I guess its time to type this one in again. There have been 3 times that I have almost resigned myself to being fish food. 2 were working underwater, so those dont really count here. The third happened while fishing in the Hell Divers spearfishing tournament out of Empire, La. 12 to 15 years ago. Zieg and I were out with a fellow named Carl Lowe on his boat and the owner of a now defunct dive shop in Slidell LA. Carl is one of those types that is indomitable and fun to watch, but you never want to buddy with him. Ive been at 160 in 200 vis and all I could see of him below me is well-expanded bubbles coming into view. At any rate the rules of the Hell Divers Rodeo is that all fish must be boated by a single diver. Buddies cant help even by laying a hand on the line. At the time I was diving with a relatively new JBL 450 Magnum with a classic cable rig. That is SST cable with quick disconnect halyard clip at the cable attachment to the muzzle, no shock line.
I was at about 110 on the second rig when the grandfather of all AJs swims by. This fish was about as long as Zieg, with his XL Jets on. Zieg was diving with a smaller JBL sawed of magnum at the time. Zieg was actually closer, but didnt have the gun for that size fish. I _thought_ I did. I got a shot at the brain, and missed it low by about an inch. This put the shaft cleanly through the head right at the roof of the mouth behind the eye. I owned the fish since I had a shaft through his skull, but I hadnt actually hurt him enough to kill him this week. The fish did as AJs do and headed to the bottom. Did I mention the bottom was about 800 down? I didnt want to go that deep and the next cross member was near 200 and too deep for me to be fighting a fish that size with a partially used steel 72 on my back. I inflated my BC (Scubapro BCP batwing) and swam around a pile to foul the cable. In this I was partially successful. We removed ALL the barnacles from that pile from about 120 to about 140 as the wrapped cable and I slid down it. The fish hadnt slowed down much. In the effort to turn the fish I was also holding on to the 3' diameter piling with both legs and my left arm. Somewhere in the middle of this "Minute (month?) From Hell" I managed to kill a large bristle worm by crushing it with the inside of my bare left arm. Zieg later recalled one very mangled one about 10 long drifting down when he came back to look for me. That could well be the culprit. I found out something about bristle worms that day. The silica spines also carry a neurotoxin! Suddenly the left side of my body didnt work; this included the portion of my diaphragm on that side. This is not to say the right side worked much better but I still had a little control of it. Suddenly I was at 140, couldnt inhale, had a full BC to the point the overpressure valve was cracking, and to top it all off it felt as if someone had poured molten steel on my left arm. Zieg was off chasing a cobia that had come in to see what the ruckus was all about at the time.
I did the only thing I could do. I opened my hand. The fish and my new gun went to 800 pretty fast. I on the other side of the game was now headed up with a speed to challenge the AJs downward rush. We had about 15 of Mississippi River water murk with about 3-5 inch vis floating on top of the clean water we were hunting. I attempted to remember where the cross members were in it and tried to angle my trajectory to miss them. I got lucky then and made it to the surface without hitting a cross bar. If I had hit one at least the fully inflated BC would have made the body recovery possible. I got clipped off to a galvanic protection cable where it went into the water and just floated for a while. There was enough surface chop running so that as long as I could keep the airway open the waves helped me breathe enough to stay conscious. The toxin wore off some in about 15 minutes and I could breathe enough to get to and into the boat. This was NOT a good day.
BTW the arm healed in about 6 weeks. Zieg and I team hunt now, and no longer go for the biggest fish _every_ time. If Zieg had been there I may well have tried to get to him for help. We found out later that that may have been the last thing I would have done. I NEEDED the wave action to keep me breathing. To try to handle this emergency UW would have been fatal. In 30+ years of diving this is the ONLY time I can remember where handling an emergency underwater would have been more dangerous than bolting to the surface.
FT
Is that a close call?
