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No Gringo, No! | diving story

admin — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 18:04:38 +0000

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.

admin — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 17:43:09 +0000

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

admin — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 17:11:03 +0000

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 decided we wanted some crab omlettes for breakfast because there were so many rock crab cruising around, so we nabbed about 20 of the angry little crustaceans and brought them back to camp. The reason they are called rock crab is because the suckers are so damn hard to break. The meat isn’t as tasty as dungeness, but will do in a pinch.

At any rate, as anyone knows, when you cook crab or lobster, you are supposed to put them into the pot while the water is cold….that is part of where we went wrong. The other thing was that we really only had 1 pot that was large enough to hold around 5 or 6 crabs. So, without our knowledge someone started the water a boiling before they actually put the crab in the pot while we (the divers) went back to the cleaning station to clean our abalone and fish(rock and ling cod) We arrive about 15 mins later with the camp in chaos. One of the ladies (not naming names to protect the innocent, but you know who you are) had attempted to jam around 1/2 of the crabs into the boiling pot of water and what happened next is something I will never forget. You see, the crabs didn’t like being forced into a boiling pot of water, so they decided that they would leap out of the pot and get the heck out of there. So there were several crabs running for their lives all over the camp after jumping out of the pots. It was quite comical, but also kinda sad because the crabs had nowhere to run really. The ocean was several hundred yards away and down a very steep cliff. It took about 10 mins. to gather them back up to finish the job.

They were delicious…in fact, probably the best crab omlettes I ever had. So remember, always make sure to bring a proper size pot and don’t boil the water before you put your catch in.

Don’t get your hand stuck in a glory hole

admin — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 18:09:40 +0000

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 diving, you only get one breath so you need to make every second count because in many cases you will on get one chance to grab that killer ab because of the conditions (rough water or poor visibility.

On more than one occasion I have had my bar under a rock and popped the hubcap sized ab, only to find the bugger is too big to get out of the opening. No matter how many times you twist, turn and tug, that ab isn’t going to come out. Trying to decide when to give up is very important to your survival and the survival of the abalone because if you can’t get him out, you need to stick him back on the rock so he can torture someone else.

The key is to not get your hand stuck in that hole or any other. If you see a hole that is questionable, it is better to not take a chance because it could mean serious trouble if you push the envelope.

Diving is Heaven!

admin — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 22:53:04 +0000

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 and enjoy.