My partner and I didn't do any of the deep dives that required decompression. Hawaii had so many great spots to dive in relatively shallow waters, I never felt the need anyway. All those dives, I never had a shark encounter, but did have one with a barracuda. My other dive partner was a spear fisherman and had several "catches" in his game bag. I was twenty or thirty yards behind him when I saw him hanging vertically in the water, lining up a shot...Team Roper wrote: ↑Sat Oct 17, 2020 6:54 amOh man, that is so funny. You really scared me though when you said you pulled the inflator and "shot" to the surface. I am happy you didn't have the word " embolized" in your sentence.BrokenolMarine wrote: ↑Sat Oct 17, 2020 12:16 amI dove in Hawaii for three years, and my dive partner was my pastor's wife. He knew she was safe with me on multiple levels. We had a signal for emergency surface if you were within reach but the partner was looking away, pinch them hard....
We were diving "Shark's Cove" so called because from the air it was shaped like a dorsal fin. When you entered the water and swam seaward, there was a large bowl, twenty feet or so deep, then farther out a larger bowl as the cove widened, thirty feet, farther out, an even larger bowl closer to fifty feet. Each bowl had structure in it, like coral, large rock formations, and the bottom was rippled from the surge. Great cove to find shells.
To hold a position you had to kick against the outgoing surge, and ride the incoming surge, kick against the outgoing, ride the incoming. I was on the bottom, having hit a sharktooth jackpot, fighting the surge... When I felt a burning pain in my right thigh. I pulled the inflator on my vest and shot to the surface...
As I rose I saw a huge moray pass under me, twisting and snapping his jaws, he had to be six or eight feet long six to eight inches thick, and pissed. I watched him swim around the reef, still on the bottom, and vanish.
My dive partner popped up beside me grinning. "Sorry, you were about to become lunch."
"I saw, what was his issue."
" poor guy was sitting in his hole in the reef, waiting in ambush for lunch, when the surge pushed you back and you kicked him in the face two or three times to hold against the surge. Just as he was going to bite your fin, and maybe your foot, the surge reversed, and you flew the other direction... He's a foot out of the hole, looking hot! The surge pushes you back and you bat him around like you are mo and curly. "
She is dying laughing now.
"I managed to get there just as he shot full length out of the hole, following you in the surge ride away.... "
We made some great night dives in the Caribbean and the creatures that show up at night in the dark of the water are things out of a Jules Verne movie. Some gave me great concerns but what an experience.
... And a three foot silver torpedo blasted by and struck that mesh bag of fish. Is wasn't a clean pass, the ties were 1/4 poly. The cuda was shaking his body trying to rip the bag loose and his scales were strobing in the sunlight...
I saw another flash as Patrick drew his six inch serated dive knife, and then it was quiet. We swam clear and surfaced.
"I thought you were going to try and add big silver to your game bag.".
" I'm not an idiot, I probably would have made him madder. I just wanted to cut those ties, now I know why the bag came with the cheesy ones. "