Freedive Hunters: May 2008

Four crew members were off to West End Catalina in search for... this story is getting old - it seems we are always in search for White Sea Bass. Well, we were a little closer this time, so keep reading...

An unspoken truth: the first one in the water gets the biggest fish. Jordan started putting his suit on before we left the harbor, and when Jordan grabbed the wheel to drive, Tom secretly slid into his suit -the race to be first was on!

On our way out, we were treated with a large school of dolphin, so big it must have covered about 2 or 3 football fields! We slowed down and went right through the school. A lot of them started swimming alongside the boat and directly beneath us.

They were jumping and feeding and swimming about. It was a beautiful spectacle.

Here we are holding tight onto Jason's legs, so as to acquaint himself with our seawater, mammal friends.

Our first stop was backside of the West end. The conditions were less than poor - viz was no more than four feet and murky and the current and surge were strong. Jordan and Tom were silently uneasy, but dove for a good twenty minutes. Tom ran into a Calico that had just eaten about three anchovies, and was in no condition to escape - Tom capitalized! We headed back to the boat and begged Fred to take us to more friendly waters.

Second stop was on the front side. Conditions were slightly better, but still kelpy, 5 or so feet of viz, murky, and quite eerie. After about 25 minutes of diving, Tom was diving fairly close to shore in 30 ft deep water, when he ran into an unexpected predator. Tom was silently cruising through the kelp at 15 feet, hoping to run into a prized WSB, when he glanced left to find a large grey/white fish making its way through the kelp just three feet away. Tom lined up to take a shot thinking it was a White Sea Bass due to its similar color pattern. The body of the fish was unusually large in size, and Tom was beginning to think he'd land a new world record. He continued to turn and adjust to locate the head of the fish, but wasn't able to since it kept swimming steadily forward. Finally, the tail came into sight, and this was the shocker - it was not a flat and wide tail like he'd been hoping - it was a lot like a shark's tail instead. This took a couple of seconds to register... when it did, Tom just about soiled his wetsuit while swimming to the top with his gun pointed in the direction of the shark. Quickly, Tom located the boat and furiously scurried off, constantly scoping around him to ensure no sharks were following. Jordan made his way over to the boat where we thoroughly discussed the situation.

The consensus was that this was not a fish, but rather a shark. We identified it by process of elimination, and the decision was made that this was none other than a juvenile Great White ranging in length of 7-8 ft. Frederic continued dressing himself with wetsuit, belt, and gun and headed off to that exact spot, while Jordan, Jason, and Tom decided Fred needed some alone time in the water.

While the rest of us were gathering our thoughts and nerves, we let the boat drift with the current while Fred was drift diving and scaring all the sea bass out of the water with his preceded reputation as a WSB killer. He did have a sea bass sighting, but wasn't in position to fire.

We packed up and headed South East for one more stop. This was a fun dive with plenty of five plus pound Calico hiding in their holes. Jordan was in the zone and nailed a healthy Kelp Bass and an unlucky male Sheephead.