Sat30Jan2010

BigMo!

Information
Bob Diaz | SpearBlog 1997 | January 30, 2010

UPDATE: An article related to my story below was published in the April 2007 issue of Florida Sportsman. I post it here for the sake of any nay-sayers or persons who may be thinking that some of my descriptions or even the existence of Big Mo may be exaggerated or even fictitious. I invite you to read my story below and then enjoy the article as well.


This story is true, and while actually pertaining more closely to my brother-in-law, is one that I was in the water for and probably closer to the actual events than I would care to consider...

It was the summer of 1997.

We were spearfishing along the 7 Mile Bridge on the East side of Mosier channel. We had been in the water for a couple of hours already and it was late in the day. The usual predators had started making their usual pre-supper rounds. You could see them scanning the bottom for any scraps that would make easy pickings before going on the hunt.

It was getting close to dusk, but the catch was a little skimpy, so we decided to stay in the water for a little while longer. My wife and then sister-in-law were driving the boat for us. They stayed close, knowing that this tended to be a time when we ran into some of the more predatory inhabitants of the waters off Marathon key.

As we were swimming along with the boat nearby, we noticed that schools of rather large tarpon were jumping out of the water. My brother-in-law called to the boat so they could see this interesting phenomenon. Now seeing tarpon jumping may not seem to be such a spectacle at first, but these were in the 4-6 foot range. So it soon occurred to us that something was up...

My brother-in-law was about 1 piling ahead of me (approximately 30 feet), but as usual, the viz was less than 15 feet. So at the time, I wasn't sure exactly how far ahead of me he was. All of a sudden, I hear the engine of the boat roar (and I do mean roar). I get right up next to the piling and pop my head out of the water. As the boat speeds by me, my sister-in-law and wife yell to me "Hurry up! there's a shark!". Not knowing which direction the shark could be coming from, I jump right into the turbulent water behind the boat's propeller and swim as hard as I can (obviously, trying to avoid the propeller itself).

Now, we run into sharks on a fair amount of dives, but the sense of urgency in the faces of our wives made me believe that this situation was different. I pull up to the dive ladder just as my brother-in-law is mounting the ladder himself. When I get into the boat, I am confronted by a brother-in-law that is more than a whiter shade of pale.

Once we were in the boat and reasonably calmed down, my brother-in-law told me the following sequence of events...

Once he had told the girls to check out the tarpon, he noticed that they seemed to be extra frantic underwater as well. We normally swim through schools of large tarpon while spearfishing the bridge. But they are usually laying like logs in the shade of the bridge and casually move out of our way as we swim through them. They part for us like gentle silver giants as we go by. But on this occasion, they were frantically swimming away from something, and judging by the size of the tarpon, something big. At one point he was actually having to fend them off with his fins and gun stock.

Once he got a whiff of the goings on, he decided that whatever was chasing these fish was probably right on their tails. So he stopped along side of a piling and waited with his gun poised in the direction most likely to yield a view to the chaser.

Imagine if you will, the following... you're left shoulder is up against a wall, your gun is pointing down that wall towards its end, and you're waiting for something large to come around the corner. Unfortunately, you guess the wrong direction. You notice something to your right in your peripheral vision. This fish has decided to outsmart the tarpon as well as yourself and come around the back of the piling. As you roll your line of sight over to the right in order to see what's there, you are now looking upon the biggest ugliest predator you have ever seen.

It's Big Mo. Mo is a Hammerhead Shark. By most estimates, Mo measures somewhere between 15 and 17 feet (these are other peoples estimates, not just my brother-in-law's). Big Mo is a well known resident of the 7 Mile Bridge in the Florida Keys. People have been talking about him for many years. Some have even tried to catch him, but to no avail.

This is the part that is probably hard for most folks to imagine, so I will try and set the ambience. This is a prehistoric eating machine. Not to mention butt-ugly. A flat 4 foot wide head with one eyeball at each end. And a girth that probably measures better than 7 feet around at its widest point. It does not think, it just swims and eats whatever it can catch. It is unrivaled in the water, especially when it reaches these dimensions.

Upon seeing this monster, my brother-in-law rotates his body to get his gun between him and the fish. Unfortunately, upon doing this, he realizes how completely ineffective a measure this truly is. As he put it... "all I could do was look at the girth on this thing and think, 'shit', I fit in there...". "This thing's head was 4 feet across.. ." he tells me.  "It passed by me, very casually and turned around to face me.." he tells, "I guess he really wasn't hungry because he swam pretty lazily by, he was never frantic".

He begins to yell "SHARK! SHARK!" through his snorkel, trying to never take his eyes off the shark.

Realizing that my brother-in-law is yelling without even taking his head out of the water, my sister-in-law and wife immediately start the boat and speed by me on their way to him,  warning me of the impending danger. By this time I would assume, the shark has removed himself from the area upon hearing the boat's engine barrelling down on him.

As I jump into the boat's wake, worrying only about the propeller in front of me, I'm not really paying attention to much else. But as I later realize, I got lucky too. I may have been swimming directly into the shark itself. I like to think that this wasn't a possible scenario. Otherwise I would probably have a lot more trouble getting back into the water in this area as often as we do.

In all the years I have been diving with my brother-in-law, and all the situations we've gotten into and out of over the many dives, I have never seen him so shaken up. Needless to say, we didn't tempt fate quite so much after that. When the sun starts to set, we get the hell outta Dodge! We got lucky once, and we don't like to push our luck, not too much anyway :).