No Gringo, No!

by admin on February 10, 2010

This isn’t really a diving story, but I thought it was related enough to share.  I was with some friends on a fishing trip to San Jose del Cabo which is just north of  Cabo San Lucas. We were going after tuna and dorado primarily. We started off early in the am one day and as it pretty much the case all year around, it was hotter than blazes and we had pretty much exhausted our supply of drinks in the cooler. I was looking for a way to cool off and decided that since we were stopped it would be a good time to go for a swim.

So, I took off my shirt and ditched my flip flops. I then proceeded to the back of the boat to jump off the swim deck. As I was just about to jump, I hear the loudest scream from a man that I think I had ever heard as he is grabbing me by the shorts, he exclaims, “NO GRINGO, NO” …if you jump you will die!!! I am thinking to myself, what the heck is this dude talking about and then his teenage son comes over a calmly explains that their are literally millions of Portuguese Man o’ War which just bloomed/hatched and that with so many in the water, I would surely get killed if I jumped in. Holy Schnikes! ….almost jumping to my own death wasn’t something I was planning on doing that day, so I immediately got back into the main deck of the boat and thanked them for saving my life.  I did look more closely into the water and they were right…as far as I could see there were these tiny jelly-fish with those tell tale dreadlocks. That is when the captain broke out his secret stash of tequila and beer….and I was mucho gracias for that.

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Don’t Panic, it’s only a darn seal.

by admin on February 10, 2010

In many cases when me and my dive buddies are doing our thing, we are in what is locally referred to the “Blood Triangle or Red Triangle” which is a roughly triangle-shaped region off the coast of northern California, extending from Bodega Bay, north of San Francisco, out slightly beyond the Farallon Islands, and down to the Big Sur region, south of Monterey. It is called this because about 30% of the world’s great white shark attacks to humans happen in this area. It is because of the high concentration of what great white shark like to eat happens to make this area their home and the fact that humans also like to frolic in the water and behave like a seal as well (Surfers and Divers)

Anyway, again, I am at one of my favorite abalone hunting grounds along the Sonoma Coast free diving and you know when you are splashing about on the surface, sharks really just love that….it means lunch time to them. I am happily swimming around in about 25ft of water and I am on my way down and all of a sudden I catch something out of the corner of my eye. I didn’t really catch the full outline, but the color and speed where of great concern. Let’s just say my heart started to race. I came up for a breath, contemplating my next move, so I decided to move into a kelp bed near some large rocks hoping that would be some kind of deterrent of whatever was cruising around near me.

I decided to go back down and take a look as it wasn’t very comfortable waiting around for what could have been a shark stalking me. I went down to around 15ft and suddenly felt a sharp tug on my leg and looked back up to notice that I still had a leg for which I was grateful for and looked around, but didn’t see anything…then the next second I about had a heart attack when something brushed up against me and loudly barked in my ear under water….it was a damn Seal! I was relieved and scared out of my wits in the span of 10 seconds. It was just wanting to play, but I didn’t want to participate at that point because it was so unnerving. So, I decided to move to a different area and the seal lost interest, but man, it was enough to get your ticker going, let me tell you.

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Make sure the pot is BIG enough

February 6, 2010

Here is a quicky story about a time that a bunch of us went up to Ocean Cove and were preparing breakfast after an early morning dive. Some of the non-divers in our group were fishing off the rocks going for rock and ling cod. For some reason after getting our limit on abalone, we [...]

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Don’t get your hand stuck in a glory hole

January 27, 2010

I have been abalone diving several hundred times over the last 16 years and I can tell you that I have made several foolish mistakes in that time.  One of the worst ones is that invariably abalone with hide in the tiniest of places in between and under very large rocks. When you are free [...]

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Diving is Heaven!

January 4, 2010

My name is Rod Beckwith and I have been a diver for about 16 yrs. Both S.C.U.B.A. and free diving are passions of mine and I would like to share my experiences with you here on this blog. I have many stories to tell and have even created products for the industry. So sit back [...]

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