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REPORT FROM THE FLORIDA KEYS, 1999 Written sometime early February 1999 I left to Miami on Jan 6th, 1999 early morning. I had
barely finished moving my office to its new location in freezing winter
cold (bet 25 and 50 deg C below). John Bettua was waiting for me in Miami
airport with some dive gear I needed.
We stayed there for another couple of hours, waiting for Alessandro
Picasso who was arriving from Barcelona. Then
“Lucky” Bettua left us to go back to Ft-Lauderdale. It was so
nice of him to go through all the trouble in order to bring me the dive
gear. Ulises Perdomo (ex-Picasso distributor) and his
friends picked us up and we drove to Ulises home, where his lovely wife
Frella had prepared a delicious Cuban supper for all of us. After the
supper, we all drove towards the Keys, as we were scheduled to spend the
night in Key Duck, between Key Largo and Marathon. Five more people were to join us from Italy. Italian champion spearo, Stefano Bellani, his wife Angela, his friend Alessandro Celli, his wife Annarita and Picasso's lawyer in Roma, Davide Gastaldi. Thursday, Jan 7th, 1999 In the morning, we embarked on "Predator", Ulises' 36 ft boat, powered by an economical diesel engine. We dove and spear fished in various spots, between 35 and 125 ft deep. Ulises's assistant, Roger (another one!), Alessandro Picasso, Davide Gastaldi and myself were on board (Stefano and Alessandro Celli joined us the next day and the day after). The sea was very rough and Davide and I were seasick. Davide was in a pitiful condition. I managed not to throw up. I should have never had breakfast that morning. It really messed me up. However, I could dive, but only to a maximum depth of 24 meters. These were "left-right" dives, as Jean-Pierre Botha calls them: You reach the bottom, you look right, then left, then you quickly head back up :-) Maximum bottom time the first day: 1 min 15 sec. I was not in my best shape. It really shows when you neglect your regular training schedule. Add to that many other factors: (a) I hadn't been in the water since October 12 Huge barracudas everywhere ... we didn't even bother. They were suicidal. The "other Roger" shot one who insisted on taking a chunk out of a speared amber jack. It was filleted and used as chum. Fish taken that first day: Amber jacks (between 25 and 60 lb each), large cubera, mangrove and red snappers (many in the 10 to 15 lb range) and black groupers between 8 and 12 lb Friday, January 8th, 1999 Alessandro (Sandro) Picasso and Stefano Bellani were unbelievable... I had been diving with Sandro in Llafranch (Costa Brava in Girona, Spain) in July last year and seen him drop with extreme ease to between 25 and 32 meters each time and hunt in "ambush" ("a l'espera", in Italian or "agachon", in French), for a minute and a half to past 2 minutes each time, with less than 2 to 3 minutes rest between dives. All that, without using ballast! But he surpassed himself on the "Thunderbolt", a "fish rich" shipwreck at 25 to 38 meters deep in the Keys. This area swarms with giant jacks (amber jacks, yellow jacks and bar jacks) as well as huge groupers and a monster jewfish. What I should mention is that the current was
difficult to swim against. We had to hold on to the float, and each diver
to each other’s shoulders, as we waited to descent each in his turn. Viz
was not great. So we were basically ducking down and just kicking with
fins until reaching the "invisible" ship deck, about 22 meters
below, then following the ledge. I didn't go much deeper than the deck
itself, because it was a bit too much for me as an addendum to a bad sea
sickness and a gun without a reel, just a nylon line, for amber jacks 40
to 70 lb :-( That day, I lost a speargun belonging to Ulises, as the nylon line snapped after I missed a grouper at 90 ft and the shaft got stuck on the bottom ... with the heavy currents and the poor viz we had to kiss Ulises' gun goodbye. It is frustrating to watch giant fish swim by you as you can't take a shot simply because you don't have the proper setup... On the other hand, watching Sandro and Stefano going down to these depths, while battling the current and come up fighting and reeling up a 70 lb amberjack was an unforgettable spectacle. At one point, Sandro was reeling in an amberjack (over 50 lb) ... A monster jewfish pops up and "sucked" the fish in, along with the 160 cm shaft! ... (Guess it used the shaft as a tooth pick later on) ... The fish was a 500 pounder easy ... HUGE!!! Judging from the expression on Sandro and Stefano's faces!!! ... It snapped the 300 lb mono and went back to the wreck to finish the Martini :-) ... I went down twice to see it myself, but too late ... The disposable underwater camera I was fooling with, wouldn't click past 35 ft. I had to leave it on the deck and go back in the water. After the cooler was filled with giant snappers and amberjacks, as well as the biggest barracuda I've ever seen, with teeth like those of a German shepherd's, I was resting on the deck after a dive, when I heard screaming in Italian ... I suddenly saw Sandro holding a huge brown head and exalting in Italian... "Oh no!" I thought to myself "He popped a jewfish"!!! "I can't believe he did that! He knows it's illegal” I looked
down and here it was... the largest black grouper I've ever seen
personally in Florida; 68 lb. Kill
shot placed behind the eye, in 31 m of water (102 ft). He retrieved it,
motionless. Gorgeous fish. On another dive, I followed Sandro to past 90 ft and stopped, as I watched him go further below until he reached the cliff (115 ft) ... I saw him take aim and fire his gun. A bright flash of white zoomed like a torpedo towards the hull as he ascended. I realized that he had to release too much line from the reel, so I followed him to the top and got ready for the shoot off: that's when the fish is being reeled up and all the divers are ready for the big curious ones who would start to circle the speared fighting fish. But nothing happened. The fish had holed itself inside the wreck. Stefano dove down to release it. He came back up with a disbelief expression on his face. "Guys, you gotta see that for yourself ... you won't believe me if I told you!" Curious, Sandro took a minute to relax, then plunged down along the black mono line ... He came back up and explained to us that the amberjack had completely twisted the shaft in an almost perfect spring shape around a 5 inch diam. metal rod! As if it was a plastic line he said, with Stefano nodding in approval! That was more impressive for them than the Jewfish swallowing the amberjack along with another shaft previously! It freed itself; of course ... The jewfish was definitely happy to have us around today :-) Maximum depth I attained was 27 meters. But the bottom time has improved: 1 m 45 sec. Many dives were in excess of 1 m 30 sec. Highlight of the day for me: I spent the whole afternoon without a speargun, diving with my 3 MM 2 piece suit WITHOUT a weight belt! I loved this sort of workout; I watched Stefano taking his last few breaths before the dives: He would stretch his arms ahead of him ... take deep breaths, then over stretch them again, then go ... I did try the same technique: GREAT! I know it's small things that make a whole difference ... and it did work. but having no weight belt, I would exert myself force kicking in the first 20 ft or so, then continue kicking until I start getting the "lighter feeling" at around 50 ft! From there, I'd go down as deep as I can before I feel the beginning of the urge to breath , then just let myself pop upwards like a cork! GREAT WORKOUT!! Fish taken? Naaaaah ... You don't wanna know ... Jus look at the pictures... you ain't gonna believe it! :-)) Saturday, January 9th, 1999 I am limping badly ... my left foot is swollen and in pain. The day before, I ran into the razor sharp tri-cut spear tip of Stefano's speargun ... it went an inch deep in between my 3rd and 4th toes ... right in that area where the skin is extremely thin and sensitive. It was then that I thought to myself: "What a great idea Bill McIntyre had, when he installed that gun rack in his boat". It could have been okay, except for that extra squeezing pain later on, forcing the swollen foot in an already tight fin pocket :-( The weather was about to change. The seas were calmer
than the 2 days earlier. But we were to expect a bad weather on Sunday.
Basically, we knew in advance that this would probably be our last day of
diving. We're late. Ulises is still on his way from Miami. We
had lost so many shafts on Thursday and Friday that he had to go back to
Miami to bring us a new batch! The problem was the sharp metal edges of
the wrecks. They would snap the mono line each time a big fish managed to
wrap itself around a metal part. Don Cooley's advice to me proved
valuable: Ulises handed me a 90 cm Picasso Hunter. Yellow nylon line attached to its handle. Oh no. Not again. They're all gonna start whining, because my trail line is getting in the way and creating delays each time I get in or out of the water. But do I have the choice? I've got guns and reels up the kazoo in three different countries and here I am, on that 36 ft boat, on a 3 days fishing trip in the Florida Keys with two of the world's best spearos and I don't have a God damn gun or reel! I was arm less and harmless ...:-( It was my mistake in the first place. First rule of day one, remember? Another valuable lesson learned: when hunting deep and in currents, there is no better alternative to a gun with a reel. Just make sure the drag is adjusted and the line pulls out easily, before you take that shot at a 50 lb + amber jack cruising by you at 80 ft + depth. No, I didn't do it. I didn't take that shot, because I couldn't bear to see Ulises cry the loss of his second Hunter First spot that day; a place known to Jamie Joanos, a spearo from north Florida and a friend of Ulises, who happened to be on a spearfishing vacation too in the same area. Jamie and his friend had rented a small boat for the week. They gave us the GPS coordinates of a great spot out there in the blue. That was our first destination that day. One hour later, we found their boat there and the
party began. Jamie and his friend were hunting on scuba. It was a 90 ft + reef, with a boat wreck in the middle. Viz. was almost good (by Florida standards). Amber jacks and giant barracudas all over the place... A couple of huge cubera snappers were landed immediately by the Italian quartet. Alessandro Picasso and Stefano Bellani were going down and up to 100 ft as if on a 30 ft reef ... Jamie and his friend were breathless. "Boy are your friends good!" ... Well buddies, you’re watching world class champions here ... Ain't see nothing yet ... wait, they're just warming up! Jamie got on his boat, took his scuba gear off and joined us in the water. The amberjacks were big and numerous ... and the barracudas were watching and waiting. In order to be able to follow the deepest divers and still feel safe, I had left my weight belt on the boat. After the day before practice, I felt pretty confident in reaching 85 ft + without my 16 lb weight belt. Not that I particularly enjoyed exhausting myself on the way down, but because I greatly appreciated the free ride back up, especially that I had never experienced this diving style before. It was simply SCARY. Each time I'd reach 20 ft or so from the bottom, I could clearly follow Stefano and Alessandro as they graciously cruised the bottom, swimming steadily, gun stretched out ahead of them, eyes constantly scanning in a 180 deg mode, effortlessly! ... Then just swim back up with no hurry. At one point, after over one minute below, I saw Sandro fire his gun and swim upwards. Then, as he felt the resistance, he went back down! Tried to disengage the line that was wrapped around a metal shaft ... after a while, he gave up and went up for air. Then he, Stefano and Davide started relaying down to get the fish. That was teamwork at its best. My breath-hold time was okay, considering I wasn't wearing a weight belt. Between 45 sec and 1 min 15. The more I practiced the initial "push" while ducking ... the longer my breath hold. Without an adequate rigging, I had to let the big jacks swim by ... It takes a hell of a strong will to refrain from "giving it a shot" :-) But deep inside, I was satisfied because it feels good to know that "I could have had as many as I wanted", or so to speak. An hour or so later, Jamie and his friend took off towards blue water to tackle pelagic with line and reel ... as we moved to a shallower spot. NEVER lend your dive knife! Alessandro Celli had lost his knife the day before.
Knowing I had extra knives with me, he asked me if I could lend him one. I
said sure! One minute later I realized I had only brought my stiletto,
since Jamie had fallen in love with my Tiger knife the night before and
insisted on keeping it. I felt bad going back to Alessandro and
disappointing him, so I offered him my only remaining knife. BIG MISTAKE!
... Not that I could
have lost my life because I didn't have that knife on me ... But little did I know the
humiliation that was soon to be upon me. Sometimes you really wish you
were dead! Ulises and Roger told me that our next stop would be a 50 to 60 ft reef, in the middle of nowhere, but where visibility is usually poor to very poor. And I mean poor, by New England's standards. That's poor! I'm saying that because that day, although I could almost see the bottom from the surface, I couldn't see more than 6 to 8 ft horizontally, once at the bottom. The water was "clouded" with sand particles ... and I was told later that this was an unusually EXCELLENT visibility for that spot. Maybe two or three times a year does it gets that clear! Go figure. This time I wanted fish. Only groupers or big snappers ... My weight belt is on and I'm ready for action. The current is drifting and I am scanning the bottom ... small fish ... only small fish. I started diving and looking around. Viz was bad and nothing was worth the trouble. I didn’t have a stringer (Thank God* ... you'll understand why later) and I'm not shooting anything worth calling the boat for. I see a fish. In that kind of visibility, if you see a fish at 50 ft, it must be a decent fish. I dive right towards it ... It's a red snapper. It's easy to recognize a red snapper: it's gray :-) ... Kill shot. That was my largest red snapper to date. Remember, that was only my 3rd trip to Florida and I shot a 5 lb. red snapper. Maybe after another 10 trips there, God willing, I'll be shooting 50 lb red snappers, yes? The boat picks the fish up. I'm back in the water. Here it is ... here it is … A grouper . It's one no, two .... GROUPPPERS! Lots of them ... I dive down. This time I feel I have it. Small groupers. Okay, they are small. 4 or 5 of them, zooming by a big rock, with a big entrance. I look inside, but it was too "cloudy" and I couldn't see anything. Go back up. Breathe, breathe, breathe.... breathe... relax ... I know it's there. I can feel it. That rocks looks like a grouper's head office to me. The smaller groupers are coming back and they are all around it ... I dive down again ... 45 ft ... there they are ... none look legal to me ... but they look attached to the place ... "C'mon babies ... where's momma?" I look in the entrance again; I sneak in slowly, silently. I close my eyes and open them up again; to better see. Sand clouds. Still sand clouds. I can stay a bit longer. I imagine a moray eel popping out from the opaque water and tearing off my upper lip. Nah… This is a grouper hole. Just get in a bit deeper and look. No fear. A large shiny black sphere sparkled in the dark. Oh yesssssssss ... It's a big grouper's eyes. I now need air and I can see nothing but that black shiny sphere ... I aim, shoot and swim immediately upward for air. No resistance... Another kill-shot, of course... As I pull on my way up, I feel the weight of the fish ...not that heavy. I'm perplexed. Then I see it coming out of the hole. My jaw dropped. A puffer. Oh no, I just murdered a tropical fish. The mother of all puffers. Now I must get rid of it immediately before anyone sees it, or I'll be the laughing stock of the expedition. But the spear is firmly stuck in the head bone ... no way out. I tried everything I could... The mono line was solidly attached to the gun. It was not my gun, right? ... I had no KNIFE to slice my way out of shame. I was also not so sure about that fish. I knew that some puffers were poisonous ... so this didn't help either. So they all saw it ... I'll spare you the details. * In the Keys, carrying a fish stringer close to your body is not a great idea... you'll see why at the end of the story The boat is now heading towards another reef. This one is vast one, difficult to cover in a short time, even by six divers. Average depth is 50 / 60 ft. Ulises, our host and boat operator, told us he would let us get in the water two divers at a time. We should stay together, since he couldn't keep track on 6 individuals on such a vast reef. I teamed up with Stefano Bellani. One minute later, the boat was about 300 yards away from us and Stefano and myself started scanning the bottom, swimming slightly up-current. Viz was better than the last spot where I got my world record puffer fish. At one point, I recognized the familiar silhouette of a baby hammer shark swimming right underneath us. It was about 2 ft long at the most. I pointed it out to Stefano ... he raised his head of the water and said to me smiling: "Si...
Si…! Martelli
piccolo!" It wasn't hard to understand for me since
"hammer" means "marteau" in French and piccolo is the
name we give to the smallest bottle of sparkling wine or Champagne. "Picollo martelli my ass!" ... what I'm worried about is "la mamma martelli" Stefano just kept swimming. I was worried; a baby shark that small has to have some sort of protection around, no? I lost track of Stefano in less than a minute, so I raised my head and started pushing myself up with strong and steady kicking, maybe I could spot his snorkel or something, but all I saw was our boat, even further away. Now I was really worried. I really had a bad feeling. It felt too much like the pre-arranged suspense part in an horror movie. I had chills up my spine, so I started swimming towards the boat. Less than a minute later, I saw another baby hammer (or maybe the same one), but before I could start getting more ideas, I had the most unusual sight: giant pilot fish. I saw many of them swimming slowly 20 ft away. That was the presidential escort. I knew exactly what to expect next. I had never ever seen pilot fish that size in my life before. They were so big, I almost imagined our baby hammer sticking underneath one of them. They were swimming straight, but totally unhurried and at a steady speed . A few ones passed by, then the water started getting darker. Right, like we needed that extra layer for the scenario ... was it a passing cloud or ... oh no ... oh shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit ... the only time I saw a wide spread like that was when I had a 1500 lb moose cross the road up north as I was grouse hunting. From one eye to the other, it must have been over 3 ft. And that was no golden hammer. Mother of all piccolos and magnum of them all. My first time ever in presence of a 14 ft plus ocean beast, swimming slowly ahead, with over a dozen escort fish around it, not counting the explorers ahead ... Its tail was moving slow and steady. Didn't even take a closer look at me. I was in a total silent panic, holding my speargun straight ahead, with both hands squeezing the handle. I followed it as the high part of its tail started fading away in the night blue water ... God! will that cloud pass! I was still insecure ... I felt something was wrong with the picture. As the last back escort disappeared, I kept my head fixed on that direction, with my eyes scanning repeatedly 180 degrees sideways. My worrying proved right, as 60 degrees to my right I saw it like coming right out of a nightmare ... straight towards me. I swung the gun and faced it. Eye contact ... it stopped. 15 ft or so away ... Then it turned around and swam away, as if not interested ... But by that time, I was really, really uneasy and scared... I hung on to my pattern; keep my head in the direction I saw it disappear last, then scan 180 degrees left and right ... 15 seconds later, it came back, this time to my left ... same move, eye contact; same behaviour ... it turned around and swam away. By then, it was impossible for me to even raise my head out of the water and scream for help; I was too scared to lose track of it. So I started calling through the snorkel ... the blowing sound of a moose call. For 4 or 5 minutes, the scenario pattern was the same; it tries to surprise me, but the eye contact makes it swim away then show up from another angle ... at one time, I could clearly see its jaws ... side to side, bigger than the fireplace in my basement. Scary mamma ... As I was getting all dizzy from blowing my lungs out through the snorkel... I heard the salvation sounds of the boat's engine. "What is it?" shouted Ulises I raised my hand in the air, with my fist clutched, in danger mode signal. I didn't raise my face out of the water until I felt the hull rubbing on my shoulder. I climbed on board. "We're going a mile away of this place I hope!" ... "Pick the others up immediately or else they're in for a nasty surprise" 15 minutes later, we were heading towards the last spot of our day: the famous Thunderbolt wreck. During the 40 minutes or so it took us to get there, I was having visions of gracefully and slowly moving giant grey fuselage with a panache. Thunderbolt - The last dive I felt the currents were stronger than usual... our
boat was drifting rather quickly and Ulises had to reverse more often to
spot the marker. Stefano, the two Alessandros and Roger were in the
water. Davide was seasick. I saw an orphan carbon gun with a reel. I
"borrowed it" and hopped in the water!
Wow ... finally a gun that's equipped for some action. The others were swimming up current to reach the marker and hang on to it. From there they would dive down to the wreck, 100 ft + below. I let myself drift for a while, to relax. I was now about 200 ft away from them, but slowly drifting side by side with our boat. Sixty ft below and ahead of me, the sight of a huge school of silver shining fish gave me the adrenaline rush. I breathed deeply 5 or 6 times, then hyperstreched my rib cage, pinched my nose and blew to pre equalize, as I ducked down and started finning my way down. I was 50 ft deep, when I
raised my head to look where the school was ... and there they were ...
Bar jacks in the 20 lb + range. I pulled slightly on the line from the
reel and felt it would release without problem.
Gun extended, I swam slowly towards them. I had a large one in
range now, directly facing me. I aimed between the eyes and pulled the
trigger. Thoooff.... I heard the spear striking it. It went through it all
the way and out of its side ... a perfect shot. It just tilted sideways
and starting spasming, mortally hit. I raised my body upwards to begin my
ascent and had just started finning when they showed up like magic … Did you see Disney's, "The Lion King" ? Do you recall that sequence in the elephants’ graveyard when the hyenas attacked baby Simba? 5, 6 or more of these black pit bulls of the sea,
hurried movements with Doberman silhouettes. They came out of nowhere in a
circular pattern from the deep where the water was night blue and dark ...
it's amazing how the sun always seems to disappear in moments like this,
and it's suddenly dusk. They where whirling up in my direction and I had to
contract all my face neck and chest muscles, forcing myself not to exhale
from shock, as I continued heading towards the surface. In panic, I
started pulling the speared fish towards me and they started closing up
underneath me. The circle was now smaller and denser and I could only see
the excited, nervous and unpredictable movements of the large headed bull
sharks, getting closer and closer. As I reached the surface I realized
what I was doing wrong; in my panic I was bringing the bleeding fish
towards me... to hell with the fish ... here take it! Want fries with
that? Snap; in one single bite, the fish, although solidly impaled on the
spear, disappeared. I saw not even a scale. How did he do that? I couldn't
do that with a tiny piece of shish kabob! The others went closer to the fastest guy, hoping for a bite too. No fish. They suddenly all seemed to be looking up at me. No, they weren't asking for another fish. They clearly wanted to taste Lebanese food. As I raised my hand, I almost hit the boat. The back platform was right there. I profited in that moment of hesitation just before they torpedoed towards me, to grab the side and pull myself up. Davide took back his gun and started retrieving the line. "You missed?" Then his eyes went bigger when he finally saw the badly bent shaft. It was clear the bull had pulled the fish sideways. "Bull sharks, Davide, we must warn the guys." We went back to where they were and saw them
floating all together forming a circle on the surface. I knew that the
bulls wouldn’t impress Sandro. Earlier, he had wrestled an 8 footer in
90 ft of water and pulled his amberjack out of its jaws! (See picture
here) He came back to the boat with half the fish. They wanted to spear fish, but it was clearly out of the question because of the hyper nervous bullies... After a few minutes, Sandro attached a spear to a marker buoy and speared one of them. This sent it fleeing away with the buoy and its cannibal friends followed and left us in peace. Uh... left them in peace, really. I had already taken my wetsuit off to have it disinfected :-) That was the end of my dive in the Keys. Roger Yazbeck - February 1999 |