Ep. 350: Sharks in the Oreos

but that doesn't rhyme. So you got it's like you gotta kind of mash yourn a mester, Chester the dive math Master about dive maister Chriester the dive maister. Yeah that works. Chester turning just was like a phenomenal free diver. Now just is like a better free diver than me. Now that's not true. It's like it is true. It blows my mind. What day was it? What was the day you couldn't really get under the water. You couldn't like terday, So yesterday was what Saturday? So would have

been Friday? So Friday he can't really get underwater. And on Saturday he's a fifty diver hanging out, hanging out, looking around relaxing. What's your secret chester? The first day I was flailing around like shark bait. And the second day I just was like, I don't know. I just gotta relax because I can swim and I can hold my breath and I think I know how to clear,

so I just have to relax. So I relaxed, and I think I only made three dives, like three or four dives all day, all day yesterday, but I just tried to make sure my heart rate was low, and yeah, just relax. And then the when I was diving in Hawaii, the thing that hurt the most was I'd go down and I didn't know how to equalize my mask and my eyes were getting sucked out my head basically, and

that was like very It limited me a lot. But now that I just pushed a little bit of air into that mask and relaxed, it was sweet and just dive in. So in Louisiana, there's a muckline and not all the spots, but a lot of these spots were at and you can't see anything, so you just it's kind of freaky, but you keep swimming down, keep swimming down, and all of a sudden, it's like clear, you start seeing fish around and then watch I was able to then watch you guys do what you do, and it

just helped. You know, everyone's moving nice and slow and smoothed and relaxed. So watching helped a bunch too. Do you think you're going to give up on walleye fishing though, Nope, it's still is gonna be interesting to you. I think you might share to start hunting while you stand up in a boat, not knowing what's going on down there, all your fancy electronics, when you can just go down

there and look. Well, you know, I don't think anybody in those walleye circuits scout by diving that would you would learn a lot. Yeah, in my freshwater diving in Arkansas, UM, the walleye and stripe ass everything. You get a complete different perspective of what it's like versus what the rod and reel guys see. Amazing for scouting. Brandon introduced everybody introduced themselves. Brandon Brandon hendrickson ecstatic sport fishing and this Louisiana.

So tell everybody what that is? Um? What is that? Um? Not not venice, but tell everybody what your what your business is, your line of work, So I run offshore uh sport fishing charters here. Uh Tuna swordfish is our primary thing. Um, I love just spearfish though. That's kind of how I got got into it. It's been my main thing for years. And but but you don't. You don't guide spear fishing. I do not. I do not guide spear fishing only because of liability issues, got it? Yeah,

we can't get insurance. Yeah? Is it that you can't or it would make it untenable, Like it would just be like totally impractical. Oh, I could do it in a heartbeat. I could probably half a dozen requests every know, I mean from the insurers perspective, like you could, but it would just be like outrageous, It would be outrageous. Yeah, it's it's difficult to find the insurance. And I mean

my insurance is already crazy. Yeah, and I could. It would double what am are what I'm already paying, got it, Yeah, and just make it that's uh too expensive to get clients. Yeah, your average client wouldn't be able afford it, got it? So, And you were saying spear fisherm or tight wise a little bit like more so than Tom, more so than Yeah, very I think the the average free diver spear fisherman is pretty thrifty. It's a younger crowd. Uh, the cost of getting into it is not super high versus uh,

you know, our middle age client. It's a scrappy more like dirt bag, kind of dirt bag, like that dirt bag, like dirty, but dirt bag. You like. It's just a little more, just a little yeah, younger se Yeah, it's a lot. It's a lot of young a lot of young kids. Not like old yachtsman. They're not yachtsman. No, not your average one. Greg, introduce yourself, Greg Fonts, distributor for robb Allan spear fishing Products. And that's about it. Mentor to Steve here and there. If he listens, come on,

he's the mentor. Mike my Crib underwater cinematographer. I shot a couple episodes of you guys, my first with you. You prefer to be filming underwater? I do, but I do buffaler stuff too. Yeah. Um, how long you've been diving for it's just two five? Oh really? Yeah? So you didn't grow up with it? I mean I always like snarkled in the lakes and stuff. It was moved to California, and as soon as I moved, I took a scuba course and I bought it underwear camera. That's

why I moved to California to be underweard photographer. And uh because the school I went to had an underwater photography program. So I left school and U n C and moved to California trained underwater photographer. Mhmm, you've been bit by a shark? Yeah, almost yesterday, got close yesterday and then justin have you been on the show before? Okay, you joined another underwater cinematographer. Yep, my name's justinter Custy. I'm an underwater cinematographer. I'd say camera operator, but I

learned the underwater camera stuff later on from Kimmy. Kimmy taught me yet yea yea. And then of course Chester to dive master Master Master Chester, he's going to be the next sponsored athlete from sponsors and carbon Finn sweatsuit. Yes, Chester's gonna quit work and he's gonna have too many options available to Chester. You talk about being on the you and Seth. Uh. Seth's got gas row on testinal

problems right now and can't join. Are you able to talk about, uh, what it means to be the Angler of the year, not that you are the Angler of the year. We're not the Layer of the year. But this is for the Montana Walleye Tour that Seth and I are fishing, which consists of four tournaments in Montana, and ideally you want to fish them all. So I would up your odds to become Angler of the Year, which means they take your top three tournament finishes and

you get points. And I'm not quite sure how the point system works, but obviously if you do better in the tournament, you're gonna get more points. UM. And we have done two out of the three tournaments that have happened so far, I think we're sitting in sevente place UM, which is pretty good UM, out of quite a few boats, quite a few teams. We have one more left. We get back from this trip in Louisiana. We have a day to unpack, repack, get the boat rigged, get all

that stuff. Sare hellos and goodbye is to our wives and head out to tiber for the last one m And if we do well, it'd be sweet to place top ten in Anger of the Year. If we do well, it could happen. You never know. It's great, man, you guys are tearing it up. You guys gotta bear with us while we we gotta talk about a bunch of

new stuff. First off, this is really new because, like hundreds of years old, we recently covered something where we were covering some guys looted an ancient archaeological site and tight Wad, Missouri. We got talking about how does how did tight Wad, Missouri get his name? Guy writes in and says A listener writes in and says, I thought i'd share the local history on how tight Wad got its name, as it was taught to me my entire

childhood by every old man within thirty miles. So tight Wad was once time, once upon a time called Edgewood, Missouri. Here's always got his name. A postal worker long ago stops into a local produce shop fixing to buy himself a watermelon to give to his wife. You track and chester there's a big, huge bin of watermelons and they're priced whatever. He digs through and finds the best watermelon

he can find, brings it to the counter. The shop owner tells him, well, that watermelon is the unusual for the bin. Therefore the watermelon you selected is actually fifty cents more. The postal man was livid about this and returns to his mail office. The town has like sixty nine people in it, so every time a piece of mail was coming into Edgewood, the postal worker would scratch out Edgewood and write tight wad on it and send

it along as a snub to the watermelon salesman. He says, in all their versions of this story, it was a chicken, not a watermelon. So there's that. I don't know. I

don't know. I got to think about it longer. Every time in the summer we get into summer, we always get a lot of letters from people who are having access problems while fishing, like real mean people in Florida that set up sprinklers and shipped to Like if you go fish by their dock, their sprinkler kicks on, or you go to fish by their dock and they go out and turn their boat engine on an idol at the scare away the fish. Whatever they can do to

her ass. Fisherman Listener writes in about this. Now he's a respectful chap who wrote in, and he's being purpose Per was fully vague in his explanation of where this is, because he's like, for all I know, the guy is right, but it's a big lake in Lake County, Florida. He says there are several springs that feed into canals that connect to this lake. The canal that he's referring to has been a public waterway for as long as he's been alive, and in fact, he knows it's been regarded

as a public waterway for at least thirty years. Presumably it was public many decades before that. There's crystal clear water, large a lot of hybrid bass, so it's always a popular spot for swimmers and anglers. A single landowner owns both sides of this canal, and he's always been unfriendly, and lately he's been really waging war on users bass fisherman. Now he's gone so far as to go ahead and erect a motorized strawbridge to once and for all block the canal. Huh, this guy is like, is this an

a legal deal now? At all? Fairness, I can't tell if that's illegal, and I don't know the story. I mean he's blocking public waters or not? I mean talking about this because I don't know, well, right, but I think about it. I didn't do my I didn't do my research. Think about in Montana if someone like put something like that over a river where you used to be able to get a boat too, But I don't know that that's the case here. It's interesting to me,

but I don't know. Anytime someone tells me a story, it always pisses them off, so usually don't say it. But you know what, I'm always thinking when someone tells me a story, I'm always thinking, it's probably the north side of that story. So I don't know two sides to everything. If he was more if the if the person wants to write in and be more specific about which canal it is, I bet you we will get a lot of more dedicated, vetted feedback about what the

legal play is here. But what without you saying where this is? It's just too hard. We're not gonna be able to go get a bunch of professional opinion on it. We need you to drop he needs to drop a pin. You can still get a canoe through there. You can slip a canoe through there, But you don't know if you're gonna be some pistol wave and canal owner on the other side of it's even this little drawbridge has even got like this little extra board hanging down. Is

it connected to the bottom. No, there's no way. Uh So, yeah, you can get more specific and I'm sure a lot of people because whenever we do this, like people weigh in there, like I know that spot and here's the deal with that spot, and you'll get a lot more feedback. You guys could probably all sneak through there with your wet suits on. You guys would look like the Seal Team six going through you there. Now here's a real

super interesting story. Um, it's an old story, but it's been made new again and I'll make it relevant by saying on our last episode, recent episode, we had the writer, photographer, commercial fisherman from Alaska, Seth Cantor, who, as we explained, grew up in a side igloo. He brought down to our studio whale meat and we enjoyed bow ahead, muck tuck um so bloob earth a little chunk of skin

attached was kind of right now my favorite food. Um. That coincided nearly in time with a real development for the Macaw tribe of Washington, who is a step closer to this is a Northwest Washington, the Macaw tribe. They're one step closer to legally resuming the hunting of gray whales. Let me give you a little background in understanding this.

The Macau tribe in eight fifty five signed a treaty with the US government which seeded a bunch of their historic lands and secured for them certain things, including whaling rights. So they treat they had a treaty negotiation with the US government who never ever ever default sign and agreement that they would be able to continue whaling. Okay, and

they did continue whaling. They wailed until nine when they voluntarily abandoned whaling in n Now you might be like, why would they do that, Well, here's why they did it. At that point in time, commercial whaling enterprises had greatly reduced whale numbers. They were historically harvested harbor seals, some other marine mammals, but they targeted gray whales. There was global efforts at that time to curtail and end whaling.

And also the tribe had been you know, influenced by like americanization programs, right, like everybody get on the same program. Great American melting pot so culturally they moved away from it, and there were very low whale numbers, and there were global pressures for governments and others to end whaling. In fact, the McCaw equit whaling before some countries ended their own

organized whaling programs. Fast forward from to the mid nineties and gray whale estimates at that time, gray whale population estimates were up to around twenty thousand animals, so a lot of whales and the Macaw announced their intention to resume whaling. They were going to resume whaling by getting oh whale. But in all that time between twenty eight and the mid ninety, these whales had become like cultural deities.

They had become almost if you want to understand like how our culture feels about whales, they revere whales almost as much as they revere dogs. Dogs are the new whales. Now, Yeah, you definitely here save the whales. Yeah, but I mean like dogs like now, like you know, in the old days, like my dad would talk about being made to go down and and put puppies in a bag with a rock and throw them off the pier in Lake Michigan Cheese to get rid of extra puppies if you had

a dog, had extra puppies, that doesn't fly anymore. Absolutely not. So like like dogs have entered this almost like human class, right. Oh yeah. I feel like a lot of people are having dogs and not having kids anymore because kind of just satisfied with the dogs. They don't last long. Dogs. Yeah, you have kids, it's like you know, they're stood around you die. You get a dog, it's like the ends in sight. Like for this dog for like thirteen years

and die, not a big deal. When when our dog dies, it's gonna be a bad day in the Floyd household. You're just gonna take it hard. She loves that dog more then she loves me. So when they wanted to get back and the whaling whales had entered, like to save the whales thing had become like so effective that it had become cold, Like people would be more mad about you killing a whale than you're killing a person by far, uh, And they had to put up with that.

So there's there's kind of like two primary viewpoints came out about tribal whaling um and it came from both sides.

It was kind of coming from the right and the left in a way where people are like that for the tribe to choose a resumption of what the tribe was saying is they're saying, like, we're going to resume this like thing, like our culture is based on whaling, so we're gonna resume something that had as great societal importance to us, And we're gonna resume whaling as taking up our ancestral culture, assuming our ancestral rights, um re

establishing our treaty rights, having a cultural connection to our forebears. Like these were things that they articulated as being very important to them, and the blowback was like varied. Okay, the blowback to the tribe came in two ways. One it was sort of like this idea that like, if you're gonna take up historic cultural practices, then you should

resume all of your historic cultural practices. That it's like, if whaling is so important to you, why don't you bring back widow burning, why don't you bring back Native American slavery and slave trade practices? Why don't you resume human sacrifices, Why don't you resume intertribal warfare? Okay. The other take on it was, well, then you should give

up everything that modernity has given to you. If you're gonna take up whaling, then you better give up electricity, You better give up basketball shoes, you better give up welfare assistance. Like, if you're gonna be like the old times, you gotta give up all the new stuff. And this is like the heat that this tribe took. There was more legal wrangling than I care to get into here, and it'd be like too hard to track the whole

damn thing. But they went ahead and killed whale. Uh. People got great glee out of the hypocrisy that they used a traditional canoe with harpoons, yet they had backup boats and a fifty caliber rifle that after they harpooned the whale, rather than killing it in traditional practices, which would have been basically getting up and lancing it behind the skull were of the spine hooks up, they shot it with a fifty caliber rifle, which apparently came on

the recommendation of a veterinarian. So people had a heyday with like, oh, it was kind of traditional, but kind of not and how hypocritical and people turned into a fiasco for the tribe. They had all the usual suspects right humane society, um they had petera On and on totally bent out of shape about them killing this one whale. They had to contend with news helicopters, they had to contend with protesters and boats trying to run them down.

Just a total disaster for everybody. But they got their whale. A bunch of people got their first ever taste of whale blubber right, and then it was given a lot of press that a lot of the whale meat rotted on the beach and they had they didn't know how to take care of the whole thing, but they were like stepping back into getting back into this thing. A family tried again in two thousand to kill a whale and they were again hounded by news helicopters. The Coast

Guard was involved. Apparently a woman was trying to harass the chase that was trying to harass the whalers in a jet ski and she got hit by a Coastguard boat and was litigious about that. Uh again made it a total hassle for him. They haven't done any whaling since because they've been waiting on the federal government to

give them the okay to resume whaling for real. Like with all red tape eliminated when they came when they did the Marine Mammal Protection Act, you had in a for instance, Native Alaskans have all these car beouts for the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Um Siberian Eskimos have carve outs for the Marine Mammal Protection Act where they're allowed

to resume whaling for traditional practices. The Macaw didn't. But for like thirteen years they've been doing an environmental impact statement on whether they can get one of these legitimate carbouts from the FeAs to do their whaling. And they just released early like a draft of the environmental impact statement which suggests that an early so coming up early next year they'll get the green light for a six year period to kill twelve what to kill twelve whales

over a six year period. And now we're in that beloved period of all this ship called the um public comment period, which she always wanted, like is they who do they listen during the public comment period? The problem with the public comment period is you know they're gonna you know that the save the Whales people, you know that they're like radical animal rights movement is just gonna

dominate the public comment period. Oh yeah, it does not sound like peaceful gathering or comments coming their way by any means. No, it's like the anti hunting crowd will

dominate this period. A lot of times. I always find that like non Native, like non Native American hunters usually aren't that interested in Native American hunting rights because it's like because legally it's been set up to legally it's been set up to put at odds right, Like people of Euro American descent um often have like your hunted, Like if you're of Euro American descent, You're hunting privileges are regarded as much less important than Native American or

Native Alaska hunting privileges, which creates a lot of resentment. There's kind of idea that like whatever happens to them doesn't impact me. And if I'm a Euro American, a hunter of Euro American descent, they're not going to have my back when it comes to my disputes from my rights. That was lightning. They're quite a boomer there. And we're in a rainstorm, So if you hear a little the whole time it's just pouring down, rain sets the mood.

And if someone's a if you're like a hunter, like a hunter in America of Euro American descent, You're gonna view like, why do I want to have the This is a common perception I hear from people, like why would I have Native Americans back on their hunting rights issues? They're not gonna have my back on my hunting rights issues.

Or this is this idea that like, it's these two things, like Native Americans are negotiating their hunting privileges and a just a completely different realm than what then, what the American population at large is doing to protect and get their hunting rights and and in fact, often like people of Euro American descent or not, such as a non

tribal I think it's cleaner say nontribal individuals. Non tribal individuals get their hunting privileges and all their bag limits and everything is set through state wildlife management agencies and tribal organizations like tribes. Tribal organizations often negotiate directly with the Feds. So we have we we like occupy these

completely different realms. Uh, we live under different jurisdictions. So I think that a lot of people would look at like what the Macaw have going on with whaling and would just think like, what does that have how why does that have anything to do with me? Like, why would I care if they can whale? Um, they're not gonna look out from my right to fish. In fact, their rights to fish often trump my rights to fish. So if it's good for them, maybe it's bad for me.

My view on it is, if you look at who's opposed to them, it's like it's like the radical animal rights movement is opposed to my Kyle whaling. And you know how you often can like pick your friends by your enemies. I would just say, like, the people who are opposing them are not your buddies. So I reflexibly looked at this, and then I hope that they are able to resume their whaling. And that's and I don't think that what that means is it might open up

whaling down the road to dudes like me. Um, that ain't never gonna happen. And it's like has to go get a whale for fear that they would be hard to get that that. Um, I wouldn't be able to eat anything but that whale for the rest of my life. Once you feel a freezer with a whale, you're done

hunting and fishing. Yeah, I think if they're recovered and if you look at what they're proposing twelve whales over six years, if it's done responsibly, like right, yeah, it's just there's there's the thing we've been talking about over the course of a couple of days. We're talking about like this is a good segue actually to these waters uh there day were I was expressing his view that that the world is more it's sort of like it's

wildlife management. It has to be considered in sort of like locally specific areas, and it has to be considered in terms of like you have to get down to the nats ass on a lot of wildlife recovery issues. We're discussing that that globally, right, like as a collection of species, as a collection of many species. Globally, sharks are in trouble, meaning there are shark species in trouble, like specific shark species are in trouble in specific areas

of their range. But that doesn't mean that all sharks are in trouble across the entirety of their range. It's more complicated than that. And I think that that the whale movement created this thing that's sort of like that they they've lumped all whales together and they've viewed them globally. To say that a lot of whales are imperiled across much of their range in the would have been like

a very true statement. Certain whale species were imperiled somewhere, imperiled in particular areas of their range, and some were imperiled over the entirety of their range, But that in no way meant that all whales are imperilled everywhere. That whales live just like the sharks, just like the sharks. And you cannot come and make an argument that in northwest Washington gray whales are imperiled or that even has

any bearing on like global gray whale populations. That this tribe were to kill a whale or two every year, it's not an issue. It's just public perception. It's a public perception bad. If a couple killer whales or orcas they got like rebranded as orcas. If a couple of orcas kill a great whale, it's the greatest thing in the world. That's gonna be like David Attenborough will be like this is so cool, or however he puts it.

They love it. But it's but a native American tribe kills one and it's like, oh my god, those same people watching in Monterey every year that there's always a couple of great whales killed by workers there and it's the circle of life. They love it. Yeah, well, I think it's that was my mind. It's it's interesting because I think there's too many times where if like, well, I can't, if I can't take advantage of that resource, I don't want anyone to be able to take care

of that, never take advantage of the resource. And we saw this in the closure of the abalone fishery in northern California, where you'd go to these d f G meetings and explain what dfgent Department Fishing Game, which has now changed his name. But um oh, that's right, what is it now? Ah, this is a big issue. So it's like there are a lot of state agencies that just have wildlife and them like our our state agency, um so fish wildlife and parts. They never called it game.

It was always wildlife, so no one cares. It was always wildlife. But Californians resented the idea that animals are game, so it's fish and wildlife, so they changed it to be like, well, it's like a value judgment you're placing. You're saying that, like wildlife resources are like game for the taking, and so they wanted to make it wildlife as part of California's And I'm not trying to hack on you boys. I'm not hacking you boys. I'm not

hanging on you boys at all. I'm just saying that California is gradually but steadily transitioning away from consumptive use. Would agree that there's no example where they're not they're phasing out consumptive use of wildlife resources. Yeah, And when you look at something like the Abalonie Fishery, you have these meetings after meetings and people would bring in videos of these areas that are completely healthy. And we're talking

about specific areas. Just because one one area is unhealthy doesn't mean there isn't an area that's sustainable and that you should be able to harvest from. And you'd go to these meetings and you'd have all the passionate you know,

abalone hunters out there. But then I don't even know where these people would come from, but you would have this line of fifty people that would talk about, well, I think we need to close it because I wanted to be here from my kids, and I like going to the ocean and whale watching, and you're that's nice, but you're not using the resource. And if you're not

using the resource, you don't really understand the resource. So it's one of those things of to just kind of paint broad strokes of I want it closed because I wanted to be here from my kids. That might not actually not be the case. You know. It's one of those things if if you let areas be overpopulated or you don't monitor them, you know, they can actually become

more unhealthy and collapse even more. And my big issue with that was when they were doing surveys, they would serve as specific sites over and over and over again. They would never go out of those sites and go, Okay, hey, what are in these m l p A s. How the m l PA is doing. They would never survey the protected areas to actually see what an untouched area

was doing. So it's just interesting that, you know, just it's just so general of like, oh this one area is bad, we should shut it down, or I don't want you to have it, so I you know, I don't want to have it, so you shouldn't happen. And it's one of those things that that's because you don't actually use the resource. I don't. I'm not going to rush out and go hunt to whale. I'll tell you

that much if I could. It's one of those things that that's culturally important to a tribe, you know, that's you know, if healthy populations persistent, they should be able to harvest one. But I do feel that that the whaling spirit resides deep in my humoculous though, because when we're out fishing and you're like cruising along out to your fishing spot and there's a whale out in front

of you. For reaching along, I do some part of me is like, my god, I mean like like you just like what, like to think of people in a skin canoe? Oh? Yeah, Like to think of people in a boat made a walrus hide, paddling up with homemade tackle made entirely from bone and wood and animal parts, paddling up, fixing the sink a harpoon into that thumb bitch. It's like that is a level of that's a level

of gur not often achieved by modern man. Well, I think people discount the the amount of effort it takes to do some of these things right, you know, like like again the apple and fish are fishing the rigs out here. I mean, hey, you know, put a seven mill wet suit on and getting fifty degree water that's super murky, and go try to get apple on. It's one of those things that I think people just think

everything is easy. You know, you just go you just go out there and go whaling are you know, you just go out there and shoot the rig up or go get abalone or whatever it is. And it's just like that. There's a lot of effort and put into it. It's it would be impossible to do. And in some and in many ways, it was sort of subvert democracy, and it would subvert the North American model of wildlife conservation.

But if I was emperor of the world, or even just emperor of the country, I would enact the system. When it came to wildlife management issues and they got into the public comment period, I would send out legions of people to go assign value systems to opinions, and you do an interview process. In my surveyors would go to every American who said, like I have I have I have something to say, I have something to say,

you'd raise your hand. I'd send one of my research to researchers to your home and they would interview you, and they would assess your education on the issue. They would assess what you had at stake. This is horribly an American, if new American, But I would find a way to pay for it. I'd pay for it by by the president off fishing licenses. I don't know what

the hell i'd do. I'd figure out some way. I'd like steal it from other ship that I don't care about that much, So I would, Uh, they do an interview with you, like what is your knowledge, actual knowledge of the issue, based on some like impure like based on like empirical data. What do you understand and where does your understanding a line with sort of an objective reality as determined by like an impartial group, And then

like what do you what's at stake for you? And then I would rank the importance of your input on a sliding scale of one to ten, and it'd be like the bonus point system and tag allocations. If you were a ten, your vote counted by ten. If you were a one year, vote counted once. Then I do all that ship way better program. Yea, things will be a lot better, way better. Very Unamerican. Here's two more things that sort of fit. This is all well themed,

you know. Krin puts all this like a figure. We always have a lot of stuff we want to talk about. Krinn puts it together. Did a good job putting it together. Um. I have observed, and it's been observed by many people that the that the Pittman Robertson Act, like which we talked about every episode in some capacity or another, has become like this over observed thing. Um. And it is all the money that AMMO buyers and gun buyers, all

the money that they put into conservation. And usually some of the groups, uh, some of the firearm groups and ammil manufacturers who are hit by Pittman Robertson are most eager to let the public know about what their contributions have been. Federal ammunition. Every year will release what public expenditures on federal ammunition has pumped into Pittman Robertson, which is an excise tax on sporting goods equipment. There's a

parallel program in fishing called Dingle Johnson. So it's like marine fuel trolling motors all kinds of fishing tackle has an excise tax attached to it. It's been around, Pittman Robertson has been around since nine and it was put into effect because hunters and gun owners asked for it to recover American wildlife. And now Pittman Robertson kicks out, you know, like a billion buck a year for access, disease research, wildlife management, and all goes as matching funds.

So all the guns and AMMO you buy, then you could be like an anti hunter New Jersey who buys a pocket pistol. You just paid into Pittman Robertson funds and it's dished out through UH matching grants. So for a state to get Pittman Robertson fund they have to kick in their own money. They get that money by selling hunting and fishing licenses. Okay, so they want to do a thing. They want to do, you know, an

access program, they want to do a research program. They want to put in water tanks to improve wildlife habitat in the desert. Whatever. They're like, we got two grand for this project. We'd like to get two grand to Pittman Robertson money. And they look at everything, it lines up with mission, and bam they give them the money. It's a wonderful program. Well not if you ask Georgia Congressman Andrew Clyde and his fifty three co sponsors who

wants to repeal. So Republican from Georgia, he wants to repeal Pittman Robertson. He's got an interesting argument that I that I dig the argument, but I just don't like the whole thing, and I'll talk about why both. The interesting argument is that he's saying, you can't tax, ah, you shouldn't be able to tax the constitutional right, and he thinks it's like an Pittman Robertson is an infringement

on constitutional rights. Where he's coming from is that there are right now people trying to fight gun ownership and fight Second Amendment rights with these sort of like retribution taxes against gun owners. Okay, So a Democrat from Virginia, Don Bayer, Congressman Virginia, he's introducing this bill that would put a thousand percent tax, a one thousand percent tax on semi automatic weapons, okay um. And also like anything beyond rim fire AMMO would be under these huge taxes.

All right, So in trying to fight that out, they're like, well, let's just overturn the whole program and get rid of Pittman roberts which has been around since that that bill is so I think Pittman Robertson is so perfect and does so much good and has been around so long. I don't think you should go back in time and attack old ship as a way of attacking new ship. That's coming from a very different perspective. Remember, it was

the gun. It was the hunters that wanted Pittman Robertson, and Pittman roberts has been serving hunters for that long. Now again, hunters aren't synonymous with gun owners. In fact, most going owners aren't hunters. But look ahead. I don't think you should look past on this man. It also starts to mess with Dingle Johnson. So, for instance, like electric outboard motors would reduce excise taxes, I know it's

from ten percent to three percent. There's no constitutional right to have anough trolling motor, so you pay excise tax on all your spear fishing gear. Sure, it's the same thing to support fisheries. An old program that came from the good guys. It didn't come from the bad guys. I get the argument, but I think it's like it's just I think it's like and he knows it won't pass. It's almost like we're like giving it the we're sort of falling into the trap by talking about it because

there's no way it's going to pass. But it's like it's politicking. It's politicking. It's like bringing things up for discussion. I think it's a bad idea to go through with this last war to get into before we start talking about something else. Um, No, two more things, but they both have to do with fisheries sort of. There's all these news stories out right now about how I even I read it in the Wall Street Journal where this guy's all fed up, like, oh my god, now bees

are fish. California now says bees are fish? What what will happen? Where will the chaos end? What's next? And here's what happened in California. I'm sure you've seen headlines if you're if you're newsreader in the morning, I'm sure you see a redline headlines like my god, Californians so stupid. Now they're saying bumble bees are fish. Well when they Okay,

it's actually an interesting thing. When California built like like it's California Endangered Species Act, they put in place like what could be covered under the Endangered Species Act, and they did. They The California Dangerous Species Act expressly protects birds, mammals, fish, amphibians, reptiles, and plants. The California Danger Species Act does not define fish. However, this is where it starts to get rich. However, the law, the California Endangered Species Act law is part of the

California Fish and Game Code. So people reading the law went in to see, like, when they say fish, what do they mean? Well, we have to go one step deeper and go since it's part of California's Fish and Game Code, what does California's Fish and Game Code mean by fish? If you go into the Fish and Game Code, here's what they mean by fish. They take fish to

mean any mollusk, crustacean, invertebrate, or amphibian. Now, that definition mullus, crustaceans, invertebrates, amphibians doesn't specify whether they're talking about terrestrial or aquatic. Some people are saying that definitely the definition of what they mean would definitely include bees bumblebees because bumble bees are invertebrates. Other people are like, but dude, they were talking about ship in the water man, they were talking

about fish. They weren't talking about that. It's like, clearly they meant ship in the water like fish, but there would be shellfish, whatever, snails in the water. There are people are like, no, it says uh any mullus crustacean invertebrate amphibian. Therefore, under that fish thing, we have the ability to say that bumble bees are endangered. So what does that mean? Does that mean you can't lot of be or else you'll get a ticket? You know what it means is there there is a like however they're

going about it. Here's what they're after. There is a pollinator crisis. No one in the right mind, no one like, what do they we want to do? What if you want to do something about it or not? Just like, no one in their right mind can tell you the planet is not getting warmer every year. Whether you're gonna do how you define who's the blame for that is

up for debate. What you're gonna do about it is up for debate, But you cannot argue You cannot argue that the planet isn't getting warmer every year, right it is. You can't argue it anymore. That you can say that I don't give a ship, or you can say that it's not my fault, but you can't say it's not happening, and no one, no one does anymore. No one's like it's getting colder. Pollinators are vanishing at an astonishing, alarming rate. That's just it's just sucking true, like I don't give

a ship. If you want to do anything about it, or who you want to blame, but that is happening. They are I shouldn't say alarming, because that's a value judgment. Pollinators are declining, bumble bees are declining. If you care or not, I don't know, but that's an it's an objective reality. So they're trying to find a way to do it. Who's pissed about agricultural producers because of insecticides?

Insecticide application, that's why they'reduking it out. So when you see a headline Californians think bees are fish, good lord, that's what that's about. Since we've got a couple of Californias, You guys, got any comments it's just a little more complicated. It's a little more complicated. When when I heard about it, I was like, or whatever they've been kicking around the courts. It'll get appealed again, I'm sure. But currently it stands not that bees are fish, but the bees are covered

as a thing that can be listed. Right now, as it stands in California, bumble bees can be listed. So what are they saying just bumble bees or be's in general? Well, right now they're worried about seven species of bumblebee. Do you guys know that honey bees are not native? It's a North America European. Yeah, did not know that general? Nightcrawlers aren't native? When you're way ass up on the mountains and you're in a little meadow when you dig

downer's nightcrawlers sitting there at some bitches not native? Where are they from your Asia? Like Canadian crawlers not Canadians? Not wild? What about the red wiggler that I don't know about. I have a feeling, and then we will be corrected by a thousand million people. I have a feeling that the red wigglers a non native invertebrate. I would love to know, we'll find out I begs some uh, some sly telephone user right in our presence would be able to figure out if red wigglers are now it

or not. One last thing, and this is bringing us closer, and you'll see that we're narrowing in on what we're narrowing our focus. Uh, Brandon, tell us what we witnessed yesterday by the pokey boats yesterday, two days ago, whatever the hell it was. We're watching a bunch of commercial what's the potent? Because we're working the Menhaden, the Manhaddan fishery.

It's a big thing here, they persone, the Menhaden. What would it be fair to call it like it's an industrial operation, absolutely, like the industrial harvest of men Hayden, which they hear about call. Yeah, what was it? Three inch? Three inch? They get up to about five six inches at full size with the dots on them. Yes, yeah, they have a dot up up towards the front shoulder. Hunt and fishing type people would look at it and be like a bait fish Yep, it's one of our

most common bait fish here. But they use them for uh, they press them for oil for fish oil, yeah, fish food. The sorts of you know, a lot of products food. Yeah, they process and it's not you don't go down to the fish store. You don't go down to the you don't go down to the whole foods fish counter and get a couple of but you probably have gotten them in products that you've purchased. Uh. We had a guy

right in. So we we we do this thing every year with with every year, a couple of times a year we do like a State of the Union on conservation issues with with Fosberg, who's the CEO and president of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership of which I am a board member. On a recent State of the Union episode, we spent quite a bit of time talking about the stripe bass fishery all up down the eastern seaboard of the US. I know that you guys just bring it

home from Californians. You guys have a stripe bass fishery as well, but that's a non native population stripe bass, and in fact a lot of people like to see those go away, and they'd like to see the ones where they're supposed to be do better. Straight bass. Yeah, it's a huge debate. So it's a it's a non native. It's like a deleterious exotic in some areas, but on the eastern seaboard of our beloved country, it's it's the

primary fish, that's the primary targeted sport fish. In terms of like man hours spent, stripe bass dominates eastern fishing, saltwater fishing. Uh. We talked a lot about why stripe bass populations are just not doing great and why they're in decline, and a guy rolled in saying how could he have dared place responsibility for that decline on the

shoulders of recreational anglers? He points out, how I expressed the level of skepticism that how could it be recreational anglers impacting that in just impacting that fishery, And he said he was a gas almost fell off his seat. Did Wit didn't talk about the commercial men Hayden harvest as being largely responsible for declines in stripe bass, not only that, but kobe a red drum sea trout, many other species. We put it to Witt and what thank for?

Thanked us for forwarding the comment along, and he goes on to say the listeners correct that men hade the men haden harvest definitely impact stright back stripe bass populations. He says the current harvest in the Atlantic depresses stripe bass populations by about meaning if it was not they estimate that if it was not for the commercial men Hayden Fishery, stripe bass populations would probably sit about thirty higher than they are right now, which is real significant.

But he goes on to say six million fish. So the last year that we have full data is pretty old. This gets at an interesting thing around fisheries. We have solid data on two thousand eighteen, Okay, full data on six million fish were killed between the recreational and commercial fisheries. I guess I may were caught by sport anglers. This is astounding five million. There's not many fisheries like that. Six million are killed. Five million are killed by sport

fishers the United States Eastern seaboard place. You know, are we talking about specific laateist tripe bass or yeah. Yeah, So I'm saying like like normally, like normally there's not even close to parody between commercial and recreational fisheries and salt water, meaning you go look at like what's the sport catch on said species and what's the commercial catch on said species. The commercial catch far outways the sport catch.

If you look at like salmon right commercial if you believe the data, If you believe the data, you know some of the data we see here in the golf and so I don't I don't even believe it. I think the numbers are skewed, meaning it's more meaning it's hot. You think the recreation has a higher impact. No, I think the commercial sector has a higher impact than what they lead us to believe. Then what has even put

out then what they tell us. Maybe that's the case here, but this is what people are looking at the numbers saying that like recreational fishermen are hitting it bad. Now, what what goes on to clarify is that t RCP and many others are very interested in trying to curtail uh the man Hayden fishery. Right now, it's man it it was managed like in the golf for instance, right now they don't have good management place in the Gulf of Mexico. It's managed by how many they can they

take without totally collapsing the fishery. And it's not looked at how many can they take without having major impacts on other fish species, and they just need to rem they need to rethink the fishery altogether. He says. What goes on to say, they need to shift to an ecosystem management. Well, the current harvest in the Atlantic depresses stripe bass populations by about although we have had significant wins in recent years to reduce the allowable catch of

man haden. The Atlantic does have a catch limit for man haden. The Gulf of Mexico does not have a catch limit, and he says, what we need to do is shift to ecosystem management, meaning that catch limits are now being set based on what the ecosystem needs and not just how many men hadan can you kill before you crash the stock. We're also now trying to reduce or ideally eliminate the harvest of men haden in the Chesapeake Bay, which is the nursery area for juvenile manhanan

and stripe bass. That's been a big subject here in Louisiana over the last couple of years. Um it came up under to vote here about a year ago, and it's trying to not eliminate the fishery because we know that that's that's not not possible, but try to extend the boundary of how close they are allowed to come to our to our land which basically is our estuary, because it is affecting our our trout and a red fish and everything else. Was I think one of you

guys said, most likely the cause of those sagners. It was right right by where those sagners were at. They pump out a lot of eye catch. Most most of these fish that they get caught in there do not survive, so that it's a big problem. Um, you know, there's a lot of people out there fighting for to improve it, and we just have to hope for the best that that will change because it definitely fixs the fisher Here, Wiggles on to conclude that every credible study shows that

stripe bath overfished, and that overfishing is still occurring. He says recreational as recreational angers, I'll point out that is an avid strip bass fisherman. We have no choice but to put in strong conservation measures to ensure that we end over fishing and allow stocks to rebuild. Are there any environmental issues that they attribute to the population, Like in California, we're we're fighting about salmon versus striper versus water temps of the rivers and salt water intrusion into

the delta and the loss of the delta. So a lot of you can kind of pinpoint California stripe populations by environmental changes. I think like everything probably probably sound like everything is like a death by thousand cuts, right, I mean with every imperiled fishery. Whatever you can look in in go numb. I think you can go numb by like how many things are contributing? Right? Like does

warmer water matter? UM, damning irrigation, I mean damning destroyed straight bass runs in many rivers, right, So like damning irrigation, UM water quality. And then you can sort of be like screw, let's not do anything, or you can look at like major contributors and try to attack the problem in some way that makes sense, and maybe attack the problem across the wide variety of things. I can tell you that what with t RCP is anything but an

anti straight bass fisherman. DU's an adverstrate bass fisherman. Um ah he's calling for is like they're they're working their asses on the man hadan issue, which is a thing. And also that they he whoever people they're doing that need to think about their catch in a way that's pretty common for fishermen to do. Give you, guys, theory on sharks. I'm not talking about how many sharks around. Let me put we're jumping. That goes back to your your talking about the whaling and how No, I didn't

even I didn't even mean shark management. I just meant like dealing with sharks in the water. So yesterday, real quick, I look, I hear a couple of yells. Well, we heard a couple before I heard it, and I was in the water and quarter mile away. Yeah, he's a lot better than mine. I couldn't hear all that hooting out. Anyways, once we heard you, guys, we got over as quick as there was people in the water. After your photo shoot, there was a lot going on. There was a lot

going on. But what I do see, recall I seen a little because that's seen a little bit. I'm trying you left off all the parts about everything. No, I'm getting there. I don't order. No, you're like Quentin Tarantino. These guys are diving in a sweet spot. I had just shot a fish left st out a park. Okay, what part so we have to. We have two rigs, two rigs side by side, only about fifty yards apart, and so we put two divers on each rigg way more than maybe seventy. Let me set the scene then

you can be when rigged. Okay, I'm gonna give me a minute. I'm gonna go back to the seventies, started building big oil rigs out of the Gulf of Mexico. These oil rigs are fish magnets. They are man made reefs, and you want to talk about objective realities, These rigs create life and create and enhance the fishery. Normally, when you're fishing, when you're diving a rig, you dive a rig, right, We're gonna go dive this rig, and you go to the rig, and everybody that's gonna fish jumps and dives

the rig. Then you go to another rig. Just so happened that our captain, you know what the difference in the captain and the skipper is, now the skipper owns the boat. Our skipper, Brandon, took us to a spot We're going to dive two rigs at once because they're so close together that the boat contend to both people. That was an anomaly. It's not it's not uncommon, but that was this trip. It was anomaly to have two

right next to each other. They're normally like spaced far apart. Correct, So we we did that and not just not in like a couple of people in the like groups of two's right, Yeah, separated by a hundred yards. Go ahead, Chester, Well I'll let these guys go and then I'll end up so I don't miss anything. This is coming down. Oh yeah, someone's gotta explained the oreo and then we'll get into the shark couple of stuffy. So this is an area where we got we call it the areo.

We got dirty water on top, there's a clean layer down underneath the dirty warrants an explanation of dirty water and dirty water meaning like less than one ft of visibility. You can't see the end of your gun. You can't. You know you can't. You can't. If someone's breathing up next year, you might be touching shoulders of them, but only be able to see their hand. Yes, is that you hit me? And that's surface layer of dirty water might be uh five ft, it might be six. You

don't know until you drop through it. So that this area. That's that's the top cookie. The top the top wafer was about five to ten ft at this spot, the frosting and then it got pretty clean underneath there down to about fifty and then it got dark again. So this is the kind of the area where I in. UH and they say sometimes there's single those traditional traditional and double stuff double stuff oreo is a nice big

band of clarity. This was a double stuffed oreo. We are don't want yesterday at that spot, we're looking for mangrove snappers and uh Greg had Greg had been on this rig and uh had had got himself a nice, nice mangrove and the hell of a time over on our ridge, huge, huge school of mangroves. I had been staying on the boat prior to that. Let's letting these guys get a couple of a couple of fish. And then Greg got back in the boat and he's like, hey, you want to get in. I'm like sure, why not?

You said you wanted to get in? Yeah, Greg, Greg Field to tell me he'd also shot one that had gotten away. I ripped off one and then he chi did one. He sort of chummed to the waters per se so uh, Mike and I jumped in. Uh I did a little test dive to check it out. On the first dive, everything looked good, lots of fish around. And second dive went down and uh I found it.

Found a nice mangrove. Mike's following me right above me, and uh pull the trigger and uh, I'm fighting this fish, getting it out of the rig, and all of a sudden, from the lower wafer the dark side, here comes the bull sharks to two very grown bowls which would be nine nine probably eight nine ft pushing three pounds. Those are big ones, and they were not happy, you know, acting very erratic. Um. So then as we come as we I'm fighting the fish, not let him get to

the fish. Um. But then we get back up into the the top wafer where we can't see anything. And uh so that's where it gets a little scary. And what I see? What I We hear some yelling. We look over and I see two men and they look like wet coons treat hanging on to the oil rig. We're hollering. We're hollering for the boat to come over because we wanted we'd like to get out of the water at that point, I've got a bleeding fish. Brandon

is up the ladder of the rig. I'm just in the water with my camera case I can't climb up to the ladder with my rig, screaming for you guys. And there was a little delay. I think there was a photo shoot going on on the other Definitely, we watched you guys know. I watched you guys are letting drivers into the water as we were yelling. There's a lot going on it once it's so yeah. Anyway, we were successfully recovered, but it was a pucker factory of

nine point nine. That's one of the things that most surprised me about this, this whole thing of of being in salt water with sharks, is that it's not the presence of sharks that matters, but it's the demeanor of them, which is which is like very true of grizzy I'm totally used to that with grizzly bears. They're sort of like, oh, that's a grizzly bear mining its own business. It doesn't matter. That's a grizzy bear that's scared. And we know that.

We know the shrimp boats the days before and dealt with hundreds and hundreds of sharks and nobody went crawling back into the boat. It takes a lot to spook me. Like when they when they act like that, that's another story. Yeah, yeah, I mean we're we were on the on the shrimp boats and we were getting within. I had a you know, a couple of bull sharks come within, you know, foot or two of me, and it's just one of those

things of you. They're not aggressive though, they're just being inquisite even and I don't recommend, and we spend a lot of time with these things, so I mean, if you dump me in the woods, I would have no clue how to read a grizzly bear. But I have spent so much time in the water with a lot of different types of sharks that I have a pretty good idea what's going on with them. Um. And for instance, when I got in there the first day, I didn't know what I was doing, and I when the sharks

came in, you guys are around me. But I'd start kicking a little more and like, because yeah, they feed off your energy if you're if you're fidgeting or kicking erratically or creating bubbles, and they were coming, lapping, coming checked me out where you guys are just calm, and shortly after you had told me, hey, it's time to get out of the water. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, there was there was one bowl that was getting a bit

bit agitated. And yeah, it's one thing if you're if you're by yourself or you're within another person that's really experienced with sharks. But yeah, we have that many people in the water, you gotta just kind of call it safe and don't have to worry about it. There was a thing that also reminded me of Grizzly Bear, which is, uh, you and I were swimming back in the boat one time in a in a big bullshark came up behind you yep, and I was screaming and yelling to you,

and then he left. And then he came up behind me and you literally pushed me out of the way and charged him. Yea there for me, like the kind almost like swam over me and ran at him and he took off. Yeah, and that's so you know, if they're not in a feeding mode there, you know, they're just cruising around looking at stuff and they don't you

don't see people all that much out Aaron. It's one of those things of if you think of it this way, if you're kicking away from it, especially with like carbon fins and I'm you know, a spear gun and all that stuff there, you look pretty big. You look pretty big. But they're also like, what the heck are you? So if you're swimming away from him, they're just gonna like keep on going, Hey, what the heck is swimming away from me? And um, he wasn't being he was he

was inquisitive. I wouldn't say he had any aggressive body like just like too close for comfort. And they get to a size where like if they beat you'd be a big deal. Oh, bull shark, If a bull shark lays into you're in trouble. Yeah no, those those aren't shark him to joke around with. So yeah, you gotta square up on him. And it's one of those things of last The last thing you know you can do

is a is a bailout. As you have a spear gun, you can you can poke it away, which will generally get them to kind of go away, but sometimes it'll piss him off a little bit. But yeah, you gotta you gotta square up on him, let him know that you gotta think you're, you know, say, six ft tall with three ft long fins, you're nine ft long. You're pretty imposing. You just gotta kind of not show that you're trying to either flee or you're you're not scared

of it. Yeah, Mike, you had a when we were watching the bull shark footage yesterday, you had an interesting observation about their caught You said, they're cautious. Yeah, sharks are. I think it was. I did a quiderloop pee trip to and did Great Whites and the sharks would never come in close. It took them a long time. They'd swim around, they'd swim under, and they'd watch us, moot, look this way, and then they sneak in because if

they get hurt, they're gonna die. So if it's shark has an opportunity and it thinks that it's good, it's gonna take it. But otherwise I feel like they're they're pretty cautious and calculated. Yeah, it's an interesting observation, like if he gets messed up, he's dead. Yeah, they can't afford it. They can't afford to lose an eye or or something like that. Yeah, exactly, So they're not looking to be dumb, and they're old. I mean, big ones

are old. They're they've been around, you know, they don't they got that way by not making dumb mistakes. Depends on you know, I don't know. The great whites are pretty long with well some of the greed like greenland sharks and stuff like that. They're extremely old. I think a great way I can be like thirty years old something like that. Do that research just to catch up the red wiggler. It's native to Europe. How about that?

Oh yeah, someone was looking here real quick. Uh. According to the Chesapeake Bay Program, I haven't heard of them before. Fourteen years for a bull shark is average life expectancy at short. They can live to be at least fourteen years old. They grew off all fast then now the oldest so the oldest known bullshark thirty two, average of sixteen years in the wild. It seems like a lot of things in the ocean life spans about thirty years. Bigger animals, Jester, it doesn't look good for your ass.

Life expectancy of things in the ocean. I know. I see best thirty year less span too. I got two more years. What are the what are all the what are all the kind of sharks you see in this in this environment? And like like how would you describe like like sort of like ecosystem wise, you would say, we're I mean we're in the goal for at the mouth of the Mississippi, but in the salt water as far as what what type of sharks that we have here? Yeah? Like no, like where where did you say we're at?

Right on a planetary sense, Louisiana Mississippi River delta, He's starting to a delta that turns into a full on ocean right the Mississippi motor how many miles and you hit the ledge. Well here around Venice were as close to the continental shelf as you can get in the Gulf of Mexico. Um, that's what makes our fishery well, that and the and the river delta so special, or our proximity to close to deep water and to the

loop current. So um, we have shelf riggs and we've got all our near short rigs that are being fed by the by the alta. So you've got a lot of industryans coming out, a lot of bait which feeds the fishery. And then proximity to that thousand foot and then you're proximanty and you're very close proximity to that deep deep people water to that loop current that also then pushes the pelagics and things like that in. Is there a lot of like natural reefs or is it

a lot of mud? Because of the delta in and stuff coming in? We have very little natural reef here. We have some more more to the west, but um mostly mud. And then we've got the oil rigs. So the oil rigs have or man made reefs. Basically I want to get into that. Do you want to get into that? Now? There are in the Gulf some estimate of five thousand oil ricks. I don't know for sure on the number, but that sounds that sounds turned up. I'm sure someone can tell you down to the down

to the down to brass tacks. But at some point I'm sure that was was accurate. So around five thousand there. Uh. They became very popular. Like however one felt about offshore oil extraction in the Gulf and fossil fuels and all that, you can't get around. One fact is that the rigs created a lot of sea life, accessible sea life, accessible

fisheries congregated around the rigs. So as riggs are as these all these five thousand rigs are being brought offline, taken out of production, as they've moved operations or whatever the hell. There's been a big question what to do with all these things, and they're enormously popular with fishermen. UM At a time, they had the rigs to reef program that came about in the eighties, and they they've

done a bunch of things with riggs. So I'm gonna try to just based on my understanding from talking to you guys and others and reading UM they toyed with like trying to make them not a navigational hazard, so cutting them off what down sixty ft down? I think a little deeper than that. Typically, I think about seventy five ft is about about is below the water level, so that the biggest very even deeper, so the biggest vessel could pass over correct and not tag the top

of the reef. So it's out of the way of shipping correct, but it's down there providing fish habitat. They've also messed with just uh many they can just tip over. It's in deep enough water where you tip the whole thing over at its base and they would dynamite them, and that creates a lot of controversy because that kills every damn thing on the rig. Yeah, they'd have these huge, just miles of fish just floating, which rather than cutting them off at the base, they would dynamite the basis

and pull them over. They would. That was something in the past. They they've they've gotten rid of that, the blasting, and now they cut them off, they shear them off,

cut them off whatever. And then during the Obama administration they started the Idle Iron I Iron Act, which was a push to just all together wholesale remove them and as your deck hand put it, when they're done, there's not even a beer can return to natural state on the bottom correct all hauled short, they'll run on like a heavy duty trawl over the area when they're done removing it. To make sure they got rid of absolutely everything, even subst They cutting it off subsurface all the way

to the mud, if not below. And I think last year alone they removed like a couple of hundred rigs out of the Gulf. I think I heard our friend Ronnie and he's got a good friend who works in that, in that business of actually removing these. He said they were scheduled to take out another hundred and fifty this year. Yeah, I've heard a hundred fifty to two hundred a year. There's boats out applying the waters called rig reapers, and they've been doing destroy. They've been doing that. They've been

doing that in Texas for years. Texas, the landscape of the fishery has completely changed. They don't have many rigs over there anymore. Yeah, you'll pull up on I we pulled up on rigs that you had on your GPS to find that it was gone. It was like that scene in Star Wars and they go to that planet and ain't there anymore, remember that because the death started like blowing it up. They get there like it's gone. Yeah,

and it happens fast, have its fast. I would be like I was fishing here a couple of weeks ago, because like it's gone. That's why. Just to put it into perspective. Two on the life around these, which I was so surprised at when I was I didn't have gloves on one day, and you can swim up to these and hang onto them and kind of rest. And I had my hand on these barnacles which are like yeah, anywhere from a penny to like a big silver dollar

kind of size, maybe a lot of them, um. And they have holes inside of them, and I had my hands on there and I was like, I was like, what the heck is going on inside of one of them? I was getting bit by little fish. And Justin has a video where you can see like five of these little fish just sitting in those holes. So it's cool to put it into perspective. You can see the anywhere from the smallest little micro organisms. Then you know, it gets these small little fish attracts bigger fish to eat

those fish. And it's just all the way up to bull sharks and goliath group er. It's just this whole ecosystem, which one is a reef, from the tiniest organism to the biggest. It's it's it's own ecosystem. The presence of presence of sharks is a healthy ecosystem. They're very healthy. I mean, if you if you were to see and you can go to a lot of places in the world and not see the life that's on these things, it's a very very healthy ecosystem. Um. And when they

remove them, it's completely gone. But what is what is the main argument, do you guys know of why they want these out just to return it to a natural looking state. Um, I don't think you're going to get it clear. I think there's a lot of clear answer. I think there's a lot. I think there's a lot of theories. I think there's a lot of money behind it. I think there's a whole industry uh being fed by making millions off of removing these and the scrap value

there's no way to scrap value paste. You're pulling those things out of the water, but the cost to pull them, they're also getting paid to pull them out of the water industry recycling. There was Lena, which was one of the very It was a deeper water rigs about thousand feet of water. It was removed a year and a half ago, two years ago, and I believe that the numbers.

I saw that the cost to remove it was two billion dollars to remove it, and that only can they just took the top deck off and then they cut it at the base and teetered it over in a thousand feet of water. Two billion, So there's some there's some serious money. And yeah, but I don't but the people task with removing them are not driving the policy. I don't like. I'm roll rig. I think they should be left as habitat. I do too, And I put it look like I said, I told you my, I'll

share with I'll share again, my my. My solution cut off whatever number fifty of them, study five percent of them, but then put them all in the pile somewhere else. So put cut three off and pile them on top of every fourth. Make it a reef. There's this This

subject has been mind revisited, revisited over. I mean when when this started happening, um, and there was a lot of people that were very passionate about fighting against it, because you know, as you lose a rig that you've been diving for X amount of years and then it's gone,

and you know how much life's on that rig. And I think a lot of people would would agree if if some of like you know, the environmental groups or you know, you know, people that are passion about conserving nature were to drive any of these things, they would go, why are we removing these things? But obviously there's there's something bigger at at hand here. It's not like the the diversit diverm are just passive about them being removed.

There's been a lot of fighting and research and UM, it's not like they didn't try to put up resistence. Well yeah, and I don't want I don't want to seem like I'm under playing like anyone anyone's stake in

the game or like how it's been approached. But I but I if I had to get in the mind of UM, like like get in the mind on the other side of it, it would be that this sort of ideal and like this idea and certain political circles that sort of like like that that mining drilling infrastructure is bad, and that when you come in and do an operation like a coal mine, oil drilling, whatever it is, that in the end you um, you do your remediation right right, you bring it back as close as you

can to what it was before you did it, and that is driving sort of like the reduction of this. Then you probably have also like people can probably make a case that it's like human health hazard because as they decay, they can fall over, a bulk could hit them. So they got that and there weighing that and UM obstructions on the bottom of the ocean for current uses and later uses and so like in that's driving the conversation and that people who are looking to the fishery

are being undervalued or their their input isn't being listened to. Yeah, I mean there's a lot of things that play. Yeah. I mean you got it. You're looking at the oil industry, right, I mean, that is a massive animal, and it's one of those things of you know, you could be passionate about a recreational activity, but I mean at the end of the day, you're not gonna have the funds. It's

it's a lot more than a recreational activity. I mean, you're talking about an entire Fishi's industry down and it's an history that's where as sport fishing, sports, sport fishing, charter fishing, the recreational side, the commercial fishery. You know, you remove all of these out of here, then it's gonna completely change that whole industry across the board. It's

a little bit like an unintended consequence this thing. I don't think anyone probably maybe maybe maybe some biologist and maybe some biologists when they're putting all that stuff in, maybe some biologist is like, someday, this is gonna be a fish Mecca because of all of the reef habitat, you're creating a lot of the remediation you're talking about maybe when it comes to coal mines and things like that. Uh, this is different because the what has resulted has been

what has been left from it is a positive. They've created something positive by building these They've created a new ecosystem that that is wonderful. That's different than like drilling a coal mine and then just leaving it as is. This is a positive. Yes, there is a naviga ational hazard. Are there ways that we could could go about, uh, fixing that and yet still maintaining that ecosystem. Well, I think electronics is taking care of that problem for you,

I would think. So. I mean everything is on the map. Every you know, we run radar, everybody's got eyeballs. The type of ships that they were worried about hitting. These things have the electronics and the technology to avoid them. And there's giant horns on all these rigs. So I mean, it's one of those things that um no, it's it's trust me. It's the fight has been going on for a long time. It's just not gaining traction. How they're putting new rigs in because not really really were the

only ones I see going in our deep waters. Yeah, you have some deep water ones are drilling new wells out there, because those drill ships that we were near are just basically idle. Those are sitting, Those are sitting idle right now. Those are waiting to be deployed. Huh. So the drill ships that are active are out in three, four or five thousand feet of water right now drilling new knew wells. And the big thing with these rigs is that, and you saw it. Not every rig is

as good as you know. There are some rigs have been removed that we're um. I mean Lena. I was lucky enough to dive Lena and it was this massive structure that was absolutely amazing. It was right there on the shelf. It had coral, tropical fish, it had everything on it. It was it was amazing. Yeah, um, yeah, I was lucky if I did. My friend Joe Wegman took me on a deep scuba diver there just to see. You know, as a free diver you touch the surface of it, and then when you do like a deep

scuba dive on these things, it's it's just amazing. I mean the size of the amber jack, in the size of the red snapper and everything. It's just I mean it's from top to bottom life and the size of the tiger sharks from what I heard, very big tiger, very big on those big deep water riggs. Well they're they're around, but like on this the biggest tiger shark I've ever seen was off of Lena. I mean it was it was. It was like a scene out of Jaws of like just yeah, I did a triple take

on it. So how many feet deep was that one? Uh? The rigs of and so you're saying, if you is that a thousand feet? But if you dive down a couple hundred feet you're still encountering more and more and more fish down that deep. So I think we did a we did a deep scuba to about two thirty and it, I mean it didn't didn't stop. Everything got bigger the deeper you went. I mean, this this amber jack had, I mean, it's just these huge jowls. It's the biggest hamber jack I think I've ever seen. It

was just a monster. It was just I mean, it's all all out of reach for freedom. You're talking about like a hundred plus. Oh yeah, well well over with smaller ones behind it and red snapper and um grouper and I mean that's all real. Yeah, it's just amazing. Like you said, if you went somewhere and just did a reef dive that looked like these rigs look, I mean, it would be absolutely dry dropping. Um. Well, that's why

I had asked Brandon. I'm like, why don't I see more Scooba operations around because this is like the ultimate place to scuba dive if you want to see fish. And then you brought up the liability issue. Yeah, it's huge liability issue. And people, you know, people that are really experienced rig diving dive these riggs and have issues. So it's one of those things of the one of the issues you run into scuba diving. Um, you get hung up. Well, one depends on how deep you're diving.

But um, a lot of people push it on these rigs and do deep scuba and don't you know, they get narcked out or they don't do proper decompression times. Um, it's the spear fishing side, the spear fishing, spear fishing side. You're you're in deep water, you know, you might be scuba diving a four it might be four feet to the to the bottom. You can easily lose track of how deep you are. And the water is so crystal clear, right,

you saw some of it. It's just you can keep on going and I go shoot, you know, I'm a couple two hundred plus feet down. And then you got the variability of our water with that that dirty water on top. You know this, it doesn't necessarily attract your your average recreational scuba diver. And then the cross currents are in issue too. I mean there's people that get

blown out of these things. Right, There'll be a top current going one way, they'll drop down and then they'll current will be going the other way, and then you know, say you're you shoot a fish or the some of these currents, Like we were lucky. These currents were pretty um calm when we were in there, but they get

really going and you'll get blown out of the rig. Yeah, if you're doing a like a safety stop on a lay up on a scuba and you're let's say you're off the side of the rig, you could easily pop up a half a mile away. It's been we have the we have least free dive and scuba spear fishing rodeos every summer and it's just a couple of summers ago we had had a diver lost, fortunately was able to be recovered, but it was quite the mission. But

he just came out too far from his boat. Yeah he I mean he came he was doing his safety stop and that cross current got him. Yes, So when you're doing these deep scoobas right, if you drop the two feet, you have to decompress at a certain point. So say you do a safety stop at fifty ft or thirty ft and the current is so strong that you get pushed off the out of the rig into the open water. Well, you have two choices either surface

and get narced. You know, you have to go into the decompression chamber um or you know, continue on your safety stop and then pop up, which can be a long way. And the surface so the boat, the current at the surface may be different than what it was down and where that where that diver was at. So the boat is going to be looking down down current thinking that the diver is over here. Well he's not. He actually went that way. So that does create that creates a whole other hazard got it is it hard

to hang out on the surface with those tanks. I guess you DIDs the tank, you wouldn't, wouldn't just think you'd blow your BC up and you just you could float. But but you yeah, I mean, who knows it's gonna be your You're pretty small out there in a big, big ocean. The other danger that I was never used to is having to ascend with my hand above my

head because the water seems so clear. It's just like you can reference where you are, you can look up, but then that whole murky layer, you know, you could be running into different things, like you're saying, like offshoots of the rig, and that kind of was a nervous factor. Every time you're going up. You know, there's a swim away. There's been a lot of drivers that have been been killed that way, you know, hitting their head on the way up, like oh no, knocks you out and then

knock you out and you sink. How much like like how much of a trade secret? How well can you basically describe the whole shrimp boat thing? Shrimp boat things? There is a thing called shrimp Yes, it's very well known. It's very well known. It's very well known. I can't talk too many details. You don't need to talk too many details. But like, but if you if you go behind a shrimp boat, there are fish behind them. Look around and why are those fish behind those shrimp boats.

There's a lot of byecatch that these shrimp boats offloads a lot of shrimp heads because they had all the shrimp and all manner of everything else and everything. I think it's a There was a couple of turds coming out of the coming out of the out of the vessel, and then just like holy ship the fish, there was a lot of fish. We were blessed to find some some of those anchored up, moored up shrimp shrimp boats. I think they were taking the day off, probably just

shrimping at night. And uh, I got a little bit of chumming. And if you go to the right one or can be fished, there can be fish more often than not. You gotta hunt around. It's not everything everyone, that's for sure. And I came down here with I mean I had you know, I'm not like I don't I sell him go to do something where I'm like, I'm my goal. I wanted to get a kobe. Um. I wanted to get a kobe real bad. It's like a kind of a sort of almost one of my

favorite fishes. Definitely one of my favorite fish. Made my favorite fish year. I missed one last year kind of like almost like ticked him a little bit. It made like a little noise. Yeah, I think I went down in the water and then like looked up and somehow, I don't know where he came from out of the like over my head, and I remember holding on the bottom of his throat like under his jaw and touched one off and like it made like a slight sound as it deflected off the side of his of himself,

and I was tantalized. I was titilated, titilated, and uh, this year we jump in. I was like, oh, you know, at some point I'd like to get a kobea. You know, everything happens fast underwater. But I jumped in the water and all sudden, just like there is a kobea. They're inquisitive in my face. So like coming into hang out to do a pass by, noise bubbles, thrashing, came into a pass by, yep, and I got a kobe. But too quick, too easy. Was it too easy? To quick?

And then I got another Kobe it was also too quick. I just think, I try again. I think what I want is I wanted. I wanted to dive down and have him come by a bunch of times and I dive down and you come by a bunch of times and I dive down and I'd get a shot. But it doesn't go like that. Calling man, the one you shot was a writer on when I had my second one,

your second one. Yeah, I shot at Kobe. That was chasing Greg's shot KOBEA which happens and then I, uh, the first shot of Kobe, the chase you called me. The first Kobe shot just came from came blasting through. That was on a shrimp bout. Huh yep. Yeah, that was a big one too. It was a nice one. So I scratched that itch and and Rinella family lore, Uh,

my mother. There's like old black and white photos where my mother, when she was a young woman, caught a big Kobe in Mississippi, and that's an often talked about things, probably because there was an old black and white photo of it. So it got like you know, I mean, it kept its has traction over the years. Is the Kobe case Missippi, the steve in front of the shrimp boat in a black and white you know, and put it in front there, So we tired Kobia. Red snapper

management here is interesting. We targeted red snapper. Where last year when I was here, it was, if I'm wrong, Friday, Saturday Sunday. Friday Saturday Sunday is our recreational two per day sixteen inch minimum or eighteen. It was two per day last year. It went to three this year. It is so you can you can target red snapper Friday, Saturday Sunday, and on holiday weekends like Fourth of July, you also get the Monday or the Thursday. If it

happened to let's follow on that holiday. So we targeted those. Mangrove snapper is much more liberal. Yeah, seven seven days a week, tena day, ten a day within your there is a cumulative aggregate. So you could have let's say three red snappers and seven mangroves. You can't have three reds and ten mangroves. Very similar to like water fowlers managed that way, we'll be like six ducks, not more of which, right, no no, no, no no no um and then we did. Then I can talk about the

last thing we targeted. Yeah, of course I can. Sure. We targeted Triple Tale. We targeted Triple Tale, which sport rod and real people get a little touchy about because they want that to be just for them. That's okay. They didn't see the lily pads. We found them. No, it's not like a general spot. You just have to go find the spot, you know, much guarded a guarded secret. Triple Tale spots. We target trip Tail spots, and um, that's really something dirty water like so dirty. It's just

you can how can I even describe? Like the best you can see is to kind of get like if you're looking up, if you're down at twenty looking up towards the sky, you see shadows. You see no fish detail, it's a shadow. Yeah, everything is just like anything you might see is like it's either mud or kind of a shadowy. It's very spooky around. It'd be like rummaging around in a dark closet with a really shitty flashlight.

It's pretty and there's a guy there that wants to be in the head with something, and there's a guy somewhere, and there's a guy with holding your breast. Somewhere's the guy with the bat and the head and you gotta hold your bread some big bull sharks. Yeah, that's the guy with the bat. Yeah, that's you. Came on the boat and you're like that ain't for the fan of hire.

It is really intimidating, really intimidating. Yeah. Yeah, I've I've taken a couple of close friends that have dove all over the place to do that, and they did one dive and they're like, nope, right back in the boat. I would have really, I would have dove down if someone wasn't saying it's possible. Out of dope downstaid like what's the point, You're like, absolutely cannot do it. You

cannot do it. That's how we talk at And we find the lily pads in there right depth of water and they're right underneath them to push the large mouth out of the way so out of washing out washing out of the delta are uprooted, which like this there are massive place, which is true, big huge chunks of the lily pad, like huge chunks like like boat sides, and they're coming out of the delta and they get out into the muddy water to the delta and this attracts a lot of light weed lines. It's just like

the mahi. It's like the sarcasm weed lines. Uh, it's just the near shore version of it that the ma he would be offshore, but these are You'll get the triple tail and small jackfish under the lily paths and they are in some mock the hair and dirty water. Very intimidating. Yes, sneaky. I didn't. I didn't even follow Steve at the camera because I'd just be bumping into him the whole time because I had to say so close to him, so he had to go with the

go fro. Yeah, it making me nervous. We had to play a ride on my back, hang on your belt while we're explored around in the dark. That's good. That

was awesome. Um, I don't really know because I don't know, but I mean this has to be uh, I mean, this has to be up there with the richest fisheries I've I think so, I mean I've been all over the world, you hear, like that that band around southeast Alaska is sort of the richest marine ecosystem on Earth, Like that latitude band in terms of just pounds of life the water supports when you get into plankton on up right, like like per unit of space pounds of

life that it supports is high. And then some areas like you know, people might think of like Hawaii, like so many fish, right but Hawaii, like you have areas offshore in Hawaii which your regard it something is a desert. It's like something of a marine desert, massive, massive amounts of very deep water inhabited by very few fish right there there. And but they're they're like concentrated in slight places. And if you didn't know what you're doing, you could

go along. You could spend a ton of time drifting along on the surface, staring down and not see ship. Like on the middle of the Pacific. Even though you think like, oh tropical, no one around, must be loads of fish. That doesn't necessarily mean there's loads of fish everywhere. Um, but here, man, it's incredible. The gulf is incredible. It so one of one of the kind. You know. That's

why we're moving. The rings is such an issue because it's it's a special place and every time you come down here you need to enjoy it because the next time you come back that ring could be gone, and it's one of those things of it's you can come down here and take a lot of it, for granted, but it's one of those things of you know, some of the first rigs that I dove are now gone, and it's one of those things of yeah, you have to have to enjoy it while you're down there. Ronnie

um Cajun. Ronnie, who's been on the show before, he described losing riggs as um. He said, it's like losing a friend. Yeah, it is to lose a good ring. I wonder what it was like here before the rigs, the historical data on it, like was there. I'm sure they're the same fish, but yeah, I think they were just obviously they there. We have a few few reef areas, so I would assume that they would be more congregated

to those those small reef areas. Spotlar. I mean, I've seen some pictures going back to like the fifties of but mostly like tuna and things that they caught back then. Um, which that the rigs aren't necessarily that relevant to the tuna ficiary. Um. I mean they are to a certain extent now because it concentrates them. So we can go target them. But back in those days, I think maybe before the rigs, it was more of a trolling you know,

you go out troll a rip things like that. Um, but now now we got now the rigs are what's attracting him. I just think that they hold debit. Yeah, at risk of beating the subject to death. I think

you have to like whatever it was before. Let's say you could go back to day, you go back to n hundred and we had like some kind of baseline date about the fishery and d I don't know that that's coming Like that's not necessarily coming back, you know, like removing the riggs isn't gonna return that because of because of why, because of a thousand things. It could be better, Like yeah it might, it might be better

now with the rigs. But if you look at like like someone even if someone did come and say like oh no, no, no, no, it was spectacular and the red the red the red Staffer fishery was amazing and nineteen hundred okay, but should changed its nine hundred. I mean, you have uh a lot of industrial pllutants that come down the river. You have habitat degradation in other ways, you have over over fishing and international waters. I don't know, no no, no, no, no no no no on so

I don't know. Let's come back, but what is working right now? It's like, what's working right now? The guy the rigs yep. So it's like to to think that to chase something that you're you know, if someone said it was great a hundred years ago, it's like, there's no guarantee that that's where you're going. If you have a thing that's like a bright shining spot right now, hang on to what you have that's good. Totally tell you what's not working right now. Here is our shark problem.

We have a serious shark problem on shore. You guys didn't see it. Where we're out of balance. It's way out of balance because there's absolutely no shark fishing beyond three miles, so like it's illegal, correct, there's no commercial shark there's no commercial shark fishing whatsoever. And it has gotten out of balance. Now we're we're dealing with certain areas where we you know, let's say you go tuna fishing, you hooked tantuna, you be lucky if you land one.

All the other ones got eaten by sharks. It's I mean, it's it's it's really a problem. They'm not saying that they need to call them, but but they need to ring some kind of balance to take a more localized approach to the management. Yeah, open some areas where they're doing great that. Yeah, that's what I was talking about. More local, localized management of it would be would be ideal.

Florida is having the same problem. I mean, they're a shark a shark tournament in Florida this week because of the same same thing, and then they're getting a lot of blowback. There's a lot of people that I mean, there's a lot of people that have never even been in the water that because they watched Nagio, they have this opinion on sharks and they watched too much shark week.

My instagram blew up yes last night because of the shark tournament Florida and all the shark up life following this is you know hard I love sharks, but you know, if there's an issue with too many sharks, then yeah,

it's thank in California. I talked to me about just to studies, all the sharks, the great whites, uh, and he said that in recorded history there's never been so many sea lions on the California coast and there is now and the sea lions are an issue, and you know they're never gonna go or do anything to the sea lions. But like because they're furry, uh, people you know like them too much. Yeah, furry cares mad megafauna. It's got eyelash. No, if it's got eyelash in the

water and blinks, people's imagine if it blinks. So Brandon tell people how to uh, even though they can't book a spearfishing trip. That's just your that's your recreational passion. Yeah. Um, you can get ahold of as far as you can get ahold of me gold. Yeah. Instagram, h Spiro Brando or Ecstatic sport Fishing either on on both of those or Brandon Hendrickson's sport fishing and spear fishing on on Facebook. I gotta warn you, know, you gotta be ready to be in a boat with a guy that wants to

catch fish. Brandon Savage catch If you don't want to catch fish somewhere else, but I want to like be very focused on the capture of fish, I would go to this guy. Yeah, it's a great Brandon thinking it's fun, like like hanging out these great you'll learn a lot um. You're you're intense about your discipline, which I think when people are paying to go out somewhere, that's what they expect. And you produced. Look at how much I hope my fish. Yeah,

we crushed it every day. We had three days of amazing, amazing weather, amazing diving. We had a good team of good divers. Two. But I imagine as a guide, like you'd expect to say that, like you're you're versatile, meaning like you're going off. You're obsessive about current information, not the way the water is flowing, which is part of current information. But you're interesting, like what's going on with the weather, what's going on with water temperature? Is water clarity?

Be flexible, do right. There's a lot of that don't work, You do that. If that don't work, you do that. That don't work, you do that. Like there's a lot of things and stuff you need to be to be like good at fishing. Yeah, as your deck can put it. There's two kinds of people in this world. There's fishermen and those that wish they were. There might be a third out there. I think I met a couple, but does that cut bait and get chest or the chummer? All right? Thanks? And uh and uh, tell folks where

to find you Greg, or where to find your product assortments. Yeah, it's Rob Allen diving dot com. So anytime you look up prob balance, spear guns, something we'll pop up that has to do with me. And if you have a question about rab balan stuff, you're in, you're in. You're in the US of A. You'll probably want to talking to Greg. Yeah, if it's if it's into us, you'll end up talking to me um or my wife for one of one of the guys at the shop. And then if it gets fed to South Africa, it'll probably

get something back to me. You'll probably get you'll talk to your email someone in South Africa. I want you want to be talk Greg anyway. And uh, Mike, you you imagine because you're a photographer and all that you're on social Yeah, rape photo and rape photo dot com. People are a A B E P H O. TA. You need a picture of something taking underwater? I'm your man.

Mike's working on a cool white sea bass documentary. Yeah. Actually, at the end of this month, hopefully I'll be done filming and then on editing and hoping to have like a premier this winter December January, and they're not gonna submit the film festivals. You can call it all about White Sea Bass. So I'm gonna do uh, like a photo a contest on Instagram and see what people name people can give me in. The winner will get a print.

I just haven't done yet, sweet because I don't know what's the name it a White Sea Bass documentary is the hardest part. It's like soup the knots on White Sea bass, right, Yeah, it would be like behaviors and then it will be a human impact the from the natives to gil netting to the recovery of White Sea Best natural history. They stopped gil nitting in ninety two, so it's been thirty years, so it's kind of cool. It's thirty years of life span and White Sea Best.

We're kind of seeing what gil knitting, the stopping of guild ning, what it's done. Oh and the guildnetting decimated White Seabs and uh Johnson yep married to Kimmy warreners. So if you go look at Kimmy Warner stuff, it's mostly taking my Jobson. Yeah, you can find me at Kimmy Swimmy on Instagram. Uh no, but we uh we do. Yeah, I'm on Instagram to Sanamatowski. But we have some exciting things coming out with Meat Eater coming out this fall.

So working with my wife am Me on that and my son Buddy on that too, and so this fall there will be some cool episode series and videos and things like that. And then Chester to Dive Master. I'll be here still a muskie Chat. Muskie Chat Joe Tommy Edson. After he came in and did trivia and performed so well, the guys at work have dubbed him the blue collar Scholar. I love it. Did he change his at he went and secured the blue collar Scholar fork truck driver Trivia Master?

I like it all right, Buddy, Thanks a lot