Underwater journey

A spearfishing outing to a couple of wrecks turns into an adventure.

By ED WALKER, Times Correspondent
Published December 22, 2007

It started out like any other spearfishing outing. Last week, Cameron Kirkconnell, G.R. Tarr and I met at Anclote Village Marina, loaded the gear into Tarr's boat and headed offshore. Kirkconnell, a ship's captain in the merchant marines, is an underwater videographer who has filmed freedive spearfishing videos at exotic locations around the world - including Fiji, Australia, Costa Rica and California. He holds or has held a dozen world records for such fish as king mackerel, dogtooth tuna and hogfish. The visibility of water in Pasco County had been exceptional, so he brought his equipment for this trip just in case.

The plan

The evening before the trip, Tarr and I struck a deal. I agreed to share the GPS coordinates for a wreckI knew and he would share numbers to one he had. We would then dive to both during the trip.

Wreck No. 1

The weather was unseasonably warm, and the seas were calm out toward 50-feet deep. As we pulled up to the spot, we could see a large dark spot where the wreck was - indicating top-to-bottom visibility. Near the surface, spadefish and small snappers came up to investigate.

We entered the water with two speardivers and one cameraman. Immediately we could see that the wreck was completely covered by a dense school of bait fish that morphed into different shapes as the numerous amberjacks and kingfish moved around it.

Toward the bottom, gag grouper and mangrove snapper darted into the darkness beneath the bait ball to hide. To hunt them, we would have to slowly wave our guns through the bait to make an opening to see through. When the bait moved aside, we were face-to-face with dozens of goliath grouper that were tucked tightly in the structure. Many of the snapper and grouper hid behind the goliaths where they seemed to know we were reluctant to shoot anything.

We speared the largest amberjack from the school - a 40-pounder - a kingfish and several gag grouper that were hanging around in the sand outside the wreck.

I took a chance, nudged the goliaths out of the way and shot a big snapper deep in the wreck. The ensuing commotion excited several 300- to 500-pounders, which came out and became aggressive. We decided it was time to move on.

Turtle attack?

We stopped at a ledge in 70 feet of water and caught a few nice grouper and hogfish then headed for the boat. Tarr noticed a giant turtle off the bow. It was a leatherback, one of the world's rarest species. In 25 years of local fishing, I had never seen one. I swam out to it as Kirkconnell followed with the video camera. It was huge, probably 8 feet long and easily weighing more than 500 pounds. I swam casually alongside but didn't touch it. I had heard leatherbacks can be unpredictable.

Then the massive reptile began swimming erratically and jumped out of the water. It attacked Kirkconnell, whose only defense was his video camera housing. Twice the turtle came charging in with its huge mouth agape, snapping it jaws and biting the camera lens. As we climbed aboard the boat, the leatherback was still circling and lunging.

Wreck No. 2

The day had already been amazing, and we approached Tarr's wreck in 85 feet of water.

Before we even put the anchor down, a river of amberjack and big cobia had risen to the surface and was now following the boat.

We anchored the boat, hurriedly donned our gear and dropped over the side. A hundred amberjack from 10 to 80 pounds greeted us at the surface. Because the bag limit on them is one per person, we were going to be selective.

Peering through untold amberjacks, I spotted three cobia and was able to get a shot on a 40-pounder. At the same time, Kirkconnell speared a 70-pound amberjack. As we struggled to get the fish under control, several giant permit, a large kingfish, more cobia and amberjack all moved around within sight. It was an incredible gathering of fish. We landed our fish, and then I closed out our limit of jacks with another 50-pounder. We took several more cobia, with the largest weighing 65 pounds. We saw one in the 100-pound class, but he stayed out of range.

Near the bottom of the dive, we shot several nice grouper and even an extremely rare yellowtail snapper.

The entire time we were there, we were followed by a mass of amberjacks and other fish.

It was one of the greatest dive trips any of us had ever experienced, even for Kirkconnell, and it all took place off the shores of the Nature Coast.

[Last modified December 21, 2007, 21:31:41]