Ep. 444: When the Turtles Come For You

Hey guys, it's Brody Henderson. You probably know me from kicking Stey's butt on Meet Eater's trivia show. When I'm not doing that, I'm part of the Mediatter publishing team and stoke to announce that our new book, Catch a Crayfish, Count the Stars, Fun, Project Skills and Adventures for Outdoor

This is the Meat Eater podcast, coming at you shirtless, severely, bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listeningst you can't predict anything presented by First Light, creating proven versatile hunting apparel from Marino bass layers to technical outerwear for every hunt, First Light, Go Farther, Stay Longer, All Right. Recording from the Bahamas elbow K Can we say that?

Said that?

I was just reading it. When we whooped the British the first time, A lot of the I don't mean no disrespect to we whooped the British first time. A lot of the British came down and hit out here. Yes we think with that. We've been calling you tea and I know your name is Eryl. Yes, what's tea come from?

Thurston? Thirst is my last name? Oh, Errol Thurston. That's right, that's right, and give.

People a very quick snapshot of your life.

Oh, we're born and raised here in the Bahamas, went away, went away to college, came back home, and I saw emt full a while. And then after that, you know, I started fishing and alan hopping and taking folks around for a little while to make a little extra money. And it just took my life over. And now we do it full time.

And what's your social media handle?

Paid to play all day?

That is joined also by dirt Myth Who's gonna taste something in a minute?

Oh that's coming up?

And uh joined today by DreamCatcher, so funny some folks, Nora's Hogdog, Jimmy warrener Hi, Justin who's just somehow just justin.

Cinematoskie.

Oh yeah, Cinematowski. You don't you You stay behind the scenes in the in the in the Justin Kimmey operation.

Largely, Yeah, it seems a bit less controversial. Keep my mouth shut.

Everyone just picking on me. He just has the true soul of a cameraman. That's how I would play it.

I don't know when I get talkered out, and I don't want to make a dive. He's usually right handy to go. Pretty excited that that one.

When Steve hand me the puspy, I'm.

Like, shoots, yeah, I'll go that's good. And then Cameron is here dig in a little bit. People know you're from the spears Chef Spears No no, no, no, well that but I mean how I met, how I became aware of you is from the Campfire Story story.

Oh yeah, that's right.

You can find him at Camp kirk Connell. Is it Camp kirk Connell yep, to follow his exploits. So Camera's been on the show before. Well, hold on it. Everybody's been on the show before except Tee. Camera's been on the show before, and then was introduced to folks on this podcast long ago because I think we yeah, we played your campfire story at the end of a podcast. I still haven't heard that one. I need to listen to that really, Yeah yeah I don't. Yeah, I could picture not listening.

It's tough, but I mean, thank you guys for doing that, because I never have to tell that story again.

You just refer people.

Yeah, it's like if you want to hear it, man, go listen to it. Oh wait, we almost got one of you yesterday or today. We have some tough dives here.

Last I was all right, Dirt, you ready to try it? Yep, okay, Dirt, myth is gonna dig in. We're working on he say, I don't know how much I want to say about this. We're working on a signature freeze dry meal, and I want it's to be all bison meat. I want to do a b I wanna. I want to a bison meat signature freeze dry meal, because if you're gonna eat a farm raised animal, that's just the one of that.

It's it's like it's a shot call, shot gobble. I don't think about my dirt can't why.

And teasing of the device.

That smells pretty good now listen, yeah but here here hear me out. Though. You gotta understand this is freeze dried food. Hey, I know, but but I mean there's like food and then there's freeze dry food. And years ago I wrote an article in Outside magazine about freeze dried food, like the history of it all, going back to the Vietnam War and the lurps, and got all into the space program. How they never how it would sometimes space ice cream went up, but no one none

Yep.

But at that high I went to see that they can only show one body at a time, and when I went there, it was the child. I think it was the child that had been one of them had struck by lightning at some point in time. But at that high elevation, they they sublimated.

Just slowly, they axated.

They froze solid, and then gradually the gradually the moisture and went to a gas of state. And so it looks like they could stand like this child. We went to see it looks like it'd stand up and walk away.

Wow, freeze drive room five hundred years or more.

That brings me round to that meal. So they put it in this chamber.

Listen, who's hungry?

They put it, they pull a vacuum on it. Okay. And then when I went to this freeze drive plant, they pull a vacuum on it. And then you can take that food, lift it out of that tray and bust it like a sheet of glass.

Really, you know, no moisture in it.

No, no, And that is so point being if you put a bunch of burgers in there and then poured water onto a burger, what are you gonna have goulash? No, you're gonna have a soggy burger bun.

Oh.

Yeah. So when you see when you go into the freeze dry food place and they're selling like four wild mushroom Peruvian result or you know, you're like, come on, dude, it's freeze dry.

Yeah it's not.

It's like it's not the same thing. And so to make a good freeze dry meal, you have to be you have to be aware of the limitations of freeze drying. Like everything isn't good freeze dry. I don't know, probably maybe, but probably not. Shrimp cocktail not bad, I had it, but uh so dirt digging.

Can we say what?

No?

Okay, I do like this? Got high calorie content, fro trips like that.

All right, it's an old lie. Like you don't like it. It's easy. We just come back and tell me don't like it.

I did eat.

I've been eating amazing food. So this is this is gonna be accurate. Oh yeah, that is good.

It's good.

We'll see the.

I got.

I don't believe it is because nobody doesn't articulate words.

Yeah, but you guys got me soakedyed up. That's good man.

When he likes something normally, he just does like this.

Is clearly.

Keep smiling.

I want I want to Can I grab some other spoons? Honestly?

Oh no, I would like a spoon. Yeah, I would like spoon.

I can grab them dirt if you want to keep going, because that is that.

Was good man, Holy ship the borrow.

While we get those spoons, I gotta cover off on some stuff. Uh T, you're gonna like one of these because one of these you have a snake phobia. Yes, tell folks about that, which makes no sense to me. You're not a scare of sharks. No, not at all, not a scare.

To anything, not at all.

Scared of snakes. Yes, I don't know snakes at all.

You're in the right line of work because there's no snakes in the walk.

I'm telling you, bro, anything that moves that fast with no legs, it's not for me. So it's not for me.

I think I told you.

Steve.

The other day, I get a I get a pictures. He calls me. He's like, hey, there's a snake in the yard. I was like, okay, what do you want me to do about it. He's like, I need to know what it is. I was like, well, send me a picture of it. He doesn't even roll down the window to take a pictures. It's like, man, that's a black snake. It's gonna be fine.

Frequent, frequent cause of death when they come in through the window. Yeah, you're right at the driver's seat.

Don't let your guard down.

Yeah, I got bird shot for him.

A few more weeks, so a few more weeks of pre order yet. For our children's activity book, Catch Crayfish, Count Stars. You can get a couple of you guys, a lot of you guys have ordered one already, and I really appreciate that. And if you pre order here, here's why it helps me out. If you're interested, Let's say you just want to help Feller out. Let's say you know you're gonna eventually get it. Okay, you know

So I could use that book.

Yeah, Dirt, you should get that book. It'd be great. Yeah, you'd be you'd be even more competent. Meton Aaron, he's been on the show a bunch of times. He's the anthropologist and if you went on YouTube and why, he's the experimental archaeologist. And if you went on YouTube many of you did to watch our our video about where we teamed up with some archaeologists to butcher a bison using stone tools, which is all right now on YouTube. You'll you'll see you'll meet Meton and he's from Kent State,

I don't know much about him?

In California, there was a pretty late here who's got here?

I'll type it in got Google.

Well, I just can't remember what. So he was the subject of a nineteen ninety three film. But in the early nineteen hundreds, Ishi, the last of the Yahi Indian tribe, his whole tribe was wiped out, okay, in warfare with the Whites. His whole tribes wiped out from disease and warfare. He hid out for twenty years in the mountains. In the early nineteen hundreds, after his whole tribe was thought to be gone, they found him and he oddly, I see, I saw this movie years ago. He oddly goes and

Oh, knock it right out of the eye.

Out makes sense, does it?

Don't want to smash it against your eyeball and see anything.

Gave himself a tremendous knock on the head, and somehow maybe Lodge put the thing against the lid. One guy they were talking to it was a guy named Don Crabtree, not a subject from the study, but just in the Review of Literature, described one of the injuries he received

Damn. But you had to make that. You had to do it to make the tools. Yeah, no getting around that.

Uh So that's interesting, But I don't really know if you talk. Here's the thing about it that I keep thinking about. If you went and sent a survey to one hundred and seventy three chefs more than twenty five percent cut themselves, will have sought professional medical attention. There's no way, hundreds. If you sent to one hundred and seventy three chefs more than a quarter, I'm going to tell you that they saw it profession medical care from

Well, what about the guys cleaning fish, because I mean, in the years of cleaning fish, I mean I've cut myself so bad multiple times that you know I've needed help.

I've sought professional medical care over fish fish in Yeah, but not fish.

Cleaning fish in what do you mean fish in?

Oh? When I was a little kid, I got a hook real bad and my thought I had to cut it. Looked at scari.

I had to seek medical help over fish cleaning. But not because I cut myself with a knife, but because the fish spine got stuck so deep in my hand and broke.

Off and had to dig it out. Yeah, we know we had to have our little boy lately. I should have called you when we were trying to figure out about this. He stepped on a black urchin. He got three of them in his foot, and man, that crippled him up pretty good. Oh yeah, and eventually they just came out in his shoe. Yeah yeah, man. My wife likes to like squeeze any kind of things like that. She wore all her welcome to That kid chased him around, chased him around with a fat bag razor and a

He knew what she was gonna do.

Trying to dig that stuff out of bottom of his poor little foot. Uh. Florida right to hunt and fish? T Yes, Sir Cameron. You guys are Florida residents and hunting buddies. We hunted home to you hunt. You guys hunt to get at home to we get our.

Two knucklehead boys and the woods together and watch them. It's hilarious.

Great Florida could become the twenty fourth state to establish a constitutional right to hunt and fish.

Uh.

The Florida State Legislature passed a resolution which refers the questions to voters. The resolution would add a twenty eighth section to the Declaration of Rights in the Florida Constitution to say that hunting and fishing this is how these things were. There's a couple things to say about these things. I'm supportive of them, but they have their limits. But

Two hundred and twenty.

One years later, Alabama became a state with a right to hunting fish. The most recent and we covered this on the pod shows how long this show's been on the air. The most recent amendment was on the twenty twenty ball in Utah, which we covered. I think we even had the guy that wrote that bill come on the podcast and it was approved by seventy five percent of voters. Here's a weird one. Arizona rejected theirs in twenty ten.

That is surprising.

No Arizona rejected it. It usually always passes. So the constitutional amendment was introduced in the Florida State legislature is House joint resolution, and no one ever cares about that. In February, the House approved the amendment by a vote of one, sixteen to zero. Incredible.

Yep.

The Senate thirty eight to one. I'd like to meet whoever. But here's the deal. It then has to go on and get so it passes unanimously. It's nanimously, unanimously agreed by the House to put this forward as a vote one dissenter in the Senate, and now it has to go overcome the hurdle of sixty percent popular vote. Jeez, here's the good and the bad of these things. I think it's a great thing. I think it's a great gesture. I think every state should do it. Should be fifty

I don't know.

I could picture a future in which I don't even want to say this because so far out I'm gonna say, I don't want anyone to think I'm actually saying this is true right now. But if let's say in the future, it became that I let's say in the future, fifty years in the future, it became that it actually became illegal to hunting fish, and you had given up all hope on fishery fishing game management, and it just became illegal to hunting fish, divorced from any consideration of the

Has Montana got that?

Yeah, you know one of the state what state was going to do it? One state that recently did it, was going to put trapping on there and backed out at the last minute. So they kept at the hunting fish and yeah, they bet they chickened out at the last minute. I think it might have been Utah chickened out.

I'm just worried it caused too much.

You know, they're careful of their bedfellows. They were carefully. They don't want people who practiced the dark arts being in the room.

Man.

So, so for Florida, do you think that by doing this it's going to more are so protect our right to hunt and fish?

In theory, I think theoretically yes, I'm just looking forward to and maybe there's already one that I'm not aware of, and if there is, I'm sure someone will write in and tell us. And if you know of one, please write in and tell us. I'm not aware of a situation to date. It's anticipated it will happen. I'm just not aware of a situation to date where a state where someone went to do something in a state and then the state Supreme Court said, like, you can't because

So it's kind of a preemptive move on all these states part starting in seventeen seventy seven.

Yeah, just in case I would like to. I would probably write it in such a way that would not pass. But I would like to take a stab at writing one of those. So if you want of the states that hasn't done it, and you want someone who has no idea, you want someone ask no idea how to write legislation, I would love to take a stab. Here's a great one. This will be a play, will you boys from Florida too? Soap can make humans more attractive

Okay, well you just stitched cam. When Steve said that.

I know, because he hates mosquitoes, I'm so afraid of him. He hates he hates mosquitos born ticks. Yeah, because you spend a lot of time.

You spend a lot of time overseas or some mosquitos where I was like, legit, Yeah, okay. They had volunteers who submitted fabric samples that they had worn either unwashed or after washing with four different brands of soap. You following, Yep, they tear the sleeve off, so you wear the so you washed with a kind of soap, wear it. Let

Yeah?

Native soap?

Yeah, my son, that's what do you use?

Simple truth?

You never heard of it?

Now, that's a good name for soap. It's a simple truth.

It doesn't work.

It's a simple truth. I'd make one called objective reality. Simple truth, just the simple truth. You ever heard of that soap? No one?

No?

Okay. So we all know that female mosquitos are the only ones that bite. They're the only ones that feed that need blood. They need blood when they're developing their eggs. However, they cannot get blood and still successfully hatch. But they have a much higher likelihood of hatching if they can get blood to fertilize, not to fertilized like from the mail, but to feed their egg. So even if she doesn't bite, a caribou or you or whatever. She could still be successful.

You make a sweat.

The fabric was used. Okay, So they don't even want the person present. They just want to put their sleeve in the tank. Because one thing that's known is that exhaled carbon dioxide is attractive to mosquitoes warm air. They detect warm air coming out. You're buying their attract to it. So they didn't want people. They just wanted to know, like, what is the fabric soap thing? W Here's okay, here's

Well, you Southern boys did, both of you repels mosquitos.

Here's why they think it could be linked to its coconut scent, as there is some evidence that coconut oils are a natural deterrent for skeeters. That's a fact that's interesting.

But that is one hundred percent fox.

You know that's true.

I know it's true. Coconut is here in the island One of the biggest ways to get mosquito is you take a old dried coconut, bust it in half, and you put coals in it. And it's one of the best bug repelling elbow. Oh yes, just you just put coals and it put a couple of coals inside a coconut shell.

So it heats those oils up.

Yeah, and it just slowly smallers into smoke and it works.

There's some other tree that grows here and in the islands. Came in islands as well. They used to burn at night.

Well, in Tahiti they make monnoy, which is roasted coconut oil, and I was told that, I mean, the tahesions just use it on their skin with the smell so good. It makes your skin nice and you can put in your hair. But I was told there that it also detures mosquites.

I'm in I'll try it.

Yeah, yeah, Native soap bystock and Native Soap. A doubt it's publicly traded, but they you can figure out.

I just get cocing it oil.

There you go.

Uh T, you're gonna like this one. This is the snake one. Remember I told you I want you to come on the show just because this. I don't mean to hold to play the snake phobia.

That's all right, I'm a game.

Okay. We did some background research on this one too. You know Moulan how do you say it? Moulin Rouge. They have been in Paris. The Moulin Rouge cabaret club in Paris has been forced to drop a long running snake act and never been there. Apparently there's a thing they do there.

You know.

There's a bar in Montana, the sipping Dip was that? Oh yeah, in Great Falls? The Mermaid Bar.

Yeah, where you can drink and the hole behind the bar is the aquarium, and and ladies in mermaid suits to.

Be one of those.

I can't believe you didn't do it. I didn't such a different wonderful job.

You'd have to move to Vegas, wasn't it?

Get fish?

She too can spear your dinner she.

Got off the window.

A different one.

You've done it. If it was the Montana, they had a great We used to go there back in back when I patronized bars and the sipping dip. Yeah, they had the people, the gals swimming in the mermaid suits and then they had a piano player. Anyways, in this one, this Moulin Rouge outfit there in Paris, they have a thing where they put snakes in a tank and then the swimmers get in and swim with and and swim with and sort of like frolic with the snakes.

Water water snakes.

Well, here's the thing. The animal rights folks got all up in arms. All other problems on Earth having been taken care of, they have they have decided that this has taken it too far. This has taken it too far. So after they they caved, the Moulin Rouge Cabaret club caved and said that as of today they permanently ended the snake number. Now, the whole meat of it here with the animal rights movement was that these were terrestrial snakes.

I believe that. Remember justin when we were in Malaysia and the python thing climbing climbed in my lap, Yeah, and then I freaked out and whacked it off. And then it was supposedly a lean python, but it swam really well in the water. So I'm right up to another boat and climbed in.

And the reticulated python GE's out in Singapore Indonesian Malaysian borneo. The reticulated python is frequently found in sewers. It's an excellent swimmer. They actually use water as an escape route uh an escape place, and the Indian pythons, nocturnal mainly terrestrial, are excellent swimmers, quite at home in the water. They can wholly submerge for many minutes, but often linger near the bank either way. Either even I don't know what

I would argue, I'd love to hear from your herpetologist guy. But every snake's gotta be able to swim.

Oh that it's hard to picture a snake that just can't.

Florida.

Every steak in Florida can swim, I promise you that. Yeah, because it floods, like the whole place floods. But I mean, even the snakes in the desert. I bet you've chucked them in water. They'd figured out.

The only one. I can't think of it, I'm sure, but no, because you have all kinds of rattlesnakes in Florida, and they probably I mean, they can't. If they can't swim them, what are they gonna do?

Oh, they can swim them really good.

Yeah, I've seen it.

Yeah, yeah, a couple of corrections where we had stuff wrong. While I applaud y'all's recognition of the hero epic is universal and older than the dirt, not older and dirt myth, but just the actual dirt. Thirty nine, there's one major myss that I hope would have coming up. I'm fumbling this whole thing. We had a guest on Jackcar, novelist, and he was Jackcar was pondering the universality of the hero epic and certain stories that seem to be in

That's what I thought.

Well, here's what he's pointing out. So in Oklahoma, May third, nineteen ninety nine, they had a F five tornado hit three h two. But when everybody says the highest wind speed ever recorded, it usually goes by non typhoon. I thought, it goes by non typhoon.

Yeah, that's what.

Non non typhoon like a natural wind, right.

They differentiate between a sustained and then like a tornado or hurricane or something like that. And tornado, I mean, good lord, they gotta be crazy.

Well, our taxi driver getting here, said Dorian, reached three hundred miles per hours.

Camera made the cigarette smoke.

Blow col bullshit.

Well this so this hit three to zero two and apparently that's the highest recorded.

Yeah, well that's fast.

To you st talk about losing your home to a to a to a hurricane.

Ain't not much to say. It's gone.

Damn yeah, right down to the gun safe.

Everything gone, just flat, flat foundation done, all your stuff, everything, everything. I came back and even when I flew Oval, flew like five days later, and the only thing that was really recognizable was my boat from the air. It wasn't where it was, but my boat had I painted to flow on my boat blue like a sky blue. I flew Oval and I was like, oh, there's my boat.

Damn nothing else.

Yeah, And that was the only thing I had a starting point, you know. And after getting on the ground, and they four or five days later after that, they got on the ground and it's like, all right, let's stop looking.

So where do you think your stuff is?

Only God knows. I know in my in my room it was a box. But like old high school pictures and prom pictures and stuff, it was found, not it was found. Probably it was found an area called Leisurely. Leisurely is about twenty five miles off. Some kids were just cleaning up one day and found pictures and stuff scattered and a big and stuff, and they sent me a picture of it and I said, holy crap, that's me.

But this surprise isn't You probably can't answer this. But with whole islands where everything was carried away, how come when we're diving, how come it's not just like furniture and off the door were like where does it go?

Okay? So off the door in I've got great go pro footage of me on a jet ski And there was mattresses as far as you could see here in the Sea of Bobaco. They got water logged. They end him sinking. It was I mean tons of them everywhere. The only thing that was left in the Sea of Abaco basically was trees. That was it. All of the all of the material like doors and roofs and stuff. All the stuff got sucked out. Everything got sucked out and our before the storm touchdown, how the harbor of

Yep.

Yeah, we came here and we had two helicopters with us. We had a caravano, like thirty thirty five boats. We had two helicopters with us on a little plane and we had them putting in GPS points on stuff they see and it were quiet. It's like, guys, there's nothing you guys could just run, nothing in front of you, just keep running. Yeah, and it was nothing, and they

When we've been diving, we've been seeing stuff like there's parts of houses, parts of like roofs. I mean we've been constantly.

I've seen some of that. I thought some of that was lobster condos.

Some of it is, but the smaller chunks, especially when we were in those channels.

Yep, there was a bunch. No I did, Yeah, you're right, you know I did. For some reason, I registered all that as lobster condos. Stuff that people set up set out.

And it has gotten better, obviously, because a big storm will come through here with ten foot seas and move all that stuff around again.

But up here in the.

Sea of Avoca, a lot of these trees and stuff like wh I'm running up in the tower. You can see all the trees still, which is wild, you know, to see a tree out randomly. So I've got the info on Hurricane Dorian. It tied for the strongest landfall in the in Atlantic basin. It's regarded as the worst natural disaster in Bahamas recorder history, one of the most powerful hurricanes recording the Atlantic, with one hundred and eighty five miles per hour sustained.

Wins Well, I wonder what constitutes sustained, like a time.

That is crazy?

One minute?

One minute that counts sustained. You know, when the tsunami hit Japan, it took I can't remember if it was eighteen months or two years, but that stuff started to beach up in southeast Alaska and we started finding a lot of stuff. It was a long time later, it must have been. It might have been too I think it was two years later that we would start finding all kinds of stuff.

Where's the Where's is Africa? Where that stuff would hit or does the golf ticket somewhere else?

I think North Carolina got a bunch of like all the trash ended Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, Carolina.

Once the trash came with, Like from where we're sitting right now, these inlets that you see right here, there are two main inlets. Once stuff get pull out of there, the primary current run from south to north.

Oh okay, I was doing a lot of that stuff.

Like camp set will end up off of the Carolina. So what don't end up off the Carolinas'll actually end up off of Bermudo and that's where do you go. And then from Bermudo over the Portugal And well yeah, but like camps had a lot of boats and stuff that was here. What didn't get put in the pine forest ended up in the Carolina. Yeah, a lot of it.

So some dude in the Carolinas is cooking with your pants and stuff.

Hey, I hope you enjoy them. I hope you enjoy them.

Oh.

Some guy wrote in about a really good thing that I'm saying good because we struggled with the same thing the spring. It's a great question, uh, he says. This past week I was turkey hunt on a large tract of state forest in northern Pennsylvania. Round eleven am. He picks up a gobble, gets some positions, sets up. Fifteen minutes later here he comes big old strutter. The thing was no beard. When the bird got to fifteen yards

Work, because I mean, like, you get checked and you're holding the turkey and it's got inch long spurs, big old redhead, twenty five pounds, but there's no beard, Like does he cite you?

What are you doing? Cam? What are you doing?

I played by the rules, but a lot of times if you see that fan, you see that redhead, he's going down.

You're not even thinking about the smoking.

And then when a turkey's strutting, his beard will sometimes lay in that little creek like knowing that I like and all, I've done a lot of turkey hunt and when a strutter comes in, I do not think to verify the presence of it. But apparently you should.

Could you claim me you shot it off? Maybe so, I don't know.

I'm sure a game warden. If you're a game warden out there and you've cited people for shooting beardless gobblers, I would love to hear about it. This guy is like I have to think a CEO wouldn't be understanding.

But it's a.

Great thing because I like, I'll check for beards in some situations. But if he's like strutting and goblin, how many times have you shot a turkey be the only thing you see is his head.

Coming head in the tail like that the.

Tail fan Like you're like, that's all I need to know about. Yeah, it's a great question. And as far as I know my buddy's farm, no one even got a chance at the beardless gobbler. For a while. My wife hates for a while, her nickname was the bearded hen. She doesn't have a beard. She doesn't have a beard, but uh my daughter shot a beard at hend and we started to call them their mom the beard at hen for some reason. All right, where do we start?

Sigutara grows, it starts, it starts from dead coral, so like a hurricane just came through here. So whatever corals here is probably gonna be dead because it got abused by rocks and everything in the rough weather. So this area especially is going to have a lot of challenges with SIG because what happens is the dead coral dies, then there's this type of algae that grows on that dead coral that has the whatever toxin in it. Little three fish eat that it accumulates in their body, and

Go back though. He's like he's like committed himself to not go out.

He's like, I'm not going out there with everybody else getting thick the big groupers and the challenges. I mean, in this week we've seen six different kinds of groupers. So a tiger grouper that's fifteen pounds, a black grouper that's fifty pounds, a Nassau grouper that's twenty pounds, or all the same age. You know, they're all pretty old fish. It's just species specific. So I'll eat a tiger grouper

You know.

I think that it would be gread to have experts write in on this because last I heard, there's just still so much mystery to the science of cicatara. And I've definitely heard stuff about dead coral and storms and whatnot, but I don't know if they really nailed it down. I do know it starts from some sort of algae bloom that has a toxin. And there's so many different theories on that. Some people think it's development, some people think it's the chemicals using golf courses, you know, all

That's like saying, I mean, but red Tide's always been around.

I mean, but I don't cicatara hasn't always been around.

I don't think so.

I don't think so because there is no Hawaiian word for cicatara, which does say a lot, being that that was the main source, right and it's fish, and so being that there was no Hawaiian word for cicatara, we do and no talk about it nothing like that. We do think it's something that is relatively new, but trying to figure out exactly how to pinpoint the source of it gets confusing.

All.

I mean, I could be wrong, but the last I heard, all we really know is that it comes from algae, and there's some sort of toxin that bioaccumulates as it goes up the food chain. And I even say some sort of toxin because the problem is is that they've even made cigatara test kits where you can catch a fish, test it for the cicatara toxin and then it can

I feel bad for that company that did that, because I saw that coming too when they came out with a sigatary kit test kit. Inevitably, somebody's gonna get sick and sue them and shut this company down that's actually trying to do something really good and jo people. But it didn't last long.

You said you got to mess with that kit. Yeah, you said everything you tried had it?

Everything I tried, seriously, everything I tried hot it, And I mean, yeah, they sent me a kit and I was like, all right, we'll give it a thing a shot. And I think I still have one or two kids left. For me here, I'm not speaking for the rest of the world, but for me here and this part of the world, there's certain areas where I fish and I will harve as fish and I will not eat it. I just know, like like certain areas is more prevalent.

But your dad's headed a bunch of times.

Yeah, my dad's haided. Yeah, every local, all old guys back on the mainland, they eat anything from the ocean. But my feeling is they built up such a tolerance to us, you know, I feel as if they built up such a tolerance to it not you know, they still get sick, they still get really, really sick, but it does not it does not hit them as hard as someone let's say, things from Montano.

Because you know, because some people that have.

Because at first I felt the same way, because I mean, it's so interesting because wherever you go, like people will have these things up no, you outside the lagoon, it's fine inside, you know, And there's all these things, and there's always the people who are like, oh, just give it to that guy. He's immune, you know, and.

By science.

I always thought that would be that would contradict the science because if it bioaccumulates, I always thought it bioaccumulated in us as well, So then you wouldn't think that you would get immune to it, because you would just think the more fish you eat, the more pro when you were to getting it. But I think what she's saying is that you get it so many times and then it's just you really start to just not even

How funny is it that all of us, and coming from different places, always call it hot. I've never heard that before, because you're hot and cold, like you wouldn't be able to walk barefoot on this this floor without feeling like you're burning up. It really affects you.

Oh really, yeah, so talk about when you had it?

Okay, So I think I'm pretty positive I had cigatara or something some strain close to it, but I had shot a sixty pound ullua a diet TRAVALI. I know, it's pretty like amazing experience, but that was the last big ulu I ever shot because I ate it and ate some of it, and then a couple of days later, I just I just felt like all my muscles were just being pulled and stretched, and it was like every part of me was so sore from the inside out, and I felt fatigued, but I just felt in pain.

Do you know that she Kimmy here basically called Seth bald faced liar. I was there, what Kimmy he said he was, He did not. She said he was lying. She thinks he's lying bald facedly about.

No, he was just confused.

He's not a liar.

He just got it wrong.

But steve to get back to your point. A lot of people, a lot of people say, you put ants, let aunts eat on it, and you put mustard on it, and you put a penny.

In it on our back of I don't know about these.

I know none of it.

The village pig, the village pig, the cat.

I don't think any of that stuff works. If if if it's got sick, it's got sick. Bro it's you're gonna get hit.

Well, I know, but there's no idea is that.

Oh so you give it to your neighbor.

Fly land on it like you take a barracuda, and if a fly lands on it, it's clean.

He's gonna line on no matter what, go for it, go for it.

Oh damn, yours is froze speaking of.

I know I can picture that this we're gonna have a great series of corrections. Yeah, about the sig conversation, sigtary conversation. This is this is just kicking. This is just the initial round.

Well, there's people actively like our friends on Awahu just got it from my knife jaw and they had somebody reach out to them and like actually do an interview, like come to their house and do an interview. So there's like people.

From what I know, scientists are just begging for more information. They're still trying to figure out.

What someone needs to do is they need to have an interactive world map that people can say definitively this spot, I got it from this fish, it was this size.

It would help something that would be a great thing to build into navi ONYX. Yeah, so it shows you like the depth.

Probably the big ones are you can send send if you want me to research it. You can send me exactly where you got the fish, what size it was, if it was close to a world record or not, how big. But talking about you know, the development areas that you know would think you would have it. Some of the most remote places that I've traveled are the absolute worst, where there's there's no way it's development. You know, it's it's where hurricanes have hit multiple times over the years.

But like Alaska doesn't have it because the colder water temperatures.

I assume I've never heard any mention of it. I've always heard it associated with coral. Yeah, and that's why it was explained to me. Why that's why like Couda's barracudas in the golf or you know, particularly barracudas shot off the oil rigs, like they're not on the kind of habitat that lends itself to getting siguara, and that it's more of a for fish that are frequenting coral reefs.

So in the in the Gulf Mexico off Florida, black group are commercially speared and caught there up to one hundred and twenty pounds, and they sell them commercially no problem. But here in certain parts of the Bahamas, you wouldn't touch a black over fifty pounds. It's gonna get you sick, you know. So amberjacks in the Golf Mexico no problem here. Twenty fifty pound amberjack you're gonna get.

I won't touch it one.

They will beat you down.

Totally ignorant, is it.

It's not a heat thing as far as cooking like you could.

You can't.

That's what I was curious about.

Yeah, yeah, I agree with you, Kim, that it can't be development because you go to it's mean tiny little atolls and they say, don't eat that fish.

There's in this one part of the Bahamas I'm talking about. It's the backside of Grand Bahama, the furthest I guess, last third of the eastern end of the island there. I've been coming backfishing before and seeing the guys you know, lobstering and said, hey, I'll trade you some fish, you know, for lobsters. And I show them what I have and they're like, no way.

Oh is that right?

Yeah, like hogfish, like six eight pound hogfish and they're like, nope, no way. Because of that reason, Yeah, that whole area over there is a total hot spot. But it's weird, like we've eaten plenty of fish over there and tea and ived over there. Much like a lot like the when you get further down towards the tip of Abaco.

Really yeah, So when when all the corrections come flooding in from uh know, it all is out there and I'm looking forward to it. Matter of fact, your subject line can just be like I'm gonna know it all and I honestly want to hear it all. Has anyone ever? Are there any f d A or who regulates uh who's responsibilities? Not U s d A? Who regulates wild caught fish?

Like?

Who has who? What regulatory agency in the US has oversight over wildcought fish?

It depends what are you talking about?

Meaning like like to get into the USDA USDA inspection. Oh gosh, so drugs, it has to be certified by the f d A. The fd A like certain dies right, all kinds of food additives f d A agricultural products is usd A, Like I know cultured mushrooms that that thing is like.

F d A.

Man, I don't, honestly, I think it skips that whole process.

It might because I kin does one. Is there ever any has there ever when people are writing in about this, is there any Has there ever been any articulated prohibition anywhere from selling fish over a certain size the way that you frequently because here's the thing, you see it all the time. Oh okay, dirt just pulled up something. The EPA and the FDA collaborate work together and that. But that's recreational commercial contaminate. That's recreational fish. Oh no,

So this has happened a lot in Florida. But it's not am I Arrow might correct me on this, but guys that are commercial fishing in Florida get greedy. You know, they're getting arracudas or getting groupers or whatever. But they know, hey, we can zip across the Bahamas illegally, die for a day or two, get a ton of fish, groups, snappers, hogfish, barracudas, and bringing back and sell them in Florida. In the time that I've been alive, multiple times I've heard of

You mentioned the the We've covered this a few times. When they go and check what fish actually is, I can't remember what it was. Man overwhelmingly red snappers, not red snapper there's no way. And it makes sense because you got all this like like what we've been getting mutton snappers, mangrove snappers. It's just I mean, at some point it's just the restaurant or whoever. It's just like

And they further reduced the quota this year for red snapper in the Gulf of Mexico, which they have an IFQ, which is an individual fishery quota. So say there's a million pounds that are available, there's I believe it's like three companies that own like two thirds of that quota. So if you and I, hey, do we decide we want to go out and be commercial fishermen, it's almost impossible to do now because it's so expensive and so

Another one that someone mentioned before was how much steel head turns up and canned salmon.

Mm hmmm, because they're so close just catching.

Them on the high seas, you know, you know, and just whatever you can't since you can't, they just it's just something different. Uh, talk me about turtles around here. That's that's interesting because they were very drawn. Uh A handful of occasions were like attracted to us, and they're big, bigger than Yeah, we got big turtles.

So we got a lot of turtles.

Like what's a big loggerheadway three four?

Easily they're huge, those giant heads. Their heads were like a yetti bucket.

Yeah they were.

They were like that turtle was not quite as long as me, but like almost like almost as long.

And like thick, like two and a half two feet thick.

They're big.

I got a shot of it right next to you Steve and you'll be able to see that parison. It was like making dwarf in you.

And they're they're coming up to check and see if you're not a breeding group.

Yeah, they want to be involved in whatever's going on.

There's not too many.

We've been on numerous occasions being cam diving for lobsters and how I'm coming up to us. I have a video of cam just han feeding one, like a big one. It hands the size of basketball and canter you're just eating it and it's like, great.

You occupy, you keep kill a lobster here, you can twist the tails, you know, if the lobsters so you'll look back and there'll be a turtle right there eating every head and they hear it out. They hear it, they hear it, they hear it, they start coming over and they'll come eat. I mean that one day, I think we had that one turtle eat maybe thirty heads, just just yeah, yeah, they love them.

Loggerhead eating them.

Oh yeah, yeah.

That one that came up from the bottom of my first house like oh beautiful, welcoming the interaction and then it got closer and say big look at that like mouth on it and then its eyes look kind of like a monster ghost. And then I wasn't into it anymore.

He looked like it was like one o'clock in the club. The lights were about to come along, and he's like, there's four four girls and one dude left, were going.

Why was he gunning towards me?

Then she looked the most helpless.

That's true, guys, got a lot of I ain't paying attention. So tea has been, it's been, you were saying fifteen twenty. No, no, that was when the shark prohibition in the Bahamas.

But turtles spent just as long. Turtle's probably been even longer than that. Turtle's probably at least been twenty years.

Do you remember when you could eat turtles?

Oh yeah, oh yeah, one hundred percent. We loved it. It was really good. Easter is a really really big holiday into Bahamas. Easter is owl version of Thanksgiving for y'all. And I can remember folly as a kid, eating lots of turtle and lots of shark.

Would you guys target the turtles back in those days.

Most of the time you find whichever one you want, you're already getting your mind made up. How you which one you want because the grand turtle and loghead tastes completely different. And most of the time we would get a grand turtle, you chase it down and jump on it and put a knife to it.

And then how would you guys prepare them?

I like my turtle like my mom as a kid. I like having it as a pepper steak. I like how you do, like how you a cook pepper steak. I loved it having that way. Another way you could do it is like a countryfied steak, but pasta shell. There is really a lot of meating though in a turtle. But I hear just rumors of them starting to open up a turtle season here to get into Palmas. No, I don't know what true, what that is or what I have no interest in killing them or whatever.

But did you feel it was unsustainable When you were a kid.

It was one hundred percent sustainable, and today it still is for those that want to get them. Is still sustainable turtles everywhere all through to Bahamas.

So it wasn't like they were. You didn't feel that you guys are running out of turtles back there?

No, no, not at all. Every little creek a canal, you going right now? It's hundreds of turtles areas. You go dive in kalank, could dive in lobster anywhere. This turtles everywhere. Turtles, they I'll think they get so big they really have no natural predators once they get so big, because you get a big turtle come up on a shark. He could really bully that shark if he wants to. The shark doesn't want to get hurt. The shark just

You know.

We had a guy, uh he's been on the podcast a couple of times. I think it was Danny Bolton that was observing this. Maybe you remember this. He's talking about the idea of like the sharks are reckless and he's like, man, they can't afford to get hurt. No, it's like if he gets hurt, he's dead. Yeah, his parties are you know, like any little thing happens to him, right, they can't just run around being stupid.

No, you think about how many we saw this week. They were perfectly clean. You think about how hard their lives are and the crap that they go through when they're Most of them are so beautiful. They don't have a mark on them. Yeah, it's the ones that I see with big bite mark on him, or like that guy must be a dick. We need to stay away from him. Yeah, you know, like those are the ones that are like or a real skinny one. If you see a skinny one.

Yeah, trouble, Yeah, yeah, I guess the Yeah. The point on that being that you think, well, how a turtle run him off? It is like, why does he want? Why would he risk it?

Yeah? A turtle getting a chunk taken out him by If you see a big turtle and you got a shark hard on him, he'll never turn away from him. He always faces him, you know. So he's ready to bite, he's ready to snap back.

You know.

I mean a turtle. I think they got a well of one thousand pounds of pressure and a beak, you know what I mean. You see them crush a kun show. I wouldn't take a chance at all.

They can crush a coun show.

They sure look like I got a really close look at that turtle's face and I'm just saying, like it's it's beak looked intense.

Oh yeah, you're thinking of the kunks that were like keeping to eat. We're talking more of the undeveloped ones.

That are still like junior consol juvenile ones last of three years.

When I was a kid. This is back in the Camon Islands when you were still able to catch turtles. They'd set nets. So, say there's ten people on the island would set nets for turtles, and basically is a net that looks like a flag on the surface. So you'd have a buoy a weight on the bottomlying going up and there'd be a flag kind of a net on the surface, and they'd have a fake turtle on the surface, like a piece of wood, round piece of wood with two flippers, so it looked like a turtle.

You took it.

And I can't remember if we talked about this, definitely not so I might have been seven or eight or at the time. So there was a big turtle in that We got it out and we were running back to our island, and on the way back we had an open boat. That turtle was was in the uh on the deck of the boat and my uncle was running the boat and that turtle just inched his way up and bit him like this on the back of the ankle. And you have never heard a louder noise,

Yeah you did.

Yeah you did, scared of it, but yeah, there the bite you. Oh yeah, especially when he knows he's screwed, he'll bite you.

Oh.

I would hate to get bit by that.

And in Behaman culture, why where did the whole like I get the Eastern meal right, and then you know where I grew up like a common Eastern meal would be that you'd have a honey baked ham, right, Why sharks of turtles? Do you have any idea?

I think it was just easier to come by. That's that's that's just what I think. And I mean we never we eat turtle probably once a year, twice a year. But shark, I mean, shark was a common occurrence. We ate shark a lot, a lot of shark, black tail, reef, almost any shark. We got makos every once in a while. The old guys are go deepdropping, they'll come across the thresher.

It is really good.

I think one of the biggest things here in the Bahamas that we do it at is not sustainable. It's conk. I think ten years ago, maybe fifteen years ago, we should have shut down or at least put a season on conk in the Bahamas because we explore quite a bit of gonk, quite a bit, and I just don't think it's sustainable.

In your lifetime You've seen a degradation of the resource.

Big time, big time, and it is not it is not due to nature. It's not due to any other thing but oval fishing. You know, I conk is such a smart social creature. If you were to take an area to the size of like a let's say an acre, and you dive, it's got a thousand colnar there. You dive ten, you break up the shelves, you drop it a right back in the middle of the conk. Within two or three days, every conquinarya is gone, every conkentary is gone because of that hazard. Yeah, nobody wants to

But we didn't cover it. But a guy rode in about the giant bucks that live in his graveyard by his house. But that's different, that's different species. Dear people. Uh with the with with the kankfrishera. The reason I could just I've thought about that often when I'm in areas that have con is, it's just they're they're highly visible and you just pick them up. And I was like, unless they're unless they're also out there in three hundred

Then that's what they're doing. It's it's hard to really think about. All right, So if you got a lot of it being exported, and conk is a real big delicacy in Obahama, so you have a lot of locals and all eating it. So the amoud of conk that we export and we provide to restaurants and just local street vendors and stuff, it's just not sustainable. It is not at all. I've seen conk populations go way down

There's no season on conk and.

Now they're talking about it, and I saw Department of Natural Resources, which is our game warden system here. They said they're going to start June first of twenty twenty three to put like a six month season on it or nine months season on it, which I think is great. It'll help a lot conk mostly spawning cooler temperatures. I think they should do it mostly in the winter months.

So that's you were saying, that's one commercial activity you don't you don't participate in.

I do not participate in conk Rocfuston. I don't, Jess. Jess like to me, I mean ethically to me, it is not right, you know. So I'll see Concodell, I'll take my boy, will go and get two or three for dinner. We never take enough to freeze and carry back a woman at all. We just get what we can right there, and then we grab a couple for dinner and that's it. We leave the rest.

You know.

I think that the kunk. The kunk export or lack thereof, is a good show of national pride too, that if you want kunk, you should come to the Bahamas, anticipate in the tourism and yes, the local economy rather than I mean, god knows what it goes for a pound and gets exported. It's nothing.

Yeah, so and it does.

It doesn't do much for here, but the attraction of people being will come here of like this is the place you get it. I think that's way more valuable.

Yeah, I agree with you.

I was talking to another friend of mine from the U of M, and he was like, hey, how about kung farming? Now, Now it can be done, but kung doesn't grow really fast, you know. And I feel as if if someone was to come in and do kung farming every year when they do their harvest, they should release a certain percentage back into the wild. Sure, you know, just try to help it from me and sustainable. But the way we're the way i'll the way we're doing it, I was not right.

I want to move to another fish species. And I'm going to start up by asking Kimmy this question, uh, and then we'll get to something you were telling me t is uh. But in Florida, bonefisher can't can't touch them, right. It's like like the trifecta of flats fish, bonefish, permit, tarp and you can't harvest those fish. Isn't it no kill in Florida?

Or just frowned upon you said, you said bonefish permit tarpe, Yeah, permit, you can.

You can fish for you can fish for permit.

It pisses people off like nothing else.

Like the reason I bring it up, we saw a permit and I had no idea that the permit went.

Into a hole.

This is a this is a big argument. I would love I would love to come back on the podcast with one of these diehard permit fishermen. I have the flats, fantastic friends that are you know, permit guys, and I love them to death. Permit do not belong the flats. They occasion the flats, they go there. They're reef fish. I see thousands and thousands and thousands of them on the reef in holes. I'll send you a video to add to this, like of three permit in a hole.

I get what you're saying. It'd be like if you were looking for people you could find them in movie theaters, right, a lot of people never ever going to a movie theater.

And you've seen the the videos of like swordfish on the flats or the reason for a tuna tower. Everybody's heard the term tuna tower talking about sport fish.

On a boat.

You look out tower and a boat.

Those were developed for cat k and beeminy, so the guys could be up super high to see bluef and tunas that are done spawning in the golf or breeding whatever the hell they're doing the golf Mexico coming across a gulf stream and occasionally coming over the bank in twenty thirty feet of water, Yeah, in shallow water, and they would see them. Back in the Hemingway days. They developed these big towers so they could present baits them

No?

Not upon the flats. A Bahamian got killed one the other day, chased it down and shot it with the wine sling.

Wow.

Serious, yep from the boat. It was like eight hundred or something.

Crazy.

Who it was.

Huge, Yeah, as it was moving like you're saying.

But bluefin tunes aren't flats fish permit, look all up on the flats.

I love it, but they're not always there.

I don't think they're always there. I mean it might be two subspecies, but I don't know. I didn't see this fish, but there, Kimmy saw it. You saw it, and you guys know, like one thing I'll hand you guys, like your ability to know what the hell fish you're looking at and sixty feet of water.

I was thinking that too.

Ste half the time I put my head up justin knows I'm gonna go like, what was that? A lot of times Justice is like, don't recognize that one. He's far from home, but yeah, that's like a roughly group or esque that looks like.

I don't know where it's camp.

I don't know, but uh, but the the fact that the permit went into a hole. Yeah, So anyways, that guy we were talking about, you know, fella could go down there and get him, and we opted out to get him. And I pointed out and it wasn't it was It was a large A big part. A big factor me now I wanted to go down and get them. Is how riled up people get. And sometimes I like

I would have eaten it, And like, I'm just in I caught a large mouth bass in Minnesota. My parents and I love it, and what we eat bonefish trying to slow and I just you know, I don't see the issue.

Yeah I don't either, but but you have to trust you, and I tell you it's an issue. People, people, it's an issue.

And you ask why, I'm like behind the scenes because I'm like the guy I shoot that permit because I don't want to deal with that.

So the permit thing, it's an issue. And we passed on a permit, and I was going to bring up what you just brought up is that as much so. I remember when the first time I went fishing bonefish. After a while of fishing bonefish, we ate a bonefish, and it felt like you're being like naughty to eat

No, no, nobody will judge you in Hawaii for eating oh eo, Like nobody thinks of it really. I mean, we know that people love to go fly fishing for them elsewhere and that they put up a good fight, but it's not like it's not the most popular thing to do in Hawaii. But as far as eating them, like,

But if you think of like, you know, if you said to someone you want some mushy fish, most people are gonna be like, no, I'll pass.

But if you think about, like, think about like spicy tuna when it's not like in chunks, but when it's like really kind of minced and made into spicy tuna and then put over rice and sushi and rolla, wouldn't you call that a mushi meat? Wouldn't you call that delicious? Okay, So loami oyo is a moshi meat that is very delicious.

Oh my god, I'm craving it.

It was somebody justin has eaten it.

Do you love it?

Or do you love it? There's like no other option. It's delicious.

I've shot.

They're not the easiest t shoe, Like, they're not something you have to work. I mean, I think the only thing you have to worry about is like if you were to like surround at a school, that wouldn't be you know, if everyone did that, that wouldn't be sustainable. But as far as like fishing for them or shooting them, it's kind of rare to get one. Yeah I have.

I would love to add that to my list of stuff I have And I was so happy.

Oh they're really soft, so it's hard to like really get them right.

No, I mean they're a great fight but no, really firm.

Yeah, if you if you shoot them, you're gonna get them.

Do you clean them the same way you clean like an ava, Like you pound them out and then you cut up a slit at the back and like roll it out.

That's definitely a popular way to do it. And everyone has their.

Own nique on that phone.

I mean people have their always, but some people will like throw it in a freezer overnight just so that all the you know, briga mortars and coagulated proteins will relax. And then the next day you'll take it out and you'll cut a slit in the tail and then you get a rolling pin and then right behind the head is where you start, and you put this pressure on it and you just roll it out and all the meat just comes on out.

What Yeah, come on, we.

Made a meat YouTube video similar to that.

Right on you're taking a fish, you freeze it and then thaw it so it's kind of soft, yeah, and you squeeze it out the table to make.

A slit, and then you're like roll You put all this pressure and you roll it out and the.

Tail where we'd usually be the back of this floor and you.

Just get all this this basically like ground meat out, you know, and it is and everyone has your own way, like not everyone likes that style, and some people prefer to do it other ways. And again it's not like I'm an expert on it because I've only shot one, you know, but I've eaten it. I've eaten it a lot, and it's something that's like serve as a really special

Oh really, yeah, to you talk about how your dad and his body's fishing, this is this cracks me up.

Many they hand line them. They do it at night. They hand line them, use little hermit crabs, and they do really well. This is a small one.

They let it go. It's really big.

They'll let that one go too. But the size they want is basically like fourteen inches sixteen inches somewhere. It's a perfect size for them.

And what they do is they they'll scale it. G got it well first time about how they catch it.

So you just use a hand line, high line with a hook and a hermit crab, crush the hermit crop out of the shell, stick it on and they mostly do it at night, bonefish day, and they're on the flats. They're on the flats. They're on the flats. They go to the fly and they in the night.

But aren't you fishing in a little bit deeper water at night?

They come they come right along the showline. They come right along the showline, feeding on crabs or whatever else on night and at night. They're not picky in the daytime after use like really light floor or carbon and stuff. Nighttime, they don't care.

They just feed.

That's it, you know. A couple of hermit crobs. You do pretty well, you know, and they go then the way they do it, they don't gnad them at all, so it's really sustainable as well. They use a little little pin hook and a little hand line, take a couple of flashlights and some off for the bugs and.

Some of that.

Natives.

Yeah there's a plug for native soap and yeah, there you go.

They go and they get them. But the way how they do it here is they they they gill and gut it and then they butterfly it all the way on down in the skin, and they lay it wide open as a butterfly, and they put it in the oven and they'll suck a onions, peppers, tomatoes, but that was salt and pepper they want and to put it on it. Put it in the oven. When it's already fully cooked. They pull it out, and then they take the bog boe from the tail end and they pull straight up and all the.

Bog bone comes out, but there takes the ribs with it.

No, a lot of ribs stay behind. But I don't like bone fish because it is too much work a guy of my physique. I gotta eat bro I don't want to.

You can't be picking.

I can't be picking.

But they love it.

But you need to groover, you know what's up?

What's up? It's too much rock to eat. But it takes you like an hour to eat a meal.

You're making me think of how many fish? We got a pile of fish. We got a clean man. I love it.

It's getting nice and stuff.

I want to talk about the fish we got. Have you guys run through the fish we got? I got one more question. We saw sharks but had no you'd say that, like, no, we didn't see anything anything that you never said, get back in the boat, nothing like that.

Just there kind of their behavior. And we were really efficient with not leaving stuff on the bottom, like we got stuff out. Honestly, the worst setup we had was a fish that we had never shot, which was a big black that went in a hole, big black grouper. And while we were looking for that thing, that big mutton came in and you shot that mutton, and as you shot it, everybody was kind of looking at you.

That's like, that's like bears in a way, there's a point at which enough people is just never a bear issue.

Yeah, that's how that's how it.

Most normally.

But I don't think he knew.

I don't think he knew we were all there. True, I don't think he knew we were there. I think he thought it was just one or two. Yeah, yeah, I think he was more surprised than we were.

Yeah, but it was pretty chill this week with with sharks, and I attribute it to how many people we had in the water got it because we chummed a lot. Like you said, like the chuming is so much fun. Let's do it man. I made it rain today and the sharks never showed that.

Well.

That nurse shark that came kind of came and then it really came up. Do they have those ever trouble in a weird way?

It's like, I don't know, how would you describe them, Like the nurse sharks. It's like it's like a goofy dude that just kind of ambles into the bar. It's not really dangerous, but he will bite you, you know, like if if you if you're if you ignore him enough to be like, hey, this guy's not going to hurt you. They'll bite you. Yeah, you will like you and they don't let go. If they bite you, they they like suck in and they've got you basically an

Now, Paren, another guy we're with you just described nurse sharks as like big goofy How are they?

Are you gonna say that parents goofy guys?

No?

No, Paren told me tiger sharks are like stoners until they're not.

So today we all saw that same video today with the shark, the tiger shark attacking the kayak.

Yeah, crazy, Now what he thought he thought that was a basking turtle? Oh he thought that kaig was a turtle.

Yep, Because most of the time like that I've seen in the world.

But yeah, that makes sense. It's just like, oh, a big ass turtle on the surface, let's.

Hit it before he gets a chance to turn.

Yes.

And the majority of really big tigers that I've seen have been right here beside me already, like I hadn't seen him coming, because they've come from behind you and they've determined that's not a turtle, it's not something on a bite, and he's like arms reach away and it's terrifying.

And they're just like this. He went to make his arms go around in a circle, but they didn't reach.

Yeah, but yeah, I we I think we talked about it yesterday or whatever. Like tiger sharks in the Bahamas, I'm honestly not overly afraid of because they are so cautious. It's not like Hawaii tiger sharks. Hawaii tiger sharks they bite people, you know, they're like they mean business here. Not as many spear fishermen get bit by ti as reef sharks. Reef sharks are the big problem here. Bulls, lemons, the ones that are in that kind of you know, thirty to ten foot of water is the most dangerous area.

That shallow water. Like Cam just said, the shallow water is the worst. If you see roof sharks out in the deep me you know you could, you could can creat distance in deeper water, but that shallow water stuff mine. When they fired up, they all fired up like they come on hot. And it's a good chance. I mean, if you if you don't keep your head on the swibble or you don't have a good buddy tohies his head on the swibble. Someone's gonna get bit, you know.

You guys mentioned something to me. I'm curious if you could speak to it for a moment that the popularity of shark viewing has led to like conflict between spearfishers because of the practice of chumming up sharks for shark viewing and educating sharks about like what humans mean? You know, this is this the thing?

Yeah? And I love that you know exactly how to push my buttons. Yeah, such a This is such a challenging discussion, and by openly discussing this in years past, I've had death threats by by shark huggers to the point where I had to get lawyers involved, oh to like help track down these people to make sure they

So I don't think that groupers are unbeautiful and uncool exactly. People fish for groupers. It's just I think the deer really beautiful and really cool, and people hunt deer.

And social media has totally changed the lives of sharks in the last ten years, you know, just because they're.

One of the big winners.

Yeah, they really are.

Because poppy teen age girls took a hit, but sharks it had great and people like.

In personally I'll say this as well, like I've I've had to kind of keep my mouth shut about it because it is such a strong majority of people that don't have any experience with sharks that are making up all this bullshit about you know, I don't even know how to say it to you, Like it's so this is.

How I feel. I feel if you are, if you are a shark diving operation, putting people in cages and this and that and everything, I feel like all you're doing is starting that animal for money, not just my personal opinion. And a lot of them get pissed off when they say it, but it is what it is what me and Kim do. We are hunters and the way how we hunt in the water is so sustainable. We don't train sharks. Even if a shark, even if Cam was to shoot a fish, he's coming with a

That's true, and that's true every every time.

Yeah, the photos and yeah after she already even she even went as far to call the police fus over a fish that we had and it was legal, it was a legal harvest. The cop came on Oval. We gave him a bunch of fish. She hung over with us swamp On. We swapped numbers. When he's like, hey, when you come back tomorrow, you get more fish, let me know, you know. And this girl she had the heart to come to us in Oxes for carcasses so she could go feed sharks tomorrow.

It's crazy.

All you're doing is extorting these almost some money.

You know.

The thing that I brought a horrible I brought the point where you have it would be such bad form to uh bait grizzlies in order to have grizzly viewing.

That's our exactly, And so we keep saying everyone to be pistols lions. There's a reason you can't do it.

Yeah, everyone the expert like grizzly protectionists, hunters, homeowners, the fishing game. No one would support you pulling up to grizzlies and throwing them stuff to eat, so that terrorists could take pictures of them.

And I guarantee and I hope to God this happens sooner than later. In ten years, worldwide, it's going to be illegal to feed sharks for tourism and people are going to be that look back at chunk worldwide?

Is a big chunk?

True?

What were we thinking? Yeah, you know, because it is. It's grizzlies and tigers, lions like people are gonna get bet and it's changing the attitude these animal and hey, like, all right, we're where we are right now. Two miles down south of US, a girl at a sandbar with fifty other people around got bit by a shark and took like a fifteen pound chunk out of her leg.

I heard fourteen Sorry close.

I tend to exaggerate.

To drink golding, to drink and waste deep water.

Never dropped your drink, rumor has it she never dropped her drink.

The proximity of all the local communities, like way these people feed sharks, it's mind blowing. Some of these people feed these sharks so close to the local communities. It's crazy. We have one place named Tiger Beach, and Tiger Beach is a good stretch away from you know, some of the local communities, but every way else people don't care. They don't care. And you have tour groups doing it. You have local charter companies.

That do it.

Hey, you want to go see a shark, Let's go see a shark and they feed them, which is crazy, even the Marinas.

And another like another argument from sustainable fishery side is when people think of people killing sharks, they think of finning. Finning is not the only thing that happens with the shark. You think about how big that animal is and how many different uses there are for that animal. Like, there's so much meat in a shark. The return on it is huge. Like what you actually yield teeth, fins, meat, so much more of that gets used than almost any

Yeah. I remember years ago, I remember when they did what was called the finning ban in US waters. And it wasn't that they banned finning, they banned the percentage of your hold. What percentage of the shark parts in your hold could be fins meaning I don't know what it was, thirteen percent or something like that, meaning you couldn't go out and just fill your hold full of fins.

If you were going to harvest sharks, you had to harvest. And I one hundred and ten percent agree with that sharks in their entirety. But what if you know, we said, well you can't serve beef tongue anymore. They're not just going to get in the tongues, you know, out of the beef. It's the same like, okay, let's use the fins instead of wasting. Now, Like, wouldn't it be better to utilize the entire animal? Yeah, So, you know, one

I feel that people are, in our well intentioned way, we sometimes overdo it on making big moves and management. Like if you go into the nineteen seventies with the Wild Horse and Burrow Protection Act. No one could picture in the nineteen seventies the situation we'd be in now, where there are literally millions of wild mustangs. There are millions of wild horses kept on that have been shipped to farms in Kansas because there's a prohibition on killing

And to be honest, the way of taking fish has changed as well. So long line is the only thing that ever kept sharks in check, like the way they reproduce. The numbers that are there now, we probably can't catch up unless they allowed long line in again. And there's only a handful of boats on the east coast of the US that are allowed to long line for them, and they do well, Like when they're ready to do it, they'll go put out their long line, they'll catch their sharks.

Okay, what all kinds of fish did we get?

Speaking of fish, you got a mackerel today, cereal mass cereal macrel. That was very cool. We've got some hogfish. We got some yellow jacks. We've got some mutton snappers. We got groupers, three kinds, black, nasa, yellowfin, we got nope.

I caught a strawberry group around a fish pole.

You also, yeah, we also caught some mahi on fishing poles. We've got some yellow tail snapper on fishing poles. And what am I missing from the.

Dives yellow eye snapper yellow ye, Yeah, a couple of another deep drop snapper button which are black.

Snappers, button snappers. Those and one other silky.

White silky snapper which is also called squirrel. Sometimes a black market, you.

Guys are fourteen white market.

Yeah, different market. What they call margaret fish here. Oh, the game is called a margaret fish yep.

And the one is regarded well, regarded as food and ones not really saw.

It after the black we don't touch.

Speaking of which, Kimmy, when you shot that, I know it was a mistaken identity. We never did weigh it. I think we cleaned it.

That was a world record.

I'm going to eat it. Oh and there was another fish we ran into. No, we we just fit. So we just fish. Let me clear up. We fish for four days everywhere from like trolling, deep dropping spinners, little bits of cut bait. Uh and then a variety of spearing styles and a bunch of people. So in some of these things we got like one or two of But you got that that fish that you think looks like the one you like with the molars in it.

Oh yeah, the oh yeah, yeah yeah, fifteen oh yeah, fifteen yeah. Is that a grass porgy or that was a monster.

Yeah? Yeah.

I got an album co home coot Jack. Then I got that that big turtle, and they got that great white short. I got a four foot doors offered. Then Connor caught a big barracute off the dock.

Again when we mean Sam caught a barracute off the dock, and then a you said yellow jack.

Yeah, yeah, you're going strong.

But predominantly we targeted snappers and snappers and groupers, predominantly, no hoggies. That's why Kimmy became hog dog.

She was a group of hog.

Hog Dog.

Kimmy gets dialed in you could see surface. You see on the surface like here we go, fish coming out, that's coming up.

I was extremely selective.

So if the person that stole my fish is listening, oh my god, we didn't catch We didn't catch nothing. All right, guys, anything any want to add any final thoughts?

I wanted to ask you because I've dove with you in a few different spots, like this type of diving compared to like Hawaii diving or Louisiana, Like how do you rate this type of diving with Cam and how he kind of targets this species and kind of having Kimi over here.

Yeah, You've already experienced so many different environments of spearfishing and styles of spearfishing.

So yeah, this has been the So let me back up a second on this question because mostly, like like trapping, like I learned, we just learned self taught. Never you know what I mean, hunting there was there was there wasn't any kind of hunting media. Just you just knew what the guys around you knew, right, and fishing you

No, it's like five thousand or six thousand.

Oh, that's it's over a mile. Yeah, that's right.

No, we were out, we were out at one point six Yeah, I think it's five or six thousand feet of water. That is just a sur is a surreal feeling to be there with the pelagic fish swimming around. It's just surreal. There's a there's a three dimensionality to it that you're so many miles from shore and it's miles deep and it just there's life still. Yeah, that

Then you shoot a fish and you go back into and you go back into the.

Murk and it's like that is such a weird thing to lay there and not know what's down below you. And then you dive down because it's all that stuff from the Mississippi River coming out and that that dirty fresh water floats on top of the clean water. That's bizarre here. Just it's like stunning water clarity. I mean,

And I leave the light down, the light looking into the right hole.

You know.

It's so funny like that. I can't think of an equivalent anywhere.

I think what I like the most about this about diving here is I've never been so assertive, and that's what I like about it. I think in Hawaii like feels like all the fish there have these like PhDs stay away from humans, and so you really have to just lay down. And it's just sometimes it feels like it's all about how long you can hold your breath,

There's so many. The challenge here too is there's so many different species. And I mean every time you guys surface, we talk about what happened. And there's times when you need to speed up. There's times we need to slow down with the same fish, or that you need to have laid down or gone faster. And it's that's what makes it so cool is there's no one way to do it. It's very situational, so you have to draw from everything that's happened in the five days before to

Need to be there. Then Yeah.

The fish that eludes me is the uh and I don't even I never even had one, like in range really is a couberra.

Yeah they're tough.

I'd like to get a Couberrera someday.

Man different than the Koobi Chopra chopper.

That's different.

That was my one of my favorite moments is and I watched that coublera scare off that shark. That was like, I've never seen that. I've never hunted something that's scaring off the sharks that are coming in. That's really cool.

That's good they're aggressive. What was your what was your favorite fish of the trip?

That was my question for you too.

Oh, I know what I hadn't like the big mutton snapper I thought was pretty impressive. Yeah today, Yeah, just the ones we've gotten today. We hit the ground running because I hadn't seen that when I was I hadn't seen that when I was with you guys before. Nothing. I mean, I like, I love it all man. But it was cool to get those big, like really nice big mutton snapper.

What was what was your top moment?

Do you think you're getting that fish out of that hole so you didn't have to do It's pretty cool. Yeah, dude, I'd still be out there trying to get that fish out of there, because I'd take an hour between dives, you know, to try to go down there and sorting that whole situation.

Now and so different than hunting. So like hunting, if say you you wound a deer or whatever, and then I shoot it and finish it. It's kind of a letdown here. It's everybody has got to work together because you got to get it done. So it's it's a group effort. It's so different than any other sport because it is such a team effort. And I I'm appalled by the people that think this is an individual sport. It's such a group sport. That's what makes it so fun.

You know.

One of the one of the most it worked out in the end, but like a real sinking feeling is when I went down shot a grouper and ran out of air and couldn't get him out. And as I'm coming up, I'm watching my spear in the entire spear ship vanishes into the hole. I was like, that ain't good. He wound up coming out like a different route, you know, and like dragged the spearshat back out with them, you know, and then you went back down.

He's like nope, an he went right back in.

So we did not.

I don't think we had any really good way.

No I'm really proud of us for that, Like every fish that we ended up shooting in a hole, even if it ripped off, or even if it hold up immediately somehow, just like the teamwork, we recovered every single fish. And I love how everybody focused on that, Like no one was just like all right, see you later.

You know that, every single.

Person was Okay, we're all staying here until and so many comes out.

So many times when we were doing it too, because it creates such a commotion. Stuff came from so far away.

Oh sure, lots of stuff coming in, and we.

Had more shooters, so they just got added to the jettie.

On that one, I was expecting you just to start coming up one flay at a time. But eventually you got that thing out there. Here's half a flay. I'll go back down.

That was a process. So that fish went. You shot it in one hole and it went up into a crack there was I mean, it felt solid. I put my feet on the reef.

Oh yeah, like it was in a concrete ank.

You're never coming out. And I'd pretty much given up on it, and I went and looked on the other side because I saw a little stirrup and I went in there. I was like, okay, there he is.

So I went down.

I was like, you know, told you just to cut it off. And when I went down, he was right there. So it's like, I'll just kill it and let Steve do the next part. So as I was killing it under my right elbow, I felt what I thought was a shark's nose coming, and it was you coming to grab it. And it scared the I was like, I'm about to get eating and nobody said anything.

I'll send you that shot because I was right there.

Oh, I heard it too, but I thought he was trying to tell me something. No, I didn't even know. You didn't know I was.

I was with you.

Yeah, Now that was a great trip, man, Thanks guys. Thanks you guys did a great job of showing me. All right, kimmy good.

I am so good. I'm just thinking of all the fish we're going to bring.

Home an eat all right, Thank you everybody, Thanks for joining.

Thank you. A ride on.

On sealry shine like silver in the sun.

Ride ride on along, sweetheart.

We're done beat this damn horse today.

Taking a new one drive.

We're done beat this damn horse today.

So take your new one.

I don't