good evening on this cold north wind evening. the waves sucked today on the north shore. big, onshore, and unridable. town came down too into the waist high range. surfers are bummed today but divers are stoked!!! i surf when the waves are good, and dive when the waves aren’t. what a life yeah? haha… anyway, took naoka for his first boat dive. did some shallow dives today to break him in so i thought it would be just another ordinary day in the water. but these are the days that you see the freakiest things. first, on our first dive, we were diving together and i speared this fish. an aggressive shark came out of the blues and tried to eat it off my spear. i pulled the fish in close and tried to poke the shark away with my shaft. i never give sharks my fish. no way… so i kept him away but he didn’t want to leave. i told naoka “shark” and when he saw it, i think he freaked out. i seen his eyes get big in his goggles… haha… but the shark eventually left so we kept on diving….
second dive, we went out to this spot about 30′ deep. i jumped off the boat and seen this something huge in the sand. the water was a little dirty so i couldn’t make it out. i dropped down on it and as i was approaching it, i saw his eyes look up at me. shit!! it was a freaking huge barracuda. i’ve never seen a barracuda that big in my life. it was about 6′ long and super thick. i pointed my gun at it and it never moved. i kept looking at me and as it was going to take the shot, i thought to myself, no way!! if i spear this monster, i will lose my gun for sure. and there’s no way i was going to take that chance. if i had a shitty gun, i would have for sure. came back up and took the tag line off naoka’s gun and clipped it to my gun. now i have a float so i’m ready to take the shot. went back down, and he wasn’t there…. shit!!! oh well…. i was telling myself “next time”. but there might be no next time….
this is what a barracuda looks like. the teeth are so big and sharp that it can rip a fish in half. and probably my arm…
third dive, the water was dirty again so couldn’t see too far. i went down, waited for this uhu to come in, got the shot in the head. then as i was pulling him in, this huge 40lbs ulua or GT tried to eat it of my shaft. what?? he looked me in the eye, turned to the side, and swam away slowly… shit!!! another missed chance…. oh well, there’s always tomorrow…. waves are going to be junk for the next 2 days so got to go back in the ocean and experience things only free divers can….
this is our catch from today. not bad…. see the gold on the top? 3 big gold bars???
yeah, this is the gold i was talking about. steamed kumu for dinner tomorrow night and nitsuke kumu for wednesday….
and last, here is naoka’s first speared fish….. don’t laugh because this is where everybody starts….
**by the way, no eddie aikau today. they got until feb. 28th so plenty of time….
