31 January 2016
Blue Heron Bridge, Riviera Beach, FL
Dive Log 8:
Depth: 24 feet
Encountered (highlighted):
Atlantic Spadefish
Yellow-headed Jawfish
What a difference a day and a dive makes!
How’s everybody hanging?
What a difference No Fishing makes!
Man I told you life was full of ups and downs, but we come out of it.
Going under gets you back up – you’ll hear many divers tell you that right there.
More people need to get into the water – I guarantee you will love more.
So, have you ever seen a baited fishing hook underwater from a fish’s perspective? Think about it – you can probably imagine that exactly in your mind’s eye – probably from cartoons and stuff like Finding Nemo. But have you ever swam up on a fishing hook, line and sinker in real life at the bottom of the sea??
G and his wife took me up to dive the Blue Heron Bridge in Riviera Beach. This was my second time there. Viz was much better.
First time diving in a full wetsuit – that 5 mil kept me warm. (A much appreciated gift from Cyrene in Albuquerque, a longtime funder and friend, who has stood by me and my non-profit organization and artist work for over 15 years.)
The waters around Blue Heron Bridge are filled with life because there’s no fishing, no netting, no “bugging” (lobstering), no taking. Meaning no killing pressure, no depletion. Animals are allowed to live out their natural lives as part of the ecosystem. All the abundance is striking. We’re used to poverty!
We need to set up safe places all around the world.
High tide was just after 1 p.m. We made it in time. When diving the bridge, you want to hit high tide because the clarity of the incoming water is much better, and you don’t have to fight the outgoing tide.
See – you learn all these small details about life at sea level. Only total immersion is teaching me.
Once we submerged into the Caribbean blue water we swam south to cross under the bridge. It grew dim and green, a Lost World willed to the living.
G swimming ahead looked like a horizontal astronaut in the shadowed green gauze, spearing the water with his light.
My breathing was much better this time. I wasn’t sucking all the air out from the tank real quick like my first few times. And no probs equalizing. #Progress.
Def won’t get complacent though. The test will be once I start going deeper and breaking atmospheres underwater.
Atlantic Spadefish schooling in the Lost World under the bridge.
A large school of Atlantic Spadefish, sheets of rippling foil, swam slowly back and forth, checking us out. We returned the gaze. G’s wife took lots of great pics with her SeaLife camera.
As we swam through to the other side of the bridge that’s when I saw the fishing line hanging down, along with a leader and lead weight and bare hook lying at the bottom.
At first I thought it had broken off some time ago and was just hanging there to entangle, snag and injure fish and other wildlife well into the future. My first instinct on land or at sea is to always remove fishing line.
G was looking at me from behind as my fist closed around the line. I had dive gloves on.
My mind slowly realized somebody was illegally fishing from the bridge up top. The little grunt fish hanging around had already “stole” the bait.
For a second I imagined what would happen if I yanked the line so hard the pole came out the guy’s hands.
Man that woulda woke his azz up. Haha he would’ve thought he’d latched into the biggest damn fish. And probably cussed and wondered about it for years.
We had good laughs about that later as we hosed down the equipment in G’s backyard.
I love hanging on the sea bottom. I could just chill there on the sand or shells or pebbles. Of course I am careful to not touch corals or other creatures or plants.
Black-tailed prairie dog on the sea of grass plains west of the Road to Red Shirt Table, Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, South Dakota.
On the way back we ran into this little fish called a yellow-headed jawfish who stands upright and builds a burrow like a prairie dog. Seriously. Just like prairie dogs out West. Well survivors who haven’t been poisoned, gassed or shot I mean. You know some people say prairie dogs are so unusual and intelligent they’re aliens lol. With their “Roswell” eyes and the way they talk and build their cities they sure look it. Some people say fish are aliens too.
Yellow-headed Jawfish
This little jarfish had a very bright yellow head and pearly blue and white body with big black pop-eyes. She was about 4 inches long, or should I say tall.
So beautiful like all fish. Just clean and perfect.
She would look around, while standing upright on her tail, waving her little see-through arm fins, then go down, grab a shell with her mouth, bring it up to the top and place it onto the rim of the perfect circle burrow she was creating.
She’d stand there all happy with her big black pop-eyes, opening and closing her mouth. Then go back down and get another one.
Behind G’s place, we sat on lawn chairs after rinsing off the equipment and wetsuits. Massive organic collard greens grew out of a garden patch.
Like a thunderbolt of a good idea coming out of nowhere, G said:
“I wish people would stop eating fish for a year. I mean all over the world, Give them a break. Some time to recover.”
He eats meat, spears fish, and has dabbled in vegetarianism.
As the possibilities and opportunities of what he said sunk in, the activist in me just stared.
You know I am pretty good at getting people activated to do something, and to spread the word.
Hmmmm… Stay tuned. 2017 is going to be an interesting year.
At the end of our dive, as we got to the shallows and stood up into Earth’s first atmosphere, G said, “Back to Earth…”