Fish Stories

Last night we went to Prill and Charlie's for day 6 of parties. The pleasant surprise was that Vance and his girlfriend Kelly were there. Vance is very nice, he's around my age, I suppose technically he is my step-brother-in-law. Vance works in the water. That is just way too cool. I didn't catch the whole story but it seems he created an "out take" DVD for Peggy (Woody's wife) showing what he does for a living. In short he films underwater footage around the world that is used on the Discovery Channel, National Geographic etc or for major films too. I'm sure there is much more involved. Point being is that he took clips from the South Pacific, Galapogos Islands, Hawaii and Florida and put it into a 30 minute or so DVD w/ a music background. Most showed cool footages of shark, alligator, cute turtles etc.
The MOST ultimate cool footage was of them swimming off the coast of Hawaii w/ a beautiful/ugly Humpback Whale. Seeing a person next to this graceful huge whale was unreal. I was SPELLBOUND watching as the whale flipped Vance in the water with her fin. TOO cool.

Of course all this underwater watching makes me share my one and only salt water scuba diving trip. There was the great, good, cool and FREAKY times. Not to bore but in a nutshell:
First up I kneel on Fire Coral. That SUCKS and hurts really bad.
While till reeling in the pain of the fire coral I look out into the blue and see a spotted eagle ray swimming in toward the reef. WOW. I'll NEVER, EVER forget that image.
They teach you how to flip backward off the side of the boat. Most people can do this with ease, being me I have NO clue how I'm going to pull it off. BUT I make it with ease.
While at around 60ft I notice 4 or 5 shark below me and really don't have a problem with it. It is actually a cool thing to remember and share.
The absolute worse was the night dive. My flashlight broke. I can still feel my hand on Dave's T Shirt, totally death grip. I felt a brush on my shoulder and there was a tarpon to my left. This was the black, the unknown. It totally ultimatly freaked me out. I can honestly say I PRAY that I will never have to go in the Ocean at night again. I realized I'm VERY afraid of the dark water...yet I'm OK in the daytime with sharks. Not normal, but I guess I'm not.

The large ass fish in this blog is the tarpon. These fish feed at night near the shore, hense seeing him on a night dive. These fish can top over 200lbs, they are about the size of a person. I would think that would explain the freak out fear.

That's so funny how vivid that trip is, it was at least 11 or 12 years ago. I really want to do that again!