all signs to the contrary. Waking up at 4:45a on Friday, I head outside to hitch up and load up the boat for the trek to Marathon. All signs pointed to the weather being more of the same with the wind picking up well before dawn (which is never a good...
For the past 20+ years my family and I have been heading down to Marathon during the Summer months for the purposes of spearfishing and family weekends. Over the past 15+ years since owning my web site, these Summers have offered me the opportunity to...
Wind Seas Viz Temp 5-15mph SSE 2-3 SE Swell 40-50' 86F The past couple of weekends were plagued with algea blooms and low viz thanks to the higher surf temps and a West wind that always seems to wreak havoc for us. But right around Wednesday of this...
Wind Seas Viz Temp 5-10 WSW 1-2' 15' 88F This past weekend the weather was still beautiful (beautifully HOT) as it has been for weeks now with mild winds and calm seas. But this week we were met with green, dirty water in almost every direction. In...
Wind Seas Viz Temp 5-10 SSE 1-3' 25-55' 85F Many times I get asked the question, "How many fish have you lost to sharks?" and I always find it interesting how people that don't dive or spearfish frequently automatically associate what we do with sharks...
and temperature but even these were not producing bait much less our target species. We ended up about 25 miles south of Marathon without so much as a flying fish to show for our efforts. Finally after spending all this time searching, we came across a...
law showed a Sunfish that weighed about 200 lbs floating around (they don't swim very effectively) about 24 miles South of Marathon in water that you couldn't even find a ripple on much less any kind of waves (24 miles off!). Needless to say, I was...
morning, unloading and picking up the boat at the ramp, it was time to pack up for an overnight trip to the campground in Marathon! Honestly, it was only out of hating to disappoint my daughter that I found the energy to drive down to the keys on...
at the first couple of spots (#67 and #25). #25 is a spot that we found a couple of years ago with another dive buddy from Marathon. Since we found it, it has usually produced decent to very good sized mangroves on a regular basis. The problem is that...
nature kept slapping me in the face with reality. The winds were incessant. Every flying sign and flag between Miami and Marathon appeared as though they were made of wood as they stood at attention in 20-25mph winds (with higher gusts). But I was...
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...
My final dive of 2011 out of Miami and my first time ever seeing a Ribbon Fish (had to look that one up). I got a little tired of seeing this as one of my only 480p videos on the channel so I remastered it in 4K. Original footage is 1080 so there was a little upscaling involved, but I think it was worth it.
My final dive of 2011 out of Miami and my first time ever seeing a Ribbon Fish (had to look that one up). I got a little tired of seeing this as one of my only 480p videos on the channel so I remastered it in 4K. Original footage is 1080 so there was a little upscaling involved, but I think it was worth it.
This review is actually long overdue as I've had this mask for well over a year now and I honestly don't know why I hadn't done it before now. After trying multiple masks over several years (and several hundred dollars), some were good (Mystic, Star, Nano), and some were bad (Zero Cubed). Before this, I had actually decided upon the Cressi Nano as "the one". I thoroughly enjoyed the fit and volume of the Nano, but there were a couple of VERY minor issues with the fit. I'm convinced that the...
Over the weekend of March 27 th & 28 th I took the Level 1 Freediving course offered by FII (Freediving Instructors International) at their Headquarters in Pompano Beach FL. FII was started by Martin Stepanek, a multiple time freediving world record holder. The Level 1 curriculum is taught over a 2 day course. The first day is classroom and pool based and spans almost 9 hours. This course is designed for beginning freedivers and is supposed to get novice divers to a depth of 66 feet.
The summer had been busier than I would have liked this year and I honestly hadn't had as many opportunities to post much less given much thought to writing a new SpearView, but after having time to really reconsider, I realized that I had actually had multiple opportunities to try out new equipment this year (not all of it successfully). Further to that point, when I took the PFI Freediver course back in March I had decided to invest in a new mask and ended up deciding on the Omer Zero Cubed...
After trying and being disappointed by the Omer Zero Cubed mask last year, I picked up a couple of other masks ( Mares Star and Sporasub Mystic ) that fit fairly well and did not disappoint, but were not the perfect fit I've been looking for in a low volume freediving mask so I didn't feel overly compelled to write a spearview about them. In defense of these masks, they are both low volume masks that are relatively inexpensive so for the money they are great purchases. Of these two, the...
Back in March of 2010 I enrolled in and completed the FII Level One freediving course . I was extremely happy with the course content and the outcome (check out the SpearView ). Unfortunately for me, I'm not a professional freediver, so as with many people, life gets in the way and complicated which in turn keeps you from building a true regimen that reinforces all the good behavior learned in the course. Needless to say, I forgot some of the basics, fell back into many of my old bad habits...
{sigplus link=goprohero2 index=1} {/sigplus}I finally jumped on the HD bandwagon and bought myself a Hero2 HD digital camera by GoPro. These little beauties have been around for quite a while now so hearing about them isn't exactly news. But since I finally got around to purchasing one for myself and it happens to be that the Hero2 is the biggest leap in performance that they've given these cameras since their launch, I figured I would put in my 2 cents worth.
Winds: 5-10 east (morning) 15-20 east (afternoon) Seas: 2-3 (morning) 3-4 (afternoon) Surf Temp: 77F Viz: 35 feet Trying to take advantage of a lull in the spring winds, we headed out at about 8:00am. The day looked like it was going to shape up nicely. The forecast had predicted 5-10 in the morning with 15-20 in the afternoon. The winds had laid down for a couple of days and we decided to see if it had allowed the local waters to clear up some. We headed out of Key Biscayne from the Bay into...
Once again, another year has gone by altogether too quickly. Unfortunately for me, I didn't get an opportunity to dive in December before the grouper closure on January 1. The winds picked up the week before Christmas and didn't let up (actually haven't let up) so December came and went and January showed up without my being able to bag that last grouper of the winter. I guess I'm just going to have to wait until May 1 st to land that next big one! I only hope that I am able to dive a little...
I won't even bother putting up any stats about this weekend's weather because it would only remind me how bad the past 3 weekends have been due to the fact that the Atlantic has just remembered that it's hurricane season and we have had (and will continue to have for at least the next couple of weeks) tropical storms and hurricanes wreaking havoc with the seas and weather. After having one of the best visibility summers I can remember, it has all come to a crashing halt! From what I could see,...
Seas: Sat - 1-2' Winds: Sat - 5-10 SW Viz: Sat - 15-20' Temp: Sat - 84 F I can't say I wasn't a little worried since the week before I finally get away for some time off after months of dealing with work responsibilities and a host of other distractions was more than a little frought with high winds and rain that pretty much kept most of South Florida under constant siege from foul weather. I had been looking forward to this week with so much anticipation. The Summer up to now has pretty much...
Seas: 1-2 feet Winds: 5-10 NW Temp: 75 F Viz: 35 feet I got another last minute (due to the uncertainty of the conditions) invitation this weekend to go back out with Carlos in Miami the day after Christmas for Sunday morning. So I stayed up late, checked and packed all my gear and tried to get in a couple hours of sleep before our 6:30a meeting time. We headed out right on time and made way out of Black Pointe Marina again. Today was a little colder out of the water even though the surf temp...
Winds: 0-5 Seas: Less than 1 foot Surf Temp: 87F Viz: 20-25 feet Considering we had a hurricane pass through the area within the past 7 days, the water was not too bad. Viz was a solid 20-25 feet in most of the areas we dive. The fish were there, but nothing in the monster range. We had a solid day of shooting mangoes. The water was extremely flat so even my kid got to swim along with his old man while the rest of the family was on the boat. As my son gets older, I only hope he takes a healthy...