Speaker 1: This is the me Eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
Speaker 1: bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You
Speaker 1: can't predict anything presented by first light. Go farther, stay longer. Okay,
Speaker 1: Kimmy Werner, explain where we are. We are in Kailua
Speaker 1: kona um in a house after three wonderful consecutive days
Speaker 1: of free diving and spear fishing. Now, uh, help help.
Speaker 1: I'm assuming that listeners have that some listeners have the
Speaker 1: same confusion that I had. Is that break this down?
Speaker 1: If you say you're going to Hawaii and then people
Speaker 1: say island. All the islands have cool names except for
Speaker 1: the one island, and you're supposed to say the Big Island.
Speaker 1: And I was asking you, why does the Big Island
Speaker 1: not have like why did the Big Island be the
Speaker 1: Big Island? Why is it not a traditional name? And
Speaker 1: the Big Island does have about traditional name in the
Speaker 1: same way where there's Maui and Oahu and nat the
Speaker 1: Big Island is Hawaii Island, and so it's a really
Speaker 1: cool name, if not the coolest name. It's just gets
Speaker 1: confusing because the state is also called Hawaii, and so
Speaker 1: when you say you're going to Hawaii, it just needs
Speaker 1: more specification, and so it just goes by its nickname
Speaker 1: more commonly, which is the Big Island. Because all islands
Speaker 1: have their true Hawaiian name and then they have their
Speaker 1: English nickname. Maui is, the Valley Isle, is the garden Isle.
Speaker 1: But everyone just calls it by the Hawaiian names, except
Speaker 1: Hawaii Island. Um just gets called by its nickname, the
Speaker 1: Big Island. You know, what I've found was interesting talking
Speaker 1: in the last couple of days is the um the
Speaker 1: difference like the mix of one disgusting fish for instance,
Speaker 1: the mix of common English okay, like state side English
Speaker 1: fish names Hawaiian fish names, but then sometimes you refer
Speaker 1: to fish by the Japanese Japanese fish names. Yes, is that?
Speaker 1: How were you brought up with that mix? I feel
Speaker 1: like every local person connected to the ocean was brought
Speaker 1: up with that mix. And and that's just one of
Speaker 1: the cool things about Hawaii is just um, we have
Speaker 1: just such a history of immigrants from all over the
Speaker 1: world that kind of came together and formed this melting
Speaker 1: pot of a culture. And because the Japanese were, you know,
Speaker 1: really good at eating fish, and that was already part
Speaker 1: of the cuisine. Um, they ended up making a lot
Speaker 1: of the food that became popular here, and so a
Speaker 1: lot of the Hawaiian fish, Um, they will have English
Speaker 1: names in Hawaiian names, but a lot of people here
Speaker 1: do refer to certain ones that are popular in Japanese
Speaker 1: cuisine by the Japanese names. And that's all just because
Speaker 1: of the immigrant days, the plantation days, and what real
Speaker 1: quick like give the names for octopus? Like what what
Speaker 1: is the what's the is there a there's gonna be
Speaker 1: a Hawaiian name for octopus? Right? The Hawaiian name is he,
Speaker 1: and you will hear it more often um these days.
Speaker 1: And I feel like that's because there is an actual
Speaker 1: intention for a resurgence of just really trying to bring
Speaker 1: back the Hawaiian language. So these days people do try
Speaker 1: and be intentional if they're saying hey, um. But the
Speaker 1: much more common name that almost everyone calls it by
Speaker 1: is taco, which is Japanese tacuaco. It was a stressful situation, Alright.
Speaker 1: We're also joined by I don't know, justin you're Kimmy's husband,
Speaker 1: I don't know, did you guys, like I don't know
Speaker 1: what the whole name situation is a lot of people
Speaker 1: will call me Justin. I kept my last name, Kimmy
Speaker 1: kept her last name, and our son, Buddy Kimmy gave
Speaker 1: him my last name. So it's the Buddy now with Turkowski.
Speaker 1: Oh ye, good deal. Alright, you guys gotta chime in.
Speaker 1: We gotta cover off on some things we gotta say
Speaker 1: at Cinematowski. At Cinematowski on the Instagram, on the Instagram.
Speaker 1: That's on the Instagram. That's me on Instagram. See some
Speaker 1: impressive work. Yes, Okay, Hank. Now, if anything we talked
Speaker 1: about catches your interest, chime in and we're gonna get
Speaker 1: back to you, guys. Heavy Duty. We got talk first off,
Speaker 1: you Honest, not here because he's off in a in
Speaker 1: a not less tropical location. He's off filming, uh with
Speaker 1: Clay nucom for media or Hunts. Not Meeting Her Hunts.
Speaker 1: First episode of this season, hosted by Yanni No No,
Speaker 1: none other than Yanni Um, is out to watch on
Speaker 1: YouTube right now, So go check that out. Everybody turned
Speaker 1: out real heavy duty for y Honest before and they
Speaker 1: will do so again. So that's our latest series on YouTube,
Speaker 1: Meet Her Hunts. Um. Okay, we're gonna talk about wolves.
Speaker 1: For a minute, Kimmy, do you understand that wolves wolf management,
Speaker 1: wolves very divisive and the Rockies very divisive in the
Speaker 1: Upper Great Lakes. Yes, I have a devisive animal here
Speaker 1: in Hawaii, like our animal everybody likes to argue about,
Speaker 1: not as nothing as controversy as that. I wouldn't say, like,
Speaker 1: we definitely have you know, a lot of um animal
Speaker 1: lovers who just don't really want people killing animals, and
Speaker 1: there's controversy kind of over that. But I don't think
Speaker 1: we have any one particular well I can think of
Speaker 1: access here. You know, there's controversy because it's an invasive
Speaker 1: species and it really does detriment to the land, but
Speaker 1: a lot of the population really likes to eat them
Speaker 1: and hunt them, you know, but nothing like wolves. Wolves
Speaker 1: is pretty pretty big, and that's devisive, biflate, that's on
Speaker 1: the same side, we're like, oh cool, Like it's a
Speaker 1: problem to the environment, so us eating them and killing
Speaker 1: them help save the land a good deal, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a couple of interesting wolf bits in the news lately.
Speaker 1: The first one is kind of baffling to me. Um,
Speaker 1: I wasn't there, and I don't really know about how
Speaker 1: light these fellers got off. So a couple of guys
Speaker 1: um near Wisdom, Montana, had apparently had a permit two
Speaker 1: do kyote work of helicopters, So shooting shooting coyotes for depredation,
Speaker 1: livestock depredation out of helicopters, and they are mean to
Speaker 1: what we're seeing here. They mistook a couple of wolves
Speaker 1: for a couple of coyotes, shot him, then when and
Speaker 1: retreat him, retrieved him on a snow machine. Didn't self report.
Speaker 1: I get this tracking with your understanding. Cow didn't self report.
Speaker 1: A couple of game wardens go out to pay these
Speaker 1: guys a visit, and they have the wolves haven't turned
Speaker 1: him in Um. According to what's out so far, they
Speaker 1: didn't have landowner permission to hunt on that property. They
Speaker 1: did not have wolf hunting permits, they didn't have wolf tanks.
Speaker 1: They did not self report yet the fine, what would
Speaker 1: you get the fine flaunt up being a whopping fo
Speaker 1: bucks per person. No one had. I don't understand one
Speaker 1: had four and thirty five. They didn't four one four
Speaker 1: thirty five to the other. They didn't even They declined
Speaker 1: to say who the helicopter operator was. The warden quarter
Speaker 1: here was saying, had they told us the helicopter operator,
Speaker 1: we probably would have talked to them, But the suspects
Speaker 1: in this case wanted to leave them out of it. Normally,
Speaker 1: if you poach a gray wolf, there's there's like big
Speaker 1: game restitution in Montana, So if you poach an animal Montana,
Speaker 1: they'll look at like what the value of the animal was, right, so,
Speaker 1: and what restitution does? It makes it be that if
Speaker 1: you're poaching trophy class animals, it makes it that you
Speaker 1: could let's say you shoot a white tailed dough. You know,
Speaker 1: like your your family is hungry whatever, you shoot a
Speaker 1: white tailed doll in the summertime to eat it. Uh,
Speaker 1: the restitution end of that, it's gonna be way way
Speaker 1: smaller than you shoot a trophy class white tail. They're
Speaker 1: just gonna look at it different because the value to
Speaker 1: the states different. They paid no restitution. Normally, restitution on
Speaker 1: a gray wolf was a thousand bucks. No forfeiture of
Speaker 1: hunting privileges. They got breaks because they were rewarded for
Speaker 1: their cooperation. Yet they didn't self report baffling to me.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not I don't even know what I'm
Speaker 1: saying should have happened but I would just if you
Speaker 1: told me, if you laid out like someone had a
Speaker 1: helicopter permit to shoot Kyles, shot a wolf, didn't tell
Speaker 1: anybody got caught later, I would have been like, man,
Speaker 1: that is their ass. The baffling part is they've they
Speaker 1: said I believe they said that they didn't know they
Speaker 1: were wolves until the deed was already done. Um and
Speaker 1: then and and really at that point is where like
Speaker 1: the track record of of law breaking begins. So at
Speaker 1: that point they would be like, oh, I'm pretty sure
Speaker 1: those are wolves. They go out on their snow machine
Speaker 1: and go out and they go, oh, now we're on
Speaker 1: the ground proofing the fact that yes, these are wolves.
Speaker 1: At that that is the exact point at which they
Speaker 1: are supposed to call the game warden. You can't then
Speaker 1: retrieve them, take them back because that would really cast
Speaker 1: a lot of doubt on the fact that they misidentified
Speaker 1: a wolf for a coyos and the wardens were tipped off. Yes,
Speaker 1: their plan was the skin and they had no plan
Speaker 1: to even report it. But anytime you kill the wolf
Speaker 1: you have to report it. Yes, I mean, if you
Speaker 1: kill the wolf, legally you're supposed to report it. And
Speaker 1: I think this is just like a really weird gray
Speaker 1: area that that's not actually supposed to exist of what
Speaker 1: the social tolerance is. And and I know, for my
Speaker 1: personal experience of being in that valley, just just walking
Speaker 1: around being a new face in town, people are like, hey,
Speaker 1: do you you here to shoot wolves? You know? Um?
Speaker 1: And I then this is very tongue in cheek information,
Speaker 1: but I know it to be fact. The landowner I
Speaker 1: had no idea this was going on, but was fine
Speaker 1: with it. My only comment here is only that I
Speaker 1: would have said, man, that's gonna be their asses. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it you know. And and we've had some history in
Speaker 1: the state right where it's like, oh, I'm not sure
Speaker 1: if the law would have landed that way for me
Speaker 1: regarding wolves and the take of wolves. So when I
Speaker 1: went to read that article in the Montana Standard, I
Speaker 1: had to take a survey. Not what the survey was like,
Speaker 1: you have to like answer too, must you have to
Speaker 1: answer marketing question? To read the article I wanted to
Speaker 1: know of how likely are you to try to lose
Speaker 1: weight in the next seven days? I put down not likely,
Speaker 1: and then I was I was allowed access to read
Speaker 1: the article. Idaho speaking to speaking of wolves Idaho getting
Speaker 1: real explain all this cow alright, so on as as
Speaker 1: I read on the meat eator dot com on the
Speaker 1: gloves off taking the gloves off on wolf management. On
Speaker 1: Wednesday the fifth, the Governor of the State Idaho signed
Speaker 1: into law Bill twelve eleven, which is legislative action against
Speaker 1: wolves um And that's a big thing in the state
Speaker 1: of Idaho because the state of Idaho is supposed to
Speaker 1: have an independent fishing game and an independent Fishing Game Commission.
Speaker 1: Those commissioners can be and and typically are appointed by
Speaker 1: the governor of the state, but it's still considered independent
Speaker 1: of the general lawmaking of the state of that You
Speaker 1: get your appointment from the governor, but that doesn't mean
Speaker 1: you owe him your bidding. Correct. Same thing with you know,
Speaker 1: Supreme Court, right right, even though presidents get very annoyed
Speaker 1: when they're appointees, do not do their bidding exactly exactly
Speaker 1: and work very very hard to make sure if they
Speaker 1: have the appoint the ability to make an appointee, they're
Speaker 1: they're damn sure gonna make make it happen. Underneath. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm not supposed to say this, but you do understand
Speaker 1: exactly right, but so like your fishing game Commission is
Speaker 1: supposed to be balanced of UM, you know, some folks
Speaker 1: that understand the interests of the state. UM. So it's
Speaker 1: supposed to be representative of let's say, agriculture, recreation, hunting,
Speaker 1: and outfitting for sure, outfitting, yeah, bird walk. You know,
Speaker 1: it's supposed to be like a good mix right of
Speaker 1: of what the state interests are. UM. Anyway, so for
Speaker 1: the first time in the state of Idaho, we have
Speaker 1: legislative overreach, if you will. UM that says, you know, basically,
Speaker 1: this is how we're going to handle a big game animal,
Speaker 1: which is what the wolf is considered to be in
Speaker 1: the state of Idaho, a big game animal. It's also
Speaker 1: considered to be a big game animal in the state
Speaker 1: of Montana. And the reason for that is this wasn't
Speaker 1: an independent decision. In order to get state management of
Speaker 1: the wolf and get that animal off the endangered species list,
Speaker 1: the state's made an agreement to say we're going to
Speaker 1: manage this animal this way. They came out with UH
Speaker 1: management plan that was agreed upon, and then that's how
Speaker 1: states got the ability to manage the wolf UH and
Speaker 1: hunters got to be able to hunt the wolf and
Speaker 1: trappers gotta be able to trap the wolf. That was
Speaker 1: an interesting thing if you look back to that decision
Speaker 1: how you're going to manage It was interesting because when
Speaker 1: they were first talking about the delistening thing in states
Speaker 1: where need the states needed to come forward to say, Okay,
Speaker 1: if if we're gonna remove federal management of wolves, states
Speaker 1: need to have management planning proposals. And I remember Wyoming
Speaker 1: was an examsistent that they were going to manage wolves
Speaker 1: is a big game animal in a certain core area
Speaker 1: in the northwest corner of the state. But they wanted
Speaker 1: to basically take like a coyote style like they want
Speaker 1: to do like like coyote management the rest of the state.
Speaker 1: And I remember that was amazing. They stuck to their
Speaker 1: guns and got there. But initially I thought, man, you're crazy,
Speaker 1: Like why not just do what Montana and Idaho were
Speaker 1: doing and just do big game animal get the whole
Speaker 1: thing over with. But they toughed it out and got
Speaker 1: through and have like a management plan that's decidedly different
Speaker 1: in that state, and and that is core to this bill, right,
Speaker 1: the difference between a big game animal and environment. So
Speaker 1: a big game animal, wolves, big horn sheep, elk, deer,
Speaker 1: they're managed a certain way. Vermints which would be coyotes, skunks, raccoons,
Speaker 1: they're managed a certain way to where. Um, your big
Speaker 1: game animals have seasons, they have tags, they have harvest
Speaker 1: reports typically uh, and your environments are managed much more
Speaker 1: loosely to where they are UH an opportunity animal of
Speaker 1: opportunity if you if you will, UM, there's much more
Speaker 1: leeway on how an individual chooses to manage that animal
Speaker 1: when they come across it. So typically choose symbolmatic of
Speaker 1: like a low amount of public desire to yes, right,
Speaker 1: there's not there's not a big demand on the resources, correct, yeah, um.
Speaker 1: And so Idaho has the wolf listed as big game animal,
Speaker 1: which means tags are required and there's a harvest report
Speaker 1: and involved. What this legislation does is um says, yes,
Speaker 1: it's a big game animal, you are going to have
Speaker 1: to purchase a tag. But the means of take, the
Speaker 1: legal means of take, will be of that of the coyote.
Speaker 1: So it's going to be legal to pursue this animal
Speaker 1: in all the ways that you can legally pursue a coyote.
Speaker 1: So it's a much more broader means of take, but
Speaker 1: you still have to have the tag, you still have
Speaker 1: to commit to your harvest report. YEA. For instance, you
Speaker 1: can't run an elt down on a snow machine, but
Speaker 1: you can run and a coyote down on a snow machine.
Speaker 1: You can't use thermal vision thermal night vision to hunt
Speaker 1: an elk, but you can for a coyote, right, And
Speaker 1: so that's that's how these means of take are are
Speaker 1: being broadened. It says here that in Idaho, like in
Speaker 1: two thousand twenty, there was only eighty four confirmed wolf
Speaker 1: kills on cattle. Yeah, very small percentage when you're thinking
Speaker 1: of in the three year average, it's wolf kills per
Speaker 1: year um, which is like very very small, like point
Speaker 1: zero zero four. What's interesting is all these means of
Speaker 1: take that you uh can use to pursue coyotes, we're
Speaker 1: actually legal under depredation circumstances. If you had a depredation
Speaker 1: incident regarding wolves and you went through the proper channels,
Speaker 1: you could hunt wolves using thermal vision night vision, you
Speaker 1: could uh, you know, you could be very aggressive as
Speaker 1: if you were not hunting a big game in a
Speaker 1: case on a case by case basis, on a case
Speaker 1: by case basis. Same with those guys were just talking
Speaker 1: about they were able to they had permits or you know,
Speaker 1: according to them I think, and maybe they did, I
Speaker 1: don't know, had permits to aerial gun for coyotes. Exactly right,
Speaker 1: not just anybody can be like, you know what, let's
Speaker 1: run a helicopter this weekend, right, Um. So that that's
Speaker 1: another great example. So there's all these things where it's like, well,
Speaker 1: how did we get to this point of saying, well,
Speaker 1: we have to take legislative action to provide for these things,
Speaker 1: many of which are already provided for in the state's
Speaker 1: Predator Management Plan, of which wolves have a dual role
Speaker 1: of being a big game animal and a predator. Right.
Speaker 1: Um chets point of how much livestock depredation there actually
Speaker 1: is for how many animals are out there is very
Speaker 1: very low. What Um is hard to consider is the
Speaker 1: stress factor of livestock on ground where where wolves are
Speaker 1: just heavy predator numbers are where you could potentially have
Speaker 1: animals stressed to where they're not putting on the amount
Speaker 1: of weight that you would expect them to over a
Speaker 1: typical amount of time on a typical pasture because you
Speaker 1: get run ragged because they're getting run ragged. Um. You
Speaker 1: could also have so you could have lighter animals, right
Speaker 1: you know, weight means cash in the bank for livestock person.
Speaker 1: Or you could even have some instances where you are
Speaker 1: not getting the calf recruitment or lamb recruitment um that
Speaker 1: you typically would, so you have to um have way
Speaker 1: more rams or bowls in with your cows for a
Speaker 1: lot longer than you typically do. Um. You know, so
Speaker 1: it just it adds up to more expense for these producers.
Speaker 1: And a lot of this is being pointed towards wolves.
Speaker 1: That that's an interesting counterpoint because when I was looking
Speaker 1: at the egg well als looking at different states like
Speaker 1: the number of cows actually killed by wolves or sheep
Speaker 1: killed by wolves, the numbers are low. Oh then you
Speaker 1: go to people you're like, well one those are confirmed
Speaker 1: and a lot of guys that turn out livestock to
Speaker 1: run um, they don't see it for months on end.
Speaker 1: So you you go back and round everything up which
Speaker 1: has been out of your site for many months, and
Speaker 1: you get numbers to come back. There's there's an enormous
Speaker 1: like there's a question mark leaning what they'll happened to him?
Speaker 1: You don't go out there and it's like you get
Speaker 1: a mortality signal on a tracking collar and go out
Speaker 1: there and confirm every one. So those are like confirmed
Speaker 1: cases and they have to be confirmed to be compensated.
Speaker 1: So if you put three hundred out in two ninety,
Speaker 1: come back and you have no idea what the hell
Speaker 1: happened to the other ten, you then don't go down
Speaker 1: and get your money from the middle. The Wolf Mitigation
Speaker 1: program correct you. You have to bring out your BLM
Speaker 1: officer or US Fishing Wildlife person take come check out
Speaker 1: that kill site, determine if it actually is a kill site.
Speaker 1: And I'll tell you right now, there's a million ways
Speaker 1: a sheep likes to die. Growing up in my family,
Speaker 1: we saw it all the time, and that's what we
Speaker 1: just kind of chock it up to. It was like, boy,
Speaker 1: sheep just love to die, right, And then like the idea,
Speaker 1: but to go out with that though, the idea of
Speaker 1: like stress induced abortion of of fetuses, and then we're
Speaker 1: just the refusal to take yeah weight than the weight reduction.
Speaker 1: What it does is allows people to point and say, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't lose that many that I know about. But
Speaker 1: wolves are costing me a lot of money exactly, yep.
Speaker 1: And then it kind of leaves a little bit of lingering.
Speaker 1: It's kind of proved me wrong, right right, And and
Speaker 1: you know, I think with most cases, like there's there's
Speaker 1: a there's some truth there. I'm sure like in in
Speaker 1: certain areas there's some truth. Um, there's there's a meet
Speaker 1: in the middle type of situation. Um. What's interesting though,
Speaker 1: and I would certainly point the fact that, Um, what's
Speaker 1: interesting to me is like, why is this being taken
Speaker 1: care of legislatively? When you look at the numbers of
Speaker 1: how Idaho Fishing Game has managed as an independent fishing
Speaker 1: game has managed wolves. Um. There. So if you look
Speaker 1: at it that when the very first season in Idaho
Speaker 1: you were allowed to hunt wolves, I believe you could
Speaker 1: have five tags. There was no trapping season, and it
Speaker 1: was confined to a very small area. As the wolf
Speaker 1: population grew, there were more hunting tags and then trapping seasons.
Speaker 1: The area of take also expanded. Two. Now currently in
Speaker 1: the state of Idaho you can hunt wolves almost and
Speaker 1: this is before this legislation goes into effect, which I
Speaker 1: think is going to be Junior July. Um, you can
Speaker 1: hunt wolves three and sixty five days a year or
Speaker 1: trap wolves almost three sixty five days a year in
Speaker 1: all game management units throughout the entire state. That's already
Speaker 1: the case. That's already the case. You can get fifteen
Speaker 1: hunting tags fifteen trapping tags. You're hunting tags can be
Speaker 1: used for trapping as long as that season is open
Speaker 1: to hunting at the time of take. And and you know,
Speaker 1: to be clear that the trapping side of things is
Speaker 1: just a much more effective means of taking wolves. Um.
Speaker 1: And So you're seeing the state agency respond to the
Speaker 1: growth of wolves um and I think the biggest sticking
Speaker 1: point is, like, what we're seeing is a social tolerance
Speaker 1: that is being been exceeded with a very large, an
Speaker 1: influential group in the state of Idaho. We're saying, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Speaker 1: When the state Wildlife Management Plan four Wolves started, it
Speaker 1: was a hundred and fifty wolves on the landscape. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it was funny about that number. Is that number
Speaker 1: at that time was unsettling to some people. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: that's way too many. The estimated wolf population in state
Speaker 1: Idaho now is hundred wolves, right, And like wildlife management
Speaker 1: is just not an exact science, Like everybody loves numbers,
Speaker 1: but they can't wrap their head around the fact that
Speaker 1: it's like counting anything wild is very hard to do. Like,
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of wild chickens around this house. Like
Speaker 1: take a ballpark estimate of how many birds there are
Speaker 1: at six? How'd you come up with that? He was like, well,
Speaker 1: the first day, well I saw one softore. Yeah. Right,
Speaker 1: but uh, the state Idaho has a bunch of camera
Speaker 1: traps out there. They do aerial surveys. Um, there's as
Speaker 1: few as let's say, nine hundred, there's as many as
Speaker 1: two thousand, and in the middle there's the number. I
Speaker 1: think that I don't think that anyone imagined when they
Speaker 1: delisted wolves. Um, I don't think anyone imagined how ineffective
Speaker 1: human hunters would prove to be. I think they I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't think that the idea was that you would
Speaker 1: like manipulate this dial and turn that up and down.
Speaker 1: But it's like they've opened it wide up. I don't
Speaker 1: know if it's a lack of motivation. I'm part of
Speaker 1: the public. I think a lot of people buy the tags, like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'll run into one. I think the wolves have gotten
Speaker 1: very smart. They avoid people and those numbers just grow
Speaker 1: and grow and grow. And I think that people when
Speaker 1: when they started these hunting seasons, they're supposed to be
Speaker 1: the end of wolves. Oh yeah. In the headlines, right,
Speaker 1: it was like, the hunters are going to kill mall right.
Speaker 1: But and and I think you're wrong in the fact
Speaker 1: that there were plenty of folks that have similar interest.
Speaker 1: A lot of the people in this room do a
Speaker 1: lot of reading, and we're well versed on all the
Speaker 1: old trapper and mountain man books and stuff, and it's like,
Speaker 1: if you read those things, the way we got rid
Speaker 1: of wolves was pumping a bunch of carcasses full of
Speaker 1: strick nine, and whatever ate on them died, right, And
Speaker 1: a lot of what ate on those carcasses were wolves.
Speaker 1: And we did that everywhere the book I'm reading right now,
Speaker 1: I keep talking about I want to do a full
Speaker 1: report on Alaska's wolf man. When he was doing wolf work,
Speaker 1: he would go into an area where there was like
Speaker 1: a caribou herd that was getting too much predation on it,
Speaker 1: and any patch of high ground around he would shoot
Speaker 1: a caribou, lace its carcass with strick nine and then
Speaker 1: use also a little balls of fat that he would
Speaker 1: also poison and scare at them all around, and that
Speaker 1: was his methodology. Yeah, the plinking away at him, it
Speaker 1: was wholesale like, and asked him to how effective that was.
Speaker 1: He was working your cotsoby one time poisoning wolves and
Speaker 1: a guy reported that he saw a group of nine wolves.
Speaker 1: It was like two black wolves and seven gray ones
Speaker 1: calm off the sea ice and he's like, oh, it's interesting.
Speaker 1: A couple days later, goes to check one of his
Speaker 1: bait stations. There's all nine of them, two black ones
Speaker 1: and seven gray phase laying around his bait station. Very effective,
Speaker 1: very effective, And I don't in any way think that
Speaker 1: we need to return to that. But that was it
Speaker 1: wasn't shooting at him. Doesn't say what else he's killing.
Speaker 1: He well, there's a picture of him doing a grip
Speaker 1: and grin with a wolverine that turned up as one
Speaker 1: of his bait stations, So I bet you can only imagine.
Speaker 1: So basically, the legislation here, which which is going to
Speaker 1: become law in in junior July UM provides for a
Speaker 1: lot of things that we're provided for with the intended
Speaker 1: purpose of mitigating live scott livestock damage. UM now it's
Speaker 1: up to the state agency to you to figure out
Speaker 1: how to implement this program that that's been handed to them.
Speaker 1: And the scary thing to me, and this is I'm
Speaker 1: not like trying to fearmonger here is uh before you
Speaker 1: get into the scary part in the bill. The frustration
Speaker 1: is that from the state legislator, it's that the frustrations
Speaker 1: that effishent game isn't doing enough. Yes, but if you
Speaker 1: look at the numbers despite all the things you laid
Speaker 1: out that they're doing, Like but but that's the criticism,
Speaker 1: Like if you won't do your job, I'll do it
Speaker 1: for you, right, And it's a lack of patience, right
Speaker 1: and and and really, yes, thank you for keeping me
Speaker 1: on track, Like that's the problem wildlife management. Right. It
Speaker 1: takes a lot of time because what they're doing is
Speaker 1: they're making incremental adjustments to a growing population and they're
Speaker 1: trying to figure out like the magic number for wolves
Speaker 1: is forty. You have to remove fort of a population
Speaker 1: in an area. There's only one study that backs this up,
Speaker 1: but that number is forty. If you can remove fort
Speaker 1: of the population, you'll see a decline, a gradual decline
Speaker 1: overall in the wolf population come in. That's surprising to me.
Speaker 1: And that's a lot of animals, right fort of a
Speaker 1: total and overall population is a shipload. If you did
Speaker 1: that too, if you did that to a population of
Speaker 1: mountain goats, they'd never recover. Oh no, no, So but
Speaker 1: last year, the state of Idaho, under the current regulations,
Speaker 1: removed over thirty of the population of the overall population
Speaker 1: of wolves in the state of Idaho, which if you
Speaker 1: put that in the context of big game animals, of
Speaker 1: which it's classified like, you'd be turning some freaking heads
Speaker 1: if you were removed of the white tail population someplace, right. Um,
Speaker 1: But that's not an apples to apples. So um. The
Speaker 1: scary thing here is here is a social response two,
Speaker 1: a scientific management situation that says, what, by god, if
Speaker 1: you're not gonna do something, we're gonna do something. I
Speaker 1: have very very very serious doubts that the legislation is
Speaker 1: going to result in some magical sixty percent reduction of
Speaker 1: the total overall wolf population in the state. And what
Speaker 1: happens when that happens, is there going to be another
Speaker 1: shoot from the hip social legislative response that says, Okay,
Speaker 1: then we do need to start poisoning on public land.
Speaker 1: You can poison through uh you know, uh certified agencies
Speaker 1: on private land currently. But you know, you take the
Speaker 1: state Idaho. You got hundred wolves in the entire state
Speaker 1: of Idaho. Dead center in the state is this impassable
Speaker 1: chunk of ground that connects with Hall's Canyon, um the
Speaker 1: frank Church Wilderness, which is two point four million acres.
Speaker 1: Do the math on fred wolves covering two point four
Speaker 1: million acres. Right, it's no big surprise that people aren't
Speaker 1: running into wolves left, right and center. Right. You can
Speaker 1: run into a lot of wolf tracks, but actually putting
Speaker 1: eyes on one is tough. Um Like, we're not. I
Speaker 1: just don't think we're gonna get to some astounding amount
Speaker 1: of wolves with this legislative tool that all of a
Speaker 1: sudden got pulled out of the toolbox. And what happens
Speaker 1: when that reality sets in? Are we then going to
Speaker 1: see this slippery slope which is the analogy we love
Speaker 1: to use in the hunting world of more managing wildlife
Speaker 1: through legislation. The headlines around this would tell you that
Speaker 1: it's gonna be very effective. Writers. I had a whole
Speaker 1: lawmakers pass bill to kill most of state's wolf population,
Speaker 1: it's like, yeah, I don't think so, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I mean the we know some things are effective, right,
Speaker 1: we know trapping is effective, but effective trappers the overall
Speaker 1: trapping population is very low. The very effective trappers within
Speaker 1: that population is very very low. And I mean it's
Speaker 1: a full time job through through the hunting reports, you know,
Speaker 1: because it's a big game animal. You gotta report your
Speaker 1: heart of best in the state of Idaho. UM, there's
Speaker 1: been one trapper who's filled his twenty tags, and that
Speaker 1: that was from last two two thousand nineteen season, I believe,
Speaker 1: where you were limited to ten hunting tags ten trapping tags.
Speaker 1: Talk to that guy, Oh, I would love to too.
Speaker 1: If you're listening, please right in. We'll give you a
Speaker 1: hat or something, because that's an amazing feats. Would love
Speaker 1: just to get a little bit of intel from that
Speaker 1: guy about what he goes about doing. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: guarantee it's not like, oh, well one weekend I went out.
Speaker 1: What's their end goal with that? Just to like the
Speaker 1: people that want the wolves gone gone? I mean, if
Speaker 1: you think about eight in two thousand and twenty, going
Speaker 1: back to that, there's a D two confer cattle that's
Speaker 1: pretty good in my opinion, but it's those other unforeseen things.
Speaker 1: And then there's also there's also sort of like proxy stuff, right, Like,
Speaker 1: there's an enormous amount of like it's it's not even
Speaker 1: a debatable fact that it has ramifications for big game hunting,
Speaker 1: right But if a hunter says, hey, my problem with
Speaker 1: having what I would call too many wolves is it
Speaker 1: lowers the get the pool of animals out there for
Speaker 1: people who want to hunt, because the people looking and
Speaker 1: be like, well, that's an illegitimate argument. So I think
Speaker 1: it's in a little wait, there's sort of like taking
Speaker 1: a thing that has some level of public sympathy, which
Speaker 1: would be a livestock producers ability to stand business, right like,
Speaker 1: that seems important. And you take all of these different
Speaker 1: anxieties about wolves, whether they come from people who have
Speaker 1: what I would argue to be very ill founded concerns
Speaker 1: about human welfare, legitimate concerns about wild game populations, legitimate
Speaker 1: concerns about cattle shoes, and you kind of put it
Speaker 1: into a place that seems like the best way you're
Speaker 1: gonna win um for hunters to say, like, I want
Speaker 1: there to be a lot more elk around because I
Speaker 1: like to shoot at them. People like are very unsympathetic,
Speaker 1: even though that to me seems like an extremely rational argument,
Speaker 1: people are very unsympathetic to that. And from the Clearwater
Speaker 1: North all the way, which is essentially the Panhandle, Idaho,
Speaker 1: if you look at it as a as a handle
Speaker 1: with frame pan on the end um from the Clearwater
Speaker 1: North there there's unmistage, Like there's no doubt there's been
Speaker 1: a reduction in elk numbers in those zones. But that's
Speaker 1: also where the bulk of the authorized wolf depredation like
Speaker 1: aerial gunning, has gone on. And that's that's where like
Speaker 1: the big the hammer, sledge hammer sized tools and the
Speaker 1: tool kit are coming out to reduce those those wolf
Speaker 1: numbers in those zones. There's also the issue if you're
Speaker 1: still running around with from the mid nineties when they
Speaker 1: began to do reroductions, people had to put numbers out there,
Speaker 1: and you're you're at zero, right, You're at like effectively
Speaker 1: zero wolves. So people say, what does success look like
Speaker 1: to you? And they threw out some numbers that now
Speaker 1: seemed like astonishingly low, but they were. They threw out
Speaker 1: numbers that people could agree with. They're like oh, let's
Speaker 1: say hundred fifty, you know, like low asked numbers, and
Speaker 1: then people are like, wow, I guess if it's only
Speaker 1: a hundred fifty, I can get on board with that, right,
Speaker 1: I won't resist that as much. And then time goes
Speaker 1: on and they have es a predict protection. You hit
Speaker 1: one fifty, and then the states say, okay, we're there,
Speaker 1: We're gonna go back to state management, and then people
Speaker 1: use lawsuits to block those management plans for twenty years,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, the one fifty we were
Speaker 1: talking about is one thousand, five hundred, and people get
Speaker 1: real used to that number. So then this number that
Speaker 1: everybody agreed on one fifty, some of the proposals we
Speaker 1: go back to one fifty. And how are you treated
Speaker 1: in the media. You want to kill nine of the
Speaker 1: wolves and I don't know, I didn't come up with
Speaker 1: the number. You guys came up with the number even
Speaker 1: even in this discussion. Right, what we're looking at is
Speaker 1: this vacuum where it's the number of elk versus the
Speaker 1: number of wolves, and all the other factors aren't being
Speaker 1: taken into account. Right, So from the Clearwater North, that's
Speaker 1: like the Densest thickest pine forest in the state Idaho,
Speaker 1: which at the time of Lewis and Clark, they were like,
Speaker 1: you know, the natives around there, the Nez Perce were like, oh,
Speaker 1: there's no food up there, Like you're you're gonna starve
Speaker 1: in the mountains. Right then, we had major catastrophic fires
Speaker 1: um the big burn era right that ripped through there,
Speaker 1: along with heavy timber management, like heavy timber management with
Speaker 1: which opened up a ton of country. There were elk
Speaker 1: re reintroductions going on, so we you had fresh growth,
Speaker 1: rehab growth in that area and then constant timber production,
Speaker 1: more big burns in the thirties, constant timber production. It
Speaker 1: was much more. It was a much better place to
Speaker 1: be as an elk during that time. That very well
Speaker 1: could have been the heyday of elk in that region,
Speaker 1: and it very well could be this real terrible meet
Speaker 1: in the middle situation of less timber management. Some of
Speaker 1: that has to do with with um the lawsuit type
Speaker 1: of situation around timber harvest, and we haven't had big
Speaker 1: burns and you got wolves that are just really freaking
Speaker 1: hard to get on in in big, dark, dark timber,
Speaker 1: and that area grows really big bowls and really big
Speaker 1: bucks because they're really hard to get on in big
Speaker 1: dark timber two. Um. But you know, I was talking
Speaker 1: with a buddy of mine and he's like, and I'm
Speaker 1: not making fun of this guy in any way, but
Speaker 1: he just said, he's like, my family has been hunting
Speaker 1: in the exact same spot, killing elk for thirty five
Speaker 1: years and we haven't seen I haven't seen an elk
Speaker 1: in uh, you know, ten years or something like that.
Speaker 1: And it's it's hard to say, but it's like the
Speaker 1: only thing that hasn't changed in that scenario is the
Speaker 1: fact that you guys put your camp in the exact
Speaker 1: same spot. Everything else has changed, forest management practices, everything
Speaker 1: has changed. Like it's just it's not you don't live
Speaker 1: in a vacuum, and it's it's so hard to contextualize
Speaker 1: all that stuff. Now I'm really done. No, that's great.
Speaker 1: Here's the interesting one. This this is like one of
Speaker 1: those things. Uh, this is one of those pieces of
Speaker 1: reporting where someone does something kind of crazy, has no
Speaker 1: chance of passing, but it still makes the news everywhere.
Speaker 1: In Oregon. There's a bill, Um what's it called. It's
Speaker 1: called the It's an initiative called the Abuse Neglect and
Speaker 1: Assault Exemption Modification Improvement Act, which would make it in Oregon.
Speaker 1: This is a bill put out there. An animal could
Speaker 1: only be injured in cases of a human self defense.
Speaker 1: A veterinarian could still spay and neuter household pets, but
Speaker 1: you would not be able to make it illegal to
Speaker 1: kill livestock. Um. It would be illegal to force and pregnant,
Speaker 1: force impregnation on livestock, and would ban meat production in
Speaker 1: the state of Oregon. That's like an interesting, very aggressive approach,
Speaker 1: but again it's almost like not worth even reporting. Actually
Speaker 1: will never go anywhere, but it's interesting the sexual mutilation
Speaker 1: aspect of it. Uh, Chester instead of bitcoin? Yep, you
Speaker 1: know what you should have invested in? Well, everyone's saying
Speaker 1: doge coin for us? Off Hollos Bitcoin, the Continuing Adventures
Speaker 1: of Chester the investor. Come that's it come off? Um,
Speaker 1: It's it's just kind of up and down and up
Speaker 1: and nah, it's not petered out. It's just I think
Speaker 1: it's still smart to dabble in it. Well, we had
Speaker 1: our when we had our meat, did you buy a
Speaker 1: meatcrafter knife or did you get one for free? When
Speaker 1: we came out with our bench bade meatcrafter. I would
Speaker 1: have loved one, though listen, there was there's a limited number.
Speaker 1: They're all gone. They were sold for three hundred bucks apiece.
Speaker 1: A guy has put one up on eBay. He got,
Speaker 1: uh thirty seven bids. The bidding on that knife closed
Speaker 1: at one thousand, two five dollars plus twenty dollars shipping
Speaker 1: and handling. Thirty seven bids. Knife now going for one
Speaker 1: thousand two bucks. You got any more of those laying around?
Speaker 1: I just I just asked Casey how many we got,
Speaker 1: because we're gonna start our meat Eator auction house of oddities.
Speaker 1: And at first I didn't think that that because it's
Speaker 1: an auction, it's for conservation spending. We're auction off weird
Speaker 1: ship cool stuff. Like the first thing is Buck Bold,
Speaker 1: a birch bowl, a buckey bowl by Buck Bowing, all
Speaker 1: kinds of stuff. We gotta bring home something from this trip.
Speaker 1: Um and now we can put our own knives in there.
Speaker 1: And now that they're like collectors, I can't believe that.
Speaker 1: That's amazing. Uh, the suvied thing, even though I promise
Speaker 1: not to talk about anymore. Um, that's still interesting though.
Speaker 1: So the whole with everybody who listens is aware of this.
Speaker 1: The conversation about the guy that warmed his birthing his
Speaker 1: wife's birthing pool with a Suvie wand a pastor just
Speaker 1: wrote in he's always struggled with getting his baptismal well,
Speaker 1: what do they call it? Just calls it the baptismal
Speaker 1: three gallon Galvini I stock tank for baptizing people. He's
Speaker 1: always struggled with watertown got himself Suvie. This keeps a
Speaker 1: very comfortable temperature, but then pulls the wand out when
Speaker 1: he has the baptism, when he has to baptize somebody.
Speaker 1: This reminds me of do you remember when we were
Speaker 1: all sitting there freezing our butts off in the ripping
Speaker 1: wind on a super icy lake this winter. We're talking
Speaker 1: about methods keeping the ice hole from your generator in
Speaker 1: the Suvie one. We run a shipload of su VI's
Speaker 1: out there. So this guy right here, genuine pastor doing
Speaker 1: baptisms and Suvie heated water. He even send a picture. Uh, Kimmy,
Speaker 1: this I want you to win on this one. We've
Speaker 1: been had. We were having a debate recently about how
Speaker 1: why snap and turtles don't seem to want to bite
Speaker 1: you underwater, but as soon as you lift him out,
Speaker 1: they want to bite you. The guy was saying, this
Speaker 1: is this is apropo. Guy wrote, and I was in
Speaker 1: Hawaii a few years back. We decided to do a
Speaker 1: guided storkling trip. He says. His family is very scared
Speaker 1: of the ocean, so they were overloading the guide with
Speaker 1: questions about what all will bite you. They got to
Speaker 1: question about getting bit by sharks, They questioned about getting
Speaker 1: stung by urchins, and then one of his cousins says,
Speaker 1: do the sea turtles ever bite? The guide laughed, acted
Speaker 1: like it was the dumbest question he'd ever heard. Says
Speaker 1: he's been diving for forty years. I never seen anyone
Speaker 1: bit by a sea turtle. The guy goes on to say,
Speaker 1: I shoot you not. Those were the last words that
Speaker 1: beach Bump said before hopping in the water and immediately
Speaker 1: having a full grown, three pound piste off mama sea
Speaker 1: turtle latch onto his stomach. Do you buy that? I do.
Speaker 1: I know someone who got bit by a turtle. My
Speaker 1: friend Angela's a spear fisher in Um. A turtle just
Speaker 1: came up to her and bitter right on the butt
Speaker 1: and they through the wet suit bolke skin, but still
Speaker 1: love bite. But yeah, why do you think they're they
Speaker 1: would bite? I honestly think that because that turtle was
Speaker 1: kind of known, like it was in this place where
Speaker 1: we'd go a lot for blue water diving for oos
Speaker 1: and stuff. But in that type of diving you have
Speaker 1: chum and and and turtles will eatum, they will eat octopus,
Speaker 1: will eat all kinds of things if if they're fed it.
Speaker 1: And so I think a lot of times people have
Speaker 1: kind of got to know that turtle and maybe we're
Speaker 1: feeding it, And so I think it was just kind
Speaker 1: of a hay feed me thing. And so that story
Speaker 1: that you just told, I bet if they're taking tourists
Speaker 1: snarkling there, you know, there could be someone feeding the turtle.
Speaker 1: And I think that when they become like pets, they
Speaker 1: want to ask for a snack and they don't have
Speaker 1: any other way to ask. So as I've had one
Speaker 1: bite my fin before ye diving and scared the ship
Speaker 1: out of me, I didn't know what it was. And
Speaker 1: there's a curiosity bite, I think more and anything. It
Speaker 1: wasn't aggressive, and it's also pulling on your friend. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just real rightly though. Uh, this is interesting from Nature's
Speaker 1: metal there day the sex changing tongue eating ocean house.
Speaker 1: You know about this cow, Yeah, it looks like that.
Speaker 1: A little alien. There's a bug. It's not a bug,
Speaker 1: there's an ocean house lays eggs on a ficious gills.
Speaker 1: They like snappers. His his Linarian name is Simon thoah
Speaker 1: x Agua Xegua. I don't know they live inside uh
Speaker 1: so that this picture is out of South Africa. Their
Speaker 1: offspringer born in the ocean. A group of attached themselves
Speaker 1: inside the gills of a fish. They like to target snappers.
Speaker 1: Once they're tapped, one individual from the group will become
Speaker 1: a female, a proto Andriddick hermaphrodite. She grows larger, so
Speaker 1: one of them decides to become female. That one girls
Speaker 1: big moves onto the tongue of the fish, clamps onto
Speaker 1: the fish's tongue, feeds off its blood, eventually cuts off
Speaker 1: the blood supply to the tongue. The tongue atrophies and
Speaker 1: falls off. Then the parasite assumes the responsibilities of the
Speaker 1: tongue and lives there as a tongue permanently. Everybody else
Speaker 1: stays a male, and they all are. It's sort of
Speaker 1: like bivy of mates hanging out on the gills. Boys,
Speaker 1: it's like the females. It's her little harem of males
Speaker 1: stuck to the gill. The great picture. Oh here's the
Speaker 1: one last thing that caught my attention. I'm on the
Speaker 1: I get emails, and I used to I've tried to
Speaker 1: not I've tried, like subscribe it. You can't unsubscribe, and
Speaker 1: Non'm glad I didn't unsubscribe, even though I've tried a
Speaker 1: couple of times. From the Wildlife Conservation Society, they came
Speaker 1: out with like they're sort of like rolling with the
Speaker 1: social distancing thing, you know, and they're saying and they
Speaker 1: came out with this research about how we need the
Speaker 1: social or throwing out there that we should social distance
Speaker 1: from animals better. And it looks at non consumptive recreation
Speaker 1: and the impacts of non consumptive recreation on animals. And
Speaker 1: they're putting out distances at which your presence screws with
Speaker 1: wildlife waiting burns and song birds hundred nine yards hawks
Speaker 1: and eagles. You should stay four thirty seven yards away
Speaker 1: from them mammal threshold distances a thousand yards for large
Speaker 1: on that's like moose, you should stay fifty four yards
Speaker 1: away from small rodents. Well there's a get go. Just
Speaker 1: caught him off right here. Well, you're way too close
Speaker 1: to his ask is eighteen inches. It's from from a
Speaker 1: gecko fighting. That was an ambitious you should make a
Speaker 1: little video that sweet meal. We've we've had qualified captain
Speaker 1: and Nature is Metal in two days. Well I caught
Speaker 1: it right there while we're talking about how you shouldn't
Speaker 1: get so close to critters. But point being, that's a
Speaker 1: really ambitious ask. Like, I don't know what people are
Speaker 1: gonna do with those numbers. Boy, people in parks national
Speaker 1: for us getting them to read a sign I think
Speaker 1: is uh thousand yards from moves fifty yards from a chipmunk.
Speaker 1: It's a real hard Yeah, I can't picture just getting
Speaker 1: much traction be real good for folks in the laser
Speaker 1: range laser range finder industry that need to carry range
Speaker 1: finder with you. I think what this report will do
Speaker 1: is it I think that it will. It won't like
Speaker 1: it would be horrifying to see this enacted by law,
Speaker 1: but I think it does make people asked people to
Speaker 1: be aware of what their presence asked people to be
Speaker 1: aware of what their presence around animals do. But when
Speaker 1: I see an animal, I always want to go over
Speaker 1: there and check it out. Oh yeah, I very rarely
Speaker 1: moved by the desire to get farther away. And YouTube
Speaker 1: is full of people like you. It's like, I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's worst thing would be that you're worrying wildlife. It's
Speaker 1: the way I would sell as You're just going up
Speaker 1: there to have a look. Look look at that. Let's
Speaker 1: go and have a look. It's just my instinct, man.
Speaker 1: So seeing this felt like I felt really singled out.
Speaker 1: Fifty four yards from a chipmunk. My mom's head right
Speaker 1: now as she sleeps is about three inches from a chipmunk. Chipmunk.
Speaker 1: Then on the other side of the brick. All right,
Speaker 1: Kimmy and Johnson, give yourself, give you guys a better,
Speaker 1: more thorough introduction. Now Red Talk Shop, Red Talk Hawaii
Speaker 1: introduced myself. Both of you like give you like what
Speaker 1: your stick is, what's your spe you know your spiel?
Speaker 1: These are all Yiddish terms. I think, like what your
Speaker 1: deal is. I'm Kimmy Werner and I was born and
Speaker 1: raised here in Hawaii, Maui and grew up kind of
Speaker 1: tagging along with my dad when he would go spear fishing.
Speaker 1: And now I'm a spear fisher woman myself, and this
Speaker 1: is my husband justin. How did you guys meet spear fishing? No,
Speaker 1: I met on a gig. I got hired from Minnesota
Speaker 1: to come to Hawaii to be a production assistant, and
Speaker 1: Kimmy was the talent on the show. And we worked
Speaker 1: together for a while. And once work was done, we
Speaker 1: um hung out. Yeah, yeah, we did the wind up
Speaker 1: being that did that? How was that received by the
Speaker 1: rest of the production team? Well? Good, Actually we waited
Speaker 1: until it was kind of over, you know, just for
Speaker 1: the sake of well, nothing happened on production. You guys
Speaker 1: took a shine to each other. I just stared at
Speaker 1: him a lot and and and then after production wrapped,
Speaker 1: like we did some filming here and then we went
Speaker 1: to Mexico and then after production wrapped. Um, then we
Speaker 1: started talking and then I invited him to Hawaii. About him,
Speaker 1: I liked that he was really nice and that he
Speaker 1: worked really hard because it was um kind of a
Speaker 1: ship show of a production, like it was really bad,
Speaker 1: and and there was a lot of tempers and stress
Speaker 1: and egos and all kinds of stuff that you just
Speaker 1: really it wasn't a good feeling production a lot of times.
Speaker 1: And and Justin who had just taken a gig. He's
Speaker 1: he was a cinematographer for snowboarding and bow hunting, but
Speaker 1: he just took a gig as a p a just
Speaker 1: because he wanted to come to Hawaii. And so he
Speaker 1: was kind of working so hard rookie circles around a
Speaker 1: lot of people, and I just noticed that he was
Speaker 1: just always kind to everyone, and in the midst of
Speaker 1: all that stress, it was just like something I could
Speaker 1: tune into to not get irritated. And he had nice eyes,
Speaker 1: would you like, I remember just watching her goal pro.
Speaker 1: I mean she was very kind to everyone, of course,
Speaker 1: and she cooked very well, which is really great, but
Speaker 1: most of your kindness. But then I remember being blown
Speaker 1: away on one of our trips, like I'm so new
Speaker 1: at this point to the ocean. And when we were
Speaker 1: in Mexico, she was wearing a goal pro and she
Speaker 1: shot an ahi, And first of all, I didn't even
Speaker 1: know you could like shoot fish underwater, which spear fishing.
Speaker 1: I didn't even know what it really because it's still
Speaker 1: hanging from a tree. If you do that in Minnesota
Speaker 1: pretty much. Yeah, now I hear about shooting Walleye and
Speaker 1: then really um Montana, but so I remember watching that
Speaker 1: and I just thought like, holy sh it, this is
Speaker 1: the most badass thing I've really ever seen, you know,
Speaker 1: and her just like being able to do that in
Speaker 1: control and then learning more of out her. But then um,
Speaker 1: once we were able to just spend time with each
Speaker 1: other when she brought me, like I had like four
Speaker 1: days off in between hunts. She brought me to uh Maui,
Speaker 1: where we ended up getting married like eight years later,
Speaker 1: and she came over from a different island, and she
Speaker 1: brought venison, lobster and minpaci, which you guys learned about um.
Speaker 1: And then we fell in love and it was It's
Speaker 1: the same type of lifestyle that I grew up on,
Speaker 1: except for in Hawaii. You know, I was really attracted
Speaker 1: to lakes and wilderness and hunting, and she was everything
Speaker 1: about that, um, but in Hawaii, which was so foreign
Speaker 1: to me. So now being here eight years, I felt
Speaker 1: like a kid again, learning the ocean and learning a
Speaker 1: whole new hunting tactic of of spear fishing, you know,
Speaker 1: learning the oceans, learning how to free dive and things
Speaker 1: like that. So she really has changed my life in
Speaker 1: such a great way. And it was kind of neat because, um,
Speaker 1: when after our four day first date, you know, when
Speaker 1: we did fall in love and um, Justin, it was
Speaker 1: kind of an interesting situation and because we wanted to
Speaker 1: be together, I wanted to be in Hawaii, and so
Speaker 1: Justin was trying to figure out how to get here.
Speaker 1: But he was a snowboarding cinematographer and so it's not
Speaker 1: like the easiest career to keep living in Hawaii and um,
Speaker 1: and so it's just really neat that somehow I was
Speaker 1: able to take this Minnesota boy and just like train
Speaker 1: them to dive, and it ended up being the coolest
Speaker 1: thing to like mold this person from scratch to be
Speaker 1: this underwater cameraman who had no bad habits at all,
Speaker 1: and I could really just like teach him like where
Speaker 1: to lay, how to how I hunt, And it ended
Speaker 1: up just being really cool a good way to um
Speaker 1: bring us together first of all. But now that we
Speaker 1: still do that today, it's just it's pretty fun. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you guys worked together like a very fine tuned machine,
Speaker 1: but you know what each other is thinking. Yeah, without
Speaker 1: And that's one thing. In water, you can't really communicate
Speaker 1: right unless you stick your head up, and then you're
Speaker 1: burning energy yelling or talking. You're trying to get that
Speaker 1: person's attention. So it's just all like the more instinct
Speaker 1: you can be, the better, because there are so many
Speaker 1: times when I wanted to say things to to you
Speaker 1: and to cow in the water, and I just like
Speaker 1: I wish it was like hunting on land when when
Speaker 1: someone's helping me, they're always whispering in my ear, and
Speaker 1: that there's so how many times I want it's like
Speaker 1: whisper in your ear, But I can't because you can't
Speaker 1: talk underwater. And if I take my head out of
Speaker 1: the water to talk to you gotta take your head
Speaker 1: of the water. At anytime your head's out of the water,
Speaker 1: it's not good because you're taking yourself out of that world.
Speaker 1: You're taking your eyes off that fish. And so it's
Speaker 1: it's really um a difficult place to communicate with words.
Speaker 1: And so the more you learn to just watch somebody's
Speaker 1: body language and understand what they're thinking and what they're doing,
Speaker 1: the more seamless. You become like a pack. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: watching you do is very apparent, like it's it's I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's fun to see like the level of i
Speaker 1: mean communication and and just like flow that that's possible.
Speaker 1: You know what when you were what was your earliest
Speaker 1: exposure to the ocean. My dad says I was four.
Speaker 1: I remember it when I was five. But around four
Speaker 1: or five, my dad um started letting me take along
Speaker 1: with him to do what to go spear fishing. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't spear fish, but my dad, um, that's how he
Speaker 1: put food on the table. My parents didn't really have
Speaker 1: a lot of money, and that's like literally how he
Speaker 1: fed us was to go spear fishing and um. And
Speaker 1: he always just says it's because when my mom was
Speaker 1: working as a waitress, he couldn't afford a babysitter, so
Speaker 1: he just started bringing me along. And at first he
Speaker 1: would just told me on a bookieboard, but I'd always
Speaker 1: want off the boogieboard. I don't want to see everything.
Speaker 1: So then my job was just to keep up, and
Speaker 1: so all I would do is swim on the surface.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't help much, you know, I just tell him
Speaker 1: what I wanted for dinner and watch him go down
Speaker 1: and get it for me. But that was my earliest introduction.
Speaker 1: Were your parents married, They were married? Yeah, And then
Speaker 1: how far back he married was your was your father
Speaker 1: and mother both born in Hawaii. My mom was born
Speaker 1: in Hawaii. My dad was born in New Mexico. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he came here and took to just eating out
Speaker 1: of the ocean. Yeah. He um, he was. Um. He
Speaker 1: went to Vietnam and when he got out he kind
Speaker 1: of didn't know what to do with himself. And he
Speaker 1: moved to Hawaii in his early twenties and he was
Speaker 1: taken in by this wonderful Hawaiian family. Um, we'll see
Speaker 1: a combat veteran. He was in the Air Force and
Speaker 1: um he was actually um um more of a mechanic
Speaker 1: in the Air Force. But um, but yeah, he got
Speaker 1: taken in by this beautiful, wonderful Hawaiian family who they
Speaker 1: just taught him. Um. It was a the grandma of
Speaker 1: the family that um that kind of got him into
Speaker 1: spear fishing. When so, when you were little, did you
Speaker 1: do you remember at because you gotta exposed to it
Speaker 1: at four years old sometime around then, did you do
Speaker 1: you remember ever registering fear of the ocean or did
Speaker 1: did you miss did you skip that step? Oh? No?
Speaker 1: I um. Everything about it was scary, like we would
Speaker 1: have to you know. We would pull up at these
Speaker 1: big tall cliffs and my mom would drop off. Sometimes
Speaker 1: my mom would drop off my dad and I and
Speaker 1: then he'd have to put me on his back and
Speaker 1: we hiked down these cliffs and we jump off these
Speaker 1: rocks and then we'd be in like crazy blue water
Speaker 1: that you couldn't touch and you couldn't see, and we
Speaker 1: would drift the coast down to another bay where my
Speaker 1: mom would pick us up. And so a lot of
Speaker 1: that was intimidating to me. And my dad would just
Speaker 1: like he would just play these like tricks on me
Speaker 1: that he would It's true, but he would always like
Speaker 1: look at me as soon as we pulled up and
Speaker 1: he knew I was scared. He would always just be like, wow, Cam,
Speaker 1: aren't you aren't you relieved? We just survived the most
Speaker 1: dangerous part of our day, the car ride, Like, let's go,
Speaker 1: it's all downhill from here. And he'd always like say
Speaker 1: stuff like that to kind of train me to think
Speaker 1: about things differently. And and yeah, and sometimes I would
Speaker 1: get in the water and I get distracted. I'd see
Speaker 1: a beautiful turtle or something, and then I wasn't doing
Speaker 1: my job of keeping up, and I would look up
Speaker 1: and there he'd be, nowhere in sight, and I would
Speaker 1: just be alone in the blue. And that was really
Speaker 1: scary for me. But I'd have to like look at
Speaker 1: the edge of my visibility, like just to see the
Speaker 1: bubbles left by his fins and just keep swimming that way. Um.
Speaker 1: But you know, I think it was just because I
Speaker 1: was so young, and I just my dad was like
Speaker 1: my Superman in my in my eyes, you know, he
Speaker 1: could in my eyes, he could do anything, especially at
Speaker 1: that age, Like he was just my hero. And so
Speaker 1: as long as I knew that I could see those
Speaker 1: bubbles from his fins, as long as I knew that
Speaker 1: I could see a silhouette, as long as I knew
Speaker 1: he was anywhere around me, I just felt like, um,
Speaker 1: nothing bad could happen. So I think that helped me
Speaker 1: overcome that fear, and he would always just really drive
Speaker 1: it into me to relax. UM. But those days didn't
Speaker 1: last forever because my parents did start making money very
Speaker 1: shortly after that. Um, they saved up money to put
Speaker 1: my mom into a community college when I was five
Speaker 1: as well. She was fourty years old, first time going
Speaker 1: to college. Um, two years later graduated, got a job
Speaker 1: as an emergency room nurse, and my dad's company also
Speaker 1: started taking off his construction company, and so then we
Speaker 1: made money. They worked all the time, and we lived.
Speaker 1: We moved out of the shock in nature. We stopped
Speaker 1: getting our food from the ocean. We got it from
Speaker 1: grocery stores and restaurants, and that kind of all ended.
Speaker 1: And so I didn't actually take up spear fishing until
Speaker 1: I was twenty four years old. And the fears I
Speaker 1: had to face as an adult, um rhein during the
Speaker 1: ocean trying to get dinner, they were they were definitely
Speaker 1: so you you didn't spearfish at all for all those years. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it almost felt like I felt like I was really
Speaker 1: lucky to have experienced that. But it's not something that
Speaker 1: everyone does, you know, and um, it's definitely not something
Speaker 1: that girls did. And and so I pretty much just
Speaker 1: grew up like knowing that that was a passion of mine,
Speaker 1: knowing that like I had comfort and skills in the
Speaker 1: water every once in a while, like you know, every
Speaker 1: time I got in the water, I try to go
Speaker 1: and hold my breath and do stuff. But we just
Speaker 1: didn't do it as often. And um, did you do
Speaker 1: the other kids stuff in that age? Like that's like
Speaker 1: the prime social age, right, like were you doing basketball
Speaker 1: or organized sports for for school where you're surfing with
Speaker 1: folks or yeah, I like playing in the ways and
Speaker 1: going bodyboard earting, I was on the swim team, Um,
Speaker 1: all these things that you know, we're never quite as
Speaker 1: exciting as that first thing I did canoe paddling competitively. Um,
Speaker 1: but those were always my favorite memories. And my dad
Speaker 1: and I would still go fishing bottom fishing for fun
Speaker 1: and catch fish that way, but we just we didn't
Speaker 1: spend as much time going diving in the way that
Speaker 1: he used to when he would use that to feed us.
Speaker 1: And and so yeah, it wasn't until later in life
Speaker 1: when I just realized, like, you know, that's not just
Speaker 1: this nostalgic memory. It's like it's not something because I
Speaker 1: would look up the word nostalgia because I felt like
Speaker 1: I was suffering from it because I really missed those days.
Speaker 1: And it remember it said like longing for something that
Speaker 1: no longer exists. And I just thought that time of
Speaker 1: my life of living that closely to nature and getting
Speaker 1: food that way, Um, it was a time that I
Speaker 1: was lucky to experience. But it doesn't really cist in
Speaker 1: this modern world anymore as much. Um. But when I
Speaker 1: realized that it still could, that was when I decided, like,
Speaker 1: I have to go see about this, you know, And
Speaker 1: I went and I got my own spear. Um. I
Speaker 1: couldn't get anyone to take me diving, to say, in
Speaker 1: my life saw spear fishing and kind of a negative
Speaker 1: light at that point. I think he had to do it.
Speaker 1: I think he he loved it. But I know that
Speaker 1: when I was twenty four, when I did finally get
Speaker 1: that spear, and I drove myself to the beach, and
Speaker 1: I remember I just had no idea what I was
Speaker 1: doing when in the water started swimming, got super scared,
Speaker 1: like I wanted to turn around everything, and like I
Speaker 1: had to use little tricks myself, because at one point
Speaker 1: I saw a little white break and I saw the
Speaker 1: bubbles and it made me feel calm, and so I
Speaker 1: keep swimming that way. But anyway, by the end of
Speaker 1: that day, I was able to get some fish. Just
Speaker 1: remembering what I saw my dad do and I was
Speaker 1: able to get five fish, just like there was a
Speaker 1: hole hole and coole and then pie gee. And that
Speaker 1: day I just knew like I'm a changed person, Like
Speaker 1: the woman that came out of the water was just
Speaker 1: like completely different woman. I felt accomplished. I felt like
Speaker 1: a lioness. And I just felt like to take this
Speaker 1: catch home and cook it, like this is the best
Speaker 1: meal I've ever eaten. And it made me feel like
Speaker 1: I was falling in love. And I called my dad
Speaker 1: up to tell him, and I remember being so happy
Speaker 1: and just like because he was always wanting to know
Speaker 1: what I was gonna do with my life, you know,
Speaker 1: like I just um, he knew like I was cooking,
Speaker 1: but I wasn't really into it. I would always talk
Speaker 1: about doing art and he was just like those are
Speaker 1: not careers, you know. And and when I finally told him, Dad,
Speaker 1: I found what I what I'm gonna do. I thought
Speaker 1: I would be so proud because it was what he
Speaker 1: taught me. And I told him I'm gonna go diving.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be a spear fisher, and he was just like,
Speaker 1: give me, I don't know where you're looking for the answers,
Speaker 1: but they're not going to be at the bottom of
Speaker 1: the ocean. And I remember I was just so heart
Speaker 1: broke in like he just totally like dismissed the whole
Speaker 1: idea of it, and when I thought he'd be so happy, um,
Speaker 1: And I think it is because he related that to
Speaker 1: being poor, to being so poor and struggling to you know,
Speaker 1: to survive and succeed. And when they did start making money,
Speaker 1: I guess, you know, that's what you do, is you
Speaker 1: become successful so that you can give more to your
Speaker 1: children than what you had and you can see them
Speaker 1: go further then you went, you know, I guess as
Speaker 1: parents dreams. And so when he saw me like gravitating
Speaker 1: back to wanting that, um, it didn't sound like a
Speaker 1: very good plan to him. You know, you kind of
Speaker 1: answered the question. But earlier I was going to ask
Speaker 1: you if you know, you were just making a funny
Speaker 1: point or being glib when you said that he took
Speaker 1: you because he didn't have a babysitter, And I was
Speaker 1: going to press you on if that was totally fair
Speaker 1: or not. But I'm now it seems like he wasn't.
Speaker 1: In his mind, he definitely wasn't giving you like this
Speaker 1: great gift to teach you to be in the ocean.
Speaker 1: It was pragmatic. I mean, that's what he you know,
Speaker 1: that's what he says, like. But in my mind, he
Speaker 1: had to know he was giving me such a great
Speaker 1: gift because if he said we're going diving tomorrow, I
Speaker 1: was the one knocking on his bedroom door at five
Speaker 1: in the morning saying, I think the sun's coming up,
Speaker 1: let's go. You know, so he knew that I loved it.
Speaker 1: Were you an only child? No, I, Um, I have
Speaker 1: to older half brothers, but they're out of the house already,
Speaker 1: they're much older. And so it was my sister and
Speaker 1: I who are just a year apart. And she was
Speaker 1: always invited to come, but just never really took to it.
Speaker 1: And she also my parents gave us like the choice
Speaker 1: if we wanted to go to preschool or not. I
Speaker 1: chose no, she chose yes. So she had to go
Speaker 1: live with my grandparents to go to preschool. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: what other like what other ideas were you pursuing to
Speaker 1: to make a living? And then also what does it
Speaker 1: mean to spear fish for a living? Like, just tell
Speaker 1: give people a glimpse of what you're not selling fish, right,
Speaker 1: So so give people a glimpse of what that looks like. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well so the other ideas. I mean, I knew I
Speaker 1: liked cooking, and I knew I liked food, so I
Speaker 1: got a degree in culinary arts and I was working
Speaker 1: in the restaurant industry. But I was just so bored there,
Speaker 1: Like I just was working with ingredients that meant nothing
Speaker 1: to me that we're flown in from Afar and frozen,
Speaker 1: and I was making the same thing every single night
Speaker 1: and just feeling like this is not creative. Um. I
Speaker 1: also can I also tried to, you know, do art
Speaker 1: for a while, and I really enjoyed that because it
Speaker 1: gave me the freedom to go spear fishing. Um. But
Speaker 1: I really barely got by on selling paintings. That was
Speaker 1: very hard. Um. And I never really knew how you
Speaker 1: would make money as a spear fisher because I wasn't
Speaker 1: a commercial fisher. UM. I just knew that's what I
Speaker 1: wanted to do. I didn't even the approach it as
Speaker 1: a career. I just looked at like, if I can
Speaker 1: paint paintings and sell them so that when the weather
Speaker 1: is nice, I can get up and go, that's a
Speaker 1: win for me if I can survive just doing this.
Speaker 1: But eventually, um, I got better and better at it.
Speaker 1: I ended up winning the national championships and started getting
Speaker 1: attention for it, and then um it just ended up
Speaker 1: turning into a career where people wanted me to, you know,
Speaker 1: use their gear, use their their products, and give it
Speaker 1: a try and get photos with it. And took a
Speaker 1: long time, but like I would say, ten years after
Speaker 1: doing that, I finally started realizing that everybody was making
Speaker 1: money off of me, and I could probably start asking
Speaker 1: to get paid for it. Yeah, I got Can you
Speaker 1: explain a little bit the um where free diving plays
Speaker 1: into spear fishing and your challenges and emergen like going
Speaker 1: into that world free diving is how you spear fish.
Speaker 1: I know that you can definitely do it on scuba
Speaker 1: and do it with tanks, but I find it just
Speaker 1: so much more in tune to just hold your breath
Speaker 1: and go down and hunt like that because you're not
Speaker 1: you're not making all these bubbles and you're not scaring
Speaker 1: fish away like that, and there's not I just feel
Speaker 1: like it just makes the most sense to go down
Speaker 1: on a single breath of air and and try and
Speaker 1: get this done. Um. It's definitely challenging, but um, but
Speaker 1: it makes you more a part of the ocean, and
Speaker 1: I think the animals start to you. You learn to
Speaker 1: move different with that, and it just like it really
Speaker 1: teaches you this finesse that UM is all a part
Speaker 1: of hunting. And when it comes to free diving, I
Speaker 1: mean there's there's so many challenges that come with it.
Speaker 1: And I think just taking that drop into the unknown
Speaker 1: and just leaving air behind and getting further and further
Speaker 1: away from it, UM and then just trying to just
Speaker 1: trying to figure things out with this with this time limit,
Speaker 1: you know, trying to trying to understand things and stock things.
Speaker 1: And if you could just stay down there forever, it
Speaker 1: would be a lot easier. But the thing is that
Speaker 1: you always you always gotta go, and so it's UM,
Speaker 1: it's definitely challenging. How long can you How long can
Speaker 1: you hold your breath underwater? The longest I've ever held
Speaker 1: it underwater was four minutes or forty five seconds, But
Speaker 1: that wasn't like actively hunting at all. When I'm actively hunting,
Speaker 1: it's like I try and keep it around two minutes.
Speaker 1: And the main reason why is because you have to
Speaker 1: recover on the surface for twice as long so that
Speaker 1: you don't get hypoxic and blackout. And true, if you
Speaker 1: hold your bath for two minutes, you have to recover
Speaker 1: for four minutes. That's a long time stay on the surface. Um,
Speaker 1: and I wouldn't want that to be any longer. So
Speaker 1: I also feel like if I can't bring a fish
Speaker 1: in to me within like a minute and a half,
Speaker 1: I should probably try a different technique and try a
Speaker 1: different strategy rather than just try and wait it out.
Speaker 1: And what's the deepest you've dove, And what's the normal
Speaker 1: what do you consider like a normal comfortable maximum diving depth?
Speaker 1: The deepest I dove was a hundred and fifty nine
Speaker 1: ft and that was just like, oh, I want to
Speaker 1: see if I can go touch the bottom and come back.
Speaker 1: And that's all I did, just turn and burn. But
Speaker 1: it was just neat to be down that deep and
Speaker 1: feel that pressure. Um. But I would say comfortable. I mean,
Speaker 1: like yesterday's diving, we were hitting the bottom at about
Speaker 1: seventy five and watch you go down and lay on
Speaker 1: the bottom as a couple, and the water so clear
Speaker 1: you can see it from the surface. Steve and I
Speaker 1: as your support crew on the surface. Yeah, we go
Speaker 1: out of those like so, swim straight down seventy five
Speaker 1: ft of water, lay on the bottom, frown how long
Speaker 1: and what event? Just so cool to shoot one of
Speaker 1: those big cuckus. So but it's amazing. Yeah, And that's
Speaker 1: the thing too, It's like you you know, it's one
Speaker 1: thing to go down to seventy five ft and hang out,
Speaker 1: but you're not just seventy five and a big shark
Speaker 1: swims up to you, which we saw that yesterday, and
Speaker 1: like that can really take a lot of oxygen out
Speaker 1: of you right there is just having that reaction of
Speaker 1: fear um or you shule burn oxygen anytime you get flustered,
Speaker 1: Um that burns a lot of oxygen. And or having
Speaker 1: if I shot a fish and it ends up fighting me,
Speaker 1: ends up tangling on a rock. You know, all of
Speaker 1: that at depth can just wipe you out. So it's
Speaker 1: um something you gotta do carefully, can you uh you
Speaker 1: know you said if you can't bring a fish in
Speaker 1: within a minute and a half, but you don't have
Speaker 1: you're not like throwing lures or bait or anything to
Speaker 1: bring fish in, because can you explain what bringing fish
Speaker 1: in means totally, and it was so fun to watch
Speaker 1: you both learned that over the past few days. Is
Speaker 1: because a lot of people think that to hunt to fish,
Speaker 1: you know, just hold your breath in, swim up to
Speaker 1: a fish, and go shoot it. At some times Chester
Speaker 1: is just on them. They know he's on them. Sometimes
Speaker 1: that might work and he's just on them. But most
Speaker 1: of the time, like with smart fish or you know,
Speaker 1: really nice fish that you want to get, um, that's
Speaker 1: they're not going to stand for that. That you can't
Speaker 1: outswim a fish, and so if you start swimming towards it,
Speaker 1: they're just gonna outswim you and go away. Um. And
Speaker 1: so my strategy is I just I go to a
Speaker 1: bottom and and I know they can see me. It's
Speaker 1: not like it's not like I really am trying not
Speaker 1: to let them see me. I actually want them to
Speaker 1: see me. And I land on the bottom. But then
Speaker 1: that's when I just try and I try to melt
Speaker 1: into the bottom. I try and just mold my body
Speaker 1: around wherever I'm lying, if it's on a rock or
Speaker 1: in a sand pocket, I try and just become a
Speaker 1: part of that environment so that they see this creature
Speaker 1: come down and then they kind of see it disappear
Speaker 1: because that's going to peak their curiosity. That's gonna make
Speaker 1: them want to see what was that, you know. And
Speaker 1: and then I hide my eyes. That's important because the
Speaker 1: minute they see my big old eyeball is looking at them,
Speaker 1: that can really freak them out. So if I just
Speaker 1: keep hiding my eyes, they'll keep wanting to see them
Speaker 1: because I feel like when you make eye contact, that's
Speaker 1: like a part of recognizing, you know, And so so
Speaker 1: I don't want them to see my eyes. I'm always
Speaker 1: trying to hide my eyes, so I'm always kind of
Speaker 1: turning away, and it makes it like this passive or
Speaker 1: shy looking body language, and that can definitely bring them in.
Speaker 1: But there's also just tricks of fluffing sand, you know,
Speaker 1: just taking sand and just throwing up clouds of sand. Again,
Speaker 1: even that I want to do it so gently because
Speaker 1: I don't want to burn out my energy, and just
Speaker 1: this motion of fluffing sand, there's sometimes where I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: that was a little too powerful, you know, like calm
Speaker 1: it down, Kimmy, Like, don't waste your energy. But so
Speaker 1: you want to use the least amount of energy possible
Speaker 1: to do things like fluff sand or just to kind
Speaker 1: of scratch the rock, scratch the coral um, do things
Speaker 1: like that, because all they mimic things. You know, the
Speaker 1: sand it mimics when a stingray is feeding at the
Speaker 1: bottom because its wings are flapping and it's fluffing sand
Speaker 1: and it's overturning food and nutrients that fish come in
Speaker 1: and want to eat, so it's mimicking that. Or if
Speaker 1: you like scratch rocks together, mimics fish that eat off
Speaker 1: the rocks, and and so all that kind of stuff
Speaker 1: will also help bring fish into you. When you're saying
Speaker 1: that you don't care about that, you'll come down. You're
Speaker 1: you're not trying to like hide your arrival, right if
Speaker 1: you were just in the last couple of days, when
Speaker 1: you're fishing together, if you're looking down and you're you're
Speaker 1: looking down ut below you a surgeon fish, you don't um,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, looking down on a parrot fish. Give me
Speaker 1: the word um. So you don't think you're gonna drop
Speaker 1: down way over here and then creep in there. You're
Speaker 1: just like, I'm just here and I'm gonna melt to
Speaker 1: the bottom and I'm not even gonna try to like,
Speaker 1: you can do both. You can? You do try to
Speaker 1: stalk in? Um, you do, try to sneak up on.
Speaker 1: We didn't do too much of that these past few days,
Speaker 1: but I definitely do that well. Sometimes drop in one
Speaker 1: area and then just slither slither, you know, around the
Speaker 1: rocks and creep in. I try. I try what I'm
Speaker 1: on the bottom. I trying not to kick too much,
Speaker 1: so if I can just kind of pull myself forward, Um,
Speaker 1: I'll use my hands and do that. Um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of times I do. I stay low and
Speaker 1: I creep in. Does it work too? Because I always
Speaker 1: I don't think I ever did it successfully? But does
Speaker 1: it work? To be like the fish goes behind a rock,
Speaker 1: you like, now's my chance? Yeah, so you can really
Speaker 1: like get away with something. He doesn't know what went
Speaker 1: on thinking I was going to do that, but I
Speaker 1: don't know that I did that. Yeah. I mean it's
Speaker 1: it's trickier than you think because a lot of times
Speaker 1: they're onto you and they're going behind that rock to
Speaker 1: make you think they're coming around, and they're just digging
Speaker 1: out the other way. But every once in a while
Speaker 1: you can find one that's just not quite paying attention
Speaker 1: to you and you can see oh and definitely once
Speaker 1: you see them tuck away where they can't see you,
Speaker 1: that's when you make your move, and you make it quickly.
Speaker 1: If they're not looking, you move fast. I think it's
Speaker 1: hard to describe. So like if if you're a hunter,
Speaker 1: archery or rifle really in a place where you spot
Speaker 1: in stock game. The what we were hunt fish in
Speaker 1: was a very spot and stockable zone. So there's lots
Speaker 1: of variation and the landscape. There's drops, there's rises, there's
Speaker 1: there's little passes in the rocks, there's um lots of
Speaker 1: opportunity to to get behind things and and try to creep.
Speaker 1: But it's so it's like looking through spotting scope when
Speaker 1: you're looking at it from the surface, um through your goggles,
Speaker 1: things get flat and then when you get down on
Speaker 1: the bottom, it's amazing how all this how big it is,
Speaker 1: how big the terrain is um and it just I
Speaker 1: have like a finite finite amount of drops in me
Speaker 1: like breaking from the surface and getting on bottom, and
Speaker 1: you're trying to squeeze all the knowledge out of all
Speaker 1: of those drops to be more effective on your next one.
Speaker 1: But it's it's amazing when you get that the idea
Speaker 1: of how big that bottom topography is, and then it's like,
Speaker 1: oh god, how do I keep track of where that was?
Speaker 1: It's amazing to even hear you say that, because I
Speaker 1: feel like most people beginning at diving they don't even
Speaker 1: get that, Like they don't even get it at all,
Speaker 1: Like they're so fixated on the fact that they see
Speaker 1: a fish or they have to hold their breath and there.
Speaker 1: It's just the way that you guys were able to
Speaker 1: actually take the time to read the environment. It's it's
Speaker 1: it's so cool. It really just showed me how much
Speaker 1: hunting on land has to cross over because that's everything,
Speaker 1: you know. It's like that time when you're just like
Speaker 1: on the surface kind of checking out what you can
Speaker 1: see below and um and planning your job, planning like
Speaker 1: how you're going to approach, where you're gonna land, what
Speaker 1: shadows you're going to use, what structure you're gonna use
Speaker 1: In one like you have to pay attention because some
Speaker 1: rocks are way too big where if you land right
Speaker 1: in front of them, think it's a good hiding place,
Speaker 1: but you just blocked out your vision completely. It does
Speaker 1: you know, good? You know, and you guys are really
Speaker 1: choosing good approaches and good hiding places. Yea. And in lhunting,
Speaker 1: I'd always tell people that's a good spot to view nature,
Speaker 1: but we're here to kill nature. Like when you bear
Speaker 1: yourself into a treat and then you realize that there's
Speaker 1: nothing you can do. It's like a good good job
Speaker 1: you kind of laid out when you were laying out
Speaker 1: our our trip. I knew we had a few days. Um,
Speaker 1: you laid out a sort of progression for us, and
Speaker 1: it was a progression in terms of what we were after,
Speaker 1: how um, the conditions we were after it in the
Speaker 1: equipment we used. Can you walk through that progression? Definitely?
Speaker 1: And I really respect that you guys actually did it
Speaker 1: in that way where we started off, you know, basically
Speaker 1: with three prongs, you know, looking looking under rocks, looking
Speaker 1: for a small fry fish that that you really got
Speaker 1: to get close to you and m with a three
Speaker 1: prong a simple poll spear. There's no sugar mechanism, nothing
Speaker 1: like that. Just a rubber band on one end and
Speaker 1: three prongs on the other. And it's all human power.
Speaker 1: You have to hold it to keep it cocked. And um,
Speaker 1: you really have to get close to your prey, like
Speaker 1: you have to sometimes just get in there, let your
Speaker 1: eyes are I think it isn't. And if you have
Speaker 1: like an eight foot poll spear, what do you think
Speaker 1: it is in inches? I mean you're close close? Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: i'd say, I mean I wouldn't. I wouldn't take a
Speaker 1: shot more than three ft away. That would be really far,
Speaker 1: really far. Yeah. I just say a lot of that
Speaker 1: stuff is I feel like you're you're eighteen inches away
Speaker 1: from it. Yeah, even closer. Yeah, like the spear point
Speaker 1: is is close. It's not even not even really like aiming.
Speaker 1: You're kind of you're kind of pinning and pointing with
Speaker 1: your finger. You would be making them very uncomfortable. You've
Speaker 1: in their personal's face. That's good. But what I like
Speaker 1: about that is that you have to get that close
Speaker 1: to your prey and then you your prey. You know,
Speaker 1: these little fish they dart, they dart back and forth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and then it really tests like kind of your
Speaker 1: instincts and your reactions because the minute you let go
Speaker 1: of that spirit and let it fly, like you're committing
Speaker 1: to you know, to hitting that fish. And so you're
Speaker 1: really kind of leading the fish where you think it's
Speaker 1: gonna go, or just like you know, letting go when
Speaker 1: you think they're gonna stop. And and then when you
Speaker 1: do that, it's not over. Like it's just a three
Speaker 1: prong and so oftentimes you gotta then pin your fish
Speaker 1: and pounce like a cat. And so I just think,
Speaker 1: like just really honing those like responses, those like quick
Speaker 1: reactions are are so good to just hone your overall
Speaker 1: hunting vibe. But then the next step what we after
Speaker 1: three prongings, we did get spear guns and trying to
Speaker 1: hold different technique which is so much less aggressive you know,
Speaker 1: where it's stalking and it's waiting. And it doesn't mean
Speaker 1: it's at all easier because it's just a different technique, um,
Speaker 1: but I think that it's a really good progression to
Speaker 1: have to kind of start off like super primitive and
Speaker 1: just like instincts and jumping and you know and doing
Speaker 1: whatever you can throwing yourself at those fish. Really and
Speaker 1: you guys were throwing yourself on dry reef at some points,
Speaker 1: you know, um to then having to switch it and
Speaker 1: go to this like much more stealthy, much more quiet,
Speaker 1: much like less movement um type of hunting, and the
Speaker 1: spear gun will obviously give you more range, but um,
Speaker 1: I think that's just a really good way to keep
Speaker 1: stepping it up. Then, So go on to the next
Speaker 1: stage though, And also, can you help me with the
Speaker 1: what what the hell is that? Because we grew up
Speaker 1: when I was ten years old, I came to Hawaii
Speaker 1: and my family, my dad had He was a salesman,
Speaker 1: like sold insurance, and he sold enough insurance like win
Speaker 1: a trip through Metropolitan Life. I don't know if that's
Speaker 1: even still a company. He sold enough insurance to win
Speaker 1: a trip to Hawaii. So when I was Tammy came
Speaker 1: to Hawaiian he bought us a spear and I remember
Speaker 1: my brother coming in and had a giant, puffed up
Speaker 1: puffer fish on the end of that thing. But we
Speaker 1: took it home with us and realized that it was
Speaker 1: very effective on blue gills, but very illegal, and we
Speaker 1: grew up calling it the Hawaiian sling. But that's not
Speaker 1: what it is. It's I mean, people call it that
Speaker 1: all the time, and when they do, I know that
Speaker 1: they're referring to a three pronged post bear. But Hawaiian
Speaker 1: slings are a little different because they're more like these
Speaker 1: these old style like hinge guys that would have shafts
Speaker 1: that would just like free fly like bow and arrow
Speaker 1: kind and hit your fish. Um and and and I yeah,
Speaker 1: but so a three prong isn't really necessarily it's really
Speaker 1: the term as a pole spear. And it has a
Speaker 1: three pronged head on it. Yes, it's a poll spear.
Speaker 1: And then talk a little bit about the different species
Speaker 1: we were after. So we started off going after um
Speaker 1: manpachi um which live in the holes and have big guys.
Speaker 1: That's what the three prong and cole is on surgeon
Speaker 1: fish um. But then we then we moved up and
Speaker 1: we said, okay, today our goal is going to be
Speaker 1: parrot fish, who and and para fisher are tough to
Speaker 1: shoot in Hawaii. There's something where a lot of other
Speaker 1: species are gonna kind of come in and you gotta
Speaker 1: let them come and you just gotta wait and and
Speaker 1: if you take a shot at any of them, the
Speaker 1: parrot fish will go away. So you just kind of
Speaker 1: have to wait and pass and wait and pass. And
Speaker 1: that parrot fish well eventually maybe come in. But even
Speaker 1: the way that they swim, it's like it's something that
Speaker 1: um it isn't always the easiest to track, especially i'd
Speaker 1: say in shallower waters, like swinging a gun around in
Speaker 1: the shallows, it just um, it gets a little more difficult.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, we went after parrot fish and um.
Speaker 1: And then after we accomplished that, then we went after
Speaker 1: after job fish in the deep. Explain that whole process,
Speaker 1: because that was kind of interesting. Wasn't that fine? It
Speaker 1: was just so with that we went out. We went
Speaker 1: out to this drop off. We went out to like
Speaker 1: this sixty ft ledge that drops off into the blue
Speaker 1: and um, and that's a really good place to get
Speaker 1: job fish or or how we call them, you know
Speaker 1: uku in Hawaii, um gray snappers. And what we did
Speaker 1: we we brought out some bait and just started breaking
Speaker 1: off pieces and letting them fall to the bottom. And
Speaker 1: our goal was to get the uku to leave the
Speaker 1: bottom and come up and start eating the chum so
Speaker 1: that you guys say, just go down and shoot him
Speaker 1: from the surface shoodn't below the surface. That was that
Speaker 1: was the goal. On when it was amazing that we
Speaker 1: actually did get to see that. But they get smart
Speaker 1: so fast. I have to say, this is where like
Speaker 1: your calm, confident explanation of what was going to happen
Speaker 1: at the point may have um maybe cost us one
Speaker 1: encounter because it was like, Okay, so what's gonna happen
Speaker 1: is we're gonna go out, We're gonna start dropping little
Speaker 1: bits of chum these sardines, and then the trigger fish
Speaker 1: are gonna come in, and then some other fish are
Speaker 1: going to come in, and then the gray snappers going
Speaker 1: to kind of come in, and then then they're gonna
Speaker 1: get kind of competitive, and then they're gonna start eating
Speaker 1: up the chain. And it just like read out exact
Speaker 1: clear that way, like in a book, like and I
Speaker 1: think Steve and I were both sitting there like okay,
Speaker 1: so now the snapper are here, So what's going to
Speaker 1: happen in no time? And I was like, holy man,
Speaker 1: we're gonna get a lot of But I also said,
Speaker 1: I also said, and then they're going to go away,
Speaker 1: and then they're gonna get smart, Like I also said,
Speaker 1: like they're gonna come up, they're gonna do this, but
Speaker 1: after a while, like they're gonna get smart. And but yeah,
Speaker 1: that really happened fast. But yeah, it was one of
Speaker 1: those moments where when that big there's two of them,
Speaker 1: but one was just extra big when when I started
Speaker 1: coming up and doing its thing in like fifteen feet
Speaker 1: of water. Like if I could have been whispering in
Speaker 1: your ear, I would have just been saying, go go, go,
Speaker 1: go go. But you know, I don't want to freak
Speaker 1: you out. It's also new and it's hard to respond, right. Well,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's I mean, I have only recently dabbled
Speaker 1: in bow hunting, and I freeze sometimes, you know, when
Speaker 1: the opportunity is there. But the thing about spear fishing
Speaker 1: is that you also have to hold your breath, you know,
Speaker 1: And that's like, I feel like a whole another level
Speaker 1: when you get excited and you just realize like, oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, there's a fish. Okay, I gotta go and
Speaker 1: I gotta get ready, But then you actually have to
Speaker 1: think about leaving this beautiful thing called air. That really
Speaker 1: it's nice when you're kind of excited and you know, flustered,
Speaker 1: it's nice to breathe. Um. So it is a lot
Speaker 1: too to go for it. But um but yeah, there's
Speaker 1: some opportunities where it's like, you know, if you're hunting
Speaker 1: the reef and you see that parrot fish, where yeah,
Speaker 1: you can wait, you can plant you can wait till
Speaker 1: you're ready, and then the opportunities like yesterday, when that
Speaker 1: fish comes up from the depth, it's like, nope, sorry,
Speaker 1: you gotta some way. It's gotta go now. You don't
Speaker 1: have time. You just I think it warrant, like we
Speaker 1: have to bring up just how clear the the water
Speaker 1: so clear, it's it's kind of gets not there. I
Speaker 1: mean it is, but it's kind of it's not there.
Speaker 1: But you can be at the surface where we were
Speaker 1: in sevent water when you can see the rocks, you're
Speaker 1: you're you're in seventy five ft of water, but you're
Speaker 1: looking and if a fish did the right thing on
Speaker 1: the bottom, you would see it there. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: things you're gonna miss, but you could like feasibly see it.
Speaker 1: And it was overcast, so I can only imagine it
Speaker 1: feels full sun what you see. But you can see
Speaker 1: down that deep and Kimmy is taking anchovies right and
Speaker 1: you're breaking them in a half or breaking them in thirds,
Speaker 1: and they fall very slowly. They kind of create like
Speaker 1: a slimy cloud of scales. So you got to move
Speaker 1: off to the side because if you're looking down, like
Speaker 1: if you imagine you're in the water and you're dropping
Speaker 1: something that's falling slowly. If you're looking down the sort
Speaker 1: of shaft created by its descent, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: oil and scale which obscures your vision, so you want
Speaker 1: to you move off to the side, and then you're
Speaker 1: kind of you're you're peering in at this the cylinder
Speaker 1: stuff dropping um. And when something first shows up at
Speaker 1: the bottom, it's like when you hear I always talk
Speaker 1: about this. It's like if you hear a turkey gobble
Speaker 1: way off, or you hear it vehicle way off. You
Speaker 1: know it's there, but you don't. You look to your
Speaker 1: buddy to be like, did I just hear that? And
Speaker 1: the first fish you see, I'm like, you know, it
Speaker 1: catches you where you think you're hallucinating, And I remember Cali,
Speaker 1: like you saw one and I couldn't see it, and
Speaker 1: it's frustrating, but also in there it is. And then
Speaker 1: you guys are so good at shapes. I don't even
Speaker 1: know what the hell I'm looking at. When those sharks
Speaker 1: showed up, I'm like, hey, I know that fish, but
Speaker 1: I was like a lot of times you're like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, man, And then i'd get all excited about
Speaker 1: a shape and you you kind of like be like,
Speaker 1: that's not the right shape. And so the one thing
Speaker 1: that did show up that I like the second just
Speaker 1: because my very limited ocean experience, a tuna showed up
Speaker 1: in there and I was like, you know, and you
Speaker 1: were very much yeah that that was incredible. The sky
Speaker 1: and he just in there having his day so different
Speaker 1: from the other fish, Like it's almost like there's no fear,
Speaker 1: just bursting and shaking in there and these diagonal patterns
Speaker 1: and just coming right up to us because he's just
Speaker 1: so fast. And I drove, I've dove down to try
Speaker 1: to like and I got down eye level with him
Speaker 1: and this sun I hadn't thought of. But he's moving
Speaker 1: so quickly. The gun I had as a ninety I
Speaker 1: think it's a ninety ninety. What is it? It's a
Speaker 1: ninety shafts, but what is the measurement? I can't remember.
Speaker 1: It is okay, um, the fish is moving so fast
Speaker 1: and the resistance of the water is strong enough you
Speaker 1: can't track it. Like if he comes swinging by, you're
Speaker 1: not It's like you're shooting at a duck where you're
Speaker 1: like swing your shotgun through his line of travel, you
Speaker 1: physically can't move the gun on fast enough to track it,
Speaker 1: and so you're kind of like in this sort of
Speaker 1: intercepting it. And if I had had five minutes of breath,
Speaker 1: I would have gotten a I mean I took a
Speaker 1: hail mary at it. Yeah, that wasn't a hail mary.
Speaker 1: That was every one of us that we were watching you.
Speaker 1: We all thought it was in the bag. And that
Speaker 1: was justin woke up this boy. The first thing you
Speaker 1: said was God, oh my god, I would have been
Speaker 1: so cool if Steve just shot that. Do not like
Speaker 1: because it was that close like it was, that wasn't
Speaker 1: I would not because that's not a hail mary at all.
Speaker 1: That was like, oh, he's gonna get it. Like, but
Speaker 1: they're just so fast that even the people watching it
Speaker 1: happen from a distance, I think it's going to happen,
Speaker 1: and I just didn't, you know, speaking with Rick Smith
Speaker 1: about this situation, he made this comparison, which which is
Speaker 1: kind of right. It's like, oddly enough, the turkey hunting
Speaker 1: of the spear fishing world, where you get down there
Speaker 1: and you get set up in a certain direction for
Speaker 1: this turkey and the turkey's watching you so you can't.
Speaker 1: You can only move your guns so fast right, so
Speaker 1: you can't position yourself even though he's gobl into your
Speaker 1: right now and then to the left right you can
Speaker 1: do like how muchever you get all my situation pointed
Speaker 1: over that way exactly. Yeah, how do you can? You
Speaker 1: guys talk about how you know what the hell sharks
Speaker 1: or what, and then how you know what mood they're
Speaker 1: in and what their purposes are. I mean, I guess
Speaker 1: it's just it's a body language thing where if they
Speaker 1: come in and they're just like swimming slow, they seem calm.
Speaker 1: If their fins are kind of out like the wings
Speaker 1: of an airplane, that's a good sign that the sharks,
Speaker 1: you know, not really gonna attack or do anything to
Speaker 1: eggro Um when they are putting their fins down, putting
Speaker 1: them in a downwards and angle. If they start kind
Speaker 1: of arching their back, if they start um flexing their gills, um,
Speaker 1: that means they're pretty piste. And and if they're moving
Speaker 1: just really erratically and quickly and making these turns, um
Speaker 1: that that is not always a good sign either. Um
Speaker 1: off though sometimes Yeah, is it a competition thing, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it can be, so it can be territorial, it can
Speaker 1: definitely be Um. Some some sharks can just be big bullies,
Speaker 1: you know, and they just see you on their turf
Speaker 1: and they just, um, they just kind of want to
Speaker 1: bully you and um, and sometimes I feel like, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're they're the ones that just are there to steal
Speaker 1: your lunch, you know, so that they're coming in, they're
Speaker 1: checking you out, and they're telling you that they're the boss,
Speaker 1: and then if you shoot a fish, they're going to
Speaker 1: be the ones to take that fish. And still you
Speaker 1: kind of have to face the bully. And so that's
Speaker 1: why even with those, you know, the smaller sharks that
Speaker 1: you kind of just saw me going down there and
Speaker 1: just kind of tapping them, you know, I wasn't wasn't
Speaker 1: hurting them with it, poking them, but I was. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna interject here because that's not quite what I saw,
Speaker 1: because Yeah, from my perspective, was one of the favorite
Speaker 1: things I saw over a couple of days is in
Speaker 1: that you know, chum situation that Steve described very very well. Um,
Speaker 1: two black tip reef sharks came in and we're doing
Speaker 1: their thing, and to me, I saw it very clearly
Speaker 1: as the high school bully in the hallway, right, But
Speaker 1: in this scenario, Kimmy was the bully and she was
Speaker 1: swimming down and the black Tip was kind of like
Speaker 1: mixing around but gradually coming up, and they just like
Speaker 1: passed each other like two kids in the hallway, and
Speaker 1: she just gave that black tip a little elbow shot
Speaker 1: basically close. She kept going shark diverted this. I loved it.
Speaker 1: It was great. I got a shot of that, Like
Speaker 1: she just moved right through it, And I was like,
Speaker 1: did that thing hit her in the head, But she
Speaker 1: just like didn't even it didn't even phase her. She
Speaker 1: just by my head. So that's also why it was
Speaker 1: so close to what were you concerned when you asked
Speaker 1: her about that? I noticed that you asked her about
Speaker 1: how it came up to her face. Were you like
Speaker 1: concerned or you just curious? I was more curious. I
Speaker 1: was like, how close did you get to that thing?
Speaker 1: Because I don't know, I trust her. I have, like
Speaker 1: I feel safer with Kimmy in the water. Obviously she's
Speaker 1: taught me all that, but I have complete confidence in
Speaker 1: Kimmy in those circumstances where I do. I do have
Speaker 1: confidence by myself, but when I'm in the water with Kimmy,
Speaker 1: her knowledge is ridiculous. Even when we saw that bigger Galapagos,
Speaker 1: I was just like, hey, that's something I think I
Speaker 1: pointed to you. Ryan. I'm like, hey, that's something to
Speaker 1: just be aware of because it is decent size and
Speaker 1: it was moving quickly at the bottom of that laughed. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Was I was like, oh, man, like, because that one
Speaker 1: was a big shark, that was a goalopogus, and and
Speaker 1: the way that that one came in. But I also
Speaker 1: have to say, we're chumming, okay, so that's a different story.
Speaker 1: Like like I can't just call these sharks bullies. If
Speaker 1: I was just there minding my own business spear fishing
Speaker 1: or swimming, and the shark came in and started swimming
Speaker 1: like that, and then I'd be like, okay, like we
Speaker 1: really got a face off and and pay attention. When
Speaker 1: you say big shark, how do you what do you
Speaker 1: mean by that? What would you say? How will I know?
Speaker 1: I think I had said it. I thought it was
Speaker 1: like eight to ten eight ft. Maybe that's when you
Speaker 1: can really tell it's big. Is the thickness of it
Speaker 1: is what I could kind of seeking. Yeah, thicken and
Speaker 1: fast and and yeah, and the way it kind of
Speaker 1: came in and started eating chumm and doing those movements,
Speaker 1: and I was like, oh, man, were that shark? I
Speaker 1: was just like, Okay, how how are we going to
Speaker 1: tell this shark that he not the bully on the
Speaker 1: bully you know? And um, but it took off. But
Speaker 1: then when those when those other two smaller ones came. Basically,
Speaker 1: I'm not too concerned about those sharks biting us because
Speaker 1: we're so much bigger than them, and I just don't
Speaker 1: think that they would look at something so much bigger
Speaker 1: than them and say, oh, yeah, that's my prey. So
Speaker 1: I wasn't concerned about them attacking any of us are
Speaker 1: like that. But I was just thinking, I don't want
Speaker 1: them getting too confident in getting food off of us,
Speaker 1: because that's what they're doing, is they're just getting really
Speaker 1: confident in eating food that was coming from us. And
Speaker 1: then what if an uku comes up and one of
Speaker 1: you shoot it, then they're they're like, oh, we've been
Speaker 1: taking his lunch all day, this one's mine, and there
Speaker 1: goes your fish. And so what I was trying to
Speaker 1: do when I was going down there and kind of like, hey,
Speaker 1: stop eating that chump. Hey, you stop eating that chump.
Speaker 1: That's my chump. That's my chump. No, that's my chump. Is.
Speaker 1: I was just trying to mama in them and tell
Speaker 1: them like, um, this this food is just mine, you know, like,
Speaker 1: and I'm not okay with you taking it um, and
Speaker 1: let them know that as long as I was there,
Speaker 1: that is the presence I'm gonna carry because that way,
Speaker 1: if we shot a fish. Um, if one of you
Speaker 1: shot a fish and you're bringing it up in a
Speaker 1: fishing distress, that's what's gonna bring in sharks, and that's
Speaker 1: what's gonna kind of turn them into like almost that
Speaker 1: frenzy state is like those vibrations of a fish, and
Speaker 1: distress more than blood or anything else, it just hits
Speaker 1: their lateral line, those vibrations, and it activates that. It's
Speaker 1: they're gonna eat, They're gonna take a bite. And once
Speaker 1: one shark commits to a bite, you'll see sharks just
Speaker 1: come out of nowhere. Yeah. And so even though they
Speaker 1: weren't a threat to us, if one of them had
Speaker 1: committed to taking a bite out of a spirit fish,
Speaker 1: that situation can escalate quickly because the minute one takes
Speaker 1: a bite. All the other ones in the name hood
Speaker 1: are like, oh that's that's a buffet and you'll just
Speaker 1: watching get vaporized and and so basically I wanted to
Speaker 1: just show my dominance so that that way, if you
Speaker 1: guys shot a fish, I would know that all I
Speaker 1: have to do is just swim down towards your fish
Speaker 1: and just get bite her fish, and those sharks would
Speaker 1: know like, oh, she's back, not ours the menal ladies
Speaker 1: down here, Yeah, exactly. Steve kind of brought this up, um,
Speaker 1: but how often do YouTube spending as much time in
Speaker 1: the water as you do, like get concerned in situations
Speaker 1: like you know, it's it's hard for me because even
Speaker 1: just wh when you turn to me and you're like, hey,
Speaker 1: you know you see that, Like that's something to be
Speaker 1: aware of. Um, in my position, it's almost like I
Speaker 1: may as well never even seen the Glockwell shark, because like,
Speaker 1: now that I'm aware of it, what the hell does
Speaker 1: that mean to me? Like I don't know how right
Speaker 1: to me is it? Like Okay, don't even if I
Speaker 1: get a great shot at something, don't don't shoot it?
Speaker 1: Or right, I see, you guys aren't getting out of
Speaker 1: the water. So it obviously doesn't mean that. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think what it more meant is we're still going to
Speaker 1: shoot fish, but let's all be aware. Maybe we should
Speaker 1: have to talk about this, but let's all be aware
Speaker 1: that when somebody shoots a fish, the rest of us
Speaker 1: need to protect that fish, you know, protect that person
Speaker 1: pulling in that fish, and just and and just swim
Speaker 1: towards the shark like that's that's usually if I'm concerned,
Speaker 1: I'll swim towards the shark, okay. And I feel like
Speaker 1: there's bigger concerns more than we usually have with sharks,
Speaker 1: Like a lot of the concerns most times like weather
Speaker 1: chain or where's the boat or oncoming boats or but
Speaker 1: I feel like concerns is of shark usually isn't at
Speaker 1: our top level for the most part. Would you agree, Yeah, Currents,
Speaker 1: currents are much more of a concern separating. You know,
Speaker 1: if you're like further out in the water, currents pick
Speaker 1: up and you separate, that's a bigger concern than most anything.
Speaker 1: But I definitely like you, definitely, yeah. I have been
Speaker 1: in situations where, um, where a tiger sharks swimming straight
Speaker 1: at you on the surface and you're not just gonna
Speaker 1: ignore it and turn around and say I'm not concerned,
Speaker 1: you know, and um, or you're on the surface in
Speaker 1: a great white swimming straight up at you, and you're
Speaker 1: gonna pay attention, you know, So definitely I'm concerned. I
Speaker 1: just think that there's a difference between reacting out a
Speaker 1: panic and just responding accordingly. And the number one thing
Speaker 1: I think I always just keep learning in those situations
Speaker 1: is I can't outswim a shark, you know, and so
Speaker 1: the only way that truly handle it is to is
Speaker 1: to face off with it. I mean, yeah, you could
Speaker 1: like just leave and get out of the water, but um,
Speaker 1: that's what I was gonna ask, Like, if if you
Speaker 1: see a great white or a tiger shark, that's not
Speaker 1: like all right, time to get out. It's just time
Speaker 1: to be hyper aware. But keep doing what you're doing.
Speaker 1: I personally, I think those encounters are really cool. And so,
Speaker 1: you know, Steve was saying earlier, like you see something like,
Speaker 1: oh wow, let's go check that out, you know, And
Speaker 1: so I just think they're they're they're pretty, they're pretty cool,
Speaker 1: and they demand my attention because there, yeah, they're frightening,
Speaker 1: but they're special and um, and so I just like
Speaker 1: to check them out and and see how it is.
Speaker 1: And like I said, if there's a tiger shark to
Speaker 1: swimming straight at me on the surface, it is nerve
Speaker 1: racking because now I know, oh man, I gotta swim
Speaker 1: right at this tiger shark, you know, and like I
Speaker 1: have no other choice. Like that is what I'm gonna do.
Speaker 1: And I'm going to meet you with the same energy
Speaker 1: you're meeting me. And you're not like you're gonna know
Speaker 1: that if you're curious in me, I'm just as curious
Speaker 1: in you. That's how I stand. And and so it's
Speaker 1: not always like what I feel like doing in the moment,
Speaker 1: but you just do it and you just and then
Speaker 1: next thing you know, you're playing chicken with a shark.
Speaker 1: But it's like that's what you you need to do.
Speaker 1: And then when it turns, it's like it gets kind
Speaker 1: of ticked off and irritated, you know, and it might
Speaker 1: do it again, but you just keep meeting just keep
Speaker 1: meeting it, and um. Usually you can just defuse the situation. Um.
Speaker 1: And then it's just it is a really cool encounter.
Speaker 1: Let's say yesterday we're chumming a fourteen ft great white
Speaker 1: starts circling around, blows you you like. You wouldn't have
Speaker 1: automatically called it off. It's mere presence wouldn't make you
Speaker 1: call it off. You have to see more and to
Speaker 1: figure out what was going on. I probably wouldn't be
Speaker 1: at all focused on Uku's anymore. I wouldn't be like, everyone,
Speaker 1: let's keep spear fishing, um, because all of my attention
Speaker 1: would be on that great white shark. Definitely. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's difference in sharks, you know, Um and cal Hang
Speaker 1: on the chum bag. Tell people about your the story
Speaker 1: you're telling about the sperm whale. Oh yeah, so that
Speaker 1: was That was in Um Dominica and I was on
Speaker 1: the surface of the ocean um and and a sperm
Speaker 1: whale was was swimming along and it ended up swimming
Speaker 1: on the surface and we ended up like pretty much
Speaker 1: just meeting up head on on the surface. It was
Speaker 1: about thirty ft away from me. And there's a photo
Speaker 1: of this there is It's incredible. And um, I know
Speaker 1: because when I asked me how far away were you
Speaker 1: and I said thirty ft, I was like, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: look at that photo to make sure I'm not exaggerating
Speaker 1: and it really was. It was a very close encounter. Um.
Speaker 1: And as soon as it was about thirty feet away,
Speaker 1: it just used its tail, which makes a lot of
Speaker 1: bubbles and turbulence to use that big tail and use
Speaker 1: its tail, and it just flipped itself completely upside down
Speaker 1: and then it just opened its mouth and I could
Speaker 1: I could see I could see all its teeth, you know,
Speaker 1: even from there, and that was a pretty intimidating experience.
Speaker 1: But um, but then after that, I just gently rolled
Speaker 1: back over and very gracefully kind of didn't dive down,
Speaker 1: and just dove down into the depths and was gone.
Speaker 1: And later I learned from scientists that sperm whales, you know,
Speaker 1: they have huge heads, the hugest on the planet. And
Speaker 1: because I was just like right in the middle of
Speaker 1: its site, it could just it couldn't see me with
Speaker 1: both eyes, and so it had to turn upside down
Speaker 1: in order to be able to see me, see what
Speaker 1: I was. And then they're hearing it come from the inside,
Speaker 1: and so so they had to open its mouth so
Speaker 1: that it could hear me. And so it was just
Speaker 1: it was just a way of like shaking hands, you know,
Speaker 1: getting a better look. Yeah, and the photo kind of
Speaker 1: captures the moment where it's inverted. Yeah, in the gate,
Speaker 1: was that what's the scariest thing you've run into? Like
Speaker 1: the scariest moment you've had? Well, I mean when it
Speaker 1: comes to animals, I think, yeah, my first time with
Speaker 1: a great white in in the water. Um, they're just
Speaker 1: so big, you know, They're just so big and so fat,
Speaker 1: and I just always thought of them as these ambush
Speaker 1: predators that he's gonna eat you. Um, and and so
Speaker 1: I think just like having that, you know, that idea
Speaker 1: in your head and knowing that like that is what
Speaker 1: they can do and do to their prey. When you
Speaker 1: see a fat, big, great white shark in the water
Speaker 1: with you, yeah, it's it's pretty intimidating. Um. But that
Speaker 1: experience ended up being just a really beautiful, peaceful one
Speaker 1: where I just got into a groove with this shark
Speaker 1: and ended up being a really cool shark. And that's
Speaker 1: one thing that I've noticed too, is a lot of
Speaker 1: times the bigger the shark, the more calm their presence.
Speaker 1: It's just and and like the little ones, little pesky ones,
Speaker 1: they can be kind of more like the bitey, punky ones.
Speaker 1: They just got more experience what they're dealing with them.
Speaker 1: I don't know this because you said it to me.
Speaker 1: I know it just from having read about you when
Speaker 1: you started out in spearfishing, Um, you in some way
Speaker 1: registered or had the feeling of like not being taken
Speaker 1: seriously by guys. What does that? Probably maybe I'm putting
Speaker 1: words in your mouth, but I know that it's like
Speaker 1: a thing that you've lived through. I mean, I mean
Speaker 1: I can't really say that completely at all. Um, I
Speaker 1: don't know if I ever really said that. I mean,
Speaker 1: I know that, I know that I definitely yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean there's truth to that. I know. I caught a
Speaker 1: lot of guys by surprise because they just aren't used
Speaker 1: to seeing They weren't used to seeing a girl who
Speaker 1: spiritfish is Yeah, okay, there's definitely a lot of guys
Speaker 1: who didn't take me seriously and probably because um, I
Speaker 1: was a girl and they just wouldn't associate those two
Speaker 1: things together. And even if I say I spear fish,
Speaker 1: they probably just don't quite believe me. But um, so, like,
Speaker 1: what does it look like? I mean, what does that
Speaker 1: exchange look like? If you're in if you're in a thing,
Speaker 1: is it just that that you don't that you're not
Speaker 1: invited to go along or you mentioned it and people
Speaker 1: think that you can't be serious. Yeah, but I hate
Speaker 1: to even just say like, oh, guys, because because it
Speaker 1: was guys that that taught me to spearfish too, Like
Speaker 1: it was it was the guys that did believe in me,
Speaker 1: that took me more seriously than I ever could have
Speaker 1: taken myself, who mentored me, who just like believed in me,
Speaker 1: believed in me, believe me. It was you know, it
Speaker 1: was all men who who took me under their wing
Speaker 1: and did that. So we're just talking about different humans,
Speaker 1: and and yes, out of out of like all these
Speaker 1: different humans there, there were definitely some men who just
Speaker 1: couldn't register that a girl could be doing this um
Speaker 1: and it just looked like things like we'd be at
Speaker 1: like spear fishing tournaments and they'd be talking about like,
Speaker 1: oh man, I'm gonna go do this trip in Cabbo
Speaker 1: and get yellow fantuna and I'm just like sitting at
Speaker 1: the table and like nodding my head and then then
Speaker 1: look over and they'll be like, oh, like, I mean
Speaker 1: what we're talking about, Kimmy. It's like equivalent to you
Speaker 1: like going on all expense paid for a shopping spree,
Speaker 1: and I'm just like, ball, It's like, what are you
Speaker 1: even talking about? Like I was into the tuna story,
Speaker 1: you know, I like things like that, and and and
Speaker 1: it's just funny, Like you know, some guys are just
Speaker 1: like they just can't quite figure it out, like how
Speaker 1: is that possible? It can't be possible that that, um,
Speaker 1: this girl can do that whatever, So they just ask
Speaker 1: you really funny questions. Then you can just tell that
Speaker 1: they just don't quite believe you. You know, do you
Speaker 1: take it as a is it damaging? Is it amusing,
Speaker 1: you know, to get the like to get the flak
Speaker 1: or or to be that to feel like you're treated
Speaker 1: as a sort of special individual because of being a
Speaker 1: spear fisher woman. Um, I mean m I think it's
Speaker 1: for the most part, like all the uh oh, the
Speaker 1: silly stuff with the irritating stuff is just not even
Speaker 1: it's neither just not really worth my time. And it's
Speaker 1: just like that's when you know, like those aren't my people,
Speaker 1: you know. And and then like I said, and then
Speaker 1: I just I've had I just had way too many
Speaker 1: of encounters of the opposite though, of like people who
Speaker 1: just treating me like a diver like that's and that's
Speaker 1: what I always wanted it. That's what like I love
Speaker 1: before about like you know, sometimes just putting your your
Speaker 1: hood on and whatever you kind of just like look
Speaker 1: the same as everybody else. And and I think that
Speaker 1: was it more than anything, is that I didn't want
Speaker 1: to be I didn't want to be just good for
Speaker 1: a girl, which that was one of the weird like
Speaker 1: compliment you again from the ones that were intimidated by you.
Speaker 1: And I didn't want to be like, oh yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's pretty good for a girl exactly, like oh yeah,
Speaker 1: she's good. Oh yeah, I heard she's good for a girl,
Speaker 1: you know, And I just like don't. I don't. That's
Speaker 1: not I didn't like that, But I also did it like, um,
Speaker 1: the idea of like oh I'm trying to be better
Speaker 1: than the boys, you know, Um, I that would be
Speaker 1: like ascribed to you as a motivation totally yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: And I mean it was always sad and like good
Speaker 1: hearted fun and that's fine and didn't bother me. But
Speaker 1: the truth was, it's just like I just wanted to
Speaker 1: be a good diver, that's all. Like I wanted to
Speaker 1: be and and the guys that um I ended up
Speaker 1: just like, you know, becoming super friends when it became
Speaker 1: my mentors, like that's just how they saw me. And
Speaker 1: and it was just that was just the best feeling
Speaker 1: in the world, you know, just to just do just
Speaker 1: to be part of this club where um, yeah, you're
Speaker 1: just you're you're just trying to be a good diver.
Speaker 1: Do you like sitting here having this conversation like this
Speaker 1: part of this conversation. Is it annoying? Like could just
Speaker 1: be totally honest, I'm just like I'm always curious how
Speaker 1: to navigate this like that sort of question. Is it
Speaker 1: annoying to you that I asked you that? No, it's not.
Speaker 1: I mean I think, like I think if I first
Speaker 1: thought when you asked me that though, if I'm honest,
Speaker 1: was like, oh, are you trying to be considerate? You know,
Speaker 1: like is that like a like is that like, um,
Speaker 1: like a polite thing to do is to like look
Speaker 1: at how things are for women these days and and
Speaker 1: this and that. I don't know. That was like one
Speaker 1: of the first things I went in my head. But
Speaker 1: it doesn't at all annoy me because I think, Okay,
Speaker 1: another thing I have to say, I think it is
Speaker 1: an important question. I think it's a very important question.
Speaker 1: And before I used to not think that, and I
Speaker 1: wondered why people ask me that so much. Um And
Speaker 1: an example would be that I used to always enter
Speaker 1: co ed um dive tournaments, right, and so it be
Speaker 1: me and a bunch of dudes basically, And and then
Speaker 1: more girls started getting into these tournaments, and then they
Speaker 1: started like having um like like protesting them or whatever,
Speaker 1: like they needed a women's division, and they saw it
Speaker 1: wasn't fair if they didn't have a women's division. And
Speaker 1: I was the first one that was just like no, no, no, no, no, like,
Speaker 1: why the heck would you do that? Like are you
Speaker 1: kidding me? Because I was just like I want to
Speaker 1: be a good diver, and and I was just like
Speaker 1: I go home, and I just remember just telling my
Speaker 1: sister like, oh, man, like I really liked all these girls,
Speaker 1: but now they're getting all crazy and wanting to have
Speaker 1: like women's division. I don't get it. Why so that
Speaker 1: like three of us can enter and three of us
Speaker 1: can walk away with trophies? Like why would they want
Speaker 1: to do that? Why don't we just dive as divers?
Speaker 1: And my and that was seriously my point of view.
Speaker 1: And then my sister she just looked at me and
Speaker 1: she's like, oh, it must be nice. It must be
Speaker 1: nice for you to say that, and and I didn't
Speaker 1: quite get it. And then she's like, okay, me, don't
Speaker 1: you get it? Like she's like, you're the exception to
Speaker 1: the rule in so many ways. And she's like, she's like,
Speaker 1: dad took you in the water since you were five
Speaker 1: years old, and like, granted it didn't happen all my life,
Speaker 1: but it did happen for like a good few years
Speaker 1: pretty solid where I was in the water, developing this comfort,
Speaker 1: developing this belonging, you know. And she's like, can you
Speaker 1: know how many other guys do you know that their
Speaker 1: dads did that for them? And I could think of everybody,
Speaker 1: you know, if not their dad's, their uncles or someone.
Speaker 1: And she's like, okay, now, how many other girls do
Speaker 1: you know where their dads did that to them? And
Speaker 1: I honestly could not think of a single person, like,
Speaker 1: not one single person, And that to me just like
Speaker 1: change yourself. I was like, oh my god, you're so right.
Speaker 1: Like every single guy that I went to high school with,
Speaker 1: I grew up with like they were the ones that
Speaker 1: would die because their dads or uncles taught them. And
Speaker 1: I don't know a single woman who like was given
Speaker 1: that same opportunity. And and then she's like, so, now
Speaker 1: think about like, you know, it was already intimidating for
Speaker 1: you to to get back into it on your own,
Speaker 1: but the thing that got you through was those early
Speaker 1: years of being taken along like with someone that you
Speaker 1: felt safe with, you know. And she's like, if no
Speaker 1: girl has ever experienced that ever, And now they see
Speaker 1: you achieving what you're achieving, and that inspires them and
Speaker 1: they want to get into it. But they didn't. They
Speaker 1: didn't have like what you had, you know, and you
Speaker 1: don't even want to give them their own division. I
Speaker 1: was just like, give it, give it to us a
Speaker 1: little gut check. I think that in asking it just
Speaker 1: or in talking about it, for where it's interesting to
Speaker 1: me is that participation rates and some of the activities
Speaker 1: that I hold near and dear and that like participation
Speaker 1: rates are so overwhelmingly male. And I think that you
Speaker 1: would you would look at it and find that you
Speaker 1: know that there's that there's probably some physiological underpinnings to
Speaker 1: explain some of it right in some cases, like like
Speaker 1: I think if you removed any kind of like social
Speaker 1: cultural aspect, do I really think that of the population
Speaker 1: of people that hunters fishes would be male? Like I
Speaker 1: just feel like it's probably still tilt that way, just
Speaker 1: in terms of I don't know, man like like like
Speaker 1: physiology or or something like maybe I can't really speak
Speaker 1: to diving. I think that for free diving, I mean
Speaker 1: I would have to say, like I think women would
Speaker 1: really Yeah, I think when I get at that, like
Speaker 1: a couple of things that reasons when I say physiological
Speaker 1: is is if you look at different cultures around the world, Okay, Um,
Speaker 1: even cultures that hadn't had contact with one another for
Speaker 1: perhaps tens of thousands of years would develop along these
Speaker 1: similar lines where you had had that that like the
Speaker 1: hunting class, like the members of the society that gauge
Speaker 1: and hunting and fishing. Um, if you look at indigenous
Speaker 1: cultures and age jow in Africa, South America, North America,
Speaker 1: you want up saying that all these independently developed cultures
Speaker 1: also developed this thing where it was predominantly it was
Speaker 1: predominantly men, right, not for free diving. Now, free diving
Speaker 1: it's the women like Um. Justin and I actually we
Speaker 1: went to Korea to meet the Henon and they're these
Speaker 1: like old lady divers because they're kind of they are
Speaker 1: the last of their kind. It's something that hasn't really
Speaker 1: been passed on. But Um, for centuries they've been the
Speaker 1: one free diving for um, for sea snails, for um, abalone,
Speaker 1: for horn konk and um sustaining their whole island, you know.
Speaker 1: And they finding the Japanese culture too with the Ama
Speaker 1: and they were like shellfish diverse, pariol divers. Yeah, and UM.
Speaker 1: And it turned out that UM, I mean the story
Speaker 1: I hear is that for the curree yuh. Actually at
Speaker 1: first it was the men that that would do it,
Speaker 1: but then UM, But then I think what happened is
Speaker 1: Japan invaded Korea, put this tax on on the working
Speaker 1: people of this island, Jju and UM. And so there's
Speaker 1: kind of a loophole because attacks only applied to the
Speaker 1: men because they were the workers. And so the men
Speaker 1: taught their wives to dive. But then they ended up
Speaker 1: being so much better at it anyway. And the reasons
Speaker 1: why it's because they had um the more fat and
Speaker 1: so they could stay warmer in the cold water, but
Speaker 1: they also could hold their breath longer. And then so
Speaker 1: the women kind of did it because they weren't getting
Speaker 1: tax and then they ended up being so much better
Speaker 1: at it that they became like they were the ones
Speaker 1: that sustained the family. To this day, there's still the ones.
Speaker 1: We went and we interviewed these women and talked to them,
Speaker 1: and they're the ones that they they put their their
Speaker 1: husbands into college or whatever it is. They they take
Speaker 1: care of the whole family financially, they take care of
Speaker 1: the commune nitty because they're the ones that make the
Speaker 1: money because they're the ones that can dive. And so
Speaker 1: I really think that there's something different about about free
Speaker 1: diving because you don't need to be like that physically strong.
Speaker 1: I feel, you know, like I probably can't load your
Speaker 1: gun and cow like, but I don't need to because
Speaker 1: I know I can bring the fish closer to what
Speaker 1: I was gonna get at with the what I wanted
Speaker 1: to get at in the long run. Around. The thing
Speaker 1: about physiology is I'm saying like, even if there is
Speaker 1: some physiological element or something just about like aggressiveness or whatever,
Speaker 1: to hell, right, then I think that we've had, like
Speaker 1: we've had social and cultural overlays that have definitely impacted that.
Speaker 1: And what originally got me thinking about it was, Remember
Speaker 1: I was talking to a guy that looks at democrat
Speaker 1: hunting and fishing demographics, and he was pointing out that, um,
Speaker 1: that uh, a woman who hunts and fishes, there's a
Speaker 1: greater likelihood that they are in a family where there
Speaker 1: were no boys or where were they were the first child.
Speaker 1: That guys will like that that guys have historically been
Speaker 1: like basically, oh, I guess you can go because I
Speaker 1: don't have a son to bring, you know, And I
Speaker 1: think that that's like a that's an actual thing. I
Speaker 1: mean we've tried to I I perhaps um and having
Speaker 1: a daughter, like I feel like I perhaps try to overcompensate,
Speaker 1: um under like instructions from my wife too. The minut
Speaker 1: she found out she's having a girl, She's like, you
Speaker 1: are not going to treat her different than the boys.
Speaker 1: And so to hold up on that, I feel like I,
Speaker 1: um maybe do the opposite and lean on her a
Speaker 1: little more heavily or like have hot like have higher
Speaker 1: expectations to sort of demonstrate how, um, how good I'm
Speaker 1: doing right, like I need like I want my progress
Speaker 1: to be measured by hers in a way that winds
Speaker 1: up putting a little bit of unfair you know, like
Speaker 1: an unfair expectation, you know. So my like when she
Speaker 1: was eight years old, like this year, I really was like,
Speaker 1: we're gonna get a turkey. We'n get turkey, We're getting
Speaker 1: a turkey. It was coming from me very much like that.
Speaker 1: I needed, like I need you to do that to
Speaker 1: undo the stereotype that you're not responsible for, you know.
Speaker 1: So it's just become a thing of interest to me.
Speaker 1: And then we hear from people who feel um no,
Speaker 1: well oftentimes here from people who feel like like unwelcome
Speaker 1: by guys who sort of seem to want these this
Speaker 1: this world to be guy centric or find comfort in that.
Speaker 1: I don't know, Yeah, I guess I can. I can
Speaker 1: relate to all of that. I think that, yeah, because
Speaker 1: I do see like some guys just they're used to
Speaker 1: it being a certain way, and they're afraid that if
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of girls come into the scene, it's
Speaker 1: just going to change the vibe of it, you know,
Speaker 1: And it's just interesting, like on the edge of a
Speaker 1: recruitment type conversation here and yeah kind of. Um so,
Speaker 1: could you speak just briefly, um, as like spear fishing
Speaker 1: as a community is it would you say it's a
Speaker 1: welcoming community? Um? Is there part of spear fishing that
Speaker 1: like wants to like mentor people and bring more people
Speaker 1: into the space or is it is it kind of
Speaker 1: an insular community that it's like, hey, man, there's only
Speaker 1: so many fish in the ocean. I think it's both.
Speaker 1: I think you gotta earn it. And so it's like
Speaker 1: it's not gonna be handed to you. Doors might not
Speaker 1: just be open for you. You know, it's not something
Speaker 1: where it's like, hey, welcome, let's show you the ropes
Speaker 1: and um take you to our fishing spots and teach
Speaker 1: you how to do this. I don't think that, you know,
Speaker 1: it is fishing that people are going to be protective
Speaker 1: and secretive and keep to themselves in a certain way. UM. So,
Speaker 1: maybe getting a foot in the door isn't just like
Speaker 1: an easy hand out. But I think that if you
Speaker 1: want it bad enough, like if you try hard enough,
Speaker 1: and if it's just something you're really passionate about. UM,
Speaker 1: I guess I'm just telling my own story, but like,
Speaker 1: and you do it, You're gonna earn the respect of
Speaker 1: this community. And then all of a sudden, doors are
Speaker 1: gonna open and invites are gonna start coming. And and
Speaker 1: I think I kind of like it that way, like
Speaker 1: I just you know, um, and I think maybe in
Speaker 1: a way that's even why I was like, now, you
Speaker 1: guys gotta go three pronging first, you know, like you know,
Speaker 1: it's just like you don't just roll up here and
Speaker 1: put a spear gun in your hand and I'm gonna
Speaker 1: take you and shoot a big fish like you didn't
Speaker 1: earn it yet, you know, And so so so I
Speaker 1: guess I think it's a very wonderful, tight knit, beautiful
Speaker 1: community that I do think is welcoming. But I think
Speaker 1: it's the more you earn respect, the more welcoming it's
Speaker 1: going to be. Do you see a similar path in
Speaker 1: your bow hunting career? I mean, honestly, with bow hunting,
Speaker 1: I feel like I've spent um. I feel like I
Speaker 1: feel like I've earned respect as a spear fisher woman
Speaker 1: to the point where bow hunters look at me and
Speaker 1: say like, oh, you know, like and and they I
Speaker 1: feel like the doors have opened almost too easily where um,
Speaker 1: like you, your spear fishing credentials have have put some
Speaker 1: sort of like have got to me at least my
Speaker 1: spear fishing credentials have all of a sudden made like
Speaker 1: to me, it feels like a lot of people welco
Speaker 1: at me, welcome me into bow hunting. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: think that's nice, But I think I almost shy away
Speaker 1: from it because I it just sometimes feels like a
Speaker 1: little too spoiled for me, Like I, um, you know
Speaker 1: it's really I really appreciate it, but um, but I
Speaker 1: feel like sometimes when things are just like handed to you,
Speaker 1: it just doesn't feel right, I guess I could say.
Speaker 1: And so I've actually shied away from it a lot
Speaker 1: because I have been I have gotten a lot of
Speaker 1: offers and opportunities and and gear and stuff. When I
Speaker 1: get and I'm like, I'm such a big cook, Like
Speaker 1: I don't deserve this, Like this person deserves this, Like
Speaker 1: you should really be giving it to this person because
Speaker 1: I see her working her butt off, you know, whereas
Speaker 1: me like I didn't earn any of this, and so
Speaker 1: I kind of have shied away from it. And what
Speaker 1: has actually made me um crossover, just in this past
Speaker 1: week was that it was all those old dive mentors
Speaker 1: that I just speak so highly of who really trained
Speaker 1: me and diving. They're all bow hunters now and um,
Speaker 1: and they called me up and they said, you know, hey,
Speaker 1: let's get together and do a sheet punt. And like
Speaker 1: those guys they're gonna tell me to do anything, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do it, like and so I just said sure,
Speaker 1: and they're like, Okay, have you been shooting your bow?
Speaker 1: Like nope, Okay, Well meet me at the range. And
Speaker 1: I just like and I'll just listen to them because
Speaker 1: I don't know, they're just like they're my they're my teachers.
Speaker 1: And so then it just clicked naturally. And these guys, um,
Speaker 1: yeah I met you know, help me dial things in
Speaker 1: with my bow. Um, I'm just yeah, And I just
Speaker 1: like maybe I feel like I somehow with them. I
Speaker 1: feel like, oh, I have paid my dues, you know
Speaker 1: many times, fay my dues in this crew, and so
Speaker 1: when when they're gonna tell me to do something, I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna listen. And it was just such a cool
Speaker 1: learning process. And and then um, when we did go
Speaker 1: on a hunt, it was really neat because the sheep
Speaker 1: that we saw you know, my my friend Calais, who
Speaker 1: was my dive mentor, he just say, oh, Kimmy, like
Speaker 1: they're sheep up there. But honestly, there's not enough trees.
Speaker 1: That's all all lava really crunchy and noisy. The only
Speaker 1: way you could possibly close this gap is if you
Speaker 1: go alone. I can't go with you, like go. And
Speaker 1: that was like the first time I felt like confident
Speaker 1: in myself because he's the guy that he would tell
Speaker 1: me like, I know you never told this deep before,
Speaker 1: but today I know you can do it, go to
Speaker 1: the bottom. And he would he would do that to me.
Speaker 1: And so when he told me go, it was like
Speaker 1: this nostalgic bliss and like prime anything. I'm like, I'm going,
Speaker 1: you know. And and so now I feel like, yeah,
Speaker 1: like I I feel like ready to embrace that, whereas
Speaker 1: before when it's just like people I don't know, like
Speaker 1: it's so nice and I'm not at all complaining. I
Speaker 1: really am happy that I have bows and stuff, you know,
Speaker 1: but just like sending me stuff, I just started to
Speaker 1: feel a little too privileged, where um, it made me
Speaker 1: kind of even back away from it more. I can't
Speaker 1: speak to the gear end of it. But in terms
Speaker 1: of the invitations and stuff end of it, I think
Speaker 1: that what you're experiencing is, like we talked about the transfer,
Speaker 1: is that you've hit um level of extreme competency at
Speaker 1: something that is recognized as being hard. So it's an
Speaker 1: easy jump for people to make to assume that if
Speaker 1: you can do that, if you can excel in that space, UM,
Speaker 1: that you would be a great asset to have along
Speaker 1: in this space. If I hear like, if if I'm
Speaker 1: hanging out with a soldier right who's gone through and done,
Speaker 1: you know, like they became like a special Operations soldier
Speaker 1: UM and lived in that world and excelled in that world.
Speaker 1: I have like zero apprehensions about going on a backpack
Speaker 1: hunt because I'm like, I don't really know that, but
Speaker 1: understand that to be like some hard ship you obviously
Speaker 1: are really good at that. I can imagine that that
Speaker 1: would jump over and then you'd be welcome here because
Speaker 1: it's it's it requires spatial awareness, acquires like organization acquires,
Speaker 1: an ability just to stay calm and think, it requires
Speaker 1: an ability to get along with other people around you, um,
Speaker 1: and so it's like easy to to make the jump.
Speaker 1: So I think that you're probably just being uh. People
Speaker 1: are like, maybe I don't even know that much about
Speaker 1: that ship. I understand that's extremely challenging. If you're that
Speaker 1: good at that, this will be a walk in the park. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess, I guess you're right. And I just, um,
Speaker 1: I guess I never really thought it would necessarily cross
Speaker 1: over the same. And it wasn't until those guys who
Speaker 1: have pretty much like well you know, trained me from scratch,
Speaker 1: who they pretty much said that exactly like what you
Speaker 1: just said, they said it to me. Um, No, you
Speaker 1: you've got this like if you said, like all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, like I'm gonna be like way into tennis. Um,
Speaker 1: I don't know that you would then right find that
Speaker 1: you would infiltrate that world just because And then it
Speaker 1: was so neat when I when I did stock that
Speaker 1: sheep to see how much it did cross over, like
Speaker 1: it really like I had no one else there to
Speaker 1: ask or or to blame or to do anything any
Speaker 1: decision I made with my own, and I just had
Speaker 1: to look at that environment in front of me, and
Speaker 1: I just looked for for the shadows in the level.
Speaker 1: I looked for like where to couch down. All that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff and that it really it was very similar. Uh. Oh,
Speaker 1: I gotta ask something real quick to you boys chester Chester.
Speaker 1: Uh talk about your impressions. Had you dove in salt
Speaker 1: water before? No? I tried, No, really, I mean I
Speaker 1: was on a snorkeling excursion kind of as we're fishing
Speaker 1: one time in Mexico, and uh, I remember our guide
Speaker 1: getting out and like diving down to the bottom and
Speaker 1: like looking for stuff and trying that and failing miserably.
Speaker 1: That was with my family back in the day. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I was really really excited to try it. Watching you
Speaker 1: guys um the first day, I didn't have a spear gun.
Speaker 1: I was just swimming around with a snorkel looking at stuff.
Speaker 1: And it is a different world. Like from the top,
Speaker 1: you just can't, I mean from out of the water.
Speaker 1: From out of the water, what's going on? You get
Speaker 1: down there and it it's like cracks and cliffs and
Speaker 1: crevices and um fish everywhere. And I the next day
Speaker 1: I ended up carrying around a three prong with some
Speaker 1: from some fins that I found here at the rental house,
Speaker 1: and uh, I borrowed dirts snorkel and was like messing
Speaker 1: around so you probably borrowed a little bit of chew two.
Speaker 1: Definitely borrowed a little bit. I need some of that, no, um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I was swimming around by myself, and um,
Speaker 1: I was able to like get to the bottom and
Speaker 1: was like trying to like imagine, Okay, there's like a
Speaker 1: cliff here, so I'm gonna try and dive get to
Speaker 1: the edge of that and like peek over it, you know.
Speaker 1: And then you peek over and you're like, now I
Speaker 1: have no idea what I should go after, you know. Um.
Speaker 1: But I ended up I think, like sticking a fish
Speaker 1: and I didn't get him. It was like one of
Speaker 1: the ones that you guys had in the cooler with
Speaker 1: that three prong But then Steve came up and helped
Speaker 1: me out got I got the big spear gun um.
Speaker 1: And then you know, I was following Steve and he'd
Speaker 1: point out a fish and I look at him and
Speaker 1: sucking water and then spit it out again and point
Speaker 1: out the fish again, you know, and uh, I ended up.
Speaker 1: I think it was like the first got lucky, probably
Speaker 1: the first one or the second one that he pointed out,
Speaker 1: dove down and and shot and was surprised. It's just
Speaker 1: got him right behind the head, and um, you were
Speaker 1: more surprised in the fish maybe. Yeah. I was like,
Speaker 1: holy God, look at Steve and he's like a good job.
Speaker 1: And I got my first fish, So it was awesome.
Speaker 1: Proceeded to miss uh quite a few after and then
Speaker 1: pick my head on the surface and go see where
Speaker 1: Steve was and swim over there so you could load
Speaker 1: the gun again. But it was awesome and I could
Speaker 1: get into this for sure. Yeah, you feel the same way, Seth.
Speaker 1: You're not a water man. You're a water man, but
Speaker 1: you like to you like to probe the world with
Speaker 1: your walleye jig. Yeah. Yeah, I was telling you earlier.
Speaker 1: I like to feel the bottom with my my walleye
Speaker 1: jig rout and look at it. But no, it was
Speaker 1: my first time. I snorkeled a couple of times, like
Speaker 1: up in Maine on the lake when I was younger,
Speaker 1: but first time in the ocean, and when I first
Speaker 1: jumped in just getting used to everything, it was just
Speaker 1: like very stressful at first, like panic mode. I want
Speaker 1: to point out that it was u um, you know,
Speaker 1: like on a scale of one to ten of sort
Speaker 1: of like stressful places too to jump in I feel
Speaker 1: like it was over five because we were up in
Speaker 1: the rocks and there was yeah, some crashing waves. Is
Speaker 1: that like you're in some like lagoon. Yeah, it wasn't
Speaker 1: still water. You feel the forest of the swells coming
Speaker 1: in and in the noise element. I think, like you
Speaker 1: probably can't relate to say more, Kenny, but like there's
Speaker 1: a there's a stress inducing element to like the water
Speaker 1: moving bubbles in the water mouth will kind of make
Speaker 1: everything more intense. And the alarming thing to me was
Speaker 1: like my mask wasn't quite right, and I was like
Speaker 1: getting water up my nose and water down my tube
Speaker 1: and just trying to breathe that stash. Yeah, just trying
Speaker 1: to like you know, breathe normally while looking down in
Speaker 1: the water. Was was this like struggle at first? Once
Speaker 1: kept trying to encourage Seth to find something different to
Speaker 1: do with his hands. Yeah, I was just trying to
Speaker 1: like swim. But yeah, once I kind of got the
Speaker 1: hang of it and settled down, it was awesome after
Speaker 1: hovering over, you know, being in the air, right, you're
Speaker 1: over the ocean for a couple of days. When you
Speaker 1: got your when you got your face down there and
Speaker 1: looked around what was your feeling of finally, Oh, it
Speaker 1: was just like yeah, you like after beating in the
Speaker 1: boat for so many days, just like trying to picture
Speaker 1: what's going on down there. It's so different from when
Speaker 1: you actually stick your face down the wall and you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's what's down here, Like this is cool? Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: but no, it's cool. I definitely want to do it
Speaker 1: again and eventually at that point where I go down,
Speaker 1: start hunting, dive down. On another note, real quick, the
Speaker 1: clearing part, Like I basically got my eyeballs sucked out
Speaker 1: of my head yesterday, broke some blood vessels. Yeah, some
Speaker 1: blood was drawn on this track. Yeah. Yeah, when you
Speaker 1: when you go down, everyone is so focused on equalizing
Speaker 1: your ears and clearing your ears. But um, that air
Speaker 1: in your mask definitely starts to compress and compressing it. It
Speaker 1: It will suck your eyeballs right out if you don't
Speaker 1: equalize your mask too. Yeah, Kimmy, do you have any
Speaker 1: uh final things you'd like to talk about that you
Speaker 1: wish I had asked about and didn't ask And then
Speaker 1: also how can people go and see um the work
Speaker 1: that you and Justin put together and like like how
Speaker 1: should people go find you. I think I just um
Speaker 1: more so like curious to you guys, to you and caw,
Speaker 1: like I just want to hear from you about like
Speaker 1: you know, how how how it was, like how this
Speaker 1: whole trip was if you what you feel like you learn?
Speaker 1: Because I know on day one I told you like
Speaker 1: Hawaii is not necessarily the best place to come as
Speaker 1: a beginner, um because it's hard. You know, the fish
Speaker 1: are smart, like they might be everywhere and you can
Speaker 1: see them, but they're definitely don't make it easy on
Speaker 1: you and um, and so more than just me getting
Speaker 1: you on a fish, like, I think the bigger goal
Speaker 1: would be like really to learn how to hunt underwater.
Speaker 1: And for me personally, even though I said that to you,
Speaker 1: I was blown a way as we just did it
Speaker 1: day after day after day, and I really wish we
Speaker 1: were still doing it right now. Um, just watching you
Speaker 1: guys go through these steps and to me it felt
Speaker 1: like you were just learning so much constantly, and I
Speaker 1: just kind of want to know, like, yeah, what was
Speaker 1: that like, Like what did you learn? What did it
Speaker 1: feel like? Oh my gosh, I learned so much. I yes,
Speaker 1: for me, you know, it's like uh, you know, big
Speaker 1: win and and kind of a little disappointing at the
Speaker 1: same time, because like I knew coming into this trip
Speaker 1: that one of the things that I really had to
Speaker 1: fight was just like my eagerness and excitement. And I
Speaker 1: was so excited to be in the water and so excited,
Speaker 1: and and I was every single day, every like every
Speaker 1: minute of every day. You know, it's like, uh, Chester
Speaker 1: in a candy shop, right, He's gonna grab everything you can,
Speaker 1: like really really really going after it. UM And you know,
Speaker 1: I kind of failed at that really, Like I was
Speaker 1: just so excited, like elevated heart rate the whole time,
Speaker 1: just trying to just just really trying to uh you know,
Speaker 1: it's like the old you know, I got a dad
Speaker 1: as a football coach ort or football coach as a
Speaker 1: dad who was like, you know, go go, go, go go,
Speaker 1: and for me, instead of like calming down and slowing down,
Speaker 1: it's like just work really hard and pushed through. It
Speaker 1: is kind of steal what what comes out, and I
Speaker 1: just need to get a better better handle on that. UM.
Speaker 1: But the consistency of finding like very legitimate opportunities, like
Speaker 1: I absolutely no the first time I did this, UM
Speaker 1: part of me was like definitely gott Key had some
Speaker 1: success but definitely got lucky doing it. Um, I wonder
Speaker 1: if I could pull that off again. And you know,
Speaker 1: after this trip, like like I know I can get food,
Speaker 1: which is awesome and a huge accomplishment, right, So like, um,
Speaker 1: the consistency of finding those really good opportunities, even though
Speaker 1: I didn't capitalize on all of them or even a
Speaker 1: third of them, probably, um, is a huge accomplishment. Oh
Speaker 1: my god. But just the fact that you capitalize on
Speaker 1: even like even if it's just one, Like I just
Speaker 1: think that's not that's a huge win. Like you shot
Speaker 1: a legitimateho, like you shot a parrot fish Like that
Speaker 1: was like when I told people you guys were coming,
Speaker 1: Like one of the first thing they said was, well,
Speaker 1: there's no way they'd be able to shoot a new
Speaker 1: who And like like I just think, um, now, the
Speaker 1: fact that you accomplished that, Like I don't I don't
Speaker 1: even know if you realized what you pomplished, because that's
Speaker 1: a big deal. Yeah, I mean, it's just it's it's
Speaker 1: like bitter sweet, I guess what I'm getting at. Like
Speaker 1: watching uh, you know you ingin in the water, like
Speaker 1: part of me is like almost in panic. Mode of like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, did you like squander this opportunity? Did
Speaker 1: you not leach enough knowledge out of those two? Like,
Speaker 1: while you know it's it's right here, did did you
Speaker 1: not get enough out of him? You know that's and
Speaker 1: maybe that's just being in the learning curve, you know.
Speaker 1: I think if my head to look where I got
Speaker 1: this trip, um you have, Like I don't want to
Speaker 1: explain a little bit about my history with being curious
Speaker 1: about it is um. I mentioned earlier we got that
Speaker 1: pols beer when I was ten, and we would go
Speaker 1: out in our lake with an onion sack and shoot
Speaker 1: blue gulls off the bed and stuffed into an onion
Speaker 1: sack illegally, but like when you're a little kid, you
Speaker 1: can do things like if you were growing up in
Speaker 1: that lake, it would last five minutes. But his kids
Speaker 1: like kids, right, So I've always had a little bit
Speaker 1: of that curiosity about it, um. And I always had
Speaker 1: a lot of problems in my ears when I was
Speaker 1: a kid, getting water in my ears, going to like
Speaker 1: ear drum problems, my mom bringing me to the medstop
Speaker 1: like and I uh, I felt like I can't, like
Speaker 1: I'll never be able to spearfish because but my my
Speaker 1: I suffer from my ears all the time, ear infections,
Speaker 1: all kinds of jump um. And then when I started
Speaker 1: to get I kind of presented my friend Greg Fons,
Speaker 1: like this problem. He said that many people feel they
Speaker 1: have that problem. He's always hearing about people that can't
Speaker 1: dive because the ears. But it's just a lot of
Speaker 1: things you need to learn. It's a learned thing. And
Speaker 1: had some of my first like real legitimate spear fishing experiences,
Speaker 1: and he started to supply me with some equipment and
Speaker 1: kind of walked me through the gear. And then I
Speaker 1: was in this world of of uh with the actual gear,
Speaker 1: which is hard to get used to, and then being
Speaker 1: in the water and like trying to learn through a
Speaker 1: thing that you told yourself you can't do, Like like
Speaker 1: I just didn't think I could go under water to
Speaker 1: any real depth six ten ft whatever because I thought
Speaker 1: my ears would get hurt. So I was struggling to
Speaker 1: understand the gear, struggling to get over my fear of
Speaker 1: what would happen to my ears and how to stop
Speaker 1: that from happening to my ears, and then just being
Speaker 1: uncomfortable in an ocean environment and the unknowns right because
Speaker 1: I spent so much time and very comfortable around fresh water,
Speaker 1: but um, there's just a lot less going on as
Speaker 1: much less it's it's much less dynamic environment anywhere in
Speaker 1: fresh water, so it's not moving as much, there's not
Speaker 1: as much depth, there's not as much abundance of life,
Speaker 1: there's not all the unknowns. You know, I could tell
Speaker 1: you most lakes category I said, there is not a
Speaker 1: fish longer than this in this lake, and say it
Speaker 1: with like a lot of certainty that that's the case.
Speaker 1: But in the oceans, like ship, I don't know. It's stressful. Um,
Speaker 1: So I think it for a long time now, the
Speaker 1: last few years, for sure, I've talked about how like
Speaker 1: I want to be a spear fisherman, I would like
Speaker 1: to be a spear fisherman. Um on this trip, or
Speaker 1: like the couple of days of pretty intense training and
Speaker 1: exercise we had, I finally got to a point a
Speaker 1: little bit where I was like, I got comfortable with
Speaker 1: the equipment and I wasn't at any I caught moments
Speaker 1: where I wasn't having like a nagging problem of not
Speaker 1: understanding some aspect of the equipment, like knowing what the
Speaker 1: lead is supposed to feel like my mask isn't inexplicably
Speaker 1: leaking all the time, right, and and I like know
Speaker 1: how to load my own gun, and when it's messed up,
Speaker 1: I'm able to quickly ascertain what's messed up. I don't
Speaker 1: need to go ask somebody. So to hit that point
Speaker 1: where I'm I I I'm comfortable with the gear finally,
Speaker 1: and I can finally look around and I can finally
Speaker 1: understand at least what I need to know about my ears,
Speaker 1: Like there's a there's a pathway to like get like
Speaker 1: here's where my problem occurs. And sometimes I'm able to
Speaker 1: do it. Sometimes I don't, but I'm able to be
Speaker 1: like here's why that didn't Here's why that dive didn't work.
Speaker 1: I guess I for the first Like there's a day
Speaker 1: or two days here where I felt like, um, I
Speaker 1: was actually spear fishing and that wasn't just overwhelmed with
Speaker 1: anxiety and like what the hell is this thing for?
Speaker 1: And why is that that way? And is it normal
Speaker 1: that I can't see ship because it's all foggy? You know?
Speaker 1: I didn't drink a gallon of salt water today because
Speaker 1: I can't remember where the snorkel isn't isn't or Greg
Speaker 1: Fons remember this. I didn't lose my snorkel. You know.
Speaker 1: I just like God, like I'm here, I'm actually here.
Speaker 1: I'm fishing, you know, And I felt good, man, it
Speaker 1: felt good to be like to have some moments where
Speaker 1: I was there. Yeah. I think it was really good
Speaker 1: that you guys both It seems that you both came
Speaker 1: with a lot of that just figured out which was cool.
Speaker 1: Like you guys both seem to have your gear dialed
Speaker 1: and every because like even um, you know when when
Speaker 1: Seth was talking about just like getting in as you
Speaker 1: get a whole different world, and like I all, like
Speaker 1: I think, was like that must just be so crazy
Speaker 1: to just have your face in the water for the
Speaker 1: first time and just to tell yourself to breathe, you know,
Speaker 1: like we're not used to breathing through snarkles, and when
Speaker 1: you are used to your face being wet and in water,
Speaker 1: like I would think that just your reflex would be
Speaker 1: And I see all the time people just put their
Speaker 1: head out of the water to breathe. They don't want
Speaker 1: to breathe thro their snarkle. They don't trust it, and
Speaker 1: it takes a long time. I think to get kind
Speaker 1: of dialed and comfortable with your gear then with yeah,
Speaker 1: this crazy different world, and I guess I'm yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: just glad that you guys put in the time that
Speaker 1: you did prior because you came. I don't know, I
Speaker 1: feel I feel like you're both spear fisher men, like
Speaker 1: I definitely do. I think, UM, when I hear you say, oh,
Speaker 1: I want to be a spear fisherman, like you know,
Speaker 1: you know, I know that you could go and, like
Speaker 1: you said, get dinner and go feed yourself like like exactly,
Speaker 1: even just like found an octopus. And I know that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff happens by chance. It happens like when
Speaker 1: you're just in the right place at the right time.
Speaker 1: But that is spear fishing. And UM, I just think
Speaker 1: it's it's super cool to see that you guys can
Speaker 1: now enter this underwater world and just leave with dinner,
Speaker 1: you know, very cool, very cool. Can I ask what
Speaker 1: you two are doing next? Yeah? And roll in the
Speaker 1: how do people find you? Part of that? Um? We
Speaker 1: have no idea what we're really doing. UM, but we
Speaker 1: I mean, we created a YouTube channel. We created a
Speaker 1: YouTube stop real quick because like the WI the first
Speaker 1: time that we actually met. So we met through some friends.
Speaker 1: Kimmy was doing a talk in in Catching, where I
Speaker 1: used to live, and and we ended up having many
Speaker 1: many talks when we overlapped on that trip, and and uh,
Speaker 1: there was It's it's funny that one of the conversations
Speaker 1: was like, uh, Kimmy's an international traveler, international woman of mystery,
Speaker 1: like going all around the world spear fishing everywhere, and
Speaker 1: and just got this incredibly supportive boyfriend, a long time boyfriend. Um,
Speaker 1: justin at home, and you had set this like, um
Speaker 1: kind of date for yourself for benchmark to like, well,
Speaker 1: I thought I would start a family at this point,
Speaker 1: but that's kind of I've already passed that now. And
Speaker 1: there's all these other events and and things going on right. Uh,
Speaker 1: but you know, like as the world turns, it's like married, baby,
Speaker 1: and and so what's next. Yeah, that that is that's
Speaker 1: all very true. Um. And it's crazy like with that
Speaker 1: transition from going from just like traveling all the time constantly,
Speaker 1: see then all of that is coming to a screeching
Speaker 1: halt um with with having a baby and then COVID
Speaker 1: happening at the exact same time. Um, we I ended
Speaker 1: up staying home and it's ended up being the smoothest transition.
Speaker 1: Um somehow, Like I thought i'd get itchy, I thought
Speaker 1: I'd missed traveling, and Justin and I just ended up
Speaker 1: creating this YouTube channel together and just really filming the
Speaker 1: adventures of everyone backyard. It's a lot of spear fishing
Speaker 1: pretty much every episode. We're going out, going, diving, getting food,
Speaker 1: cooking it up, trying to do it all with our
Speaker 1: baby buddy in toe and um and that is a
Speaker 1: whole another fun adventure and challenge of its own, and
Speaker 1: it's just kept me so entertained and kept us so busy. Um.
Speaker 1: And we've done that for a year now. We put
Speaker 1: out an episode a week for a year, one year
Speaker 1: and we just finished that year and now we're just
Speaker 1: trying to feel where the inspiration is going. Yeah, take
Speaker 1: a great break and kind of recollect. That's a lot
Speaker 1: of work. One episode a week with the baby that
Speaker 1: was a what's the YouTube channel? It's just called Kimmy Werner. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think it's like at kay, I am I Space
Speaker 1: Warner and on Instagram you're Kimmy Swimmy. I am Kimmy Swimmy. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It is k I am I underscore s W I
Speaker 1: M M y and uh we're here filming so with
Speaker 1: with with Kimmy as a guest on our show, which
Speaker 1: will come out on Netflix next fall. And Justin all
Speaker 1: the underwater photography you'll be all see his handy word
Speaker 1: which the clips we're seeing good watching you guys the
Speaker 1: Holy Holy our favorite fish and just the surge and
Speaker 1: getting whacked against rocks and just like you guys coming
Speaker 1: up with one because it's not easy, and seeing how
Speaker 1: much you learned in those couple of days and applying
Speaker 1: it to like going back to the three prong and
Speaker 1: going back to small fish. You guys succeeded and that
Speaker 1: was really cool. Yeah, Justin had to wear a lot
Speaker 1: of hats, So I feel like we really need to
Speaker 1: make sure he gets his do here when you watch
Speaker 1: when you watch um, when you watch me Eating on
Speaker 1: Netflix and you get to the spearfishing episode with Kimmy
Speaker 1: all the underwater workers, Justin he was a mentor. Might
Speaker 1: I might put on the credits that I did it?
Speaker 1: Know you guys, do you all have shots because you
Speaker 1: were wearing GoPros and stuff, so you guys get credit, right? No, No, cinema.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, spell your deal out, uh cinema c I
Speaker 1: N E M A t OW s k I. My
Speaker 1: name is Justin Turkowsky a combination of it. But yeah
Speaker 1: and then um yeah, So check these guys out on Instagram,
Speaker 1: check out the YouTube channel, and thanks and stay tuned
Speaker 1: because we'll you will get up close and personal with
Speaker 1: Kimmy Werner on an upcoming episode of Meat Eater, which will,
Speaker 1: like I said, will come out next fall. So till
Speaker 1: then hangs off. All right, thanks guys, appreciate it, Thank you,
Speaker 1: Thanks guys,