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

  A few miles west of us some Helldivers had that very thing in mind. While we were fleeing from the bastards, they were seeking sharks, prowling through the bottom murk for the very purpose of finding them, and at close quarters. "Close" as in a few feet. "Close" as in when you bump the wall on the way to the bathroom at 3 A.M. Not much room for maneuvering down there, not when you extend the spear gun and can't see past your wrist.

  JBL, the nation's biggest spear gun manufacturer, sells more guns in Louisiana than in any other state in the union, though we have fewer certified divers than Illinois, Pennsylvania, or Colorado (PADI statistic). We're not even in the top ten. But the (relatively) few divers in the state are possessed of a raging and unquenchable blood lust, as befits the winning state in the Fund for Animals' "Cavalcade of Cruelty." You don't get cuisine like ours without it.

  But our marine assassinations require certain modification of factory spear guns. Takes power to pierce a shark's tough hide. Takes even more to penetrate the cartilaginous flesh and coldcock him with a brain shot, which is how Terry got his 407pounder in 150-foot depths years before.

  "Good thing, too," Terry says. "I was almost outta air on my way up. Then he shows up right under me-offered an ideal shot, man. It was irresistible. If I'd a missed the head or hit a little off, I'd a probably let go of the gun ... bye-bye! Didn't have much air left. Not enough for a big drawn out fight-especially if he came after me, which they'll do when wounded. None of us had been bit up till that time, but we'd just been lucky, and quick."

  The memory of that kill was still fresh for Terry on this dive with Louis and Stan. But he was out to beat his own record. And he knew where such a creature was likely to lurk: in the "Long Grass," below, exactly where Art had found his at the Timbalier rigs the previous year. No getting around it.

  "Water was murky from the top down at this rig," Terry recounts. "This was a fairly shallow rig, 70 feet or so."

  They plunged in and headed down through the gloom. "But the murk never really broke. We never got more than ten or twelve feet of visibility down there." Terry says. "But fish were everywhere. I looked over and saw Louis shoot a nice sow snapper and string it up. He just sat on a beam and was surrounded by them, shooting away."

  But Terry kept descending, the tip of his gun barely visible on the way down. Past schools of snapper, past some chunky grouper. The hell with them. He was thinking shark. A long shadow looms ahead ... it takes shape- ah, a beam! He sat on it for a second and looked around, checked his bands, his cable, his riding rig. Some more snapper materialize from the haze around him. "And I mean some beauties." The stripes of sheepshead and spadefish were everywhere. A wall of bluefish roared by. A triggerfish was starting to nip at a loose nylon strand from the riding rig. But nothing huge, no sharks around.

  So back to the stalk. He pushed off and kept descending ... the murk getting thicker . . . thicker. Finally the gloom closed in around him even tighter, almost suffocatingly so. "I knew I was near the bottom now," he chuckles. "Man, I couldn't see six feet in fronta me."

  Here's when most of us want company. You're fumbling around in that gloom with your heart hammering near your glottis. You're almost hyperventilating, your mind (mine, at least) flashing pictures of assorted versions of deep-sea doom and dis memberment at music video rates-then finally ... there he is! Your dive-buddy! The bubbling apparition gives you the OK signal and you return it heartily. Whoooo! Comforting indeed, for a few seconds anyway.

  It's instinctive I guess. Phil Caputo captured that feeling in A Rumor Of War. "In the jungle, men tended to draw together, seeking the reassurance that comes from being physically close to one another, because even the illusion of being alone in that haunted, dangerous wilderness was unbearable."

  So Terry slowed down; his fins barely moved but his eyes were sharp and vigilant. His head swerved from side to side, scanning all around. Whatever happens down here happens at close range and fast. His finger was tense and on the trigger. He picked up the fin tempo a bit and started making a slow sweep around the perimeter of the rig, finger tightening on the trigger. Ready for instant action. Like Tom in the boonies of 'Nam decades before, or Hemingway trailing a gut-shot cape buffalo before that, Terry down in the murk, stalking sharks.

  In fact he was just checking his depth gauge, barely visible in front of his face in the murk. It read 65 feet. This told him he was in the bottom murk. Yes, he was definitely in the "Long Grass." Big snapper and grouper loomed through it at close range. But none were big enough for Terry that day.

  He'd just looked away from his gauge when everything scattered. "Those fish just shot off," he says. So he braced for action. Something massive and dangerous was close by. Most divers say they can somehow feel when a shark's around. Under a rig, with its ever-present schools of fish, it's easy, and requires no extrasensory powers. You simply notice you're suddenly alone. Uh-oh ... you see fish shagging ass all around you, over you, through your legs. Look close and you'll see the fear in their very eyes. Spadefish and sheepshead aren't particularly swift. Much like Uncle Joe they're always "moving kinda slow." To see them shagging means a serious predator's around. And in a feeding mode, or a jerky pissed-off mode, barracuda don't generate that type of panic under a rig. Nor do divers. Only sharks.

  Terry tensed and gripped the safety and trigger. "Those rig compressors pound pretty loud under water." Terry says. "But right then, my heart-rate was louder." His temples throbbed and he finned forward, slowly ... just as a huge gray tail lashed the water inches in front of his mask, almost bashing it off and propelling him backward.

  "The thing was about three feet high, man," Terry says. "I knew it was a shark's tail right away ... and I knew it was a huge one. But he was already bookin'. I figured he was hit."

  So Terry, remembering Carl, booked out of there too. "I knew that sucker was gonna start biting."

  Stan had been no more than twenty feet from him at the time, and had seen the monstrosity looming under him: "looked like a submarine. I could see a fin here, then another wav over there. Put it this way-I knew he was big." He shot, without much aiming, or even much thinking. "Then I just held on," Stan says. "I knew it wasn't a kill shot, so I knew what was coming."

  Fortunately they were on the very edge of the rig, almost outside of it. So at least one peril-that of getting tenderized against the barnacled beams like a round steak as the beast rocketed around the structure-at least this threat was missing.

  And off they went, on a wild ride all right, but mostly outside the rig. "Not that I really knew it at the time" Stan says. "I mean, it was dark and murky. I just held on and went with him. Barreling through the murk. Kinda knew I had a record if I could hang on, if I could somehow boat him."

  Remember, the U.S. Navy rates this shark "swift and savage." J. L. B. Smith described the mouth of a 100-pounder as a "fanglined cavity of horror which can snap shut with bone-shearing force." Christopher Coates, Director of New York City's aquarium says, "Sand tigers bite like hell. We don't trust them." And Wiley Beevers of New Orleans gives a hearty "freakin'-aay" to that.

  In the mid '80s Wiley's part-time job was donning scuba gear and feeding the fish in a 135,000-gallon aquarium featured at a disco in suburban New Orleans named Sharkey's Reef. The tank contained assorted Gulf fish and a six-foot sand tiger shark. Every time Wiley entered the tank, the resident DJ made it a point to play Hall & Oates's "Maneater." And we'd all turn in midboogie, point at the tank and sing-along, Whoa-a here she comes ... watch out boy, she'll chew you up! as the sand tiger swaggered by, yards away, with that menacing, tooth-bristling grin and those cruel, hooded cat-eyes. Wiley always raised his arms and shook his head in mock fright as he passed. Great fun, this Sharkey's Reef.

  And you guessed it. One night Wiley got chewed up in full view of the boogie-ers. But Wiley wasn't "watching out" like Hall, Oates, and we all advised. The toothy brute blind-sided him as he fed the sheepshead. Then dragged him around the tank in a billowing red cloud, shaking his head
, jerking Wiley around like a dummy. The girls stopped in mid-spin, tottered on their heels and shrieked in horror. The guys whooped and cackled (tequila shot night) our collars flapping like kites. Yep, we finally got what we came for. They should have charged a cover charge that night. Wiley required a hundred stitches.

  So what happens when you're attached to a sand tiger five times that size, in a much fouler mood and in the visibility equivalent of nighttime in the boonies?

  "You hang on," according to five-foot-seven-inch Stan Smith.

  When speared, amberjack and cobia immediately aim for a beam to wrap the cable, and you in it, if not careful. Stan had shot his share of big fish. But he'd never gone for a ride like this. He was plowing through that murk like on an undersea boogie board pulled by a 500-horsepower outboard, holding on for dear life.

  The possibilities were endless. Let the monster double back towards the rig, and Stan might be smashed into a barnacled piling-a piling he wouldn't see till it smacked him like a three-hundred pound linebacker. Let the shark continue on course and there's all that jagged pipe on the bottom around a platform. The shark could weave through it. Stan could not. He'd be in a human chipping mill. But the triggerfish would love it. Shredded Stan, julienned Stan-a feeding frenzy for sure.

  He could also get tangled in discarded cable or fishing trawls. The pipe and cable on the bottom often snag the deep shrimp trawls that ply this area. The shrimpers feel the boat lurch to a stop. They curse and rant. They try backing up-nothing doing. Finally they cut the lines, leaving the net. Stan could find himself enmeshed in one, struggling helplessly, like a tuna in a gill net, gasping, sucking frantically at his regulator, sucking harder and harder, hearing it groan- till it stops giving. I had my guts flashfrozen in just such an incident at 90 feet once (with spent air, not nets. I'd strapped on a tank that was only half full). I jerked around, wild-eyed on the verge of a freak-out-and there was On-the-Ball, living up to his nickname, extending his octopus. He'd noticed the dearth of bubbles above my frantic movements and me.

  No such succor for Stan down here. He was alone. Nobody would find him in that murk. And of course, the Dr. Jekyll he'd speared could turn into Mr. Hyde, or Mr. Sharkey. The shark could turn and open his manhole of a mouth, and Stan could get a close-up of that fang-lined cavity of horror right before it closed around his head and shoulders, or made off with an arm or leg. Wiley got a nice little adrenalin jolt, a free ride around the tank, and a hundred stitches. Carl paid with hundreds of stitches for his dive-buddy's shot.

  Stan would pay for his own. But 150-pounders hit Carl and Wiley. Minnows compared to the thing barreling through the gloomy depths with Stan in tow; a third its size, to be precise. Stan wouldn't get off so easy. He probably wouldn't get off at all. Carl was surrounded by dive-mates, rescued by a helicopter and stitched up. Stan was alone, literally blind in the murk, and attached to a shark that could swallow the one that hit Carl. Here was potential for much more serious damage.

  But hey, this is Stan's recreation. Let's not get melodramatic here. In Death In The Long Grass Capstick wrote: "You will only have half-lived your life if you never feel the icy clutch of danger for its own sake."

  No danger of that for Stan. The key is to feel that "icy clutch" in your gut but keep your head clear. In talk after talk with kick-ass, deep-diving, monstrosity-spearing rig divers like Stan and Terry, the refrain's the same. "Don't panic. Stay calm. Keep your head." That's how they explain their weekly defiance of the laws of physics, the laws of medicine, and-to many-the laws of sanity.

  African big-game hunters say the same. And it sounds easy enough, when you're in their living room on a couch with a brewskie. Attorney John Jackson III of New Orleans has a trophy room crammed with African game: lions, buffalo, and elephant tusks. Some of these creatures charged him through the Long Grass. John knows something about that icy clutch. And as befits anyone with those instincts who lives in New Orleans, John was himself a rig-dives: Twenty years ago on a dive near these very rigs he looked below him and saw a huge shark, probably smaller than Stan's. "I got the hell outta the water," he says smugly.

  I mention this to put Stan's exploit in perspective.

  Finally Stan knew he'd have to surface-wherever he was. Fortunately this was a fairly shallow rig. At 200 feet a big wounded shark is a different matter (ask Stan). This one gave a final lunge, then seemed to slow down. So Stan aimed for the surface. But which way was that?

  After bumbling through the murk like a gyroscope, it's easy to get disoriented in that stuff, especially after a twisting, turning roller-coaster ride through it courtesy of a five-hundred pound, fourteen-foot shark, and no rig structure around for orientation.

  But remember Stan's admonition, "keep your head." It's not idle chatter to him. He had the presence of mind to observe his bubbles. This told him which way was up. He followed them, tugging the shark along.

  Imagine tugging a five-hundred-pound grizzly on a leash. Imagine it at night, in the bushes. Now you get a feel for Stan's predicament. He started swimming up, trying to tow him along, finally budging the brute. The tension against his spear gun was a good sign-a sign that the shark was pulling against him. Wonderful. Nice to feel. A slack cable might mean the beast had turned-might mean that mouth was closing on him unseen, a la Sharkev's Reef. And it wouldn't be a measly one-hundred stitches if it did.

  Yes, that tension felt comforting. He had fifteen feet of cable and another six for the gun. So he could reach the surface by only horsing him two-thirds of the way there.

  "Man, we were starting to get worried," Terry recounts." I'd gotten outta that murk fast-remembering what happened to Carl. I didn't want to be down there with a wounded shark."

  Terry swam out of the murk and into the still murky middepths. His other dive buddy, Louis, was sitting on a beam shooting big sow snapper. They signaled to each other. And Louis seemed unaware of any shark. "That's how murky the water was." Terry says. "I saw Louis almost immediately when I came out of the heavy bottom murk, maybe twenty feet away. But he hadn't seen a thing. I swam around for a while but couldn't find Stan-no bubbles, no nothing. I figured the shark had taken him off. Louis and I surfaced and got in the boat."

  This was a shallow rig, so at least Stan was in no danger of being tangled in the cable and dragged towards the black abyss till his air ran out or the pressure crushed his chest like a thinshelled egg. The shark couldn't take Stan down. But it could sure take him away.

  Terry and Louis waited anxiously on the boat. Minutes passed and no bubbles rose. Their own tanks were nearly depleted, so Terry and Louis knew Stan didn't have much more. Still no bubbles rose. They started worrying.

  Three years before, dive-mate and beloved friend Warren "Whip" Mermilliod failed to surface from a dive. Terry was on board waiting, then down under looking. They found Whip's spear gun with a sixty-pound barracuda attached. Three days later they found Whip's body, showing massive head injuries. The Coast Guard had given up the search two days before, but-typical of these guys-Whip's dive buddies had not. Tom tells me Marines have a similar philosophy about never leaving dead buddies behind the lines.

  "Not again." Terry was thinking. "I can't go through another one of these things." It was Whip's wife that Terry was thinking about. It was for her sake that they refused to give up the search. It was for her that Terry, Val, Gerry, and a few others tied themselves together with rope, gripped lights, and plunged into the murk at 150 feet, groped through that nightmarish gloom, that lair of sharks, that jagged steel, that tangle of cable, looking for their buddy.

  Amazingly, they found him. "Small consolation." says Terry. Now the possibility of another such scene with Stan-a newlywed, no less.

  "Then we hear this shout." Terry chuckles. "And there's Stanthe-Man! About two hundred yards away from the rig, yelling and waving, I mean he was waving up a storm. Whooo! We were happy to see that! Man, that shark had dragged him a-ways!"

  They unhooked the boat and sped over. They were even m
ore relieved to see that Stan was all right and still battling something huge. "Stan knew he probably had a record." Terry related. No way he was letting go. And no way he was gonna let any of us help him. We handed him another gun and he went down and finished it off.

  "Stan comes up, huffing, shaking, panting, we're whoopingyou can imagine. And now we had another problem. We had Stan aboard, everybody's alright. He's got a huge fish, probably a record. All that's great. And now we can't get the damn thing in the boat! We only had a twenty-three foot boat that day. There was no way the three of us could pull that monster on board."

  So they looped a rope around the shark's tail and towed him back to the rig. Once there, Terry got out on the rig and threw the rope over a beam. Now they had the shark on one end, the boat on the other and rope angling over a beam. "Then we gunned it." Terry continues. Wrunrnt! Wruuunnnn! And slowly-ever so slowly-we started raising the shark out of the water. Finally his whole body was out. "And we were freakin' out, man, when we saw the size of that thing."

  Then they looped the rope around the beam a couple times to secure it and keep the shark elevated. They carefully untied it from the back of the boat so the shark was just hanging in the air. "Now we moved the boat under it, and slowly lowered it into the boat. Man, I thought we'd sink. Good thing it was a calm day. That thing just draped over both sides of the boat. We took water the whole way in. Thank God the bilge pump was working. Took us almost three hours to make it back to the marina. But we made it."

  No putting it off any longer. Time for the Dog and Pony club to take the plunge and enter the Helldivers' Rodeo. Paul jumped in first, stopped briefly to adjust his mask and found himself behind the boat, struggling against the current. "Lookit that crazy sucker!" Pelayo barked. "Here! Hold out your gun!" And Paul stuck it out while pumping his legs maniacally.