fish.

The national championship originated in Rhode Island in 1956, says Albert Pointe.

His father, the late Al Pointe, was captain of the Rhode Island team.

“In the spring of 1956,” he writes, “the R.I. Underwater Spearfishing Club, (the only diving club in Rhode Island at that time) team — consisting of Al Pointe, Tom Morrison, and Dan Prescott — took third place in an East Coast spear-fishing contest held at Watch Hill in Westerly. A Long Island diving team won that meet. This qualified the Rhode Island team for the National Championship held in August at Sachuest Point in Middletown. The winners of that meet were the Long Beach Neptunes from California. They used surfboards which few people were familiar with then.”