Speaker 1: This is me Eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely
Speaker 1: bug bitten, and in my case, underwear. Listening to podcast,
Speaker 1: you can't predict anything presented by first, like creating proven
Speaker 1: versatile hunting apparel from Marino bass layers to technical outerwear
Speaker 1: for every hunt. First like go farther, stay longer. Okay,
Speaker 1: Chester's new uh, Chester's new nickname. It's tricky. It's Chester
Speaker 1: the dive Masters. Well it's supposed to be dive Master,
Speaker 1: but that doesn't rhyme. So you got it's like you
Speaker 1: gotta kind of mash yourn a mester, Chester the dive
Speaker 1: math Master about dive maister Chriester the dive maister. Yeah
Speaker 1: that works. Chester turning just was like a phenomenal free diver.
Speaker 1: Now just is like a better free diver than me.
Speaker 1: Now that's not true. It's like it is true. It
Speaker 1: blows my mind. What day was it? What was the
Speaker 1: day you couldn't really get under the water. You couldn't
Speaker 1: like terday, So yesterday was what Saturday? So would have
Speaker 1: been Friday? So Friday he can't really get underwater. And
Speaker 1: on Saturday he's a fifty diver hanging out, hanging out,
Speaker 1: looking around relaxing. What's your secret chester? The first day
Speaker 1: I was flailing around like shark bait. And the second
Speaker 1: day I just was like, I don't know. I just
Speaker 1: gotta relax because I can swim and I can hold
Speaker 1: my breath and I think I know how to clear,
Speaker 1: so I just have to relax. So I relaxed, and
Speaker 1: I think I only made three dives, like three or
Speaker 1: four dives all day, all day yesterday, but I just
Speaker 1: tried to make sure my heart rate was low, and yeah,
Speaker 1: just relax. And then the when I was diving in Hawaii,
Speaker 1: the thing that hurt the most was I'd go down
Speaker 1: and I didn't know how to equalize my mask and
Speaker 1: my eyes were getting sucked out my head basically, and
Speaker 1: that was like very It limited me a lot. But
Speaker 1: now that I just pushed a little bit of air
Speaker 1: into that mask and relaxed, it was sweet and just
Speaker 1: dive in. So in Louisiana, there's a muckline and not
Speaker 1: all the spots, but a lot of these spots were
Speaker 1: at and you can't see anything, so you just it's
Speaker 1: kind of freaky, but you keep swimming down, keep swimming down,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, it's like clear, you start
Speaker 1: seeing fish around and then watch I was able to
Speaker 1: then watch you guys do what you do, and it
Speaker 1: just helped. You know, everyone's moving nice and slow and
Speaker 1: smoothed and relaxed. So watching helped a bunch too. Do
Speaker 1: you think you're going to give up on walleye fishing though, Nope,
Speaker 1: it's still is gonna be interesting to you. I think
Speaker 1: you might share to start hunting while you stand up
Speaker 1: in a boat, not knowing what's going on down there,
Speaker 1: all your fancy electronics, when you can just go down
Speaker 1: there and look. Well, you know, I don't think anybody
Speaker 1: in those walleye circuits scout by diving that would you
Speaker 1: would learn a lot. Yeah, in my freshwater diving in Arkansas, UM,
Speaker 1: the walleye and stripe ass everything. You get a complete
Speaker 1: different perspective of what it's like versus what the rod
Speaker 1: and reel guys see. Amazing for scouting. Brandon introduced everybody
Speaker 1: introduced themselves. Brandon Brandon hendrickson ecstatic sport fishing and this Louisiana.
Speaker 1: So tell everybody what that is? Um? What is that? Um?
Speaker 1: Not not venice, but tell everybody what your what your
Speaker 1: business is, your line of work, So I run offshore
Speaker 1: uh sport fishing charters here. Uh Tuna swordfish is our
Speaker 1: primary thing. Um, I love just spearfish though. That's kind
Speaker 1: of how I got got into it. It's been my
Speaker 1: main thing for years. And but but you don't. You
Speaker 1: don't guide spear fishing. I do not. I do not
Speaker 1: guide spear fishing only because of liability issues, got it? Yeah,
Speaker 1: we can't get insurance. Yeah? Is it that you can't
Speaker 1: or it would make it untenable, Like it would just
Speaker 1: be like totally impractical. Oh, I could do it in
Speaker 1: a heartbeat. I could probably half a dozen requests every know,
Speaker 1: I mean from the insurers perspective, like you could, but
Speaker 1: it would just be like outrageous, It would be outrageous. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's difficult to find the insurance. And I mean
Speaker 1: my insurance is already crazy. Yeah, and I could. It
Speaker 1: would double what am are what I'm already paying, got it, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and just make it that's uh too expensive to get clients. Yeah,
Speaker 1: your average client wouldn't be able afford it, got it? So,
Speaker 1: And you were saying spear fisherm or tight wise a
Speaker 1: little bit like more so than Tom, more so than Yeah,
Speaker 1: very I think the the average free diver spear fisherman
Speaker 1: is pretty thrifty. It's a younger crowd. Uh, the cost
Speaker 1: of getting into it is not super high versus uh,
Speaker 1: you know, our middle age client. It's a scrappy more
Speaker 1: like dirt bag, kind of dirt bag, like that dirt bag,
Speaker 1: like dirty, but dirt bag. You like. It's just a
Speaker 1: little more, just a little yeah, younger se Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a lot. It's a lot of young a lot of
Speaker 1: young kids. Not like old yachtsman. They're not yachtsman. No,
Speaker 1: not your average one. Greg, introduce yourself, Greg Fonts, distributor
Speaker 1: for robb Allan spear fishing Products. And that's about it.
Speaker 1: Mentor to Steve here and there. If he listens, come on,
Speaker 1: he's the mentor. Mike my Crib underwater cinematographer. I shot
Speaker 1: a couple episodes of you guys, my first with you.
Speaker 1: You prefer to be filming underwater? I do, but I
Speaker 1: do buffaler stuff too. Yeah. Um, how long you've been
Speaker 1: diving for it's just two five? Oh really? Yeah? So
Speaker 1: you didn't grow up with it? I mean I always
Speaker 1: like snarkled in the lakes and stuff. It was moved
Speaker 1: to California, and as soon as I moved, I took
Speaker 1: a scuba course and I bought it underwear camera. That's
Speaker 1: why I moved to California to be underweard photographer. And
Speaker 1: uh because the school I went to had an underwater
Speaker 1: photography program. So I left school and U n C
Speaker 1: and moved to California trained underwater photographer. Mhmm, you've been
Speaker 1: bit by a shark? Yeah, almost yesterday, got close yesterday
Speaker 1: and then justin have you been on the show before? Okay,
Speaker 1: you joined another underwater cinematographer. Yep, my name's justinter Custy.
Speaker 1: I'm an underwater cinematographer. I'd say camera operator, but I
Speaker 1: learned the underwater camera stuff later on from Kimmy. Kimmy
Speaker 1: taught me yet yea yea. And then of course Chester
Speaker 1: to dive master Master Master Chester, he's going to be
Speaker 1: the next sponsored athlete from sponsors and carbon Finn sweatsuit. Yes,
Speaker 1: Chester's gonna quit work and he's gonna have too many
Speaker 1: options available to Chester. You talk about being on the
Speaker 1: you and Seth. Uh. Seth's got gas row on testinal
Speaker 1: problems right now and can't join. Are you able to
Speaker 1: talk about, uh, what it means to be the Angler
Speaker 1: of the year, not that you are the Angler of
Speaker 1: the year. We're not the Layer of the year. But
Speaker 1: this is for the Montana Walleye Tour that Seth and
Speaker 1: I are fishing, which consists of four tournaments in Montana,
Speaker 1: and ideally you want to fish them all. So I
Speaker 1: would up your odds to become Angler of the Year,
Speaker 1: which means they take your top three tournament finishes and
Speaker 1: you get points. And I'm not quite sure how the
Speaker 1: point system works, but obviously if you do better in
Speaker 1: the tournament, you're gonna get more points. UM. And we
Speaker 1: have done two out of the three tournaments that have
Speaker 1: happened so far, I think we're sitting in sevente place UM,
Speaker 1: which is pretty good UM, out of quite a few boats,
Speaker 1: quite a few teams. We have one more left. We
Speaker 1: get back from this trip in Louisiana. We have a
Speaker 1: day to unpack, repack, get the boat rigged, get all
Speaker 1: that stuff. Sare hellos and goodbye is to our wives
Speaker 1: and head out to tiber for the last one m
Speaker 1: And if we do well, it'd be sweet to place
Speaker 1: top ten in Anger of the Year. If we do well,
Speaker 1: it could happen. You never know. It's great, man, you
Speaker 1: guys are tearing it up. You guys gotta bear with
Speaker 1: us while we we gotta talk about a bunch of
Speaker 1: new stuff. First off, this is really new because, like
Speaker 1: hundreds of years old, we recently covered something where we
Speaker 1: were covering some guys looted an ancient archaeological site and
Speaker 1: tight Wad, Missouri. We got talking about how does how
Speaker 1: did tight Wad, Missouri get his name? Guy writes in
Speaker 1: and says A listener writes in and says, I thought
Speaker 1: i'd share the local history on how tight Wad got
Speaker 1: its name, as it was taught to me my entire
Speaker 1: childhood by every old man within thirty miles. So tight
Speaker 1: Wad was once time, once upon a time called Edgewood, Missouri.
Speaker 1: Here's always got his name. A postal worker long ago
Speaker 1: stops into a local produce shop fixing to buy himself
Speaker 1: a watermelon to give to his wife. You track and
Speaker 1: chester there's a big, huge bin of watermelons and they're
Speaker 1: priced whatever. He digs through and finds the best watermelon
Speaker 1: he can find, brings it to the counter. The shop
Speaker 1: owner tells him, well, that watermelon is the unusual for
Speaker 1: the bin. Therefore the watermelon you selected is actually fifty
Speaker 1: cents more. The postal man was livid about this and
Speaker 1: returns to his mail office. The town has like sixty
Speaker 1: nine people in it, so every time a piece of
Speaker 1: mail was coming into Edgewood, the postal worker would scratch
Speaker 1: out Edgewood and write tight wad on it and send
Speaker 1: it along as a snub to the watermelon salesman. He says,
Speaker 1: in all their versions of this story, it was a chicken,
Speaker 1: not a watermelon. So there's that. I don't know. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I got to think about it longer. Every
Speaker 1: time in the summer we get into summer, we always
Speaker 1: get a lot of letters from people who are having
Speaker 1: access problems while fishing, like real mean people in Florida
Speaker 1: that set up sprinklers and shipped to Like if you
Speaker 1: go fish by their dock, their sprinkler kicks on, or
Speaker 1: you go to fish by their dock and they go
Speaker 1: out and turn their boat engine on an idol at
Speaker 1: the scare away the fish. Whatever they can do to
Speaker 1: her ass. Fisherman Listener writes in about this. Now he's
Speaker 1: a respectful chap who wrote in, and he's being purpose
Speaker 1: Per was fully vague in his explanation of where this is,
Speaker 1: because he's like, for all I know, the guy is right,
Speaker 1: but it's a big lake in Lake County, Florida. He
Speaker 1: says there are several springs that feed into canals that
Speaker 1: connect to this lake. The canal that he's referring to
Speaker 1: has been a public waterway for as long as he's
Speaker 1: been alive, and in fact, he knows it's been regarded
Speaker 1: as a public waterway for at least thirty years. Presumably
Speaker 1: it was public many decades before that. There's crystal clear water,
Speaker 1: large a lot of hybrid bass, so it's always a
Speaker 1: popular spot for swimmers and anglers. A single landowner owns
Speaker 1: both sides of this canal, and he's always been unfriendly,
Speaker 1: and lately he's been really waging war on users bass fisherman.
Speaker 1: Now he's gone so far as to go ahead and
Speaker 1: erect a motorized strawbridge to once and for all block
Speaker 1: the canal. Huh, this guy is like, is this an
Speaker 1: a legal deal now? At all? Fairness, I can't tell
Speaker 1: if that's illegal, and I don't know the story. I
Speaker 1: mean he's blocking public waters or not? I mean talking
Speaker 1: about this because I don't know, well, right, but I
Speaker 1: think about it. I didn't do my I didn't do
Speaker 1: my research. Think about in Montana if someone like put
Speaker 1: something like that over a river where you used to
Speaker 1: be able to get a boat too, But I don't
Speaker 1: know that that's the case here. It's interesting to me,
Speaker 1: but I don't know. Anytime someone tells me a story,
Speaker 1: it always pisses them off, so usually don't say it.
Speaker 1: But you know what, I'm always thinking when someone tells
Speaker 1: me a story, I'm always thinking, it's probably the north
Speaker 1: side of that story. So I don't know two sides
Speaker 1: to everything. If he was more if the if the
Speaker 1: person wants to write in and be more specific about
Speaker 1: which canal it is, I bet you we will get
Speaker 1: a lot of more dedicated, vetted feedback about what the
Speaker 1: legal play is here. But what without you saying where
Speaker 1: this is? It's just too hard. We're not gonna be
Speaker 1: able to go get a bunch of professional opinion on it.
Speaker 1: We need you to drop he needs to drop a pin.
Speaker 1: You can still get a canoe through there. You can
Speaker 1: slip a canoe through there, But you don't know if
Speaker 1: you're gonna be some pistol wave and canal owner on
Speaker 1: the other side of it's even this little drawbridge has
Speaker 1: even got like this little extra board hanging down. Is
Speaker 1: it connected to the bottom. No, there's no way. Uh So, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can get more specific and I'm sure a lot
Speaker 1: of people because whenever we do this, like people weigh
Speaker 1: in there, like I know that spot and here's the
Speaker 1: deal with that spot, and you'll get a lot more feedback.
Speaker 1: You guys could probably all sneak through there with your
Speaker 1: wet suits on. You guys would look like the Seal
Speaker 1: Team six going through you there. Now here's a real
Speaker 1: super interesting story. Um, it's an old story, but it's
Speaker 1: been made new again and I'll make it relevant by
Speaker 1: saying on our last episode, recent episode, we had the writer, photographer,
Speaker 1: commercial fisherman from Alaska, Seth Cantor, who, as we explained,
Speaker 1: grew up in a side igloo. He brought down to
Speaker 1: our studio whale meat and we enjoyed bow ahead, muck
Speaker 1: tuck um so bloob earth a little chunk of skin
Speaker 1: attached was kind of right now my favorite food. Um.
Speaker 1: That coincided nearly in time with a real development for
Speaker 1: the Macaw tribe of Washington, who is a step closer
Speaker 1: to this is a Northwest Washington, the Macaw tribe. They're
Speaker 1: one step closer to legally resuming the hunting of gray whales.
Speaker 1: Let me give you a little background in understanding this.
Speaker 1: The Macau tribe in eight fifty five signed a treaty
Speaker 1: with the US government which seeded a bunch of their
Speaker 1: historic lands and secured for them certain things, including whaling rights.
Speaker 1: So they treat they had a treaty negotiation with the
Speaker 1: US government who never ever ever default sign and agreement
Speaker 1: that they would be able to continue whaling. Okay, and
Speaker 1: they did continue whaling. They wailed until nine when they
Speaker 1: voluntarily abandoned whaling in n Now you might be like,
Speaker 1: why would they do that, Well, here's why they did it.
Speaker 1: At that point in time, commercial whaling enterprises had greatly
Speaker 1: reduced whale numbers. They were historically harvested harbor seals, some
Speaker 1: other marine mammals, but they targeted gray whales. There was
Speaker 1: global efforts at that time to curtail and end whaling.
Speaker 1: And also the tribe had been you know, influenced by
Speaker 1: like americanization programs, right, like everybody get on the same program.
Speaker 1: Great American melting pot so culturally they moved away from it,
Speaker 1: and there were very low whale numbers, and there were
Speaker 1: global pressures for governments and others to end whaling. In fact,
Speaker 1: the McCaw equit whaling before some countries ended their own
Speaker 1: organized whaling programs. Fast forward from to the mid nineties
Speaker 1: and gray whale estimates at that time, gray whale population
Speaker 1: estimates were up to around twenty thousand animals, so a
Speaker 1: lot of whales and the Macaw announced their intention to
Speaker 1: resume whaling. They were going to resume whaling by getting
Speaker 1: oh whale. But in all that time between twenty eight
Speaker 1: and the mid ninety, these whales had become like cultural deities.
Speaker 1: They had become almost if you want to understand like
Speaker 1: how our culture feels about whales, they revere whales almost
Speaker 1: as much as they revere dogs. Dogs are the new whales. Now, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you definitely here save the whales. Yeah, but I mean
Speaker 1: like dogs like now, like you know, in the old days,
Speaker 1: like my dad would talk about being made to go
Speaker 1: down and and put puppies in a bag with a
Speaker 1: rock and throw them off the pier in Lake Michigan
Speaker 1: Cheese to get rid of extra puppies if you had
Speaker 1: a dog, had extra puppies, that doesn't fly anymore. Absolutely not.
Speaker 1: So like like dogs have entered this almost like human class, right.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah. I feel like a lot of people are
Speaker 1: having dogs and not having kids anymore because kind of
Speaker 1: just satisfied with the dogs. They don't last long. Dogs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you have kids, it's like you know, they're stood around
Speaker 1: you die. You get a dog, it's like the ends
Speaker 1: in sight. Like for this dog for like thirteen years
Speaker 1: and die, not a big deal. When when our dog dies,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be a bad day in the Floyd household.
Speaker 1: You're just gonna take it hard. She loves that dog
Speaker 1: more then she loves me. So when they wanted to
Speaker 1: get back and the whaling whales had entered, like to
Speaker 1: save the whales thing had become like so effective that
Speaker 1: it had become cold, Like people would be more mad
Speaker 1: about you killing a whale than you're killing a person
Speaker 1: by far, uh, And they had to put up with that.
Speaker 1: So there's there's kind of like two primary viewpoints came
Speaker 1: out about tribal whaling um and it came from both sides.
Speaker 1: It was kind of coming from the right and the
Speaker 1: left in a way where people are like that for
Speaker 1: the tribe to choose a resumption of what the tribe
Speaker 1: was saying is they're saying, like, we're going to resume
Speaker 1: this like thing, like our culture is based on whaling,
Speaker 1: so we're gonna resume something that had as great societal
Speaker 1: importance to us, And we're gonna resume whaling as taking
Speaker 1: up our ancestral culture, assuming our ancestral rights, um re
Speaker 1: establishing our treaty rights, having a cultural connection to our forebears.
Speaker 1: Like these were things that they articulated as being very
Speaker 1: important to them, and the blowback was like varied. Okay,
Speaker 1: the blowback to the tribe came in two ways. One
Speaker 1: it was sort of like this idea that like, if
Speaker 1: you're gonna take up historic cultural practices, then you should
Speaker 1: resume all of your historic cultural practices. That it's like,
Speaker 1: if whaling is so important to you, why don't you
Speaker 1: bring back widow burning, why don't you bring back Native
Speaker 1: American slavery and slave trade practices? Why don't you resume
Speaker 1: human sacrifices, Why don't you resume intertribal warfare? Okay. The
Speaker 1: other take on it was, well, then you should give
Speaker 1: up everything that modernity has given to you. If you're
Speaker 1: gonna take up whaling, then you better give up electricity,
Speaker 1: You better give up basketball shoes, you better give up
Speaker 1: welfare assistance. Like, if you're gonna be like the old times,
Speaker 1: you gotta give up all the new stuff. And this
Speaker 1: is like the heat that this tribe took. There was
Speaker 1: more legal wrangling than I care to get into here,
Speaker 1: and it'd be like too hard to track the whole
Speaker 1: damn thing. But they went ahead and killed whale. Uh.
Speaker 1: People got great glee out of the hypocrisy that they
Speaker 1: used a traditional canoe with harpoons, yet they had backup
Speaker 1: boats and a fifty caliber rifle that after they harpooned
Speaker 1: the whale, rather than killing it in traditional practices, which
Speaker 1: would have been basically getting up and lancing it behind
Speaker 1: the skull were of the spine hooks up, they shot
Speaker 1: it with a fifty caliber rifle, which apparently came on
Speaker 1: the recommendation of a veterinarian. So people had a heyday
Speaker 1: with like, oh, it was kind of traditional, but kind
Speaker 1: of not and how hypocritical and people turned into a
Speaker 1: fiasco for the tribe. They had all the usual suspects
Speaker 1: right humane society, um they had petera On and on
Speaker 1: totally bent out of shape about them killing this one whale.
Speaker 1: They had to contend with news helicopters, they had to
Speaker 1: contend with protesters and boats trying to run them down.
Speaker 1: Just a total disaster for everybody. But they got their whale.
Speaker 1: A bunch of people got their first ever taste of
Speaker 1: whale blubber right, and then it was given a lot
Speaker 1: of press that a lot of the whale meat rotted
Speaker 1: on the beach and they had they didn't know how
Speaker 1: to take care of the whole thing, but they were
Speaker 1: like stepping back into getting back into this thing. A
Speaker 1: family tried again in two thousand to kill a whale
Speaker 1: and they were again hounded by news helicopters. The Coast
Speaker 1: Guard was involved. Apparently a woman was trying to harass
Speaker 1: the chase that was trying to harass the whalers in
Speaker 1: a jet ski and she got hit by a Coastguard
Speaker 1: boat and was litigious about that. Uh again made it
Speaker 1: a total hassle for him. They haven't done any whaling
Speaker 1: since because they've been waiting on the federal government to
Speaker 1: give them the okay to resume whaling for real. Like
Speaker 1: with all red tape eliminated when they came when they
Speaker 1: did the Marine Mammal Protection Act, you had in a
Speaker 1: for instance, Native Alaskans have all these car beouts for
Speaker 1: the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Um Siberian Eskimos have carve
Speaker 1: outs for the Marine Mammal Protection Act where they're allowed
Speaker 1: to resume whaling for traditional practices. The Macaw didn't. But
Speaker 1: for like thirteen years they've been doing an environmental impact
Speaker 1: statement on whether they can get one of these legitimate
Speaker 1: carbouts from the FeAs to do their whaling. And they
Speaker 1: just released early like a draft of the environmental impact
Speaker 1: statement which suggests that an early so coming up early
Speaker 1: next year they'll get the green light for a six
Speaker 1: year period to kill twelve what to kill twelve whales
Speaker 1: over a six year period. And now we're in that
Speaker 1: beloved period of all this ship called the um public
Speaker 1: comment period, which she always wanted, like is they who
Speaker 1: do they listen during the public comment period? The problem
Speaker 1: with the public comment period is you know they're gonna
Speaker 1: you know that the save the Whales people, you know
Speaker 1: that they're like radical animal rights movement is just gonna
Speaker 1: dominate the public comment period. Oh yeah, it does not
Speaker 1: sound like peaceful gathering or comments coming their way by
Speaker 1: any means. No, it's like the anti hunting crowd will
Speaker 1: dominate this period. A lot of times. I always find
Speaker 1: that like non Native, like non Native American hunters usually
Speaker 1: aren't that interested in Native American hunting rights because it's
Speaker 1: like because legally it's been set up to legally it's
Speaker 1: been set up to put at odds right, Like people
Speaker 1: of Euro American descent um often have like your hunted,
Speaker 1: Like if you're of Euro American descent, You're hunting privileges
Speaker 1: are regarded as much less important than Native American or
Speaker 1: Native Alaska hunting privileges, which creates a lot of resentment.
Speaker 1: There's kind of idea that like whatever happens to them
Speaker 1: doesn't impact me. And if I'm a Euro American, a
Speaker 1: hunter of Euro American descent, they're not going to have
Speaker 1: my back when it comes to my disputes from my rights.
Speaker 1: That was lightning. They're quite a boomer there. And we're
Speaker 1: in a rainstorm, So if you hear a little the
Speaker 1: whole time it's just pouring down, rain sets the mood.
Speaker 1: And if someone's a if you're like a hunter, like
Speaker 1: a hunter in America of Euro American descent, You're gonna
Speaker 1: view like, why do I want to have the This
Speaker 1: is a common perception I hear from people, like why
Speaker 1: would I have Native Americans back on their hunting rights issues?
Speaker 1: They're not gonna have my back on my hunting rights issues.
Speaker 1: Or this is this idea that like, it's these two things,
Speaker 1: like Native Americans are negotiating their hunting privileges and a
Speaker 1: just a completely different realm than what then, what the
Speaker 1: American population at large is doing to protect and get
Speaker 1: their hunting rights and and in fact, often like people
Speaker 1: of Euro American descent or not, such as a non
Speaker 1: tribal I think it's cleaner say nontribal individuals. Non tribal
Speaker 1: individuals get their hunting privileges and all their bag limits
Speaker 1: and everything is set through state wildlife management agencies and
Speaker 1: tribal organizations like tribes. Tribal organizations often negotiate directly with
Speaker 1: the Feds. So we have we we like occupy these
Speaker 1: completely different realms. Uh, we live under different jurisdictions. So
Speaker 1: I think that a lot of people would look at
Speaker 1: like what the Macaw have going on with whaling and
Speaker 1: would just think like, what does that have how why
Speaker 1: does that have anything to do with me? Like, why
Speaker 1: would I care if they can whale? Um, they're not
Speaker 1: gonna look out from my right to fish. In fact,
Speaker 1: their rights to fish often trump my rights to fish.
Speaker 1: So if it's good for them, maybe it's bad for me.
Speaker 1: My view on it is, if you look at who's
Speaker 1: opposed to them, it's like it's like the radical animal
Speaker 1: rights movement is opposed to my Kyle whaling. And you
Speaker 1: know how you often can like pick your friends by
Speaker 1: your enemies. I would just say, like, the people who
Speaker 1: are opposing them are not your buddies. So I reflexibly
Speaker 1: looked at this, and then I hope that they are
Speaker 1: able to resume their whaling. And that's and I don't
Speaker 1: think that what that means is it might open up
Speaker 1: whaling down the road to dudes like me. Um, that
Speaker 1: ain't never gonna happen. And it's like has to go
Speaker 1: get a whale for fear that they would be hard
Speaker 1: to get that that. Um, I wouldn't be able to
Speaker 1: eat anything but that whale for the rest of my life.
Speaker 1: Once you feel a freezer with a whale, you're done
Speaker 1: hunting and fishing. Yeah, I think if they're recovered and
Speaker 1: if you look at what they're proposing twelve whales over
Speaker 1: six years, if it's done responsibly, like right, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: just there's there's the thing we've been talking about over
Speaker 1: the course of a couple of days. We're talking about
Speaker 1: like this is a good segue actually to these waters
Speaker 1: uh there day were I was expressing his view that
Speaker 1: that the world is more it's sort of like it's
Speaker 1: wildlife management. It has to be considered in sort of
Speaker 1: like locally specific areas, and it has to be considered
Speaker 1: in terms of like you have to get down to
Speaker 1: the nats ass on a lot of wildlife recovery issues.
Speaker 1: We're discussing that that globally, right, like as a collection
Speaker 1: of species, as a collection of many species. Globally, sharks
Speaker 1: are in trouble, meaning there are shark species in trouble,
Speaker 1: like specific shark species are in trouble in specific areas
Speaker 1: of their range. But that doesn't mean that all sharks
Speaker 1: are in trouble across the entirety of their range. It's
Speaker 1: more complicated than that. And I think that that the
Speaker 1: whale movement created this thing that's sort of like that
Speaker 1: they they've lumped all whales together and they've viewed them globally.
Speaker 1: To say that a lot of whales are imperiled across
Speaker 1: much of their range in the would have been like
Speaker 1: a very true statement. Certain whale species were imperiled somewhere,
Speaker 1: imperiled in particular areas of their range, and some were
Speaker 1: imperiled over the entirety of their range, But that in
Speaker 1: no way meant that all whales are imperilled everywhere. That
Speaker 1: whales live just like the sharks, just like the sharks.
Speaker 1: And you cannot come and make an argument that in
Speaker 1: northwest Washington gray whales are imperiled or that even has
Speaker 1: any bearing on like global gray whale populations. That this
Speaker 1: tribe were to kill a whale or two every year,
Speaker 1: it's not an issue. It's just public perception. It's a
Speaker 1: public perception bad. If a couple killer whales or orcas
Speaker 1: they got like rebranded as orcas. If a couple of
Speaker 1: orcas kill a great whale, it's the greatest thing in
Speaker 1: the world. That's gonna be like David Attenborough will be
Speaker 1: like this is so cool, or however he puts it.
Speaker 1: They love it. But it's but a native American tribe
Speaker 1: kills one and it's like, oh my god, those same
Speaker 1: people watching in Monterey every year that there's always a
Speaker 1: couple of great whales killed by workers there and it's
Speaker 1: the circle of life. They love it. Yeah, well, I
Speaker 1: think it's that was my mind. It's it's interesting because
Speaker 1: I think there's too many times where if like, well,
Speaker 1: I can't, if I can't take advantage of that resource,
Speaker 1: I don't want anyone to be able to take care
Speaker 1: of that, never take advantage of the resource. And we
Speaker 1: saw this in the closure of the abalone fishery in
Speaker 1: northern California, where you'd go to these d f G
Speaker 1: meetings and explain what dfgent Department Fishing Game, which has
Speaker 1: now changed his name. But um oh, that's right, what
Speaker 1: is it now? Ah, this is a big issue. So
Speaker 1: it's like there are a lot of state agencies that
Speaker 1: just have wildlife and them like our our state agency,
Speaker 1: um so fish wildlife and parts. They never called it game.
Speaker 1: It was always wildlife, so no one cares. It was
Speaker 1: always wildlife. But Californians resented the idea that animals are game,
Speaker 1: so it's fish and wildlife, so they changed it to
Speaker 1: be like, well, it's like a value judgment you're placing.
Speaker 1: You're saying that, like wildlife resources are like game for
Speaker 1: the taking, and so they wanted to make it wildlife
Speaker 1: as part of California's And I'm not trying to hack
Speaker 1: on you boys. I'm not hacking you boys. I'm not
Speaker 1: hanging on you boys at all. I'm just saying that
Speaker 1: California is gradually but steadily transitioning away from consumptive use.
Speaker 1: Would agree that there's no example where they're not they're
Speaker 1: phasing out consumptive use of wildlife resources. Yeah, And when
Speaker 1: you look at something like the Abalonie Fishery, you have
Speaker 1: these meetings after meetings and people would bring in videos
Speaker 1: of these areas that are completely healthy. And we're talking
Speaker 1: about specific areas. Just because one one area is unhealthy
Speaker 1: doesn't mean there isn't an area that's sustainable and that
Speaker 1: you should be able to harvest from. And you'd go
Speaker 1: to these meetings and you'd have all the passionate you know,
Speaker 1: abalone hunters out there. But then I don't even know
Speaker 1: where these people would come from, but you would have
Speaker 1: this line of fifty people that would talk about, well,
Speaker 1: I think we need to close it because I wanted
Speaker 1: to be here from my kids, and I like going
Speaker 1: to the ocean and whale watching, and you're that's nice,
Speaker 1: but you're not using the resource. And if you're not
Speaker 1: using the resource, you don't really understand the resource. So
Speaker 1: it's one of those things of to just kind of
Speaker 1: paint broad strokes of I want it closed because I
Speaker 1: wanted to be here from my kids. That might not
Speaker 1: actually not be the case. You know. It's one of
Speaker 1: those things if if you let areas be overpopulated or
Speaker 1: you don't monitor them, you know, they can actually become
Speaker 1: more unhealthy and collapse even more. And my big issue
Speaker 1: with that was when they were doing surveys, they would
Speaker 1: serve as specific sites over and over and over again.
Speaker 1: They would never go out of those sites and go, Okay, hey,
Speaker 1: what are in these m l p A s. How
Speaker 1: the m l PA is doing. They would never survey
Speaker 1: the protected areas to actually see what an untouched area
Speaker 1: was doing. So it's just interesting that, you know, just
Speaker 1: it's just so general of like, oh this one area
Speaker 1: is bad, we should shut it down, or I don't
Speaker 1: want you to have it, so I you know, I
Speaker 1: don't want to have it, so you shouldn't happen. And
Speaker 1: it's one of those things that that's because you don't
Speaker 1: actually use the resource. I don't. I'm not going to
Speaker 1: rush out and go hunt to whale. I'll tell you
Speaker 1: that much if I could. It's one of those things
Speaker 1: that that's culturally important to a tribe, you know, that's
Speaker 1: you know, if healthy populations persistent, they should be able
Speaker 1: to harvest one. But I do feel that that the
Speaker 1: whaling spirit resides deep in my humoculous though, because when
Speaker 1: we're out fishing and you're like cruising along out to
Speaker 1: your fishing spot and there's a whale out in front
Speaker 1: of you. For reaching along, I do some part of
Speaker 1: me is like, my god, I mean like like you
Speaker 1: just like what, like to think of people in a
Speaker 1: skin canoe? Oh? Yeah, Like to think of people in
Speaker 1: a boat made a walrus hide, paddling up with homemade
Speaker 1: tackle made entirely from bone and wood and animal parts,
Speaker 1: paddling up, fixing the sink a harpoon into that thumb bitch.
Speaker 1: It's like that is a level of that's a level
Speaker 1: of gur not often achieved by modern man. Well, I
Speaker 1: think people discount the the amount of effort it takes
Speaker 1: to do some of these things right, you know, like
Speaker 1: like again the apple and fish are fishing the rigs
Speaker 1: out here. I mean, hey, you know, put a seven
Speaker 1: mill wet suit on and getting fifty degree water that's
Speaker 1: super murky, and go try to get apple on. It's
Speaker 1: one of those things that I think people just think
Speaker 1: everything is easy. You know, you just go you just
Speaker 1: go out there and go whaling are you know, you
Speaker 1: just go out there and shoot the rig up or
Speaker 1: go get abalone or whatever it is. And it's just
Speaker 1: like that. There's a lot of effort and put into it.
Speaker 1: It's it would be impossible to do. And in some
Speaker 1: and in many ways, it was sort of subvert democracy,
Speaker 1: and it would subvert the North American model of wildlife conservation.
Speaker 1: But if I was emperor of the world, or even
Speaker 1: just emperor of the country, I would enact the system.
Speaker 1: When it came to wildlife management issues and they got
Speaker 1: into the public comment period, I would send out legions
Speaker 1: of people to go assign value systems to opinions, and
Speaker 1: you do an interview process. In my surveyors would go
Speaker 1: to every American who said, like I have I have
Speaker 1: I have something to say, I have something to say,
Speaker 1: you'd raise your hand. I'd send one of my research
Speaker 1: to researchers to your home and they would interview you,
Speaker 1: and they would assess your education on the issue. They
Speaker 1: would assess what you had at stake. This is horribly
Speaker 1: an American, if new American, But I would find a
Speaker 1: way to pay for it. I'd pay for it by
Speaker 1: by the president off fishing licenses. I don't know what
Speaker 1: the hell i'd do. I'd figure out some way. I'd
Speaker 1: like steal it from other ship that I don't care
Speaker 1: about that much, So I would, Uh, they do an
Speaker 1: interview with you, like what is your knowledge, actual knowledge
Speaker 1: of the issue, based on some like impure like based
Speaker 1: on like empirical data. What do you understand and where
Speaker 1: does your understanding a line with sort of an objective
Speaker 1: reality as determined by like an impartial group, And then
Speaker 1: like what do you what's at stake for you? And
Speaker 1: then I would rank the importance of your input on
Speaker 1: a sliding scale of one to ten, and it'd be
Speaker 1: like the bonus point system and tag allocations. If you
Speaker 1: were a ten, your vote counted by ten. If you
Speaker 1: were a one year, vote counted once. Then I do
Speaker 1: all that ship way better program. Yea, things will be
Speaker 1: a lot better, way better. Very Unamerican. Here's two more
Speaker 1: things that sort of fit. This is all well themed,
Speaker 1: you know. Krin puts all this like a figure. We
Speaker 1: always have a lot of stuff we want to talk about.
Speaker 1: Krinn puts it together. Did a good job putting it together. Um.
Speaker 1: I have observed, and it's been observed by many people
Speaker 1: that the that the Pittman Robertson Act, like which we
Speaker 1: talked about every episode in some capacity or another, has
Speaker 1: become like this over observed thing. Um. And it is
Speaker 1: all the money that AMMO buyers and gun buyers, all
Speaker 1: the money that they put into conservation. And usually some
Speaker 1: of the groups, uh, some of the firearm groups and
Speaker 1: ammil manufacturers who are hit by Pittman Robertson are most
Speaker 1: eager to let the public know about what their contributions
Speaker 1: have been. Federal ammunition. Every year will release what public
Speaker 1: expenditures on federal ammunition has pumped into Pittman Robertson, which
Speaker 1: is an excise tax on sporting goods equipment. There's a
Speaker 1: parallel program in fishing called Dingle Johnson. So it's like
Speaker 1: marine fuel trolling motors all kinds of fishing tackle has
Speaker 1: an excise tax attached to it. It's been around, Pittman
Speaker 1: Robertson has been around since nine and it was put
Speaker 1: into effect because hunters and gun owners asked for it
Speaker 1: to recover American wildlife. And now Pittman Robertson kicks out,
Speaker 1: you know, like a billion buck a year for access,
Speaker 1: disease research, wildlife management, and all goes as matching funds.
Speaker 1: So all the guns and AMMO you buy, then you
Speaker 1: could be like an anti hunter New Jersey who buys
Speaker 1: a pocket pistol. You just paid into Pittman Robertson funds
Speaker 1: and it's dished out through UH matching grants. So for
Speaker 1: a state to get Pittman Robertson fund they have to
Speaker 1: kick in their own money. They get that money by
Speaker 1: selling hunting and fishing licenses. Okay, so they want to
Speaker 1: do a thing. They want to do, you know, an
Speaker 1: access program, they want to do a research program. They
Speaker 1: want to put in water tanks to improve wildlife habitat
Speaker 1: in the desert. Whatever. They're like, we got two grand
Speaker 1: for this project. We'd like to get two grand to
Speaker 1: Pittman Robertson money. And they look at everything, it lines
Speaker 1: up with mission, and bam they give them the money.
Speaker 1: It's a wonderful program. Well not if you ask Georgia
Speaker 1: Congressman Andrew Clyde and his fifty three co sponsors who
Speaker 1: wants to repeal. So Republican from Georgia, he wants to
Speaker 1: repeal Pittman Robertson. He's got an interesting argument that I
Speaker 1: that I dig the argument, but I just don't like
Speaker 1: the whole thing, and I'll talk about why both. The
Speaker 1: interesting argument is that he's saying, you can't tax, ah,
Speaker 1: you shouldn't be able to tax the constitutional right, and
Speaker 1: he thinks it's like an Pittman Robertson is an infringement
Speaker 1: on constitutional rights. Where he's coming from is that there
Speaker 1: are right now people trying to fight gun ownership and
Speaker 1: fight Second Amendment rights with these sort of like retribution
Speaker 1: taxes against gun owners. Okay, So a Democrat from Virginia,
Speaker 1: Don Bayer, Congressman Virginia, he's introducing this bill that would
Speaker 1: put a thousand percent tax, a one thousand percent tax
Speaker 1: on semi automatic weapons, okay um. And also like anything
Speaker 1: beyond rim fire AMMO would be under these huge taxes.
Speaker 1: All right, So in trying to fight that out, they're like, well,
Speaker 1: let's just overturn the whole program and get rid of
Speaker 1: Pittman roberts which has been around since that that bill
Speaker 1: is so I think Pittman Robertson is so perfect and
Speaker 1: does so much good and has been around so long.
Speaker 1: I don't think you should go back in time and
Speaker 1: attack old ship as a way of attacking new ship.
Speaker 1: That's coming from a very different perspective. Remember, it was
Speaker 1: the gun. It was the hunters that wanted Pittman Robertson,
Speaker 1: and Pittman roberts has been serving hunters for that long.
Speaker 1: Now again, hunters aren't synonymous with gun owners. In fact,
Speaker 1: most going owners aren't hunters. But look ahead. I don't
Speaker 1: think you should look past on this man. It also
Speaker 1: starts to mess with Dingle Johnson. So, for instance, like
Speaker 1: electric outboard motors would reduce excise taxes, I know it's
Speaker 1: from ten percent to three percent. There's no constitutional right
Speaker 1: to have anough trolling motor, so you pay excise tax
Speaker 1: on all your spear fishing gear. Sure, it's the same
Speaker 1: thing to support fisheries. An old program that came from
Speaker 1: the good guys. It didn't come from the bad guys.
Speaker 1: I get the argument, but I think it's like it's
Speaker 1: just I think it's like and he knows it won't pass.
Speaker 1: It's almost like we're like giving it the we're sort
Speaker 1: of falling into the trap by talking about it because
Speaker 1: there's no way it's going to pass. But it's like
Speaker 1: it's politicking. It's politicking. It's like bringing things up for discussion.
Speaker 1: I think it's a bad idea to go through with
Speaker 1: this last war to get into before we start talking
Speaker 1: about something else. Um, No, two more things, but they
Speaker 1: both have to do with fisheries sort of. There's all
Speaker 1: these news stories out right now about how I even
Speaker 1: I read it in the Wall Street Journal where this
Speaker 1: guy's all fed up, like, oh my god, now bees
Speaker 1: are fish. California now says bees are fish? What what
Speaker 1: will happen? Where will the chaos end? What's next? And
Speaker 1: here's what happened in California. I'm sure you've seen headlines
Speaker 1: if you're if you're newsreader in the morning, I'm sure
Speaker 1: you see a redline headlines like my god, Californians so stupid.
Speaker 1: Now they're saying bumble bees are fish. Well when they Okay,
Speaker 1: it's actually an interesting thing. When California built like like
Speaker 1: it's California Endangered Species Act, they put in place like
Speaker 1: what could be covered under the Endangered Species Act, and
Speaker 1: they did. They The California Dangerous Species Act expressly protects birds, mammals, fish, amphibians, reptiles,
Speaker 1: and plants. The California Danger Species Act does not define fish. However,
Speaker 1: this is where it starts to get rich. However, the law,
Speaker 1: the California Endangered Species Act law is part of the
Speaker 1: California Fish and Game Code. So people reading the law
Speaker 1: went in to see, like, when they say fish, what
Speaker 1: do they mean? Well, we have to go one step
Speaker 1: deeper and go since it's part of California's Fish and
Speaker 1: Game Code, what does California's Fish and Game Code mean
Speaker 1: by fish? If you go into the Fish and Game Code,
Speaker 1: here's what they mean by fish. They take fish to
Speaker 1: mean any mollusk, crustacean, invertebrate, or amphibian. Now, that definition mullus, crustaceans, invertebrates,
Speaker 1: amphibians doesn't specify whether they're talking about terrestrial or aquatic.
Speaker 1: Some people are saying that definitely the definition of what
Speaker 1: they mean would definitely include bees bumblebees because bumble bees
Speaker 1: are invertebrates. Other people are like, but dude, they were
Speaker 1: talking about ship in the water man, they were talking
Speaker 1: about fish. They weren't talking about that. It's like, clearly
Speaker 1: they meant ship in the water like fish, but there
Speaker 1: would be shellfish, whatever, snails in the water. There are
Speaker 1: people are like, no, it says uh any mullus crustacean
Speaker 1: invertebrate amphibian. Therefore, under that fish thing, we have the
Speaker 1: ability to say that bumble bees are endangered. So what
Speaker 1: does that mean? Does that mean you can't lot of
Speaker 1: be or else you'll get a ticket? You know what
Speaker 1: it means is there there is a like however they're
Speaker 1: going about it. Here's what they're after. There is a
Speaker 1: pollinator crisis. No one in the right mind, no one like,
Speaker 1: what do they we want to do? What if you
Speaker 1: want to do something about it or not? Just like,
Speaker 1: no one in their right mind can tell you the
Speaker 1: planet is not getting warmer every year. Whether you're gonna
Speaker 1: do how you define who's the blame for that is
Speaker 1: up for debate. What you're gonna do about it is
Speaker 1: up for debate, But you cannot argue You cannot argue
Speaker 1: that the planet isn't getting warmer every year, right it is.
Speaker 1: You can't argue it anymore. That you can say that
Speaker 1: I don't give a ship, or you can say that
Speaker 1: it's not my fault, but you can't say it's not happening,
Speaker 1: and no one, no one does anymore. No one's like
Speaker 1: it's getting colder. Pollinators are vanishing at an astonishing, alarming rate.
Speaker 1: That's just it's just sucking true, like I don't give
Speaker 1: a ship. If you want to do anything about it,
Speaker 1: or who you want to blame, but that is happening.
Speaker 1: They are I shouldn't say alarming, because that's a value judgment.
Speaker 1: Pollinators are declining, bumble bees are declining. If you care
Speaker 1: or not, I don't know, but that's an it's an
Speaker 1: objective reality. So they're trying to find a way to
Speaker 1: do it. Who's pissed about agricultural producers because of insecticides?
Speaker 1: Insecticide application, that's why they'reduking it out. So when you
Speaker 1: see a headline Californians think bees are fish, good lord,
Speaker 1: that's what that's about. Since we've got a couple of Californias,
Speaker 1: You guys, got any comments it's just a little more complicated.
Speaker 1: It's a little more complicated. When when I heard about it,
Speaker 1: I was like, or whatever they've been kicking around the courts.
Speaker 1: It'll get appealed again, I'm sure. But currently it stands
Speaker 1: not that bees are fish, but the bees are covered
Speaker 1: as a thing that can be listed. Right now, as
Speaker 1: it stands in California, bumble bees can be listed. So
Speaker 1: what are they saying just bumble bees or be's in general? Well,
Speaker 1: right now they're worried about seven species of bumblebee. Do
Speaker 1: you guys know that honey bees are not native? It's
Speaker 1: a North America European. Yeah, did not know that general?
Speaker 1: Nightcrawlers aren't native? When you're way ass up on the
Speaker 1: mountains and you're in a little meadow when you dig
Speaker 1: downer's nightcrawlers sitting there at some bitches not native? Where
Speaker 1: are they from your Asia? Like Canadian crawlers not Canadians?
Speaker 1: Not wild? What about the red wiggler that I don't
Speaker 1: know about. I have a feeling, and then we will
Speaker 1: be corrected by a thousand million people. I have a
Speaker 1: feeling that the red wigglers a non native invertebrate. I
Speaker 1: would love to know, we'll find out I begs some uh,
Speaker 1: some sly telephone user right in our presence would be
Speaker 1: able to figure out if red wigglers are now it
Speaker 1: or not. One last thing, and this is bringing us closer,
Speaker 1: and you'll see that we're narrowing in on what we're
Speaker 1: narrowing our focus. Uh, Brandon, tell us what we witnessed
Speaker 1: yesterday by the pokey boats yesterday, two days ago, whatever
Speaker 1: the hell it was. We're watching a bunch of commercial
Speaker 1: what's the potent? Because we're working the Menhaden, the Manhaddan fishery.
Speaker 1: It's a big thing here, they persone, the Menhaden. What
Speaker 1: would it be fair to call it like it's an
Speaker 1: industrial operation, absolutely, like the industrial harvest of men Hayden,
Speaker 1: which they hear about call. Yeah, what was it? Three inch?
Speaker 1: Three inch? They get up to about five six inches
Speaker 1: at full size with the dots on them. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: they have a dot up up towards the front shoulder.
Speaker 1: Hunt and fishing type people would look at it and
Speaker 1: be like a bait fish Yep, it's one of our
Speaker 1: most common bait fish here. But they use them for uh,
Speaker 1: they press them for oil for fish oil, yeah, fish food.
Speaker 1: The sorts of you know, a lot of products food. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they process and it's not you don't go down to
Speaker 1: the fish store. You don't go down to the you
Speaker 1: don't go down to the whole foods fish counter and
Speaker 1: get a couple of but you probably have gotten them
Speaker 1: in products that you've purchased. Uh. We had a guy
Speaker 1: right in. So we we we do this thing every
Speaker 1: year with with every year, a couple of times a
Speaker 1: year we do like a State of the Union on
Speaker 1: conservation issues with with Fosberg, who's the CEO and president
Speaker 1: of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership of which I am
Speaker 1: a board member. On a recent State of the Union episode,
Speaker 1: we spent quite a bit of time talking about the
Speaker 1: stripe bass fishery all up down the eastern seaboard of
Speaker 1: the US. I know that you guys just bring it
Speaker 1: home from Californians. You guys have a stripe bass fishery
Speaker 1: as well, but that's a non native population stripe bass,
Speaker 1: and in fact a lot of people like to see
Speaker 1: those go away, and they'd like to see the ones
Speaker 1: where they're supposed to be do better. Straight bass. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a huge debate. So it's a it's a non native.
Speaker 1: It's like a deleterious exotic in some areas, but on
Speaker 1: the eastern seaboard of our beloved country, it's it's the
Speaker 1: primary fish, that's the primary targeted sport fish. In terms
Speaker 1: of like man hours spent, stripe bass dominates eastern fishing,
Speaker 1: saltwater fishing. Uh. We talked a lot about why stripe
Speaker 1: bass populations are just not doing great and why they're
Speaker 1: in decline, and a guy rolled in saying how could
Speaker 1: he have dared place responsibility for that decline on the
Speaker 1: shoulders of recreational anglers? He points out, how I expressed
Speaker 1: the level of skepticism that how could it be recreational
Speaker 1: anglers impacting that in just impacting that fishery, And he
Speaker 1: said he was a gas almost fell off his seat.
Speaker 1: Did Wit didn't talk about the commercial men Hayden harvest
Speaker 1: as being largely responsible for declines in stripe bass, not
Speaker 1: only that, but kobe a red drum sea trout, many
Speaker 1: other species. We put it to Witt and what thank for?
Speaker 1: Thanked us for forwarding the comment along, and he goes
Speaker 1: on to say the listeners correct that men hade the
Speaker 1: men haden harvest definitely impact stright back stripe bass populations.
Speaker 1: He says the current harvest in the Atlantic depresses stripe
Speaker 1: bass populations by about meaning if it was not they
Speaker 1: estimate that if it was not for the commercial men
Speaker 1: Hayden Fishery, stripe bass populations would probably sit about thirty
Speaker 1: higher than they are right now, which is real significant.
Speaker 1: But he goes on to say six million fish. So
Speaker 1: the last year that we have full data is pretty old.
Speaker 1: This gets at an interesting thing around fisheries. We have
Speaker 1: solid data on two thousand eighteen, Okay, full data on
Speaker 1: six million fish were killed between the recreational and commercial fisheries.
Speaker 1: I guess I may were caught by sport anglers. This
Speaker 1: is astounding five million. There's not many fisheries like that.
Speaker 1: Six million are killed. Five million are killed by sport
Speaker 1: fishers the United States Eastern seaboard place. You know, are
Speaker 1: we talking about specific laateist tripe bass or yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I'm saying like like normally, like normally there's not
Speaker 1: even close to parody between commercial and recreational fisheries and
Speaker 1: salt water, meaning you go look at like what's the
Speaker 1: sport catch on said species and what's the commercial catch
Speaker 1: on said species. The commercial catch far outways the sport catch.
Speaker 1: If you look at like salmon right commercial if you
Speaker 1: believe the data, If you believe the data, you know
Speaker 1: some of the data we see here in the golf
Speaker 1: and so I don't I don't even believe it. I
Speaker 1: think the numbers are skewed, meaning it's more meaning it's hot.
Speaker 1: You think the recreation has a higher impact. No, I
Speaker 1: think the commercial sector has a higher impact than what
Speaker 1: they lead us to believe. Then what has even put
Speaker 1: out then what they tell us. Maybe that's the case here,
Speaker 1: but this is what people are looking at the numbers
Speaker 1: saying that like recreational fishermen are hitting it bad. Now,
Speaker 1: what what goes on to clarify is that t RCP
Speaker 1: and many others are very interested in trying to curtail
Speaker 1: uh the man Hayden fishery. Right now, it's man it
Speaker 1: it was managed like in the golf for instance, right
Speaker 1: now they don't have good management place in the Gulf
Speaker 1: of Mexico. It's managed by how many they can they
Speaker 1: take without totally collapsing the fishery. And it's not looked
Speaker 1: at how many can they take without having major impacts
Speaker 1: on other fish species, and they just need to rem
Speaker 1: they need to rethink the fishery altogether. He says. What
Speaker 1: goes on to say, they need to shift to an
Speaker 1: ecosystem management. Well, the current harvest in the Atlantic depresses
Speaker 1: stripe bass populations by about although we have had significant
Speaker 1: wins in recent years to reduce the allowable catch of
Speaker 1: man haden. The Atlantic does have a catch limit for
Speaker 1: man haden. The Gulf of Mexico does not have a
Speaker 1: catch limit, and he says, what we need to do
Speaker 1: is shift to ecosystem management, meaning that catch limits are
Speaker 1: now being set based on what the ecosystem needs and
Speaker 1: not just how many men hadan can you kill before
Speaker 1: you crash the stock. We're also now trying to reduce
Speaker 1: or ideally eliminate the harvest of men haden in the
Speaker 1: Chesapeake Bay, which is the nursery area for juvenile manhanan
Speaker 1: and stripe bass. That's been a big subject here in
Speaker 1: Louisiana over the last couple of years. Um it came
Speaker 1: up under to vote here about a year ago, and
Speaker 1: it's trying to not eliminate the fishery because we know
Speaker 1: that that's that's not not possible, but try to extend
Speaker 1: the boundary of how close they are allowed to come
Speaker 1: to our to our land which basically is our estuary,
Speaker 1: because it is affecting our our trout and a red
Speaker 1: fish and everything else. Was I think one of you
Speaker 1: guys said, most likely the cause of those sagners. It
Speaker 1: was right right by where those sagners were at. They
Speaker 1: pump out a lot of eye catch. Most most of
Speaker 1: these fish that they get caught in there do not survive,
Speaker 1: so that it's a big problem. Um, you know, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of people out there fighting for to improve it,
Speaker 1: and we just have to hope for the best that
Speaker 1: that will change because it definitely fixs the fisher Here,
Speaker 1: Wiggles on to conclude that every credible study shows that
Speaker 1: stripe bath overfished, and that overfishing is still occurring. He
Speaker 1: says recreational as recreational angers, I'll point out that is
Speaker 1: an avid strip bass fisherman. We have no choice but
Speaker 1: to put in strong conservation measures to ensure that we
Speaker 1: end over fishing and allow stocks to rebuild. Are there
Speaker 1: any environmental issues that they attribute to the population, Like
Speaker 1: in California, we're we're fighting about salmon versus striper versus
Speaker 1: water temps of the rivers and salt water intrusion into
Speaker 1: the delta and the loss of the delta. So a
Speaker 1: lot of you can kind of pinpoint California stripe populations
Speaker 1: by environmental changes. I think like everything probably probably sound
Speaker 1: like everything is like a death by thousand cuts, right,
Speaker 1: I mean with every imperiled fishery. Whatever you can look
Speaker 1: in in go numb. I think you can go numb
Speaker 1: by like how many things are contributing? Right? Like does
Speaker 1: warmer water matter? UM, damning irrigation, I mean damning destroyed
Speaker 1: straight bass runs in many rivers, right, So like damning irrigation,
Speaker 1: UM water quality. And then you can sort of be
Speaker 1: like screw, let's not do anything, or you can look
Speaker 1: at like major contributors and try to attack the problem
Speaker 1: in some way that makes sense, and maybe attack the
Speaker 1: problem across the wide variety of things. I can tell
Speaker 1: you that what with t RCP is anything but an
Speaker 1: anti straight bass fisherman. DU's an adverstrate bass fisherman. Um
Speaker 1: ah he's calling for is like they're they're working their
Speaker 1: asses on the man hadan issue, which is a thing.
Speaker 1: And also that they he whoever people they're doing that
Speaker 1: need to think about their catch in a way that's
Speaker 1: pretty common for fishermen to do. Give you, guys, theory
Speaker 1: on sharks. I'm not talking about how many sharks around.
Speaker 1: Let me put we're jumping. That goes back to your
Speaker 1: your talking about the whaling and how No, I didn't
Speaker 1: even I didn't even mean shark management. I just meant
Speaker 1: like dealing with sharks in the water. So yesterday, real quick,
Speaker 1: I look, I hear a couple of yells. Well, we
Speaker 1: heard a couple before I heard it, and I was
Speaker 1: in the water and quarter mile away. Yeah, he's a
Speaker 1: lot better than mine. I couldn't hear all that hooting out. Anyways,
Speaker 1: once we heard you, guys, we got over as quick
Speaker 1: as there was people in the water. After your photo shoot,
Speaker 1: there was a lot going on. There was a lot
Speaker 1: going on. But what I do see, recall I seen
Speaker 1: a little because that's seen a little bit. I'm trying
Speaker 1: you left off all the parts about everything. No, I'm
Speaker 1: getting there. I don't order. No, you're like Quentin Tarantino.
Speaker 1: These guys are diving in a sweet spot. I had
Speaker 1: just shot a fish left st out a park. Okay,
Speaker 1: what part so we have to. We have two rigs,
Speaker 1: two rigs side by side, only about fifty yards apart,
Speaker 1: and so we put two divers on each rigg way
Speaker 1: more than maybe seventy. Let me set the scene then
Speaker 1: you can be when rigged. Okay, I'm gonna give me
Speaker 1: a minute. I'm gonna go back to the seventies, started
Speaker 1: building big oil rigs out of the Gulf of Mexico.
Speaker 1: These oil rigs are fish magnets. They are man made reefs,
Speaker 1: and you want to talk about objective realities, These rigs
Speaker 1: create life and create and enhance the fishery. Normally, when
Speaker 1: you're fishing, when you're diving a rig, you dive a rig, right,
Speaker 1: We're gonna go dive this rig, and you go to
Speaker 1: the rig, and everybody that's gonna fish jumps and dives
Speaker 1: the rig. Then you go to another rig. Just so
Speaker 1: happened that our captain, you know what the difference in
Speaker 1: the captain and the skipper is, now the skipper owns
Speaker 1: the boat. Our skipper, Brandon, took us to a spot
Speaker 1: We're going to dive two rigs at once because they're
Speaker 1: so close together that the boat contend to both people.
Speaker 1: That was an anomaly. It's not it's not uncommon, but
Speaker 1: that was this trip. It was anomaly to have two
Speaker 1: right next to each other. They're normally like spaced far apart. Correct,
Speaker 1: So we we did that and not just not in
Speaker 1: like a couple of people in the like groups of
Speaker 1: two's right, Yeah, separated by a hundred yards. Go ahead, Chester,
Speaker 1: Well I'll let these guys go and then I'll end
Speaker 1: up so I don't miss anything. This is coming down.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, someone's gotta explained the oreo and then we'll
Speaker 1: get into the shark couple of stuffy. So this is
Speaker 1: an area where we got we call it the areo.
Speaker 1: We got dirty water on top, there's a clean layer
Speaker 1: down underneath the dirty warrants an explanation of dirty water
Speaker 1: and dirty water meaning like less than one ft of visibility.
Speaker 1: You can't see the end of your gun. You can't.
Speaker 1: You know you can't. You can't. If someone's breathing up
Speaker 1: next year, you might be touching shoulders of them, but
Speaker 1: only be able to see their hand. Yes, is that
Speaker 1: you hit me? And that's surface layer of dirty water
Speaker 1: might be uh five ft, it might be six. You
Speaker 1: don't know until you drop through it. So that this area.
Speaker 1: That's that's the top cookie. The top the top wafer
Speaker 1: was about five to ten ft at this spot, the
Speaker 1: frosting and then it got pretty clean underneath there down
Speaker 1: to about fifty and then it got dark again. So
Speaker 1: this is the kind of the area where I in.
Speaker 1: UH and they say sometimes there's single those traditional traditional
Speaker 1: and double stuff double stuff oreo is a nice big
Speaker 1: band of clarity. This was a double stuffed oreo. We
Speaker 1: are don't want yesterday at that spot, we're looking for
Speaker 1: mangrove snappers and uh Greg had Greg had been on
Speaker 1: this rig and uh had had got himself a nice,
Speaker 1: nice mangrove and the hell of a time over on
Speaker 1: our ridge, huge, huge school of mangroves. I had been
Speaker 1: staying on the boat prior to that. Let's letting these
Speaker 1: guys get a couple of a couple of fish. And
Speaker 1: then Greg got back in the boat and he's like, hey,
Speaker 1: you want to get in. I'm like sure, why not?
Speaker 1: You said you wanted to get in? Yeah, Greg, Greg
Speaker 1: Field to tell me he'd also shot one that had
Speaker 1: gotten away. I ripped off one and then he chi
Speaker 1: did one. He sort of chummed to the waters per
Speaker 1: se so uh, Mike and I jumped in. Uh I
Speaker 1: did a little test dive to check it out. On
Speaker 1: the first dive, everything looked good, lots of fish around.
Speaker 1: And second dive went down and uh I found it.
Speaker 1: Found a nice mangrove. Mike's following me right above me,
Speaker 1: and uh pull the trigger and uh, I'm fighting this fish,
Speaker 1: getting it out of the rig, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: from the lower wafer the dark side, here comes the
Speaker 1: bull sharks to two very grown bowls which would be
Speaker 1: nine nine probably eight nine ft pushing three pounds. Those
Speaker 1: are big ones, and they were not happy, you know,
Speaker 1: acting very erratic. Um. So then as we come as
Speaker 1: we I'm fighting the fish, not let him get to
Speaker 1: the fish. Um. But then we get back up into
Speaker 1: the the top wafer where we can't see anything. And
Speaker 1: uh so that's where it gets a little scary. And
Speaker 1: what I see? What I We hear some yelling. We
Speaker 1: look over and I see two men and they look
Speaker 1: like wet coons treat hanging on to the oil rig.
Speaker 1: We're hollering. We're hollering for the boat to come over
Speaker 1: because we wanted we'd like to get out of the
Speaker 1: water at that point, I've got a bleeding fish. Brandon
Speaker 1: is up the ladder of the rig. I'm just in
Speaker 1: the water with my camera case I can't climb up
Speaker 1: to the ladder with my rig, screaming for you guys.
Speaker 1: And there was a little delay. I think there was
Speaker 1: a photo shoot going on on the other Definitely, we
Speaker 1: watched you guys know. I watched you guys are letting
Speaker 1: drivers into the water as we were yelling. There's a
Speaker 1: lot going on it once it's so yeah. Anyway, we
Speaker 1: were successfully recovered, but it was a pucker factory of
Speaker 1: nine point nine. That's one of the things that most
Speaker 1: surprised me about this, this whole thing of of being
Speaker 1: in salt water with sharks, is that it's not the
Speaker 1: presence of sharks that matters, but it's the demeanor of them,
Speaker 1: which is which is like very true of grizzy I'm
Speaker 1: totally used to that with grizzly bears. They're sort of like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's a grizzly bear mining its own business. It doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: That's a grizzy bear that's scared. And we know that.
Speaker 1: We know the shrimp boats the days before and dealt
Speaker 1: with hundreds and hundreds of sharks and nobody went crawling
Speaker 1: back into the boat. It takes a lot to spook me.
Speaker 1: Like when they when they act like that, that's another story. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean we're we were on the on the shrimp
Speaker 1: boats and we were getting within. I had a you know,
Speaker 1: a couple of bull sharks come within, you know, foot
Speaker 1: or two of me, and it's just one of those
Speaker 1: things of you. They're not aggressive though, they're just being
Speaker 1: inquisite even and I don't recommend, and we spend a
Speaker 1: lot of time with these things, so I mean, if
Speaker 1: you dump me in the woods, I would have no
Speaker 1: clue how to read a grizzly bear. But I have
Speaker 1: spent so much time in the water with a lot
Speaker 1: of different types of sharks that I have a pretty
Speaker 1: good idea what's going on with them. Um. And for instance,
Speaker 1: when I got in there the first day, I didn't
Speaker 1: know what I was doing, and I when the sharks
Speaker 1: came in, you guys are around me. But I'd start
Speaker 1: kicking a little more and like, because yeah, they feed
Speaker 1: off your energy if you're if you're fidgeting or kicking
Speaker 1: erratically or creating bubbles, and they were coming, lapping, coming
Speaker 1: checked me out where you guys are just calm, and
Speaker 1: shortly after you had told me, hey, it's time to
Speaker 1: get out of the water. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, there
Speaker 1: was there was one bowl that was getting a bit
Speaker 1: bit agitated. And yeah, it's one thing if you're if
Speaker 1: you're by yourself or you're within another person that's really
Speaker 1: experienced with sharks. But yeah, we have that many people
Speaker 1: in the water, you gotta just kind of call it
Speaker 1: safe and don't have to worry about it. There was
Speaker 1: a thing that also reminded me of Grizzly Bear, which is, uh,
Speaker 1: you and I were swimming back in the boat one
Speaker 1: time in a in a big bullshark came up behind
Speaker 1: you yep, and I was screaming and yelling to you,
Speaker 1: and then he left. And then he came up behind
Speaker 1: me and you literally pushed me out of the way
Speaker 1: and charged him. Yea there for me, like the kind
Speaker 1: almost like swam over me and ran at him and
Speaker 1: he took off. Yeah, and that's so you know, if
Speaker 1: they're not in a feeding mode there, you know, they're
Speaker 1: just cruising around looking at stuff and they don't you
Speaker 1: don't see people all that much out Aaron. It's one
Speaker 1: of those things of if you think of it this way,
Speaker 1: if you're kicking away from it, especially with like carbon
Speaker 1: fins and I'm you know, a spear gun and all
Speaker 1: that stuff there, you look pretty big. You look pretty big.
Speaker 1: But they're also like, what the heck are you? So
Speaker 1: if you're swimming away from him, they're just gonna like
Speaker 1: keep on going, Hey, what the heck is swimming away
Speaker 1: from me? And um, he wasn't being he was he
Speaker 1: was inquisitive. I wouldn't say he had any aggressive body
Speaker 1: like just like too close for comfort. And they get
Speaker 1: to a size where like if they beat you'd be
Speaker 1: a big deal. Oh, bull shark, If a bull shark
Speaker 1: lays into you're in trouble. Yeah no, those those aren't
Speaker 1: shark him to joke around with. So yeah, you gotta
Speaker 1: square up on him. And it's one of those things
Speaker 1: of last The last thing you know you can do
Speaker 1: is a is a bailout. As you have a spear gun,
Speaker 1: you can you can poke it away, which will generally
Speaker 1: get them to kind of go away, but sometimes it'll
Speaker 1: piss him off a little bit. But yeah, you gotta
Speaker 1: you gotta square up on him, let him know that
Speaker 1: you gotta think you're, you know, say, six ft tall
Speaker 1: with three ft long fins, you're nine ft long. You're
Speaker 1: pretty imposing. You just gotta kind of not show that
Speaker 1: you're trying to either flee or you're you're not scared
Speaker 1: of it. Yeah, Mike, you had a when we were
Speaker 1: watching the bull shark footage yesterday, you had an interesting
Speaker 1: observation about their caught You said, they're cautious. Yeah, sharks are.
Speaker 1: I think it was. I did a quiderloop pee trip
Speaker 1: to and did Great Whites and the sharks would never
Speaker 1: come in close. It took them a long time. They'd
Speaker 1: swim around, they'd swim under, and they'd watch us, moot,
Speaker 1: look this way, and then they sneak in because if
Speaker 1: they get hurt, they're gonna die. So if it's shark
Speaker 1: has an opportunity and it thinks that it's good, it's
Speaker 1: gonna take it. But otherwise I feel like they're they're
Speaker 1: pretty cautious and calculated. Yeah, it's an interesting observation, like
Speaker 1: if he gets messed up, he's dead. Yeah, they can't
Speaker 1: afford it. They can't afford to lose an eye or
Speaker 1: or something like that. Yeah, exactly, So they're not looking
Speaker 1: to be dumb, and they're old. I mean, big ones
Speaker 1: are old. They're they've been around, you know, they don't
Speaker 1: they got that way by not making dumb mistakes. Depends
Speaker 1: on you know, I don't know. The great whites are
Speaker 1: pretty long with well some of the greed like greenland
Speaker 1: sharks and stuff like that. They're extremely old. I think
Speaker 1: a great way I can be like thirty years old
Speaker 1: something like that. Do that research just to catch up
Speaker 1: the red wiggler. It's native to Europe. How about that?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, someone was looking here real quick. Uh. According
Speaker 1: to the Chesapeake Bay Program, I haven't heard of them before.
Speaker 1: Fourteen years for a bull shark is average life expectancy
Speaker 1: at short. They can live to be at least fourteen
Speaker 1: years old. They grew off all fast then now the
Speaker 1: oldest so the oldest known bullshark thirty two, average of
Speaker 1: sixteen years in the wild. It seems like a lot
Speaker 1: of things in the ocean life spans about thirty years.
Speaker 1: Bigger animals, Jester, it doesn't look good for your ass.
Speaker 1: Life expectancy of things in the ocean. I know. I
Speaker 1: see best thirty year less span too. I got two
Speaker 1: more years. What are the what are all the what
Speaker 1: are all the kind of sharks you see in this
Speaker 1: in this environment? And like like how would you describe
Speaker 1: like like sort of like ecosystem wise, you would say,
Speaker 1: we're I mean we're in the goal for at the
Speaker 1: mouth of the Mississippi, but in the salt water as
Speaker 1: far as what what type of sharks that we have here? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Like no, like where where did you say we're at?
Speaker 1: Right on a planetary sense, Louisiana Mississippi River delta, He's
Speaker 1: starting to a delta that turns into a full on
Speaker 1: ocean right the Mississippi motor how many miles and you
Speaker 1: hit the ledge. Well here around Venice were as close
Speaker 1: to the continental shelf as you can get in the
Speaker 1: Gulf of Mexico. Um, that's what makes our fishery well,
Speaker 1: that and the and the river delta so special, or
Speaker 1: our proximity to close to deep water and to the
Speaker 1: loop current. So um, we have shelf riggs and we've
Speaker 1: got all our near short rigs that are being fed
Speaker 1: by the by the alta. So you've got a lot
Speaker 1: of industryans coming out, a lot of bait which feeds
Speaker 1: the fishery. And then proximity to that thousand foot and
Speaker 1: then you're proximanty and you're very close proximity to that
Speaker 1: deep deep people water to that loop current that also
Speaker 1: then pushes the pelagics and things like that in. Is
Speaker 1: there a lot of like natural reefs or is it
Speaker 1: a lot of mud? Because of the delta in and
Speaker 1: stuff coming in? We have very little natural reef here.
Speaker 1: We have some more more to the west, but um
Speaker 1: mostly mud. And then we've got the oil rigs. So
Speaker 1: the oil rigs have or man made reefs. Basically I
Speaker 1: want to get into that. Do you want to get
Speaker 1: into that? Now? There are in the Gulf some estimate
Speaker 1: of five thousand oil ricks. I don't know for sure
Speaker 1: on the number, but that sounds that sounds turned up.
Speaker 1: I'm sure someone can tell you down to the down
Speaker 1: to the down to brass tacks. But at some point
Speaker 1: I'm sure that was was accurate. So around five thousand there. Uh.
Speaker 1: They became very popular. Like however one felt about offshore
Speaker 1: oil extraction in the Gulf and fossil fuels and all that,
Speaker 1: you can't get around. One fact is that the rigs
Speaker 1: created a lot of sea life, accessible sea life, accessible
Speaker 1: fisheries congregated around the rigs. So as riggs are as
Speaker 1: these all these five thousand rigs are being brought offline,
Speaker 1: taken out of production, as they've moved operations or whatever
Speaker 1: the hell. There's been a big question what to do
Speaker 1: with all these things, and they're enormously popular with fishermen.
Speaker 1: UM At a time, they had the rigs to reef
Speaker 1: program that came about in the eighties, and they they've
Speaker 1: done a bunch of things with riggs. So I'm gonna
Speaker 1: try to just based on my understanding from talking to
Speaker 1: you guys and others and reading UM they toyed with
Speaker 1: like trying to make them not a navigational hazard, so
Speaker 1: cutting them off what down sixty ft down? I think
Speaker 1: a little deeper than that. Typically, I think about seventy
Speaker 1: five ft is about about is below the water level,
Speaker 1: so that the biggest very even deeper, so the biggest
Speaker 1: vessel could pass over correct and not tag the top
Speaker 1: of the reef. So it's out of the way of
Speaker 1: shipping correct, but it's down there providing fish habitat. They've
Speaker 1: also messed with just uh many they can just tip over.
Speaker 1: It's in deep enough water where you tip the whole
Speaker 1: thing over at its base and they would dynamite them,
Speaker 1: and that creates a lot of controversy because that kills
Speaker 1: every damn thing on the rig. Yeah, they'd have these huge,
Speaker 1: just miles of fish just floating, which rather than cutting
Speaker 1: them off at the base, they would dynamite the basis
Speaker 1: and pull them over. They would. That was something in
Speaker 1: the past. They they've they've gotten rid of that, the blasting,
Speaker 1: and now they cut them off, they shear them off,
Speaker 1: cut them off whatever. And then during the Obama administration
Speaker 1: they started the Idle Iron I Iron Act, which was
Speaker 1: a push to just all together wholesale remove them and
Speaker 1: as your deck hand put it, when they're done, there's
Speaker 1: not even a beer can return to natural state on
Speaker 1: the bottom correct all hauled short, they'll run on like
Speaker 1: a heavy duty trawl over the area when they're done
Speaker 1: removing it. To make sure they got rid of absolutely everything,
Speaker 1: even subst They cutting it off subsurface all the way
Speaker 1: to the mud, if not below. And I think last
Speaker 1: year alone they removed like a couple of hundred rigs
Speaker 1: out of the Gulf. I think I heard our friend
Speaker 1: Ronnie and he's got a good friend who works in that,
Speaker 1: in that business of actually removing these. He said they
Speaker 1: were scheduled to take out another hundred and fifty this year. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've heard a hundred fifty to two hundred a year.
Speaker 1: There's boats out applying the waters called rig reapers, and
Speaker 1: they've been doing destroy. They've been doing that. They've been
Speaker 1: doing that in Texas for years. Texas, the landscape of
Speaker 1: the fishery has completely changed. They don't have many rigs
Speaker 1: over there anymore. Yeah, you'll pull up on I we
Speaker 1: pulled up on rigs that you had on your GPS
Speaker 1: to find that it was gone. It was like that
Speaker 1: scene in Star Wars and they go to that planet
Speaker 1: and ain't there anymore, remember that because the death started
Speaker 1: like blowing it up. They get there like it's gone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it happens fast, have its fast. I would be
Speaker 1: like I was fishing here a couple of weeks ago,
Speaker 1: because like it's gone. That's why. Just to put it
Speaker 1: into perspective. Two on the life around these, which I
Speaker 1: was so surprised at when I was I didn't have
Speaker 1: gloves on one day, and you can swim up to
Speaker 1: these and hang onto them and kind of rest. And
Speaker 1: I had my hand on these barnacles which are like yeah,
Speaker 1: anywhere from a penny to like a big silver dollar
Speaker 1: kind of size, maybe a lot of them, um. And
Speaker 1: they have holes inside of them, and I had my
Speaker 1: hands on there and I was like, I was like,
Speaker 1: what the heck is going on inside of one of them?
Speaker 1: I was getting bit by little fish. And Justin has
Speaker 1: a video where you can see like five of these
Speaker 1: little fish just sitting in those holes. So it's cool
Speaker 1: to put it into perspective. You can see the anywhere
Speaker 1: from the smallest little micro organisms. Then you know, it
Speaker 1: gets these small little fish attracts bigger fish to eat
Speaker 1: those fish. And it's just all the way up to
Speaker 1: bull sharks and goliath group er. It's just this whole ecosystem,
Speaker 1: which one is a reef, from the tiniest organism to
Speaker 1: the biggest. It's it's it's own ecosystem. The presence of
Speaker 1: presence of sharks is a healthy ecosystem. They're very healthy.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you if you were to see and
Speaker 1: you can go to a lot of places in the
Speaker 1: world and not see the life that's on these things,
Speaker 1: it's a very very healthy ecosystem. Um. And when they
Speaker 1: remove them, it's completely gone. But what is what is
Speaker 1: the main argument, do you guys know of why they
Speaker 1: want these out just to return it to a natural
Speaker 1: looking state. Um, I don't think you're going to get
Speaker 1: it clear. I think there's a lot of clear answer.
Speaker 1: I think there's a lot. I think there's a lot
Speaker 1: of theories. I think there's a lot of money behind it.
Speaker 1: I think there's a whole industry uh being fed by
Speaker 1: making millions off of removing these and the scrap value
Speaker 1: there's no way to scrap value paste. You're pulling those
Speaker 1: things out of the water, but the cost to pull them,
Speaker 1: they're also getting paid to pull them out of the
Speaker 1: water industry recycling. There was Lena, which was one of
Speaker 1: the very It was a deeper water rigs about thousand
Speaker 1: feet of water. It was removed a year and a
Speaker 1: half ago, two years ago, and I believe that the numbers.
Speaker 1: I saw that the cost to remove it was two
Speaker 1: billion dollars to remove it, and that only can they
Speaker 1: just took the top deck off and then they cut
Speaker 1: it at the base and teetered it over in a
Speaker 1: thousand feet of water. Two billion, So there's some there's
Speaker 1: some serious money. And yeah, but I don't but the
Speaker 1: people task with removing them are not driving the policy.
Speaker 1: I don't like. I'm roll rig. I think they should
Speaker 1: be left as habitat. I do too, And I put
Speaker 1: it look like I said, I told you my, I'll
Speaker 1: share with I'll share again, my my. My solution cut
Speaker 1: off whatever number fifty of them, study five percent of them,
Speaker 1: but then put them all in the pile somewhere else.
Speaker 1: So put cut three off and pile them on top
Speaker 1: of every fourth. Make it a reef. There's this This
Speaker 1: subject has been mind revisited, revisited over. I mean when
Speaker 1: when this started happening, um, and there was a lot
Speaker 1: of people that were very passionate about fighting against it,
Speaker 1: because you know, as you lose a rig that you've
Speaker 1: been diving for X amount of years and then it's gone,
Speaker 1: and you know how much life's on that rig. And
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people would would agree if
Speaker 1: if some of like you know, the environmental groups or
Speaker 1: you know, you know, people that are passion about conserving
Speaker 1: nature were to drive any of these things, they would go,
Speaker 1: why are we removing these things? But obviously there's there's
Speaker 1: something bigger at at hand here. It's not like the
Speaker 1: the diversit diverm are just passive about them being removed.
Speaker 1: There's been a lot of fighting and research and UM,
Speaker 1: it's not like they didn't try to put up resistence.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, and I don't want I don't want to
Speaker 1: seem like I'm under playing like anyone anyone's stake in
Speaker 1: the game or like how it's been approached. But I
Speaker 1: but I if I had to get in the mind
Speaker 1: of UM, like like get in the mind on the
Speaker 1: other side of it, it would be that this sort
Speaker 1: of ideal and like this idea and certain political circles
Speaker 1: that sort of like like that that mining drilling infrastructure
Speaker 1: is bad, and that when you come in and do
Speaker 1: an operation like a coal mine, oil drilling, whatever it is,
Speaker 1: that in the end you um, you do your remediation
Speaker 1: right right, you bring it back as close as you
Speaker 1: can to what it was before you did it, and
Speaker 1: that is driving sort of like the reduction of this.
Speaker 1: Then you probably have also like people can probably make
Speaker 1: a case that it's like human health hazard because as
Speaker 1: they decay, they can fall over, a bulk could hit them.
Speaker 1: So they got that and there weighing that and UM
Speaker 1: obstructions on the bottom of the ocean for current uses
Speaker 1: and later uses and so like in that's driving the
Speaker 1: conversation and that people who are looking to the fishery
Speaker 1: are being undervalued or their their input isn't being listened to. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there's a lot of things that play. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean you got it. You're looking at the oil industry, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, that is a massive animal, and it's one
Speaker 1: of those things of you know, you could be passionate
Speaker 1: about a recreational activity, but I mean at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, you're not gonna have the funds. It's
Speaker 1: it's a lot more than a recreational activity. I mean,
Speaker 1: you're talking about an entire Fishi's industry down and it's
Speaker 1: an history that's where as sport fishing, sports, sport fishing,
Speaker 1: charter fishing, the recreational side, the commercial fishery. You know,
Speaker 1: you remove all of these out of here, then it's
Speaker 1: gonna completely change that whole industry across the board. It's
Speaker 1: a little bit like an unintended consequence this thing. I
Speaker 1: don't think anyone probably maybe maybe maybe some biologist and
Speaker 1: maybe some biologists when they're putting all that stuff in,
Speaker 1: maybe some biologist is like, someday, this is gonna be
Speaker 1: a fish Mecca because of all of the reef habitat,
Speaker 1: you're creating a lot of the remediation you're talking about
Speaker 1: maybe when it comes to coal mines and things like that. Uh,
Speaker 1: this is different because the what has resulted has been
Speaker 1: what has been left from it is a positive. They've
Speaker 1: created something positive by building these They've created a new
Speaker 1: ecosystem that that is wonderful. That's different than like drilling
Speaker 1: a coal mine and then just leaving it as is.
Speaker 1: This is a positive. Yes, there is a naviga ational hazard.
Speaker 1: Are there ways that we could could go about, uh,
Speaker 1: fixing that and yet still maintaining that ecosystem. Well, I
Speaker 1: think electronics is taking care of that problem for you,
Speaker 1: I would think. So. I mean everything is on the map.
Speaker 1: Every you know, we run radar, everybody's got eyeballs. The
Speaker 1: type of ships that they were worried about hitting. These
Speaker 1: things have the electronics and the technology to avoid them.
Speaker 1: And there's giant horns on all these rigs. So I mean,
Speaker 1: it's one of those things that um no, it's it's
Speaker 1: trust me. It's the fight has been going on for
Speaker 1: a long time. It's just not gaining traction. How they're
Speaker 1: putting new rigs in because not really really were the
Speaker 1: only ones I see going in our deep waters. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you have some deep water ones are drilling new wells
Speaker 1: out there, because those drill ships that we were near
Speaker 1: are just basically idle. Those are sitting, Those are sitting
Speaker 1: idle right now. Those are waiting to be deployed. Huh.
Speaker 1: So the drill ships that are active are out in three,
Speaker 1: four or five thousand feet of water right now drilling
Speaker 1: new knew wells. And the big thing with these rigs
Speaker 1: is that, and you saw it. Not every rig is
Speaker 1: as good as you know. There are some rigs have
Speaker 1: been removed that we're um. I mean Lena. I was
Speaker 1: lucky enough to dive Lena and it was this massive
Speaker 1: structure that was absolutely amazing. It was right there on
Speaker 1: the shelf. It had coral, tropical fish, it had everything
Speaker 1: on it. It was it was amazing. Yeah, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I was lucky if I did. My friend Joe Wegman
Speaker 1: took me on a deep scuba diver there just to see.
Speaker 1: You know, as a free diver you touch the surface
Speaker 1: of it, and then when you do like a deep
Speaker 1: scuba dive on these things, it's it's just amazing. I
Speaker 1: mean the size of the amber jack, in the size
Speaker 1: of the red snapper and everything. It's just I mean
Speaker 1: it's from top to bottom life and the size of
Speaker 1: the tiger sharks from what I heard, very big tiger,
Speaker 1: very big on those big deep water riggs. Well they're
Speaker 1: they're around, but like on this the biggest tiger shark
Speaker 1: I've ever seen was off of Lena. I mean it
Speaker 1: was it was. It was like a scene out of
Speaker 1: Jaws of like just yeah, I did a triple take
Speaker 1: on it. So how many feet deep was that one? Uh?
Speaker 1: The rigs of and so you're saying, if you is
Speaker 1: that a thousand feet? But if you dive down a
Speaker 1: couple hundred feet you're still encountering more and more and
Speaker 1: more fish down that deep. So I think we did
Speaker 1: a we did a deep scuba to about two thirty
Speaker 1: and it, I mean it didn't didn't stop. Everything got
Speaker 1: bigger the deeper you went. I mean, this this amber
Speaker 1: jack had, I mean, it's just these huge jowls. It's
Speaker 1: the biggest hamber jack I think I've ever seen. It
Speaker 1: was just a monster. It was just I mean, it's
Speaker 1: all all out of reach for freedom. You're talking about
Speaker 1: like a hundred plus. Oh yeah, well well over with
Speaker 1: smaller ones behind it and red snapper and um grouper
Speaker 1: and I mean that's all real. Yeah, it's just amazing.
Speaker 1: Like you said, if you went somewhere and just did
Speaker 1: a reef dive that looked like these rigs look, I mean,
Speaker 1: it would be absolutely dry dropping. Um. Well, that's why
Speaker 1: I had asked Brandon. I'm like, why don't I see
Speaker 1: more Scooba operations around because this is like the ultimate
Speaker 1: place to scuba dive if you want to see fish.
Speaker 1: And then you brought up the liability issue. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: huge liability issue. And people, you know, people that are
Speaker 1: really experienced rig diving dive these riggs and have issues.
Speaker 1: So it's one of those things of the one of
Speaker 1: the issues you run into scuba diving. Um, you get
Speaker 1: hung up. Well, one depends on how deep you're diving.
Speaker 1: But um, a lot of people push it on these
Speaker 1: rigs and do deep scuba and don't you know, they
Speaker 1: get narcked out or they don't do proper decompression times. Um,
Speaker 1: it's the spear fishing side, the spear fishing, spear fishing side.
Speaker 1: You're you're in deep water, you know, you might be
Speaker 1: scuba diving a four it might be four feet to
Speaker 1: the to the bottom. You can easily lose track of
Speaker 1: how deep you are. And the water is so crystal clear, right,
Speaker 1: you saw some of it. It's just you can keep
Speaker 1: on going and I go shoot, you know, I'm a
Speaker 1: couple two hundred plus feet down. And then you got
Speaker 1: the variability of our water with that that dirty water
Speaker 1: on top. You know this, it doesn't necessarily attract your
Speaker 1: your average recreational scuba diver. And then the cross currents
Speaker 1: are in issue too. I mean there's people that get
Speaker 1: blown out of these things. Right, There'll be a top
Speaker 1: current going one way, they'll drop down and then they'll
Speaker 1: current will be going the other way, and then you know,
Speaker 1: say you're you shoot a fish or the some of
Speaker 1: these currents, Like we were lucky. These currents were pretty
Speaker 1: um calm when we were in there, but they get
Speaker 1: really going and you'll get blown out of the rig. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're doing a like a safety stop on a
Speaker 1: lay up on a scuba and you're let's say you're
Speaker 1: off the side of the rig, you could easily pop
Speaker 1: up a half a mile away. It's been we have
Speaker 1: the we have least free dive and scuba spear fishing
Speaker 1: rodeos every summer and it's just a couple of summers
Speaker 1: ago we had had a diver lost, fortunately was able
Speaker 1: to be recovered, but it was quite the mission. But
Speaker 1: he just came out too far from his boat. Yeah
Speaker 1: he I mean he came he was doing his safety
Speaker 1: stop and that cross current got him. Yes, So when
Speaker 1: you're doing these deep scoobas right, if you drop the
Speaker 1: two feet, you have to decompress at a certain point.
Speaker 1: So say you do a safety stop at fifty ft
Speaker 1: or thirty ft and the current is so strong that
Speaker 1: you get pushed off the out of the rig into
Speaker 1: the open water. Well, you have two choices either surface
Speaker 1: and get narced. You know, you have to go into
Speaker 1: the decompression chamber um or you know, continue on your
Speaker 1: safety stop and then pop up, which can be a
Speaker 1: long way. And the surface so the boat, the current
Speaker 1: at the surface may be different than what it was
Speaker 1: down and where that where that diver was at. So
Speaker 1: the boat is going to be looking down down current
Speaker 1: thinking that the diver is over here. Well he's not.
Speaker 1: He actually went that way. So that does create that
Speaker 1: creates a whole other hazard got it is it hard
Speaker 1: to hang out on the surface with those tanks. I
Speaker 1: guess you DIDs the tank, you wouldn't, wouldn't just think
Speaker 1: you'd blow your BC up and you just you could float.
Speaker 1: But but you yeah, I mean, who knows it's gonna
Speaker 1: be your You're pretty small out there in a big,
Speaker 1: big ocean. The other danger that I was never used
Speaker 1: to is having to ascend with my hand above my
Speaker 1: head because the water seems so clear. It's just like
Speaker 1: you can reference where you are, you can look up,
Speaker 1: but then that whole murky layer, you know, you could
Speaker 1: be running into different things, like you're saying, like offshoots
Speaker 1: of the rig, and that kind of was a nervous factor.
Speaker 1: Every time you're going up. You know, there's a swim away.
Speaker 1: There's been a lot of drivers that have been been
Speaker 1: killed that way, you know, hitting their head on the
Speaker 1: way up, like oh no, knocks you out and then
Speaker 1: knock you out and you sink. How much like like
Speaker 1: how much of a trade secret? How well can you
Speaker 1: basically describe the whole shrimp boat thing? Shrimp boat things?
Speaker 1: There is a thing called shrimp Yes, it's very well known.
Speaker 1: It's very well known. It's very well known. I can't
Speaker 1: talk too many details. You don't need to talk too
Speaker 1: many details. But like, but if you if you go
Speaker 1: behind a shrimp boat, there are fish behind them. Look
Speaker 1: around and why are those fish behind those shrimp boats.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of byecatch that these shrimp boats offloads
Speaker 1: a lot of shrimp heads because they had all the
Speaker 1: shrimp and all manner of everything else and everything. I
Speaker 1: think it's a There was a couple of turds coming
Speaker 1: out of the coming out of the out of the vessel,
Speaker 1: and then just like holy ship the fish, there was
Speaker 1: a lot of fish. We were blessed to find some
Speaker 1: some of those anchored up, moored up shrimp shrimp boats.
Speaker 1: I think they were taking the day off, probably just
Speaker 1: shrimping at night. And uh, I got a little bit
Speaker 1: of chumming. And if you go to the right one
Speaker 1: or can be fished, there can be fish more often
Speaker 1: than not. You gotta hunt around. It's not everything everyone,
Speaker 1: that's for sure. And I came down here with I
Speaker 1: mean I had you know, I'm not like I don't
Speaker 1: I sell him go to do something where I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm my goal. I wanted to get a kobe. Um.
Speaker 1: I wanted to get a kobe real bad. It's like
Speaker 1: a kind of a sort of almost one of my
Speaker 1: favorite fishes. Definitely one of my favorite fish. Made my
Speaker 1: favorite fish year. I missed one last year kind of
Speaker 1: like almost like ticked him a little bit. It made
Speaker 1: like a little noise. Yeah, I think I went down
Speaker 1: in the water and then like looked up and somehow,
Speaker 1: I don't know where he came from out of the
Speaker 1: like over my head, and I remember holding on the
Speaker 1: bottom of his throat like under his jaw and touched
Speaker 1: one off and like it made like a slight sound
Speaker 1: as it deflected off the side of his of himself,
Speaker 1: and I was tantalized. I was titilated, titilated, and uh,
Speaker 1: this year we jump in. I was like, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: at some point I'd like to get a kobea. You know,
Speaker 1: everything happens fast underwater. But I jumped in the water
Speaker 1: and all sudden, just like there is a kobea. They're
Speaker 1: inquisitive in my face. So like coming into hang out
Speaker 1: to do a pass by, noise bubbles, thrashing, came into
Speaker 1: a pass by, yep, and I got a kobe. But
Speaker 1: too quick, too easy. Was it too easy? To quick?
Speaker 1: And then I got another Kobe it was also too quick.
Speaker 1: I just think, I try again. I think what I
Speaker 1: want is I wanted. I wanted to dive down and
Speaker 1: have him come by a bunch of times and I
Speaker 1: dive down and you come by a bunch of times
Speaker 1: and I dive down and I'd get a shot. But
Speaker 1: it doesn't go like that. Calling man, the one you
Speaker 1: shot was a writer on when I had my second one,
Speaker 1: your second one. Yeah, I shot at Kobe. That was
Speaker 1: chasing Greg's shot KOBEA which happens and then I, uh,
Speaker 1: the first shot of Kobe, the chase you called me.
Speaker 1: The first Kobe shot just came from came blasting through.
Speaker 1: That was on a shrimp bout. Huh yep. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: was a big one too. It was a nice one.
Speaker 1: So I scratched that itch and and Rinella family lore, Uh,
Speaker 1: my mother. There's like old black and white photos where
Speaker 1: my mother, when she was a young woman, caught a
Speaker 1: big Kobe in Mississippi, and that's an often talked about things,
Speaker 1: probably because there was an old black and white photo
Speaker 1: of it. So it got like you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: it kept its has traction over the years. Is the
Speaker 1: Kobe case Missippi, the steve in front of the shrimp
Speaker 1: boat in a black and white you know, and put
Speaker 1: it in front there, So we tired Kobia. Red snapper
Speaker 1: management here is interesting. We targeted red snapper. Where last
Speaker 1: year when I was here, it was, if I'm wrong, Friday,
Speaker 1: Saturday Sunday. Friday Saturday Sunday is our recreational two per
Speaker 1: day sixteen inch minimum or eighteen. It was two per
Speaker 1: day last year. It went to three this year. It
Speaker 1: is so you can you can target red snapper Friday,
Speaker 1: Saturday Sunday, and on holiday weekends like Fourth of July,
Speaker 1: you also get the Monday or the Thursday. If it
Speaker 1: happened to let's follow on that holiday. So we targeted those.
Speaker 1: Mangrove snapper is much more liberal. Yeah, seven seven days
Speaker 1: a week, tena day, ten a day within your there
Speaker 1: is a cumulative aggregate. So you could have let's say
Speaker 1: three red snappers and seven mangroves. You can't have three
Speaker 1: reds and ten mangroves. Very similar to like water fowlers
Speaker 1: managed that way, we'll be like six ducks, not more
Speaker 1: of which, right, no no, no, no no no um
Speaker 1: and then we did. Then I can talk about the
Speaker 1: last thing we targeted. Yeah, of course I can. Sure.
Speaker 1: We targeted Triple Tale. We targeted Triple Tale, which sport
Speaker 1: rod and real people get a little touchy about because
Speaker 1: they want that to be just for them. That's okay.
Speaker 1: They didn't see the lily pads. We found them. No,
Speaker 1: it's not like a general spot. You just have to
Speaker 1: go find the spot, you know, much guarded a guarded secret.
Speaker 1: Triple Tale spots. We target trip Tail spots, and um,
Speaker 1: that's really something dirty water like so dirty. It's just
Speaker 1: you can how can I even describe? Like the best
Speaker 1: you can see is to kind of get like if
Speaker 1: you're looking up, if you're down at twenty looking up
Speaker 1: towards the sky, you see shadows. You see no fish detail,
Speaker 1: it's a shadow. Yeah, everything is just like anything you
Speaker 1: might see is like it's either mud or kind of
Speaker 1: a shadowy. It's very spooky around. It'd be like rummaging
Speaker 1: around in a dark closet with a really shitty flashlight.
Speaker 1: It's pretty and there's a guy there that wants to
Speaker 1: be in the head with something, and there's a guy somewhere,
Speaker 1: and there's a guy with holding your breast. Somewhere's the
Speaker 1: guy with the bat and the head and you gotta
Speaker 1: hold your bread some big bull sharks. Yeah, that's the
Speaker 1: guy with the bat. Yeah, that's you. Came on the
Speaker 1: boat and you're like that ain't for the fan of hire.
Speaker 1: It is really intimidating, really intimidating. Yeah. Yeah, I've I've
Speaker 1: taken a couple of close friends that have dove all
Speaker 1: over the place to do that, and they did one
Speaker 1: dive and they're like, nope, right back in the boat.
Speaker 1: I would have really, I would have dove down if
Speaker 1: someone wasn't saying it's possible. Out of dope downstaid like
Speaker 1: what's the point, You're like, absolutely cannot do it. You
Speaker 1: cannot do it. That's how we talk at And we
Speaker 1: find the lily pads in there right depth of water
Speaker 1: and they're right underneath them to push the large mouth
Speaker 1: out of the way so out of washing out washing
Speaker 1: out of the delta are uprooted, which like this there
Speaker 1: are massive place, which is true, big huge chunks of
Speaker 1: the lily pad, like huge chunks like like boat sides,
Speaker 1: and they're coming out of the delta and they get
Speaker 1: out into the muddy water to the delta and this
Speaker 1: attracts a lot of light weed lines. It's just like
Speaker 1: the mahi. It's like the sarcasm weed lines. Uh, it's
Speaker 1: just the near shore version of it that the ma
Speaker 1: he would be offshore, but these are You'll get the
Speaker 1: triple tail and small jackfish under the lily paths and
Speaker 1: they are in some mock the hair and dirty water.
Speaker 1: Very intimidating. Yes, sneaky. I didn't. I didn't even follow
Speaker 1: Steve at the camera because I'd just be bumping into
Speaker 1: him the whole time because I had to say so
Speaker 1: close to him, so he had to go with the
Speaker 1: go fro. Yeah, it making me nervous. We had to
Speaker 1: play a ride on my back, hang on your belt
Speaker 1: while we're explored around in the dark. That's good. That
Speaker 1: was awesome. Um, I don't really know because I don't know,
Speaker 1: but I mean this has to be uh, I mean,
Speaker 1: this has to be up there with the richest fisheries
Speaker 1: I've I think so, I mean I've been all over
Speaker 1: the world, you hear, like that that band around southeast
Speaker 1: Alaska is sort of the richest marine ecosystem on Earth,
Speaker 1: Like that latitude band in terms of just pounds of
Speaker 1: life the water supports when you get into plankton on
Speaker 1: up right, like like per unit of space pounds of
Speaker 1: life that it supports is high. And then some areas
Speaker 1: like you know, people might think of like Hawaii, like
Speaker 1: so many fish, right but Hawaii, like you have areas
Speaker 1: offshore in Hawaii which your regard it something is a desert.
Speaker 1: It's like something of a marine desert, massive, massive amounts
Speaker 1: of very deep water inhabited by very few fish right
Speaker 1: there there. And but they're they're like concentrated in slight places.
Speaker 1: And if you didn't know what you're doing, you could
Speaker 1: go along. You could spend a ton of time drifting
Speaker 1: along on the surface, staring down and not see ship.
Speaker 1: Like on the middle of the Pacific. Even though you
Speaker 1: think like, oh tropical, no one around, must be loads
Speaker 1: of fish. That doesn't necessarily mean there's loads of fish everywhere. Um,
Speaker 1: but here, man, it's incredible. The gulf is incredible. It
Speaker 1: so one of one of the kind. You know. That's
Speaker 1: why we're moving. The rings is such an issue because
Speaker 1: it's it's a special place and every time you come
Speaker 1: down here you need to enjoy it because the next
Speaker 1: time you come back that ring could be gone, and
Speaker 1: it's one of those things of it's you can come
Speaker 1: down here and take a lot of it, for granted,
Speaker 1: but it's one of those things of you know, some
Speaker 1: of the first rigs that I dove are now gone,
Speaker 1: and it's one of those things of yeah, you have
Speaker 1: to have to enjoy it while you're down there. Ronnie
Speaker 1: um Cajun. Ronnie, who's been on the show before, he
Speaker 1: described losing riggs as um. He said, it's like losing
Speaker 1: a friend. Yeah, it is to lose a good ring.
Speaker 1: I wonder what it was like here before the rigs,
Speaker 1: the historical data on it, like was there. I'm sure
Speaker 1: they're the same fish, but yeah, I think they were
Speaker 1: just obviously they there. We have a few few reef areas,
Speaker 1: so I would assume that they would be more congregated
Speaker 1: to those those small reef areas. Spotlar. I mean, I've
Speaker 1: seen some pictures going back to like the fifties of
Speaker 1: but mostly like tuna and things that they caught back then. Um,
Speaker 1: which that the rigs aren't necessarily that relevant to the
Speaker 1: tuna ficiary. Um. I mean they are to a certain
Speaker 1: extent now because it concentrates them. So we can go
Speaker 1: target them. But back in those days, I think maybe
Speaker 1: before the rigs, it was more of a trolling you know,
Speaker 1: you go out troll a rip things like that. Um,
Speaker 1: but now now we got now the rigs are what's
Speaker 1: attracting him. I just think that they hold debit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: at risk of beating the subject to death. I think
Speaker 1: you have to like whatever it was before. Let's say
Speaker 1: you could go back to day, you go back to
Speaker 1: n hundred and we had like some kind of baseline
Speaker 1: date about the fishery and d I don't know that
Speaker 1: that's coming Like that's not necessarily coming back, you know,
Speaker 1: like removing the riggs isn't gonna return that because of
Speaker 1: because of why, because of a thousand things. It could
Speaker 1: be better, Like yeah it might, it might be better
Speaker 1: now with the rigs. But if you look at like
Speaker 1: like someone even if someone did come and say like
Speaker 1: oh no, no, no, no, it was spectacular and the
Speaker 1: red the red the red Staffer fishery was amazing and
Speaker 1: nineteen hundred okay, but should changed its nine hundred. I mean,
Speaker 1: you have uh a lot of industrial pllutants that come
Speaker 1: down the river. You have habitat degradation in other ways,
Speaker 1: you have over over fishing and international waters. I don't know,
Speaker 1: no no, no, no, no no no no on so
Speaker 1: I don't know. Let's come back, but what is working
Speaker 1: right now? It's like, what's working right now? The guy
Speaker 1: the rigs yep. So it's like to to think that
Speaker 1: to chase something that you're you know, if someone said
Speaker 1: it was great a hundred years ago, it's like, there's
Speaker 1: no guarantee that that's where you're going. If you have
Speaker 1: a thing that's like a bright shining spot right now,
Speaker 1: hang on to what you have that's good. Totally tell
Speaker 1: you what's not working right now. Here is our shark problem.
Speaker 1: We have a serious shark problem on shore. You guys
Speaker 1: didn't see it. Where we're out of balance. It's way
Speaker 1: out of balance because there's absolutely no shark fishing beyond
Speaker 1: three miles, so like it's illegal, correct, there's no commercial
Speaker 1: shark there's no commercial shark fishing whatsoever. And it has
Speaker 1: gotten out of balance. Now we're we're dealing with certain
Speaker 1: areas where we you know, let's say you go tuna fishing,
Speaker 1: you hooked tantuna, you be lucky if you land one.
Speaker 1: All the other ones got eaten by sharks. It's I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's really a problem. They'm not saying that
Speaker 1: they need to call them, but but they need to
Speaker 1: ring some kind of balance to take a more localized
Speaker 1: approach to the management. Yeah, open some areas where they're
Speaker 1: doing great that. Yeah, that's what I was talking about.
Speaker 1: More local, localized management of it would be would be ideal.
Speaker 1: Florida is having the same problem. I mean, they're a
Speaker 1: shark a shark tournament in Florida this week because of
Speaker 1: the same same thing, and then they're getting a lot
Speaker 1: of blowback. There's a lot of people that I mean,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of people that have never even been
Speaker 1: in the water that because they watched Nagio, they have
Speaker 1: this opinion on sharks and they watched too much shark week.
Speaker 1: My instagram blew up yes last night because of the
Speaker 1: shark tournament Florida and all the shark up life following
Speaker 1: this is you know hard I love sharks, but you know,
Speaker 1: if there's an issue with too many sharks, then yeah,
Speaker 1: it's thank in California. I talked to me about just
Speaker 1: to studies, all the sharks, the great whites, uh, and
Speaker 1: he said that in recorded history there's never been so
Speaker 1: many sea lions on the California coast and there is
Speaker 1: now and the sea lions are an issue, and you
Speaker 1: know they're never gonna go or do anything to the
Speaker 1: sea lions. But like because they're furry, uh, people you
Speaker 1: know like them too much. Yeah, furry cares mad megafauna.
Speaker 1: It's got eyelash. No, if it's got eyelash in the
Speaker 1: water and blinks, people's imagine if it blinks. So Brandon
Speaker 1: tell people how to uh, even though they can't book
Speaker 1: a spearfishing trip. That's just your that's your recreational passion. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: you can get ahold of as far as you can
Speaker 1: get ahold of me gold. Yeah. Instagram, h Spiro Brando
Speaker 1: or Ecstatic sport Fishing either on on both of those
Speaker 1: or Brandon Hendrickson's sport fishing and spear fishing on on Facebook.
Speaker 1: I gotta warn you, know, you gotta be ready to
Speaker 1: be in a boat with a guy that wants to
Speaker 1: catch fish. Brandon Savage catch If you don't want to
Speaker 1: catch fish somewhere else, but I want to like be
Speaker 1: very focused on the capture of fish, I would go
Speaker 1: to this guy. Yeah, it's a great Brandon thinking it's fun,
Speaker 1: like like hanging out these great you'll learn a lot um.
Speaker 1: You're you're intense about your discipline, which I think when
Speaker 1: people are paying to go out somewhere, that's what they expect.
Speaker 1: And you produced. Look at how much I hope my fish. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we crushed it every day. We had three days of amazing,
Speaker 1: amazing weather, amazing diving. We had a good team of
Speaker 1: good divers. Two. But I imagine as a guide, like
Speaker 1: you'd expect to say that, like you're you're versatile, meaning
Speaker 1: like you're going off. You're obsessive about current information, not
Speaker 1: the way the water is flowing, which is part of
Speaker 1: current information. But you're interesting, like what's going on with
Speaker 1: the weather, what's going on with water temperature? Is water clarity?
Speaker 1: Be flexible, do right. There's a lot of that don't work,
Speaker 1: You do that. If that don't work, you do that.
Speaker 1: That don't work, you do that. Like there's a lot
Speaker 1: of things and stuff you need to be to be
Speaker 1: like good at fishing. Yeah, as your deck can put it.
Speaker 1: There's two kinds of people in this world. There's fishermen
Speaker 1: and those that wish they were. There might be a
Speaker 1: third out there. I think I met a couple, but
Speaker 1: does that cut bait and get chest or the chummer?
Speaker 1: All right? Thanks? And uh and uh, tell folks where
Speaker 1: to find you Greg, or where to find your product assortments. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's Rob Allen diving dot com. So anytime you look
Speaker 1: up prob balance, spear guns, something we'll pop up that
Speaker 1: has to do with me. And if you have a
Speaker 1: question about rab balan stuff, you're in, you're in. You're
Speaker 1: in the US of A. You'll probably want to talking
Speaker 1: to Greg. Yeah, if it's if it's into us, you'll
Speaker 1: end up talking to me um or my wife for
Speaker 1: one of one of the guys at the shop. And
Speaker 1: then if it gets fed to South Africa, it'll probably
Speaker 1: get something back to me. You'll probably get you'll talk
Speaker 1: to your email someone in South Africa. I want you
Speaker 1: want to be talk Greg anyway. And uh, Mike, you
Speaker 1: you imagine because you're a photographer and all that you're
Speaker 1: on social Yeah, rape photo and rape photo dot com.
Speaker 1: People are a A B E P H O. TA.
Speaker 1: You need a picture of something taking underwater? I'm your man.
Speaker 1: Mike's working on a cool white sea bass documentary. Yeah. Actually,
Speaker 1: at the end of this month, hopefully I'll be done
Speaker 1: filming and then on editing and hoping to have like
Speaker 1: a premier this winter December January, and they're not gonna
Speaker 1: submit the film festivals. You can call it all about
Speaker 1: White Sea Bass. So I'm gonna do uh, like a
Speaker 1: photo a contest on Instagram and see what people name
Speaker 1: people can give me in. The winner will get a print.
Speaker 1: I just haven't done yet, sweet because I don't know
Speaker 1: what's the name it a White Sea Bass documentary is
Speaker 1: the hardest part. It's like soup the knots on White
Speaker 1: Sea bass, right, Yeah, it would be like behaviors and
Speaker 1: then it will be a human impact the from the
Speaker 1: natives to gil netting to the recovery of White Sea
Speaker 1: Best natural history. They stopped gil nitting in ninety two,
Speaker 1: so it's been thirty years, so it's kind of cool.
Speaker 1: It's thirty years of life span and White Sea Best.
Speaker 1: We're kind of seeing what gil knitting, the stopping of
Speaker 1: guild ning, what it's done. Oh and the guildnetting decimated
Speaker 1: White Seabs and uh Johnson yep married to Kimmy warreners.
Speaker 1: So if you go look at Kimmy Warner stuff, it's
Speaker 1: mostly taking my Jobson. Yeah, you can find me at
Speaker 1: Kimmy Swimmy on Instagram. Uh no, but we uh we do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm on Instagram to Sanamatowski. But we have some exciting
Speaker 1: things coming out with Meat Eater coming out this fall.
Speaker 1: So working with my wife am Me on that and
Speaker 1: my son Buddy on that too, and so this fall
Speaker 1: there will be some cool episode series and videos and
Speaker 1: things like that. And then Chester to Dive Master. I'll
Speaker 1: be here still a muskie Chat. Muskie Chat Joe Tommy Edson.
Speaker 1: After he came in and did trivia and performed so well,
Speaker 1: the guys at work have dubbed him the blue collar Scholar.
Speaker 1: I love it. Did he change his at he went
Speaker 1: and secured the blue collar Scholar fork truck driver Trivia Master?
Speaker 1: I like it all right, Buddy, Thanks a lot