The Helldivers' Rodeo: A Deadly, X-Treme, Scuba-Diving, Spearfishing, Adventure Amid the Off Shore Oil Platforms in the Murky Waters of the Gulf of Mexico

by Humberto Fontova

  The movie version of Moby Dick showed the rollicking thrill of a "Nantucket Sleighride" which is what they called it after a whale was harpooned and rode off with the boat in tow. A "Cajun Sleighride" wasn't quite as long or fast. But what the hell. It was a social thing down here like everything else. The wives, girlfriends, aunts, and mothers didn't want a roller-coaster ride anyway. A 15 foot manta ray with a homemade harpoon in his back and a thick nylon rope as a leash provided more genteel entertainment. Mantas rarely caused the on-board barbeque pit to be spilled during the cruise. "We had a ball," says Johnny, "drinking, laughing, saving fuel. Hell I remember a big manta pulling around a thirty foot boat for two hours once."

  "Sure, by today's standards it's awful", says Johnny. "But these were the early fifties. People didn't look at it as wasteful or bad or anything. You were spearing an ugly deep-sea monster, that's all. A `devilfish.' When he tired out you blasted him in the headwherever that was, we finally found it-and towed him to shore and to the scales. Everyone crowded around, ooh-ing and aah-ing and taking pictures. The guy who harpooned it got a trophy and his picture in every paper in Louisiana, usually standing between two rodeo beauties in swimsuits, smiling away."

  So blasting hooked or harpooned fish at boat-side was approved by the Rules Committee of the Rodeo. "Okay fine," says Johnny. "So I tell my Dad, `hey, if you can shoot fish to bring them aboard, how `bout letting us shoot them underwater with spear guns and enter them in the Rodeo?"'

  And thus the Grand Isle Tarpon Rodeo introduced its spear fishing division in 1953. Almost immediately they started getting divers from all over the world. Spear fishing tournaments were already being held off California, in Europe in the Mediterranean, and in Australia. So when word got out-only took one year-they started getting the top divers from all these places in Grand Isle. When outsiders first went down and saw what was under those platforms, they couldn't believe it ... and here's guys who were diving the Great Barrier Reef and the like. They'd hit the surface just gasping and jabbering away. All night long over dinner and drinks that's all they talked about. They'd never seen so many fish, and so many huge ones, in one place in their lives.

  At least these guys had dived before. No one had in Louisiana prior to 1952. Our coast wasn't right for it. Too muddy. No reefs. The platforms solved the reef problem. Even better, located well offshore, the water around them was clear Gulf water.

  Johnny recalls that the first rig dive was by himself and friends Roy Smith and Roland Riviere. Roland owned a local sporting goods store on Canal Street in downtown New Orleans named, imaginatively, Roland's. And he'd just received a shipment of some underwater breathing contraptions called "aqualungs," the first in the state.

  "We think maybe the first in America," says Johnny. "Among the very first, anyway. We couldn't wait to try them out."

  And so they did. It was in June of 1952. They went out in a twenty-foot boat and hooked up to a-by today's standardsshallow rig. The platform stood in 60 feet of water and was located six miles off Grand Isle. The water was pretty clear that day. No BC, no wetsuits, none of that stuff. They were dressed in old cotton jumpsuits, double hose regulators. They just grabbed their spear guns and jumped in. Sure, they were a little scaredsharks and all.

  The water was a little murky near the surface, but fish surrounded them immediately. Sheepshead, spadefish, jacks. Further down it got clear, then even clearer as they descended. Then they saw them ... they kept blinking and refocusing, didn't seem possible . . . they all huddled close to each other down there, still a little nervous, while pointing and looking at each other, their eyes and gestures asking, "Can you believe this shit?"

  Call me melodramatic, but I see Johnny, Roy, Roland, and their chums in the same role as the first men who crossed the Bering Land Bridge and found virgin hunting lands teeming with unsuspecting prey on a new continent. Like our Paleolithic ancestors, these New Orleanians were all compulsive, instinctive, fanatical hunters. They were seized by the same rush that buzzed Alley Oop, when he topped the ridge over the Rockies and beheld that herd of giant bison.

  "Looked like a herd of cows," Johnny says. "Didn't seem possible. Musta been twenty or thirty huge jewfish-all well over three hundred pounds-just herded up on the bottom, right above the bottom murk, in fact, half obscured by it. That's why I say they looked like a herd of cows. You saw those big dark lumps over the bottom haze-incredible. I'll never forget it-not as long as I live. Not after logging hundreds of dives over the next forty years. What a sight!"

  It sounded fishy to me too, when interviewing Johnny. "Don't believe me hunh?" He asked. "Okay." Then he pulled out an old underwater film-and I mean old. Remember, Hans Hass's Red Sea Adventure dates from 1953. Johnny's was taken in 1955. "No underwater cameras back then, Hom-boy-da ["Humberto" in New Orleanian]. This was a regular home movie camera of the time and I made a waterproof casing for it." The film shows Johnny under a rig with seven jewfish around him, each well over three hundred pounds. He was waving a five-pound mangrove snapper in front of one. The snapper was impaled on a huge shark hook, which was attached to a heavy nylon rope, which was tied around the rig's beam. Johnny wiggles it in front of a monster jewfish, who looms out of the murk and edges closer to him ... closer, closer; the damn thing could have easily swallowed the 5 7" Johnny. He senses it too. So Johnny lets go of the hook and holds the rope about six feet over the bait, waving it, jerking it ... the jewfish lunges out-whoom! Inhales the mangrove, turns to lunge back and-tack! He starts battling the rig.

  The Encyclopedia Britannica lists jewfish as "any of several large fishes of the sea bass family (Serranidae), especially Epinephelus itajara, found on the Atlantic coast of tropical America. This species sometimes attains a length of 2.5 metres (8 feet) and a weight of about 320 kilograms (700 pounds). The adult is dull olive-brown with faint spots and bands."

  Incredible, no?

  Slowly Johnny and his dive mates eased down towards them and shot one-whoorn, off it went, snapping his spear gun cord like thread. Roland shot one, same thing. Roy, same thing. They were using the only spear guns available then. They were from France and came with a little nylon cord on the shaft. Fine for those Mediterranean fish, but no one at the time had a gun that could hold the size fish they had under the rigs, because no other diving site in the world had such fish.

  It took them a while to get the hang of the thing. But where could they turn? Who else was doing this type of diving? No one, of course. They were on their own. So they replaced the nylon cord with steel cable, bought new shafts and went back down a few days later. Sure enough, there was another huge school of jewfish down there, or maybe the same one. Wham! Johnny hit one right behind the head and it zoomed off-taking the spear gun with it.

  Hey, they were making progress. No longer losing just the shafts and the cord, they were now losing the whole gun! Finally, they asked themselves, "Why does the shaft have to stay attached to the gun?" So they attached the shaft to a heavy nylon rope and the rope to an inflatable life preserver. The plan was for one of them to shoot the jewfish, then all three would straddle the life preserver and either have a tug of war with the fish or go for a ride, then finally wrestle him up. It sounded like a cinch.

  The following weekend they went back down, feeling like old pros by now. Soon another jewfish loomed from the bottom murk. Roland whacked him, the rest grabbed the life preserver, and off they went, plowing through the bottom murk, the rope between their legs. It was a blast! Now, a jewfish is a bottom fish. So he heads down, no stopping him. And all the platforms at that time had a main crossbeam, about five feet from the bottom. Unfortunately, they didn't know that at the time. The beams were hidden in the bottom murk, and they wouldn't have been able to see down there. But they sure felt it-BONG!

  The jewfish zoomed under it and they got their bells rung. Don't ask me how they didn't get killed. Banged up, cut, shredded, bruised-yes-all that. But nothing serious.

  So, the following week, they showed up at the dock
on Grand Isle with football helmets and shoulder pads. Everybody who saw them thought they looked nuts but, to make a long story short, the padding helped, and finally they boated a couple.

  Johnny will never forget the day they boated the first one because it was also the first day that he and the others had ever seen women in a new bathing suit called a "bikini." It was Roland, Dick Alba, and Johnny diving that day. They were hooked up to the rig with the monster jewfish hanging at the side of the boat-so actually they hadn't quite boated it. But they had landed him, anyway. The thing was huge-that much they knew. But they had nothing to compare it against. Nobody had ever boated one around there. They were excited, jubilant-they had finally done it! So they started celebrating, with booze, of course.

  As they were getting into it, screaming, whooping (nobody high-fived back then), carrying on, taking pictures, they saw this big yacht pulling up to the rig, to fish. They had seen it at the marina on Grand Isle the night before. It hooked up to the rig, and some women got out on the bow to sunbathe-"and man!" Johnny recalls. "We like to go nuts! They were wearing these twopiece bathing suits! And it was unbelievable-their navels were showing. To us it almost seemed like they were naked. Remember this was 1952. No Playboy or anything."

  After they recovered, Johnny and the boys started waving, whistling, showing off. Soon they were diving off the bow of their boat, like Johnny Weismuller from the Brooklyn Bridge. They were carrying on-and, of course, still dipping into the booze. Roland got up on the bow and began waving at the girls. Then he stuck his huge dive-knife in his mouth crossways, biting it, just like Tarzan when he's diving in to fight a crocodile. He made a big show, waving around to the rest, back to the girls. Then he wound up like an Olympic diver and plunged in.

  The girls cheered and clapped. Dick and Johnny couldn't let Roland get all the attention! So they grabbed their dive knives, bit them, and followed Roland, the women cheering and clapping away.

  Johnny hit the water-and knew he was in trouble. "Owww! I had a double-edged knife." Johnny remembers. "When I hit that wawda-that sucker sliced into the corners of my mouth and almost to my gums." He came up, the water red all around him. Then Roland surfaced, grabbing his mouth, which was pouring blood too. Dick was the only one intact. His knife had a dull side. And he'd bitten it right.

  Their mouths and lips had swollen hideously by now. They could barely talk, mumbling and slobbering bloody drool all over the deck. Only one cure for this dreadful affliction: more whiskey. And there was plenty more on deck. Ah yes. Their mood brightened. Now they had no choice. The bikini-broads were still looking over attentively. They'd have to redeem themselves.

  So Roland went out, suited up, grabbed a speargun and started waving to the broads again. He'd be the first down and the first up, with a big fish to impress them.

  But his boat had drifted close to the rig now and there was a crossbeam maybe ten feet underwater. Johnny had noticed it on the way down during the first dive. "That thing was covered with sea urchins!" he recalls. "Big black spiny things-I mean covered with 'em."

  Roland had just finished spitting into his mask. He was on the edge of the bow, right over that crossbeam. "Hey Rol!" Johnny shrieked but splish-too late. There goes Roland. He'd jumped in with arms spread, still waving at the girls-and landed on his butt.

  Johnny rushed to the rail only to see a roiling mass of bubbles, more bubbles, and more. Then Roland surfaced. "Sure enough" Johnny laughs, "that crazy sucker had landed on that mass of urchins, butt first. And he was hurtin' for certain." Johnny and Roy hauled the howling, thrashing Roland aboard.

  The bikini broads knew something was wrong so they pulled their boat alongside. Turns out, one was a nurse. She came on board, bent down and gave the diagnosis. The urchin spines had to come out, she said. If not, they'd keep burrowing and cause infection, like porcupine quills.

  They carried Roland onto the girls' boat for the procedure. "Man, I'll never forget that," Johnny chuckles. That gorgeous woman-still in her bikini-was down there, poking around with her fingers, rubbing, inspecting, and yanking them out. Shoot man, I almost went and jumped on those urchins myself!

  Yes, they'd boated a big jewfish-finally. But they were still losing three or four for every one they boated, and were battered mercilessly in the process. There had to be a better way.

  And, the cry was heard. "We had a spear fishing clinic at Roland's store by an expert at fish slaughter." Johnny recalls. "It was 1957, 1 think."

  "Zee trick," the man who ran the workshop said, "eez to aim for zee brain and kill zee fish instantly. Zees is how: you form an equilateral triangle from eye to eye and then to a point above and between zee eyes. Zhat's vere you aim. Zee spear sinks into his brain right there and he eez stunned, immediately immobilized."

  This expert fish assassin spoke with a thick French accent because he was a skinny frog named Jacques Cousteau. His aqualungs had proven to be a big hit down here in New Orleans. It was time for a promotional visit to Roland's, his major distributor, in this most French of American cities.

  "We'd taken him to lunch to A&G Cafeteria," remembers Johnny. "Can you believe that? A Frenchman! An' here we're in New Orleans, America's culinary capitol!"

  Turns out, he loved it. He had meat loaf or Salisbury steak with macaroni and cheese or something like that. They laughed at that, but he'd snorked it up. He was great."

  The issue was killing huge fish, however. And Costeau got right down to business. He gave a demonstration-a clinic, of sorts,to a bunch of local divers on how to kill these monstrous jewfish. He showed where to aim to smack the brain, same lesson biggame hunters get from the white hunter on their first elephant hunt.

  And it worked. They started aiming for the brain and stoning them. Flunk! and they'd keel over dead. Then the divers would just swim up to the boat with them.

  "Yep, we learned to kill jewfish from Jacques Cousteau," Johnny says. "Then they started getting scarce."

  Then they almost disappeared. Shit happens. Happened to the mammoths, mastodons, and giant sloths of North America when some predators holding spears moved in from Asia and shoved the sabertooths and cave bears off their apex perch.

  "Move over tiger, you chump," said these scrawny, upright creatures. "Step aside bear ... now watch how real predators work."

  Some scientists say that was the end for the late Pleistocene's mammals in North America. Johnny and his diving chums found the same thing under the Gulf in 1952. Big, stupid game, subject-for the first time in their history-to the human predatory instinct.

  And the jewfish looked fated to share the fate of the mammoth. But who knew?-except the divers themselves, that is. This relative handful of people were the only ones who saw what was going on down there. They saw jewfish disappearing, so they stopped shooting them. Yes, amazingly, well before the State or the Feds moved to protect jewfish, the Louisiana Council of Dive Clubs had removed them from all competitive diving. Now, they're back.

  On rodeo kick-off morning, the elements seemed to have joined in a conspiracy against us. The ugliness started as soon as we cleared the jetties. Drizzle stung our bare torsos. Up ahead, two waterspouts snaked from the dark clouds directly in our path to the Main Pass rigs. We were huddling behind the console for shelter when a bolt of lighting crackled out and we jerked spastically into each other. [ started to laugh nervously when the thunder boomed and we jerked again, my arms shooting out over my head and hitting my friend Tom's. We looked at each other and tried to chuckle-ha-lia! But our eyes gave it away.

  Tom looks like a young Rock Hudson, if Rock was a little on the short side-5-foot-six, to be exact. He's worried that he's getting up there in years, too. "Tom!" I consoled him at a birthday lunch shortly after we met. "What's all the fuss about? You're younger than Mick Jagger, by a year!" That cheered him up.

  It took Tom a while to break into our group. We met after he'd been kicked down from the regional headquarters in Dallas to my backwater New Orleans office. Of the guys on this boat,
Tom's still the FNG (Fucking New Guy)-I've only known him for ten years. The other two guys are my cousins, Pelayo and his younger brother Paul. "Pablito," as we used to call him, was the first of our family born in the U.S., in 1962, right here in New Orleans. When Castro took over, my Aunt and Uncle came to New Orleans. Paul's nickname-"On-the-Ball"-came much later, when as a teenager he started following his older brother and his friends on hunting and fishing trips.

  In Louisiana's shallow salt marshes we fish with "popping corks," to keep the bait a little off the bottom. You "pop" it to mimic the sound of a shrimp or baitfish on the surface and this attracts the trout and reds. Paul was always great at popping but was easily distracted for some reason.

  "Your cork, Paul!" We kept yelling when it plunged.

  "What? Unh? OH!" And he'd finally rare back and set the hook. This went on for a morning and a case of beer. "Man, you're really on-the-ball today, Paul!" our friend Chris blurted after netting a gorgeous redfish for Paul. And the name stuck.

  Later that evening we figured it out. Chris, Pelayo and I had been fishing from the elevated bow. Paul was below us on the deck. The water was rippled that day and from his angle Paul had trouble seeing when his cork had plunged. And he always had ten feet of slack in the line, so he couldn't feel the tug.

  Paul attended LSU six years after us. We couldn't distract him from his studies with our usual nonsense because, oddly, Paul was serious about college. He actually knew what he wanted to study. He had ambitions for when he got out. He majored in computer science and rakes it in as a programmer today. We make him spring for the beer. He can afford it.

  This was a far crv from Tom's last dive with us. That had been in Cozumel. Four of us, including my childhood friend, Chris, plus wives. To the little Mayan dive masters we probably looked like part of the group. Just another bunch of gringo tourists unable to understand the salacious comments they were making about the dripping gringas they were helping aboard after the day's first dive, four of whom happened to be our wives. Little did they suspect that my cousin Pelayo and I understood every word.