OP
I have a couple of dings in my fingers, but I'm not sure when I got them. I saw 2 divers on my last dive with the exact same gloves, but instead of a hammerhead, they had a rhino on them. So there might be 2 brands of this style of glove. They were very comfortable.
I thought the palm area was coated in a rubber, but this is not the case. This is good since it makes it easier to handle things and you have a better sense of touch. I wore my blue rubber palmed gloves at home and it was a noticeable difference. I don't recall any pain in handling the spiny lobsters. I could sense they were sharp through the glove, but there wasn't any pain associated with grabbing them.
I didn't do great. I brought home 4 out of 8 dives. 1 of the 4 was given to me on a trip where I didn't catch any. 2 of the dive ops dropped us off in horrible spots.
Capt Sl8r's dives were unbelievable even though I only caught 1 on his boat. The topology had holes and ledges. Sharks, turtles, and moray eels were seen throughout the dive. Lots of lobster, mostly shorts though. A few that defied me catching them! I had fun though, it was 2 active hunting dives. Take out the lobster hunting and they were still amazing dives. Both dives depths were in the upper 60's to lower 80's in depth.
I caught 2 on Sea Pup. We went to the trenches north of the breakers. Quite a few divers brought up lobster. I paired up with an insta-buddy. He was a train wreck and I spent time babysitting him so he wouldn't kill himself. On the 2nd dive, the DM swam to him, grabbed him, and told him it was time to go up. He was that bad. On the first dive, she wanted him to go up with her. I still had 1800 lbs of air and he was around 800. She signaled him at least 3 times to go with her and he just kept doing whatever. I finally signaled to her that I'd go up and I got his attention. Even then, the current took her and I couldn't get him to keep up. I ended up having to shoot my SMB. He then surfaced right past doing a safety stop, but kept looking down at me. I kept signalling him to get back down and he finally did. A minute later, a boat ran over my SMB! The capt said he was running constant interference on this boat and it ran over my sausage while picking up divers. They were pretty pissed and had been trying to radio the boat to no avail. The kicker, the damn boat had a scuba flag mounted.
I'll never dive Little Deeper again, they dropped us off in 90-100 ft. The topology on their dive was pathetic. Very little rock or ledge, mostly sand. On dive 1, I couldn't even get to the bottom since I would have exceeded my MOD. I told the captain before the dive and he asked why I would bring that mix on a deep dive, like I knew we'd go that deep and he said for me to watch my PPO. Really? So I took video of David Sanchez, Mr Blue Heron Bridge Photography, and he only found 1 lobster. Lucky for him it was a keeper and an easy catch. Also, if you rented a tank from them, they had no nitrox analyzer on board and were telling divers to trust them on the mix. They would only say, "if you got the tank from us, it's 34%". And then they dropped us off to hunt lobster in 100 ft. Ridiculous. I had my own tanks, but had a 36.5% mix, used 37% to determine my mod of 91 ft. The 2nd dive was shallower and I don't recall seeing any lobster, but there could have been a few shorts. Worst charter of the four. It was also packed and the tanks sit lower than the seats, making it a little harder to get in and out of my BCD.
The other boat was Wet Temptations. I didn't care for the drop spots on this boat either, but it wasn't nearly as bad as Little Deeper. This is also the boat which give me a lobster, which was nice. I believe they had hunters on board which were not keeping, which is a nice gesture for those that come up empty. We were dropped in 90 to 100 ft on the first dive and like 80 on the 2nd. My mod was 95, so I was cradling the edge, which I didn't care for. I came across one lobster of size and there was no way to catch it. Again, all sand with some rocks here and there, mostly when it got deeper than my mod and I couldn't descend. One of the divers which works for the shop which operates Wet Temptations caught a 5 ft Amber Jack. I saw him on his scooter with his spear line running under a ledge. He was screaming for one of the other divers to give him their spear gun. It was a sight to see! The jack started swimming away and he got the 2nd gun by a finger tip hand off. I wish I had my GoPro for that one. He got it on the boat. 75 lbs gutted.
