Joaz Banbeck
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- Messages
- 65
- Reaction score
- 24
Buddy and I were in hunting lobsters off of Anacapa in the Santa Barbara channel yesterday. We were about 25 feet down with an irregular bottom at about 30 feet. We were maybe 5 to 10 feet apart. Visibility was about 20 feet near the surface, 35 near the bottom. We had been down maybe half an hour.
I was using my 4-and-1 rule of thumb: look around for 4 seconds, then look for buddy, and repeat. I had looked for lobsters for 4 seconds, then I looked for my buddy. He was gone. In 4 seconds he had just disappeared.
I did a few slow pirouettes, saw nothing. Then I started swimming in circles about 20 feet in diameter, maintaining depth of about 25 feet. I was expecting to see him emerge from a crevice with a lobster. Still, no buddy.
Then I saw a black object on the rocks at about 30 feet. It was a weight pack. It was all I could find of my buddy. I went down and grabbed it, adding a burst of air into my vest so I could lift it.
I had a weird image slipping though my mind of Delmar picking up the frog in 'Brother, where art thou?', and then the obvious realization followed. I had been buddyless for about a minute at that point anyway, so I went up.
He was on the surface. He was fine, except that he reported that he had experienced some buoyancy problems. The integrated weight pack had slipped out, and he didn't know it.
We were able to laugh about it, but I started wondering later: what if that had occurred at 125 feet instead of 25? I'm thinking of going back to the old fashioned weight belts.
Any thoughts?
I was using my 4-and-1 rule of thumb: look around for 4 seconds, then look for buddy, and repeat. I had looked for lobsters for 4 seconds, then I looked for my buddy. He was gone. In 4 seconds he had just disappeared.
I did a few slow pirouettes, saw nothing. Then I started swimming in circles about 20 feet in diameter, maintaining depth of about 25 feet. I was expecting to see him emerge from a crevice with a lobster. Still, no buddy.
Then I saw a black object on the rocks at about 30 feet. It was a weight pack. It was all I could find of my buddy. I went down and grabbed it, adding a burst of air into my vest so I could lift it.
I had a weird image slipping though my mind of Delmar picking up the frog in 'Brother, where art thou?', and then the obvious realization followed. I had been buddyless for about a minute at that point anyway, so I went up.
He was on the surface. He was fine, except that he reported that he had experienced some buoyancy problems. The integrated weight pack had slipped out, and he didn't know it.
We were able to laugh about it, but I started wondering later: what if that had occurred at 125 feet instead of 25? I'm thinking of going back to the old fashioned weight belts.
Any thoughts?