Guests
Dave and Michael Echevarria, the former being a surgeon affiliated
with St Joseph's in Tampa, and the latter a partner of a large law firm,
Rick Kennard, a Sarasota dentist, and Johnny "Sweetspot" Helmes who
defies all explanation . This core group of guys have been doing an
annual trip around the same time each year with us for several years
now. David is an avid videographer who has taken some awesome footage
for us in the past, and was experimenting with a new helmet cam on this
trip. I'll post the video link when he gets it edited.
Sea Conditions
There has never been a trip that Sweetspot has been on where the
dive conditions have not been perfect. We did experience however a
couple nights of absolutely the most hellacious lightning storms that
rival anything I've ever seen. There were so many strikes that it was
like a disco strobe light with continuous thunder for hours.
Slay Report
It was the last dive of the day, and I hit the ledge break right
while the Brothers Echevarria went in the other direction. I quickly put
a nice hog on the stringer when a monster 8-10# mango presented itself
out of a crack just at the edge of shooting range. I shot the snapper
before it could duck back in which sent it pinwheeling down the break.
While I leisurely loaded my second freeshaft after seeing that it was a
solid holding shot, a big ass dusky shark sporting a huge dorsal
appeared out of nowhere, and nearly put me into cardiac arrest. It
grabbed the snapper, shook it like a rag doll, and swam off with
it......the entire scene taking maybe five seconds.
After getting the heart rate below 100, I reversed course and met up
with Dave who I gave the international "9'-10' dusky in feeding mode so
follow me" signal. The ledge was awesome, triple tiered about fifty
yards wide with every square foot covered in corals both hard and soft
as well as sponges. We found a pocket of fish, and both proceeded to
amass respectable stringers. Dave signaled that he was low on nitrox so
I decided to go up with him.
At around 20 fsw we noticed a huge log of a barracuda with a full
entourage of scavenger fish cruising around us. Cuda are not a common
sight in the MG, and rarely do they do anything so I just casually kept
an eye on it if for nothing else than to have something to do while on
the safety stop. I then noticed that it was releasing a constant stream
of bubbles out of its ass. WTF?!! Did Zurbrick feed this cuda some Jolly
Dogs while the boat was drifting? As the fish began to swim closer the
stream of bubbles turned into a torrent, and I had to lunge at it a
couple of times gun outstretched to get it to retreat. The cuda then did
something very un-cudalike. Instead of the lightning strike attack they
are typically known for, it just swam methodically up to Dave's
stringer, and clamped down, still streaming bubbles out of its ass.
Great, I could see the headlines now, "Prominent Surgeon Loses Hand in
Bizarre Flatulent Barracuda Attack." I swam up and planted a shaft near
point blank through the head of this motherf*cker, t-boning the fish
like the old Steve Martin arrow-in-the-head "wild and crazy guy." The
cuda started shuddering like it was stoned, but then went ballistic
spinning and swimming crazily in all directions. After a bit of
thrashing about it slowly swam out of visiblity with my freeshaft
sticking out of both sides of its head, and yes indeed.....trailing more
bubbles out of its ass. F*cking surreal......
__________________
I've had it with these motherf*cking dusky sharks on this motherf*cking
ledge!
Samuel L. Amber-Jackson "Sharks on a Ledge"
AJ Suarez
