Lost_At_Sea:
Florabama...sounds like a great way to live. Welcome to the SB. How long have you been diving for lobster? When you spearfish...do you have to be really carefull with dead fish and sharks?
Around here, you don't really find lobster unless you boat dive. Shovelnose (or bulldozers as some people call them) are the predominate species that are taken in North Florida (I posted a pic on the Hunting and Spearfishing forum of the ones I got last trip).
There are a some big spinys that float up this way from the Keys, but they tend to be in different habitat than wrecks where we do most of our diving. There are no bag limits, size limits or seaons on shovelnose and people say they taste better, but I don't know about that. Anyway, the first ten years of my diving was spent diving every rock pile around here that one could get to from shore, so I really didn't start looking for lobster until I had enough income to boat dive regularly. Pretty much every dive that I make now is a combination spearfishing trip and lobster hunting.
There are a lot of sharks these days -- more than I've ever seen before. It was rare to see one in years past, but now we see them on most every dive. They seem to be pretty docile although I still get a jolt everytime I see one. Last dive, we had several Sandbars (6 footers) and a couple of small Blacktips swimming around us while my son had a grouper on his stringer. I think some divers have been feeding them because they swim right up to you and act like they are used to divers. I had to poke one in the nose with my gun when it got a little too close for me. One other theory is that fishing regs are bringing them in to the local wrecks. Snapper have to be 16 inches and a lot of small snapper are thrown back.
The only sharks that really give me pause are the big Bull sharks. More and more, we're seeing Bulls in the 200 to 400 lb range. When we see those, we usually dump what ever we have and head for the surface although a lot of the dvers we know would fight a Bull for a grouper. Not me. Last year, my son was on his knees poking flounder on the bottom near a tug called the Pete Tide. I was above him and in front of him when I looked back and saw two big bulls coming up behind him. They swam on both sides of him about ten yards and turned and headed back. He kicked off the bottom and started pushing the flounder off his gun. They swam right under his fins and circled the flounder. We got up on the tug and watched them until we had to go. They never bothered us and never ate the flounder as far as we could tell, but we both couldn't believe how close they had come. All we could say was "those were some big damn bull sharks."
