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

  Yet Darren decided to keep descending. But not because he was reeling from "rapture of the deep," or even yearning to spear a big AJ.

  "Hell, man," he says. "I was gonna swim down, grab Dad by the damn belt, and drag his ass up. He was pushing it!" Then he saw a grouper staring at him from slightly below. He swam over ... maybe a forty-pounder. Nah. Not worth it right now. He descended past him.

  Darren glanced back at his gauge-263 feet now. It was flashing red. "Okay, that's it. Dad's gotta be narked silly by now. This is it. He finally bought the farm. Hope I have enough time. I'm gonna grab him. Might already be too late."

  "Then I saw the amber jack," he says. "Three of them. And monsters. I knew they'd push a hundred pounds each. They were below me near the very corner of the structure, just outside the rig. And that's when I knew it was all over. Those fish were almost at three hundred feet and Dad was drawing a bead on 'em, aiming the gun out in front of him while grabbing a beam with the other arm.

  "It was hazy down there. Even with the crystal water, even with midday sun shining, it was hazy down there. It was just so damn deep [those Russian submariners on the Kursk were considered doomed at 342 feet] sunlight doesn't make it down there very bright.

  "Swim away!" I'm screaming to myself down there. "Come on AJs! For my ole-man's sake-PLEASE SWIM AWAY! Don't give him a shot! Please! If he hits you-that's it!

  A tank of air doesn't last very long down there, a few minutes. And supposedly, at those depths, what both were breathing was toxic. "So Dad had nowhere near the air for a wrestling match, for the dodging the cable, for the unwrapping himself-for all that stuff-not with a hundred-pound amberjack down here. Nowhere near it. Hell, a forty-pound amberjack almost drowns me at ninety feet. What's a hundred-pounder gonna do to a sixtyone-year-old man at three hundred FEET!

  "We'd been on a lot of dives together, Dad and I. Hell, he started me at the New Orleans lakefront at age ten with a scuba-tank. So its not like I wasn't used to his type diving. But this was getting spooky."

  And the AJs stayed on course. A course that would take them ten feet in front of Gerry Bourgeois, who was hiding behind a beam already taking aim.

  "I started finning frantically down. I was pissed by now. I was determined. I was gonna grab Dad by the damn BC collar and drag him up. I didn't want him to shoot. Hell, even if he stayed free of the cable, even if the AJ didn't go completely nuts and wrap him up-even without all the usual hysteria-he'd be in trouble ... but if he did shoot, and if he hit one, I was gonna jerk the gun from his hand and let the damn thing go. We HAD to get UP! No two ways about it. No more fooling around down here! Enough is enough!"

  And that's just about the time the biggest AJ angled in and Gerry crunched the trigger.

  "The crazy geezer!" Darren thought to himself. "He shot! He shot the most powerful fish for its weight in the Gulf, at three hundred feet with almost no AIR! I was already trying to figure out how to break it to Mom. .. Mom, come on now, Mom. It's the way Dad would have wanted to go. He was doing the thing he loved. He'd a wanted to be buried at sea anyway. You know that, Mom. Come now, mom ... let me see you smile now ... that's it. That's better ...

  But the fish was dead, not Gerry. Dead in its tracks. The shaft hit the amberjack and it turned on its side, quivering. A spine shot. "You talk about the sweetest sight this old boy ever saw!" laughs Darren. "I was floating there shaking from fright, from narcosis, from hysteria, from relief-whatever. Then Dad passed me towing the huge, trembling, silver fish. He looks over, his eyes calm, with an expression like: 'Let's go son ... what's the matter? You look a little nervous. Don't worry. I got it all under control, no sweat.'

  "You talk about relief!" Darren gasps. "You talk about ELATION! But actually I turned out to be wrong. He never made it down to three hundred feet. His depth gauge only read two hundred and eighty nine. And the AJs weren't hundred-pounders, like I thought. Dad's came in at ninety eight point seven."

  Sea Tiger with monster Amberjack he wrestled up from 200 foot depths. (Photo courtesy of Aquatic Technologies, Harvey, La.)

  I finally clear my head and get my bearings after another cobiapummelling-his tail to my head this time, back and forth, like Mike Tyson on the speed-bag. The gauge hose ended up tangled over my shoulder during the melee, so I can see-Christ! Five hundred pounds, I oughtta grab my ice pick and jab this cobia through the skull a few times, quiet him down-but I'm afraid to let go with one hand to grab it. I don't think I can control this brute with one hand-oops! There he goes again, another brutal lunge that almost jerks my ann out of its socket-much less kill him.

  Whack! WHACK! Now he's back to flailing the beam, my fins, and my legs with his tail. My grip slips a little and I try to straddle him again-but no way, impossible. He's still charged with life. My head jerks back and forth as he pummels me around.

  Cobia never seem to give up, even on the end of a line. You hook one and they go crazy, running and lunging like mad, stripping line like a missile. They never seem to tire. But You do. You ride him out, back and forth. Finally he gets close, he's lumbering at boat-side and you gaff him-WHOOAA!-bash-clang- clang-clang!-and he goes nuts again.

  These suckers never seem to give up. And I'm on the point of having to. My regulator's wheezing with every breath. And I'm only at 65 feet, can't have much of a reserve. Sure, if forced to, I could probably make it up with one breath, letting it out slowly. But why push it? Like I'm not pushing it already. I'll have to point his head up and just go with him. Hopefully he'll go in the right direction. But in that murk, who knows what direction that is. How will I know he's going up?

  Hemingway's "Old Man" always puzzled me in the past. "Let go of the goddamn thing!" I'd always say as a kid. "Just let go! ... Don't let him kill va! ... Let GO old man!

  But it doesn't work that way. Now I saw his point. Sometimes you can't let go. I've invested too much time and effort in boating this fish. I'll have to kill him or he'll have to kill me. So I tightened my grip on his gills again and eased off with one hand, reaching below my bellbottoms for my ice-pick. Theregot it! Got a good grip. I still have to subdue and boat this bucking, thrashing cobia before he drowns me. My air must be down to the double digits. I'll jab him and kill him-simple. Good grip on the ice pick. I'll kill him with one jab. Here goesWHACK!

  But no penetration! Felt like I hit concrete. Like a fool I hit too high. Cobia have a head like a cape buffalo, no getting through it except with a magnum ... and there goes the ice pick. It jumped from my hand when I struck the solid bone. My hand is too numb from gripping his gills for what seems like hours now, but can't be more than ten minutes. Now the icepick's fluttering to the bottom-400 feet below.

  Gotta start up, with or without this fish and my gun. No more farting around. So I get a two-handed grip on his gills again, unwrap my polyestered legs from the beam, and start finning up, through the murk and-whooaa!-the current.

  It usually breaks along with the murk. Then cranks up again when you enter it. I'd forgotten about it. But it grips me the second I ascend into the murky maelstrom. I fin like crazy to the lee of the big corner beam, the cobia still bucking me around, my gun banging the beams somewhere below me, and continue up, blind, still struggling with the fish. My regulator groans with every breath. Christ, I'm down to nothing now. Won't even be able to inflate my BC.

  Up, up, up further through the hot swirling broth, my ears popping, the fish actually helping me along now. I've got his head pointed up so his movement takes us in the same direction. Finally I hit the surface and spit out the regulator-

  "Come grab this sucker!" I screeched.

  Tom was reaching down at the back of the boat, helping Pelayo boat his AJ. On-the-Ball was aboard, jerking off his tank and BC.

  "Hum, goddamtnit!" I yelled. "I'm outta AIR! My BC's not inflated!"

  Half of what I screeched was underwater but they got the point and I saw Tom putting on his BC, then jump in to the rescue. Good, I thought. He swam over. "Whaddava want me to grab?" he spat.


  "Nothing!" I gasped "Don't grab anything! I've got the fish. He's still alive; I don't wanna let go. Look, just get behind me and push me towards the boat. I can't swim against the damn current while holding the fish."

  "Okay-okay! Here!" and he started pushing. But we weren't getting very far, and I was gasping, swallowing mouthfuls of water and on the verge of dropping everything again, when I heard the motor growl. On-The-Ball was lifting the rig hook as Pelavo worked the throttle.

  "Ah ... great!" I gasped.

  "Good idea." Tom blurted.

  Soon they were idling next to us, and good thing, too. We were probably 100 yards away from the boat by now. Paul threw a heavy nylon rope with a big metal clip on the end like a huge safety pin. Tom grabbed it and stuck it through the fish's mouth and out-OOOOWW! watch it!-and out through his gills, and I finally let go.

  My freaking hands were numb. I could barely make it the ten feet to the boat. I got there and clung to the ladder, gasping. "Come on," Pelayo groaned as he grabbed the back of my BC and jerked me aboard. I tried clambering up the ladder with my fins but stumbled back in, bashing my chin on the last rung and letting out a howl that died as a burst of bubbles.

  "WAIT!" I screeched when my mouth cleared the surface. "Goddammit! Wait! My fins! My freakin' fins are still on!" I jerked them off, hurled them in to the boat ... "let's try again!"

  Pelayo grabbed the top of the tank and I finally stumbled aboard-where I immediately tripped over a tank made slimy by Paul's grouper and landed cheek down on Pelayo's amberjack. Paul was still hauling my fish in with the rope.

  "Geezum!" he howled. "This sucker's big-plenty of fight left in him!"

  "Shoulda seen him down there." I gasped, as I ripped off my mask and collapsed on a boat seat. I could feel the snot trail over my moustache and over my lips, but I just didn't give a damn right then. The cobia was finally at boat-side and Pelayo and Tom, seeing my condition, went over and helped On-the-Ball heave the big fish aboard. It flopped over the side and started thrashing around between the tanks.

  "Watch it!" Pelayo shouted. But its tail smacked Tom, who pirouetted-waving his arms crazily trying to regain his balance-and finally he went down atop the tanks with a clang!

  "You ... alright?" I was laughing too loud to ask properly. So were Pelayo and Paul. And so was Tom. He got up rubbing his elbow, the same arm with the spear wound from earlier.

  "My gun!" I suddenly howled. I'd forgotten about the gun, still attached to the cable, which was attached to the shaft, which was attached to the detachable point, which was still in the fish-but barely. I grabbed the cable that was still hanging over the transom and pulled in the gun.

  I looked up and everyone was looking at everyone else. "Brewskie time?" Pelayo asked.

  Freakin'-aay! Paul dug them out of the ice chest and tossed them around. Mine foamed all over my face, but I guzzled deeply. I wasn't even thirsty. The motor idled as we bobbed in the waves, chugged, and gabbed.

  Those women who complain that men never talk should see this. It was a gabfest to shame anything on Oprah. Happens every time. Lots of things happened under water, lots of drama and emotion. But we couldn't shout to each other down there. So it's all pent up. Now it's uncorked and comes spewing out like shaken champagne.

  "Tom?" Pelayo laughed while wiping at his nose. "Where the hell were you? What happened?"

  "Oh, man," he moaned. "All kinda stuff happened ... don't ask."

  "Yeah," I quipped. "We got attacked by sharks on the surface."

  "Whaaaaaaaat?" Pelayo and On-the-Ball both asked while looking suspiciously at each other. "Sharks? Don't look like it."

  We told them the story; they cackled, drooled, gasped, finally recovered their breath, and started on theirs. Paul had shot a nice grouper.

  "Man, I saw him as soon as I broke through the murk ... surprised the hell outta me. They're usually much deeper, but this guy was just sitting there, his tail curled against the corner of the rig, staring up at me." Paul imitated the fish, his hands up against his armpits fluttering like a grouper's fins when it's standing still. His eves looking up over his glasses, just the way a motionless grouper looks up at a diver-right before he darts off.

  "Man, I just pointed down, hit the trigger . . . nothing! My damn safety, I thought. So I thumbed down the safety, hit the trigger again ... nothing! Then I noticed my freakin' gun wasn't cocked! I forgot to cock the bands! Man, descending through all that murk and current I just forgot about it. I was too busy just trying to stay outside the current and behind the beam. Then I break through and the fish is right there.

  "Well, the stupid sucker staved there while I cocked the bands. But when I started aiming he started finning off. Then I went at him and he sped off ... oughta know better by now. So I forget about him and start heading down for the big amberjack I could see wav below. On my way down I look over and see the grouper curled up in a corner again-can't swear it was the same grouper, but he looked identical. I aimed-wham!- right through the top of the head. He keeled right over ... I actually thought he was bigger." He was about fifty pounds.

  After dropping off the shark at the marina, Poppa Smurf hooked up with another bunch of divers who'd chartered a big crew boat and were shoving off that evening, heading west this time, and staying out three days. There were ten divers on board from three different clubs, Helldivers, Sea Tigers, and Aqua Aces. Each diver brought fifteen tanks. This was no leisurely affair.

  Terry met them, loaded up his tanks, which he'd stored in the back of his truck parked in the marina, and they shoved off, towards the Ship Shoal blocks, not far from where the Bourgeois themselves were diving. The first rig was in about 200 feet. They got to it with about an hour of sunlight left. Beautiful water again. Terry went down on the first dive with two other divers.

  "I'd had a little excitement already that day," he says. "But, hell, when you see a buddy take a huge fish, like Stan's, makes you wanna outdo him. But I knew that'd be a helluva job, considering that shark!"

  Terry prowled the depths down to 150 feet near the bottom murk for fifteen minutes and saw nothing worth shooting. No amberjack at all. "Just a few ten- and twenty-pounders." His buddy speared a nice mangrove snapper-about a tenpounderand was swimming up with it. The fish was dead, so he left it on the shaft, just pulling it behind him as he ascended.

  Terry followed him up, thinking he'd probably had enough diving for one day. Hell, he had three days to go. And the weather forecast looked perfect. Why burn himself out the first day? He was about 30 feet from the surface, watching his friend's dead snapper coming up with the shaft through him when he caught sight of a huge form to his right.

  "It was a monster amberjack!" Terry says. "I couldn't believe it! Here I'd been looking for a big one down at one-hundred and fifty feet and seen nothing. Now here's one at thirty feet almost under the boat!"

  This is rare. You don't see amberjack that shallow, not big ones, not ever. This one came up only because it was following the speared snapper, thinking to snatch it. "He kept circling it." Terry says. "Coming close but never actually taking it. I'd never seen one acting like that. He was acting like a triggerfish. They're the ones who snatch the fish from your spear-and sharks, of course. I said, well hell, ain't this my lucky day."

  Terry had shot his share of amberjack and knew this one had to push a hundred pounds. "Looked like a cinch, man. I mean, we were at barely thirty feet, almost under the boat. Usually you shoot one this big way down deep-then the battle starts, wrapping the cable around the beam, dodging it, all that mess. Here I had one handed to me on a silver platter, and a big one. I knew he'd at least put me on the board."

  So Terry took aim. But the big AJ noticed his new focus, saw him turn, saw him aim and zoomed off. "I chased him a little but I know that's pointless."

  Terry figured he'd missed his chance. It was too good to be true. An AJ this big, this shallow, this close to the boat. It was almost cheating. He started back up, thinking to board and get a new ta
nk for another rig-hop. He looked behind him one last time....

  "And here comes that big amberjack again!" Terry laughs. "Always seems to happen when you turn your back on these fish."

  But it wasn't Terry that interested the AJ. It was that wounded snapper still wiggling on his dive mate's spear. Johnny Bonck had lured a massive jewfish out of bottom murk the same way forty years before. But that was intentional. "My buddy looked down and saw what was going on. But he couldn't do anything. He'd already shot. But he was pointing man! Bobbing his head like: LOOK!-LOOK! Shoot the damn thing!" The big AJ came up for another swipe at the snapper and Terry nailed him.

  "But I shot too fast, hit him too far back. Wasn't too worried, though. Hell, I'm already up here at twenty five feet. I'll have him in the boat in no time."

  Terry planned to fight him over just a bit so he could grab the boat ladder, like he'd normally grab a beam under the rig, and just hold on, waiting for the AJ to tire. A cinch.

  "Yeah right!" He says. "That thing shot off! Straight down! I mean like a rocket. My buddy said he saw my spear hit that fish then-WHOOOOOM! He said I looked like the Starship Enterprise when it stomps it-ya know. I went from full body size to a speck in a nanosecond. But straight down, man!"

  And down is not exactly where Terry needed to go right then. He'd already been down there a while, all the way to 150 feet. He'd used up most of his tank down there. He was planning on surfacing when the big silver brute showed up so enticingly.

  "That thing was zooming, like only an AJ-or a tuna-can go. Then he turned into the middle of the rig, I'm missing the beams by inches, glancing off of them like a car in a demolition derby." And still-down.

  Decision time was coming up for Terry-hell, for most divers it was well past. Do I let go of the gun? Drown? Maybe embolize on the way up? Terry was below a hundred feet (again) and the fish was not slowing down. The shaft hit no bone or vitals, just meat. Terry was in for it if he wanted to boat this fish. His only option now was to tie off the fish and surface. But he'd better do it quick.