Its been a slow blogging month. Sorry about that. It is not that I have had nothing to blog about, it was that I was busy finishing up issue 20 and getting it ready for print. Now that it has left our office I am back in the groove of blogging and updating you all on our latest shark gossip. Currently the next adventure is planned for mid-May when Andy Murch comes thru town, we will visit with him and dive Venice, LA with my buddy Captain Al Walker.The Sdm cre with Capt. Al (L-R) Raf, Al, Andy, and me.
Captain Al runs his trips out to the blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico. These are always EPIC dives with intense shark action. This time of year, we could expect to see makos, or duskies, or scalloped hammerheads. This is the gulf and you never know what your gonna see out there, all I know is that it is going to be an intense dive. When your 60 miles out into the Gulf of Mexico, everything gets big, and the sharks are all skittish and amped up. One because we are chumming for them, and the sharks are on scavenger mode, and looking around for a free meal. My very favorite road trip pic from our film shoot Summer of the Sharks. Barbequeing, and drinking beer for our dinner, talking shark after the days dive, and drying gear in the hot Louisiana sun. It was perfect!
Venice is also the location of one of the most EPIC road trip stops I have ever been on. I am all about off the beaten path adventures and Livin the Dream...and so on. So when we arrived at the marina on our first day of this adventure I was blown away with the setting. It was super rustic, the fishermen had all come in after a long day on the water, their catches were all 100-200 pound tuna, and mahi, and wahoo. We had so much bait for our first day on the water, we had to throw a bunch a way. Its like Andy said in our film, Summer of the Sharks, "We have too much bait for tomorrow, you can't have too much bait, thats like saying I have too much money!"
Want big sharks? Use big bait!
I remember being in bed about to crash out on our first night there, when Capt Al called Rafa on his phone. I did not know what he was saying, all I could here was Rafa saying "No I don't want to go, but Eli will." I am am looking at him like he was out of his mind. I was dead tired and wanted to rest for the morning dive. I was shaking my head 'NO' at him. Rafa then said "ten minutes, yes he will be ready." My eyes went wide with anger. He hung up the phone, and I started saying, "Raf, what the hell man, I am in bed..." Raf cut me off and said, "Crawfish boil!" I jumped up, threw on some clothes, totally stoked about my first real Cajun crawfish party. Me and Rusty ate like crazy that night, and blew our chance to film or photograph it, because we did not think to bring the camera. I woke up hung over, but happy for our first day on the water, and totally burned my eyes putting on my contacts in the AM, due to the spices used on the crawdaddies.
Leaving the mrina there is so amazingly cool, we had to go out through this long channelto get to the ocean, and it was such an amazing setting, so fitting for a Luoisiana dive story. The boat ride was super rough,and it beat the hell out of us, but was so worth it. When we hit around 60 miles or so, Captain Al dropped anchor on a sea mount, and within 20 minutes or so, we had something like 20-30 dusky sharks around us. It was totally insane. Such an EPIC time, then at the end of the dive, not sure if it was our first or second day of the dive, another boat called out that they had just seen a whale shark not too far from where we were, so we hauled ass after the shark, breaking our rule that you don't leave sharks to find more sharks. And we didn't find it...in fact it found us. We turned off our boat, and just sat there scanning the water, before we knew it, a whale shark surfaced right next to the boat. Rusty was like, "What is that?", a huge head of a shark just surfaced, it was a mad scramble for gear and cameras. Such an awesome memory... such an awesome time.
So we head back there on May 9th, and this time it is me, Andy Murch and his fiance, Claire, Paul Spielvogel, and Nathan Meadows. All SDM shooters, together for one last hurrah before Andy leaves to Australia. Am totally stoked
13 days and counting!
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