Blog Post #1: About Me And Dive O'Clock

About Me

I was born in Mountain View California and raised by in Menlo Park by my mother and father. I am the oldest child in my family and was the first to experience every new thing that my family faced. My mom loves to travel and go on unknown adventures while my father loves action sports. My mom enjoys going to National Parks and traveling around to see what amazing things the world has to offer. My father’s love for action sports started affecting me when I was very young and began skateboarding after we visited one of the warehouses he leased to Independent Skate Company. My father works in Commercial Realestate in South San Francisco and this has exposed me to a variety of different activities. He got me a surf lesson when I was in grade school and I instantly fell in love with the ocean and all it has to offer. My grandparents have a house in Carmel and we would use their kayak to go out on the water and fish. We always used to see spear fisherman come into the harbor and we were so intrigued by the sport. This kept the flame alive for my love of the ocean and I knew someday I would be able to try it.

Image taken of me surfing at Stinson Beach

A Humbling Experience

For my friends 15th birthday he received a speargun from his parents and this was the beginning of our biggest adventure. We went to Carmel and dove under this pier with one gun and all this other gear we scavenged around our houses. I used my super thin surf wetsuit, a terrible plastic dive mask, and these my boogie boarding fins. The water clarity was less than 5 feet and it was completely terrifying because when you reached the bottom it was pitch black. We did not see a single fish that day and for the next couple dives. After many dives we started accumulating better gear and we started diving out farther where the water clarity improved to 40 feet. This is when we started seeing fish and we were able to hold are breathes for longer. Soon enough we were shooting fish every time we went out dive and we were getting pretty good. One particular day we decided to go out deeper and try diving at 80 feet because the water clarity was about 60 feet. It was me and three of my friends diving that day and we were on this tiny kayak with on friend kicking behind. All of a sudden I hear my friend yell SHARK and my heart skipped a beat, I had no idea what kind of shark it was or if it was a threat. I kick for my life back to the kayak and we all scramble onto the kayak like seals. As we all got on the kayak it sank well bellow the surface, I was then informed that a 15 foot Great White had swam up to friend and then swam off. This experience really humbled us and reminded us of all the dangers of diving.

Close Call

After about a year of diving and hundreds of dives my father bought me and my brother an inflatable raft and outboard motor. This was a game changer and we could go out on the water for much longer and with more people. We all were diving very deep at this point and could hold our breathes under water for a little over a minute. We started practicing holding our breathes in class to pass the time and were starting to get more competitive. One time we were trying to see who could hold their breathe longest during class and my friend passed out onto his desk. We realized that if you could remain super calm, you could slow. Down your heart rate and hold your breathe for longer. The deeper we would dive the higher would raise the chance of seeing a rare fish, we really wanted lingcod because they grew the biggest and supposedly tasted the best. So we decided to dive this really cool structure where you had to dive into this small gap and then deeper into this cave. My friend dove down first and shot a massive lingcod nesting behind these rocks. He was afraid it was gonna come of the spear so I dove down and shot it again, as I ascended the line connected to the shaft wrapped around my ankle and sunk into the neoprene. I honestly thought I was going to die after a minute of struggling with the line. After a minute and half my friend dove down and cut the line. When I reached the surface my head was pounding and I threw up. I never expected that this scenario would ever happen but I’m sure glad I was diving with a partner. We later retrieved the fish from the depths and it was an absolute beast of a creature. One should never dive without a buddy because the unexpected can occur and be life threatening.

Scuba Time!

This one dive and my brother decided to bring out scuba equipment so that we could dive really deep stay down for as long as the tanks lasted. We got our scuba certification in the Dominican Republic and it only took three days. In the United States it can take up to a year to receive one’s scuba license. We first started out in a classroom and watched the cheesiest video on the history behind diving the evolution of the sport. After that were told how to set up the tank on the BCA device and attach the regulator. Then we learned how to use the scuba system and keep a neutral buoyancy with the BCA. We then learned the safety involved in the sport and what to do and not to do. After the briefing we finally tested out the equipment in the pool to prepare us for the open sea. We started out diving on this line that we followed down to about 20 feet and we practiced the signals and what to do in case of an emergency, we even had to take off our masks underwater and put them back on. At the end of the three days we had to take a test and we all passed perfectly. In California, my brother and I dived on our own and it was absolutely limitless. We could search in every hole and between every rock for the perfect catch to take home. Sometimes I forgot I was even swimming, it felt like I was floating around weightless in space. We reached this one drop off that we plunged over and I came eye to eye with a massive lingcod. It swam right up to me and I lined up my shot, I shot him right between the eyes and wrestled him to the ground. At that point we were running out of air and we both had the perfect catch so we began our ascent. When we reached the surface we realized that we were way to far out. We could not see the bottom at all and we had about a mile swim back to the boat.

Image the taken of me at Stillwater Cove

#outdoors #ocean #shark #surf #spearfish #scuba #california

Here are some links to the shark attack:

https://youtu.be/5b4rJdAucMo

https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/11/24/shark-attacks-spear-fisherman-at-stillwater-cove-in-pebble-beach/