Chris Quam dives near Boca Grande Island

It started with a business trip to Orlando to conduct product training for sales staff at one of our distributors.  The meetings went well and it was now time for a little adventure.  I stayed a few extra days and was fortunate enough to have our rep get a small group together to go diving with me.  I am considered an intermediate diver, but still feel fairly green coming from land-locked Colorado as opposed to my new fellow divers that get out every other weekend or so.  It was reassuring to know both other divers had more experience and one was dive instructor.

Considering my past dive experiences were guided “sight-seeing” dives along natural reefs with about 150-feet-plus-visibility and I was still at the top of the food chain … I was now diving 35 miles off the coast of Florida in the Gulf in murky waters.  This time of year the tarpon are running in the “Pass” area.  I come to learn the “Pass” is also known as Hammerhead Pass, but not exclusive to hammerheads!  No, bull sharks are quite common there too.  Apparently the tarpon running, which is big sport fishing in the area, are also good feeding for the sharks.  You see where this is leading …

So we go far beyond the “Pass” area to coordinates where there are sunken boxcars, artificial reefs for fish.  Did I mention we are spear fishing?  That was the focus of diving here.  I was given brief instructions on the boat for reloading and safety on the spear gun.  Try as I may, I can’t quite pull it back far enough to reload the spear gun by myself. So we agreed to the guys reloading for me underwater.  They ask me to put on a huge metal stringer on my dive vest to carry whatever fish I may shoot.  No thank you, I decided I’ll hand my fish off to the guys to carry the “chum” around their waists, thus diverting any shark interest away from me!

First dive we descended about 76 feet.  On the descent we see two smaller, but cable-of –inflicting-serious-damage size bull sharks.  They seem to continue on and leave the area.  I’m ok with that.  The visibility is maybe 15 feet or so.  If something is going to sneak up on me, I’d like to know before it is only 15 feet’ from me!  The guys, being stronger swimmers than I, were all over the fish, groupers, hogfish, etc., and soon had their stringers pretty loaded.  We came up and I hadn’t gotten a shot off.

Second dive we descend to about 59 feet.  Lots of fish, first a huge school of bait fish surrounds me and darts by, then another huge school of much larger Jack fish does the same.  Now I’m looking around to see what is chasing them!

We spot a large bull shark just doing his reconnaissance cruise for his lunch — definitely one we keep our eye on.  And here I thought our spear guns were for fishing not self defense!

Anyway I am determined not to come up empty handed this time, despite the two guys just ahead of me either shooting or scaring all the fish away!  I know I can’t reload my gun by myself so I have to make my shots count.  I’m happy to say I didn’t miss once and ended up spearing three nice-size fish.

All in all I can’t say how much I enjoyed that trip, sharks and all!  The spear fishing is something I would definitely do again.  I love to try new things and you never know when these opportunities will present themselves again; you have to jump on it!  So glad I did!

Christine Quam is CFO, Dir. of Sales, for  HIVIZ Shooting Systems
1941 Heath Parkway, Ste. #1
Fort Collins, CO  80524
PH:  970.407.0426
FX:  970.416.1208