Danny Jones Podcast - #193 - Horrifying Biblical Prophecy Predicts Catastrophic Rise in Shark Fatalities | Manny Puig

Episode Date: July 9, 2023

Manny Puig is a legendary wildlife expert, hunter, & fisherman who became widely known for his hands-on approach when dealing with deadly predators such as sharks, rattle snakes, black bears and alligators. He has made frequent appearances on the television shows Jackass and Wildboyz as well as the Animal Planet show Gator Boys. EPISODE LINKS https://www.instagram.com/manny_puig_ FOLLOW DANNY JONES https://www.instagram.com/jonesdanny https://twitter.com/jonesdanny JOIN OUR KULT: https://bit.ly/koncretepatreon OUTLINE 0:00 - Growing up in Cuba 2:20 - Fidel Castro’s communist revolution / How CIA recruited Manny’s dad 8:29 - Manny’s dad was on CIA infiltration team / and later executed by Castro 12:09 - Escaping Cuba 13:21 - Felix Rodriguez 15:52 - Manny’s early obsession with snakes & alligators 18:51 - Manny’s first shark encounter 24:21 - Hunting sharks / Shark population decline in 1990’s 28:16 - Manny’s childhood fantasies of hand catching man-eating beasts 32:56 - How to stop a shark from attacking you: show aggression 41:16 - Why there are so many more sharks in the ocean now 42:56 - The rise in deadly shark attacks / Biblical prophecy of beasts of the earth eating human beings 44:32 - Tiger shark attack in the Red Sea 57:45 - Orca / killer whales are the deadliest animal in the sea 1:01:15 - How to ride a mako shark (don’t ride bull sharks) 1:11:54 - Tiger shark attacks in Hawaii 1:15:45 - The problem with shark over population 1:20:51 - The Amazon rain forest 1:29:01 - Barracuda 1:31:40 - Hand catching alligators 1:40:39 - How to avoid an alligator attack 1:45:02 - Deadly snake that melts your brain 1:47:14 - How bad does it suck getting bit by a rattle snake? 1:55:44 - Why Manny hunts with a trident 2:01:06 - How to hold your breath for 5 minutes / shallow water blackout Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's an honor to have you back. Your tridents have been on display on this podcast for almost 200 episodes since you were here the first time. And I'm a huge fan of you and your work and your artwork. So thanks for being back. Okay. Oh, thank you. On the first podcast that we did, we talked a lot about like the wildlife stuff he did, the jackass, the wild boys, all that stuff. Kind of like your rise to fame, so to speak.

But we didn't really cover your childhood and like your early life in Cuba and your family and all that stuff. So I want to talk about that a little bit today. Well, my memory goes back to the age of four. I remember telling me, people telling me you're four years old. As far as wildlife and Cuba, I would go in the backyard, look in a crab hole. I would put my arm in there and grab a huge land crab by the elbow. And I would try to pull them out, and the crab would actually drag me. And then my dad would come find me, grab me.

I grabbed my back feet and pulled me out of the hole. Pull me back and we pulled the crab right out of the hole. So I used to hand catch crabs at the age of four like that. So I was already getting into picking up lizards, into wildlife. I used to watch movies like Sea Hunt in Cuba when I was a kid. My dad was cool. We were living in Cuba. The whole communism thing came in there.

Castro took over. How long, so when you were a kid growing up with your parents, How long did you guys live under Batista before that whole Cuban Revolution? What year were you born? I was born in 1954. 54, okay. So the Cuban Revolution came in 1959. So I was just a kid.

I mean, when I was a kid, I didn't think about Batista or any of that. You know, that's just children don't think about any of that. Just life was normal for us, you know. I noticed changes once a Castro took over, like the properties, the ranchers go play in like we had a national forest all of a sudden it became we couldn't go there no more the government confiscated it and all the properties were taken and a lot of bad things were happening i had no clue what was going on but the meantime my dad joined up of the CIA to fight against Castro and later on he got infiltrated into cuba you know how so what was that what what happened to him when he got recruited

by the CIA like what was specifically going on with your dad what was he doing Well, our whole life was being uprooted. I mean, I was a kid, so I'm not, you know, I don't pay an attention, but the adults saw that we were losing our freedom in Cuba. You know, money was being confiscated, property, just huge changes and very, you know, like no respect for law. He was just doing whatever they wanted to do. And, you know, a hardline communist dictatorship was taking effect. What did your parents do for work? my dad was a salesman

my mother came he was a citizen for Bacardi oh no way yeah my mother came from

very wealthy family in Cuba her great grandfather was like foreign minister minister exterior for Cuba he was in all these

minister of education he was all those in Cuba one time another he's a big time politician he owned 54,000 acres and Pinal de Rio

it was my favorite place when I was a little kid to go play in Cuba. They had horses there. They had mountains, forests, deer everywhere. A beautiful property. He also had a beach house. He had a big house in Havana. So he's a very well-known politician. To this day, if you go to the ranch, the entrance says Asienda Cortina. So since he was such a unknown figure in Cuba, even though the Castro regime still kept his name on the ranch. Really? And that was, so that was your grandfather? grandfather. My mother is grandfather.

Oh, wow. What part of Cuba were you guys living in again? In Havana. You were in Havana. Okay. But the ranchas in Pinale de Rio, which is the western end of Cuba, the Oregon Mountains, the whole entire range, was there. And to this day, tourists go to Cuba, that's where they go.

Tourists go visit a place is one of the natural wonders of Cuba. There's a beautiful property. They got mountains and river to go through caves. They got lights in there. So it's like a spectacular place to go see. So when you were growing up with your dad, like what kind of you were always just like roaming around looking for wildlife, swimming in the ocean, fishing, doing that kind of stuff? In Cuba, I won a couple fishing trips to my dad. My dad liked nature, but, you know, he had a family to worry about things.

My dad was also an Olympic athlete. He had represented Cuba on rowing. Rowing is very popular in Cuba. So his team won like a bronze medal in London, I believe in 1948 Olympics. Oh, wow. Him and his brother, his brother-in-law, and several of those guys, they all came and they won, you know, and they didn't win a gold medal, but they got a bronze medal. But they were like champions in Cuba, very famous. A lot of newspaper articles about him.

So he's very much into being an athlete. He also played football for University of Atlanta. American football. Oh, okay. They used to play the American universities. They always got slaughtered by the American teams. That's what my mother told me. The Cuban team didn't stand a chance in football against, like, Georgia Tech and universities

like that, they played against. Right. They would get annihilated. Supposed that everybody would get drunk before the game to take all the pain. Those are the stories I heard anyways. Oh, that's hilarious. So he was working for, he was a big salesman for Bacardi. So when Castro took over, what happened with Bacardi?

Well, they left. They left Cuba completely. Yeah, they moved over here. They opened up Bacardi room in Puerto Rico. I think it was their base, but they had people in Miami and everything. But they were friends of the family. One time they sent me to a boarding school, and it was the Bacardi family that paid for it. No shit.

Where was that at? Tampa, Florida. It was a type of school that you live in and everything. They thought it was good for me to stay in a school like that. And after my mother had a real hard time because when my father was captured, he was executed. Well, we're jumping a little far ahead. Yeah, I'm jumping a little ahead. So your father went from working for Bacardi.

Obviously the revolution, the Castro's rebels like scoured the land in Cuba and basically took over all the businesses. Well, communism, under communism, you're not allowed to own private property. You're not allowed to have wealth. You're not allowed to have money. you're not allowed to do you know you all have to be equally poor that is their their method that's what people in this country not being educated what communism really is most of these young kids have no idea what communism is they read a few books and they think they have an attitude that ship on the shoulder whatever it is and they think they've been taught that communism is good no communism is not

good for anybody it's evil and and usually they'll take people people who were unqualified to do a job and take the qualified one and have him do something that he's not meant to do they rearrange everything and you cubans i mean the people former cubans like you are cuban born people like yourself who were part of that revolution or the people that are the most outspoken about that they're the well if you're a cuban and you believe in communism you know you can stay in cuba right i mean that's it's perfectly normal that's what i would see that's an interesting thing too when castro took over cuba he never mentioned communism once. No. But it was Che Guevara

who was with him, who was a Marxist. Is that what it was? Yeah, Che Guevara was a Marxist and his brother Raoul was a Marxist. Castro supposedly an opportunist. I mean, he's a crooked guy, but an opportunistic guy. And so he tied up

with the Soviet Union and to get protection from the United States. Right, that was much later. That came much later. So I'm curious about your father, though. So like, just let's say in this beginning part of the revolution. Like right right after it happened in 59. What was like you're,

you guys all stayed in Cuba, obviously. You survived the revolution. I was in Cuba. Well, we thought the revolution. I was a kid and all the propaganda was out there. I thought Fidel was a really cool guy. Right. Asked a lot of Americans.

Oh, yeah, no. The people going down the street. Hey, Fidel's coming down from the mountains. He's great. What do you mean? Who are they? And all the ladies and the nannies, everybody's excited about Fidel.

I had no idea. I thought it was a great guy to my mother. When's dad coming home? My mother turned around and told me he's not coming home. That was me and my three sisters. She told us that. And she goes, Fidel's not a good guy.

You know, he said, he killed your father. That was like, so I went from thinking it was a good guy to all of a sudden shock. And your mom just, you asked your mom randomly one day when's dad coming home

and that's how she dropped it on you? Yeah, well, time was coming by. She had to tell us sooner or later. Because we have no notion of time. My mother was arrested also. She was locked up. They caught her. When they arrested my dad,

they arrested her. there were several women arrested, but the Cuban government did not kill the women. And later on, I think the U.S. negotiated their release, kind of like with the Bay of Pigs people. Right. They did a deal like that. But the CIA guys, like my dad and the other men

they were captured that day, including the head, CIA guy in Cuba, Sorin Marim, they were all tried in a kangaroo court. You know, the people cracking jokes and throwing little paper balls around and laughing and everything. It's like a big party. And then they're all executed. the next day.

So your dad was recruited by CIA right after the revolution. And he was obviously recruited in Cuba? And what specifically, do you know what he was doing for them? Or like, was he? Infiltration team. He was teams of guys like Felix Rodriguez. They were going to be an escobri. Felix told me a story years later.

But he went, actually, he went to, they were training in Nicaragua. at the time. That's what CIA took him to. Okay. That's what I, I mean, of course, I'm a kid. I'm not aware of any of that. This is, I found out this later on,

his years went by. My mother told me some more stories before she died. So your dad went with Felix to Nicaragua to train? They were down there, all the CIA guys, they were all part of the same team.

Okay. Then later on, he meets Surin Marín, and Sering Marín invited him to go into Havana. And Havana was a hotbed. You know, and that's where the Castro soldiers were thick everywhere. And they were, they were searching houses one after another

and somebody ran out of one house and ran into a house where they were where they were all hiding and then all of a sudden they walked in to recognize Surin Maring and they go we got the big fish and all of a sudden everybody got surrounded everybody got arrested so they caught them accidentally but either way

I mean it was a hotbed this is days before the Bay of Pigs a couple days. Oh really? So it's all going down at the same time so a couple days later I believe after the Bay of Pigs invasion they were all executed. The six guys in firing squad.

A lot of, yeah, a lot of people were killed in Cuba and the firing squad in those days. It was nonstop. Years later, Castro even put his own top guys in firing squad. He executed his number one general, which is all he executed his two top guys, de la Guardia brothers. Both of them, so he killed Abrantus.

Either they killed him or they put him in a prison where they were going to come out alive. You know, so he cleaned house. All the people are top dogs in there. Most communist dictators do that. They kill the top brass. So how old were you when you guys found out that Castro executed your father? He was five years old.

You were five years old. God. But after that, we were able to go to Miami. So right after that, you went to Miami? Suntamata, my mother got released. We were able to get out because that was a military age. Military-aged guys were not allowed to leave. They had to join the Cuban military.

So we got out. My mother came back to bury my father, and she almost never got out. She had to go to her grandfather's political rival, who was a communist, and ask him to help her get out of Cuba. And he helped her get out of Cuba. Him and the grandfather went way back, you know, political rivals, but they knew each other. Right. They still went to dinners and stuff and had cocktail parties. Yeah, yeah.

They were rivals, but they had, they had cocktail parties together, whatever. Yeah. So when you got out, where did your sisters come with you, come to US with you? All of us came here. We were kids. My mother was like, you know, they, no money or anything. They took everything. So we were political refugees.

Did you, sorry to interrupt. Did your dad know Rick Prado? No. Because. Yeah. They knew Felix. Your dad was friends with Felix because they trained in Nicaragua. Right, right.

Felix liked my dad a lot. He came by to visit my mom sometime before she died. Oh, really? Yeah. He came by the house and all that. Did you ever talk to Felix? Yes. When did you first meet Felix?

I met him a few times that I was in Miami eating at a restaurant and he approached me. He goes, I'm Felix and he introduced himself to me. and we talked I was doing a TV show not too long ago when I ran into him on a TV show I was talking about sharks

and he was talking about Cuba and politics you know both on a topic on a, we were on Spanish TV we were both guests that day and then I saw him

and I saw him and I was getting older as I could tell you know it's got a lot of years on him now did you have any cool

I mean did he tell you a lot of things about your father that you didn't know not as much to me he said to a friend of mine they used to go to my friend's house

and he told him that he really admired my father that's what he told him, one of the people he admired the most so I mean I never met anybody say anything bad about my father you know, good or bad I never heard anybody everybody, he was a very likable, very popular guy right. Plus him being an athlete you know, famous athlete in Cuba

at the time but new generation doesn't know anything about that this is all in the past there's a new people coming up, you know, the history has been erased in many cases. I got into, I was always interested in the wildlife, but once I got into Florida, the first thing I told me, they're venomous snakes in Florida, so be careful. When you're how old? I was six years old.

Six years old. In Miami, and my friends had a ranch. And later on, when I was a young teenager, they would take me into the ranch with them. Their families are friends from, families from Cuba. and in that ranch I came in contact with alligators, venomous snakes, things like that. But by the time I was in high school, I was already bit by rattlesnake. I was already hand-catching large alligators. And I was picking up, of course, venomous snakes left and right.

I was diving, spear fishing and all that. Did you start going to, did you go to school when you were in Miami? I went to school in Miami elementary school. Okay. And then for high school, I went to private school for junior high. And then for high school, I went to Gainesville High, Gainesville, Florida. And that exposed me to a lot of the woods, a lot of venomous snakes. That's where I got bit by a venomous snake over there, and alligators.

I would go after school, walk around the edge of lakes, see alligators sneak up and dive on them and hand catch them. So I was already hand-catching large alligators. was weightlifting. I was their state champion weightlifter in high school. Wow. Yeah, you were jacked back in the day, man. Yeah, we could find some pictures of him, like old school Mani Puig photos.

You were ripped. Walking around wearing a speedo. Yeah, yeah. I did all that. The alligator stuff, once I learned techniques, it was more about knowing and understanding the alligator than strength. How to interact with an alligator. Right.

And a lot of how to hold your body. breath a long time, you know, different techniques you pick up over the years for diving, spear fishing. I spent a lot of time. Look at that one on the left. Dude, you're like, you're like Zeus. How old were you there? In my 40s.

Probably about 44, 45. I got, yeah, that was probably some of my best years. Really? In my 40s, that's when I started doing more of the TV stuff. Yeah. I learned more about the sharks and alligators. I started interacting. Before that, I did a lot of, notice I got a speargun at my hand,

did a lot of commercial spear fishing. So let's go back real quick to when you were in high, you went to high school in Gainesville, you said? Yes. And you were just like, there was a lot of wildlife around there, a lot of woods and a lot of lakes and a lot of, obviously the Gulf is there. Yes. What were you doing when you were in high school?

Like, you're obviously going to school, but so just you spent all your spare time, just hunting and fishing and catching alligators? That kind of stuff. I would do things like, okay, I tell my friends, I'm going to skip school, drop me off in the woods over here, and pick me up in three days. Now, I'd be out in the woods by myself. You know, eating, whatever I caught, surviving out there drinking water right out of the swamp.

I was doing, this is 17 years old. I was doing stupid stuff like that. You didn't know anybody else doing the same shit you were doing. You just wanted to go do it by yourself. I did it by myself. Then later on, I talked to friends of mine to come out with me, so I would go with some friends sometimes and do it. By that time, I wasn't by myself. and we go out and camp out and all that later on my friends bring a you know a tent sleeping bags

things that didn't bring the first time what was it that made you want to go do that spend three days in the wilderness just like hunting and catching and eating whatever you caught and being alone and like was there there was no fear of anything what what were you like i was attracted to that look i didn't like fast cars i don't like baseball i don't care for football i didn't care for any of that I cared for I wanted to live off the land I wanted to live like Tarzan like the Native Americans

you know off the land hunting and fishing and I used to watch sea hunt going on the water so I got into spearfishing a lot where I made a living spear fishing for many years that put me in contact with sharks and one of my first shark encounters

was in the Bahamas I had a shark bite a fin off of my foot when I was 18 years old before I even saw the shark. The only thing I've ever seen in my life at that time was a nurse shark. How did you get to the Bahamas when you were 18? There was his boat captain.

Out of Miami, he used to lobster fish in the Bahamas. Back then, it was legal, as long as you're 12 miles offshore. So my uncle said, hey, you want to go to the Bahamas and get your job on this boat? And I was like, sure, I want to go out there. So I wanted to dive. So I'd be picking up traps all day long,

but I was looking at the water. I just couldn't wait to get in there. But, you know, we were working like crazy. The work is brutal. Lopsar trapping is brutal. And these are Cuban guys are like, move it. You're slow, work hard. You know, they were yelling at you all day long like that.

Were you allowed to spear them or gig them? No. You were in the Bahamas. I mean, you know, they used to hook them and put them in. But we weren't divers. The guys that went with were trappers. They weren't divers. Okay.

So what I... So they put crap traps down there and they just... They put lobster traps and they pull them in with a winch all day long and you stack them, clean them, and bait them and put them back again. you know, I was exhausted every day but the guy goes, okay, I want to eat grouper tonight and they go Man, he go in the water and spear

a grouper so we can eat it tonight. So I jumped in, shot a grouper and a shark came from behind me and bit next thing you know, I thought it was one of the guys just playing a joke on me, wait a minute because the fin came flying right off my foot. I turned around, I saw a blur of a shark leaving at a million miles an hour.

The fin floated. I let go of the grouper I just speared. Let go of that. The grouper took off the spear and all went into the bottom, went into a cave. They threw a rope over the front of the boat. One of the guys saw him hit me. So I climbed up the rope right up the highest side of the boat and got in there. And they put a small boat in the water.

They picked up the fin. It was a floating fin. And they could see the jacket where all the, he had missed my toes by that much. You could see the entire cut. Oh, my gosh. With a shark had bit on my fin. What kind of shark was it, do you know? I'm not sure.

To the day, I think it might have been a lemon. I can remember seeing a yellowish color. so it could have been a lemon shark it was so fast I didn't know my sharks very well at that time I didn't have any experience with them wow 18 years old was your first shark

and then the guy the captain asked me can you go back and get the speargun and back then I was like you know I was kind of scared but I was you know with those guys you can't show you know you gotta be macho all the way so I jumped in went down

swam down looking everywhere which way, pull a group route, went to the surface, and he goes, can you get another one? I couldn't shoot another fish. Every time I was going to aim at a fish, I looked this way, look that way. I couldn't. Now, years later, little that I know, I'd be hand-feeding the sharks and riding on. Right. I got bit. Gosh. That was my fin. Later on in my life, I got bit by four different types of shark. I got bit by mako with my finger while hand-feeding. I got bit by Caribbean re-shark in my leg. And I got bit by a nurse shark in this leg, and I got bit by lemon in my fingers. Right. So I took some shark bites.

So when you're 18, you're working for the commercial fishing company, you're catching lobsters. How long did you work for this company commercial fishing in the Bahamas? That was just in the summer. Just during the summers. Well, summer month. I was out 36 days one time, and I went one more time out, and I was out like 20-something days, and I never went out again. Wasn't for you. No. Then later on, I got my own lobster license, and I would swim under the bridges and the keys, catch lobsters, and go sell. all you need was a $50 license.

I could catch as many lobsters as I wanted. Really? But the lobsters were, you know, hard to get and hard to find. I didn't have a boat. I was swimming around with a die flag. And, you know, there was a lot of current down there. So I'd get a slight dye, you'd make the best of it. But half a time I'd be kicking against the current and swimming down and grabbing lobsters and put them in a bag.

So it was brutal, brutal work. At the end of the day, we'd just pull into the fish house. He used to pay you in cash right there. You just put your lobsters. It's a great life. Put your lobsters on a scale. And they pay you in cash. And you were how old doing this?

That was in early 20s. Early 20s. By that time doing that. And that's just how you made all your money. It was just doing that. I did that for a while. And later on I got into some more people. You know, when I got into heavy dude into commercial spearfishing,

I had one guy. We used to go down there catching up fish every day, pay for dinner, the hotel room, and go do it the next day all over again. But later on, I met some people in the kids. or doing it more professional. We go out on trips, make more money, catch a large amount of lobsts and boats, people knew where we were going

and to be able to harvest more fish. Like long lines? No, no, spear fishing. All spear fishing. We would do the Goliath. Like, I mean, one trip we came back, I think we made like $1,400 worth a Goliath grouper each.

You know, after we pay for the gas, we pay for the food, pay for everything. And a third part for the boat, we divided it up, you know, That's a good paycheck. Other days, I make $400, $500, $500. This is a long time ago, though. So there was more money back then.

We would spear grouper, snapper, hogfish. Also did tropicals for a while. And in lobster season, I would do lobsters. But whatever we found, it was worth money, we shoot, including the sharks. Really? I used to shoot the sharks before I started making the movies. What kind of sharks did you shoot the most? Well, we shot down there.

was a lemon, bull, and great hammerhead. Occasionally, we would shoot a, you know, recruitment, wreath shark and black tip. And were you, you weren't hunting the sharks. They would just show up looking for your fish, and then you would just say it. They were, they were all, they got it from me. First thing we do, we shoot a barracuda and tied to the stringer. Like our guy would drop you off in the middle of the ocean and pick you up later,

or you'd have to swim a couple miles where the boat was anchored and work your way that way. So we'd be dragging fish with us. and when a shark would show up, we'd pop it, and we sell the shark. We used to sell the fins, sell the meat, cut the jaws out, take pictures of the shark, hang up the jaws on the wall. We did all that. Then later on, we wanted to start making money from being in the water interacting with sharks. That was more, there's more profit than that than killing the shark. So a shark was more valuable to us alive.

So at that time, I was like, hey, you know, they're killing too much. sharks in that time we would have a hard time finding them you know so it wasn't you could spearfish all day long without ever seen a shark sharks are being commercial long lining for sharks and they got depleted it was really hard to find sharks what you're getting wiped out what year roughly did commercial long lining for sharks start to kick up it's tough I would be probably 30 something 30 years ago I was saying I'm trying to I was in... It's like the early 90s?

My 40s. I would be in my 40s. Yeah, I would say early 90s and all that. It started picking up. Once they started protecting certain types of shark, like they put a ban on catching a sandbar shark. Once a sandbar shark was protected, the commercial guys, there was no reason to go long landing for shark anymore.

You couldn't make any money. What is that shark? What kind of shark? Is that a mako? That's a mako. Oh, okay. Yeah, that's not my shark. That's Mark the shark's, uh, uh, meiko.

Okay. He just, I came over with us with a scientist, Dr. Castro, to look at the, the shark. And so he got a picture with me. You know, he shows. Where did he catch that? Miami. Oh, Miami. Okay.

You're not allowed to get him anymore, but he's got permits. He's still out there catching sharks. Is he really? Oh, yeah, yeah. He's, you should bring him on the show he won. Yeah. Yeah, he's bombastic and he'll talk about. Oh, is he?

That's a big ass. Mako. Yeah. Yeah, it's a, I think it was 10 feet. I remember. I've, I've encountered Makles that big in Louisiana. I've met a fact, for Shark Week, I was riding a big McEl, if anything bigger than that one. Riding it? Yeah. Well, hand feeding it, riding everything. I did a lot of stuff with Maikles. I really liked, I like, I like, the, Mekles is a good shark to work with very dangerous, but the open ocean sharks will come at you quicker because there's less food out there. Right. It's like a desert. Yeah, so they're more aggressive. Yeah. Which is, it's perfect. That's a Mako shark. A little baby Mako.

That was a, no, it's a Mako I carved out of a bronze. Oh, you carved it? Yeah, it's bronze. Whoa. You can't click on it? That's okay. Look at that, Mani. That's a bronze. I'm an artist, so I sculpted that.

That's all bronze right there. That weighs about 85 pounds. It's hollow, but it's still 85 pounds. But it looks like a real Mako. It looks exactly like a real mako. It looks like one of those taxidermy ones. Yeah, yeah. No, but I did a by hand.

I did a hammerhead and I did alligator and I did a Glythe grouper. So when you started doing this commercial spearfishing in like your early 20s, what was it that made you? Did you just like have this inner sort of desire to push the limits farther than anybody? else. Like, did you feel like that was kind of what you were destined to do? Like, you wanted to kind of outdo everybody else, dive deeper than everybody else, find, like, catch these fish, like, more primatively than anybody else was? Like, what was it in you that made you? At first, I wanted to make a living instead of jobs that I didn't like, I wanted a spiritfish for

living, is I don't want to have a job. I like the idea of going out there to challenge of catching fish. Then later on, I was always attracted to catching fish instead of with a spear with my hands. If you love diving into culture and comedy, like on Danny Jones podcast, Playoff Hockey is right up your alley. NHL on T&T has the best coverage, making every game feel intense and unpredictable. Playoff hockey is a different level, overtime, big hits, and no one coasts. The studio crew with Paul Bissonette cracking jokes and Wayne Gretzky breaking. things down makes it even more fun to watch. Every shift matters and the personalities keep things

lively. Watch the Stanley Cup playoffs on TNT, TBS, True TV, and HBO Max. I had fantasies of catching sharks in my hands. So later on, that'll happen just like catching alligators by hand. In high school, I was catching alligators by hand. But I'm saying, like, what was it? What was it in you that made you have this desire to do this? Like, what made you want to push all these limits and do all these things that nobody else has ever done. I wanted to do what my fantasies were when I was a child. I want to do what Tarzan did in movies. It wasn't real.

I want to do it for real. And I said, I may not be the deepest diver in the world or the best spearfish in the world. But when I came to hand fishing and all the stuff, yeah, I took off with that. Well, people wouldn't think of that. It didn't cross her mind to try to do, to catch a giant Goliath or to catch a shark with their hands and things that that all started kicking to me. The more I learned, I started studying them and looking at them and I would pick up. I can get close to them.

I can do this. I start seeing ideas like that. Like catching a barracuda with a knife. I saw how close of barracudas came to me. And the son told me, pull out your knife and get one. And I did. But I literally hit him in my hands first. So I said, if I can touch them, as they were attacking the fish I had on my hand, if I can touch them,

I can get one by the knife. And I stuck and grabbed them by the neck real quick. That's the only kuta ever caught with a knife. If I were to slip, the kuda probably bit me right here. I had them right here like this. Yeah, barracudas are terrifying fish. Even when, like, I'm diving and spear fishing. I'm almost more afraid of barakutas than I've seen a shark.

Do you feel the same way? No, I'm not. I mean, you're not afraid of any of them. I'm not afraid of, I shot a lot of barakudas to feed the sharks and for me to eat. But I've shot so many kudas I can never count them. Big ones, small ones. Type in Manny Pug after barracuda and find some of the photos. But like...

I know a lot of people have been hurt by barracuda's real bad. Yeah, they're, and they get humongous. They get bigger than some sharks, too. No, the biggest coup I've ever read about was long six feet, nine inches. And... So walk me through how you caught that barracuda. Like what was going on and... Well, they were.

It was a spearfishing competition, Omer. They were holding it. They invited me there. They used to sponsor me, so I went up there. And it was in North Carolina. They went to Outer Banks. So the bunch of groups were there. So I wasn't participating.

I was just hanging out so I could go with any crew I wanted that day. And I went with Eric Salado and Luis Pereda. These are a doctor and an engineer. Both of them are fanatical spearfishermen from Cuba. and they're very classy guys, but you look at them, you couldn't believe how good these guys can dive.

But they go to all these competitions. So those guys were in the water diving, they're getting the fish I need for the competition. Free diving or scuba diving? Free diving. It's all free diving. So it's in deep water. They're going probably halfway down,

whatever, it's $150 to the bottom. And the guy in the boat says, Meni, can you get me a spade fish or a sheep pit? You know, I want to take it home to eat. The maid in the boat asking, it said, no problem. So I took the pole sphere of sheep. The spade fish swim

like midwater, so I went down and shot a spadefish, in all the time, they were like 20 barracudas on top attacking me, and they were biting at the at the spadefish. It was really ready to bite my hands, and I was literally pushing them away. I couldn't keep them off of me, so it occurred to me to pull the knife out, stick it, so I stuck with the knife

and grabbed it by the gills immediately. When I stabbed them, he bit harder on the piece of fish, and that gave me a break to grab him real quick. If not, he could turn on me. Then I brought him back. A bull shark came up, he wanted to eat it, but I wanted a picture with that Kuta. I never caught one with a knife.

I'm not going to catch another one. So I wanted to boat it and get a picture with it. So I wouldn't let the bull shark have it. So what did you do to get the bull shark not to eat it? I pulled it away from him, charged them. I got aggressive with him. Charged the bull shark? When you're being attacked by shark, if you show aggression,

that's usually a good way to save you most of the time. Not always it'll work. You want to stay safe from sharks? There's nothing better than trusting the Lord, God because they're his creatures. He sent me from them many times. Let's put it this way. How did you know that how did you know to charge him yet? Had you been in that situation before? Sorry to interrupt, but this episode of the podcast is brought to you by Verso. We all know how important it is to get the right amount of nutrition, exercise, and sleep as we age. It's something

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These two molecules act synergistically and increase your NAD plus more than just NMN on its own. Verso also publishes third-party testing from each batch produced to absolutely guarantee you're getting what you pay for. Head on over to v-r.s-o and use the coupon code Danny. It's spelled D-A-N-N-N-Y to save 15% off your entire order. Or just go to V-E-R.S.O. Forward slash Danny. Back to the show. Yeah, you've got to fight back. Or else have you run from them, I did that experiment. I saw a shark, okay, I'm going to swim as fast as I can to the boat to get away, right? I turned around, the shark was on me immediately.

I did it again, he attacked me again. So I figured out, okay, if I go after him, he runs you the way. But if you start panicking trying to get away, he attacks if he's hungry. Like when you're free diving, you'll go down. And as you're coming up for air, sometimes you look down and you see a shark falling you. Because he thinks you're running away from him. And you really need to get up for air. But it looks like you're on the run.

So you're acting like prey. Right. He is a predator. Predator attacks prey. If you act like a predator, you're scared. you scare him away because he thinks you're going to, sharks attack each other. He thinks you're going to take a chunk out of him.

Like a bull shark would get attacked by a large great hammerhead, for example. Right. So he's going to, have you show aggression, his natural instinct is to run from you. So you can bluff him. Wow. Doesn't always work. You were able to scare the bull shark away and you got that barricuda in the boat. I've had to fight off bull sharks a million times in my life.

It was a spear fisherman. And also, I used to create shark feet. in frenzies for you know to interact for for for the shows and stuff so you can probably there's videos on youtube of spear fishermen literally chumming up bull sharks and then chasing the bull sharks to shoot cobia off of their backs and it is like a i think that's a thing people do still on the east coast where because these giant bull sharks he's like 12 15 foot long bull sharks will just be cruising and there'll be these huge cobia that just swim like alongside them?

They attract the shark by pulling the rubber bands on their speargun and popping them. Then the bull shark thinks you're shooting fish, he runs up, or they take a plastic bottle and make a sound with it, a crackling sound. So when he comes up, the guys will go... That one on the very right, top right, yeah. Yeah, those are following a tiger. See, they also follow the rays, see? But what happens is every once in a while, the shark is actually very hungry.

Thank you. Shoot God, man. So there's videos that does Kobe actually swimming on top of the bull sharks and they shoot the Kobe? They follow them from behind. When they shoot them, sometimes the shark will turn around and attack. I know divers have been demolished by doing that by a bull shark. After they shoot the cobia, the shark turns around. Instead of going after Kobe, it goes after the diver.

And tears them apart. That seems like a bad idea. It's a great. These guys are gutsy. It's a great adventure. It's an awesome way to catch a fish. a bad idea. You're going to get killed sooner or later. Right. So have you ever done this? No, but I've done other things. I've shot. I've shot fish when I're running out of bait.

I'll shoot fish right there to attract the sharks and everything. I've done everything you can imagine, you know, to attract the... Look at this. Look at this. Yeah, there you go, see. Yeah, full screen this if you can, Stephen. Yeah, there's bull sharks you see everywhere there. So look, they're surrounded by bull sharks. Yeah. Well, a lot of guys get hurt doing that. Do you make a lot of guys? Do you They may get away with it one day. Whoa. I don't know a day. There's like a hundred bull sharks all around them.

Yeah, they're looking for cobia following one of them. There's your cobia right there. There's a cobia right there. See? Shoots the cobia. No sharks are chasing him. Well, sometimes the shark is not hungry. He's got to be hungry for that to happen.

If that shark wanted to, couldn't he just turn around and eat that cobia? They do sometimes. Sometimes they'll eat the cobia. Other times they'll eat the... I'm saying like before they shoot it. before like even if the no look see there's a bullshark on the attack right there see how the guy fending them off no no rewind that by like 30 seconds yeah yeah he knew what he was doing okay all right let's see what's going on he shot the cobia he's swimming back to the surface here comes a bull shark attack okay see oh he just

pointed the thing out of him if he if he turned around try to get to a boat that bullshark would have killed them they're getting fired up now see yeah look at that see how they're under attack and there's blood everywhere and everything. Okay, get out of the water. Get out. Now, where does like a bull shark rank on like, as far as like dangerous sharks? Probably the world's most dangerous shark.

Why is that? Okay, let's see how clear that water is? Imagine being attacked like that. And you're in the intercoastal with zero visibility. You won't see them coming. Right. They go up river. They go in the beaches and they attack people.

It's a coastal shark and he's got a halocious temper. on top of that he is a man killer man eater and he's got halocious temper and uh his bite is lethal his teeth are razor sharp you can shave your arms with him and they can they can bite three times harder than a great white shark three times harder yeah they're smaller but they're deadlier so so how would you compare how is that their their bite is harder than a great white but why isn't a great white so if you were if you were hypothetically we put you in a swimming pool with a great white and a bull shark How would the Great White be, or how would the Bull Shark be deadlier? Because it would just be more aggressive to eat you?

There's more than in the water. They're very shy, but they're very explosive in their attacks. And Great Whites are picky eaters. The bull is not as picky. Oh, okay. Like a tiger usually eats a person because he's not his picky eater. He's a diet is very varied. But a tiger shark doesn't have a bad temper.

Neither does a Great White like a Bull shark does. Okay. Bull shark and lemons have bad tempers. They have high levels of testosterone. If you spear them and he's on the end of line, he'll come after you. If you catch them and rod and reel, you get into water with them, usually he'll come after you. Yeah, these guys are still shooting these cobia surrounded by these bull sharks. There might be different days put together.

But yeah, a lot of guys have been bit doing that. So this is just normal. When you were spearfishing doing these competitions, it was just normal. normal to see these bull sharks. You just kind of got to be cognizant. For a while, there's a lot of bull sharks out there right now. For many years, there was no sharks. The commercial long lining had decimated them, and there was hardly any sharks around.

So, you know, so they pass all the conservation laws. Now they're back. What year did they pass those conservation laws? I'm not sure. They came little by little. You know, understand, I was out of commercial spearfisher for quite a while. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But they started a, no, they, one species after.

another started being stopped. You know, you weren't allowed to kill the dusky. Longfin Meiko, a Goyle shark. Great White shark is protected. That's why there's more and more than now right now. So, of course, you protect something, they come back. The Glythe Gruber was hunted to oblivion. Now it's coming back.

You start seeing more and more. The sharks are everywhere. There's a disbalance out there. You know, every once in a while, a good shark tournament, to balance things out might be a good idea. Yeah. I like the spearing, because you can, could target the type of shark, they need to be targeted.

Yeah. Instead of, there's a real rare species. By catch. You don't want to catch it on bycatch. So my idea was, you know, a sparing tournament. That's my idea. Nobody's ever going to agree with me, but. Right.

To go out and have a tournament, let the guy shoot several sharks every so often to kind of like level out the fish and shark population to a balance. Because it's, it's, if you talk to divers and fishermen, they can't get a fish in the boat half of the time. So is it a, do you think there's a problem? with there being, you said there's way too many sharks out there right now, and then people see them everywhere. Do you think there's a problem with there being too many sharks? If you're like a biologist, he says, well, it's a healthy ocean is full of dangerous sharks, but if you're just

a human being, what's going to water? It's a bad idea. You know, it's a balance because depends how you look at it. Yeah, the healthy ocean is a dangerous ocean, but I believe that, you know, God gave us a right to fish, hunt, and, you know, grow crops, harvest food, harvest, lumber, whatever we need from the earth, the earth provides. So we're not, we don't worship the sharks. The shark, you know, they're in the ocean, but we're caretakers, but it ain't like, oh, it belongs to them. They're the gods of the sea.

No, they're not. There's a god that made them, but they're not the gods of the sea. Mani Pug is the god of the sea. No, no, no. If there's any human that's closest to Poseidon, it's you. No, no, keep it humble. I believe in Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior, and I keep it. I keep it at that.

That's his creation. That's his ocean. So his creation has been my adventure. He kept me alive because he can let those animals tear you apart. To keep me humble, every once in a while, you get things like this. Oh, yeah. Hold it up on this side. Man, he's got the perma shocker.

This is a rattlesink bite. That's the second rattlesink bite I got. I got bitten high school on this thumb. I came out okay from that one. This is a Western Diamondback in Texas. and that was a bad bite. Yeah, we're gonna, I want to get to that. I want to stay on the sharks for a little bit, though.

And I got bit by sharks. I got bit by an alligator in the back. Came I good from that one. I came out good from everything except maybe this one. I got gored by a boar on this farm too. There's more and more stories popping up every day about people being attacked by sharks. It seems like it's, I don't know,

like it's hard to understand, to really know if it's just the media blowing shit out of proportion or if this stuff happens all the time. They just don't always report on. It's increasing. It's increasing because, more sharks out there and there's more people in the water. So when you put a lot of people, a lot of sharks in the water, you're going to get more incidents. Wildlife is making a comeback

around the world in many places. And there is a lot of wildlife attacking people as far as bears, tigers, lions, things like that. Do you know any of like the numbers as far as like shark populations now compared to like 30 years ago? A whole lot more. A whole lot more. A worldwide. Not worldwide. U.S. waters. U.S. waters. Now worldwide, yeah. If you talk about tiger population is growing in India, for example. Leopards in Africa, yeah, it's growing tremendously. Mountain lines in North America, yeah, including Florida, yeah, they're increasing. Bears are increasing.

A few places wildlife, certain wildlife is very endangered. You know, Summartan tiger, he's in trouble. You know, a few species like that. Gorillas are thriving, lowland gorilla. Mountain gorilla, maybe not so. But the lowland, this part in the Congo with is 100. a couple hundred thousand of them. And why are these animals, like, why is their population growing so fast?

Protection loss. And I also believe as end time, God might be multiplying the animals for the end time, but they're going to attack people. Can you explain your belief in that? The pale writer and the Bible kills one-fourth of world's population through war, hunger, disease, pestilence, and by the beast of the earth, wild animals. The pale rider. It's a symbol of death.

Destruction. That's a biblical thing. So apart from all the novel wildlife, I believe the Bible word for word. And so it's fitting in the pattern. You got more wildlife, more attacks. The wolf populations are growing around the world. And there's more. Now, do I like wildlife?

Yeah. I'm a fanatic about all. I'm fascinated with bears, sharks, alligators, all kinds of fish, all kinds of wildlife, but I'm a fanatic of all that. But I'm aware that these attacks have been increasing more and more.

Like the snakes kill 100,000, 100,000 people a year. Venomous snakes, they used to kill a lot less than that. It's just, it's growing. How many people do you know? Not as many as like maybe crocodiles and all that. They don't really know. Oh, look at this. Great White shark population is booming, researchers say.

This is posted literally last month. Okay. The result of that is real simple. You can't kill seals, which is what they eat, and you can't kill them. So we've made this world, this design. Scroll up. It's a Great White Shark Haven. Right there.

As summer begins and people spend more time in the ocean. Researchers are on the verge of learning more about the mysterious apex predator that swims beneath the surface. on the research ship, the Atlantic in the Atlantic Ocean, 12 miles off the coast of North Carolina, a group of scientists has been studying and tracking Great White Sharks. We're seeing an ocean that's teeming with life like we haven't seen since the 40s or 50s. Chris Fisher, founder of the research organization, Osearch told CBS News, Osearch has been studying and tagging Great Whites for the last decade. In that time, Fisher has observed an increase in the number of white sharks. Baha, wow. So you believe me now?

Oh, yeah. I never doubted you. Okay. When I was doing my spear fishing, I never once encountered a tiger shark on the Atlantic. Not one time. Now the guys see them all the time. They had been wiped out. There were no tiger sharks left.

In the 50s there were, but after that, gone. Right. Now, when I found my first tigers, we were 100 miles in the Gulf of Mexico with a 500,000. hundred pounds of kuda ripping them apart hour after hour after hour we had a couple hundred sharks around us before the tigers finally showed up those were my first tigers and i was hands on right away how are you chumming them up with what barracuda barracuda we went out there we speared kuda after kuda after kuda after kuda every kuda you spirit potentially can bite you but that was like normal every day especially filming the sharks you got to feed them or they're not coming so you know you don't buy bait

fresh. So to get fresh food, you got to get it right there. We have spear barracuda to feed them. When I went to Hawaii, they brought me fresh skip jack tuna. And that's what I fed the tigers over there. So you were saying a minute ago, we kind of got up track, but you were saying that the sound of popping the bands on a spear gun attracts the sharks now. Because sharks... How recent is that? Sharks are very smart. They learn. Yeah. They, certain places were they know when the fish are pulling up on the boat and they drop anchor and he's going to start fishing they pull up because they know he's going to catch fish

and they steal them. Sharks are not stupid. They're smart. Alligators are not stupid. They're smart. But Florida, we have alligator attacks and shark attacks. I know in U.S. waters are big because they're protected. Now if you go to maybe

South China Sea, they might be getting exterminated over there. I'm not sure. Like, China is just about wiped out the Chinese tiger. Really? Yeah, they have Manchurian tiger, which is borders Russia, because that's really a Russian protected. There have been two 10, 12-foot tiger sharks that have been caught right off the beach right here in the last week. Yeah, 20 years ago, that was unheard of.

Right. The tigers are back. Let's pull up that video, that guy in Egypt who got eaten by the tiger shark. Now, I told you on the phone. I was like freaked out when I saw this because I have never I already pulled a tab up for you I have never heard other than like open ocean shipwrecks with like you know way out in the middle of the ocean where like the oceanic white tips will devour and eat the people because there's nothing else to eat it's like a desert out there but I've never heard of a story

of somebody near the beach getting fully devoured by a shark like I've heard like obviously you hear the bites well there was a girl killed in shallow water and the Bahamas in front of her parents by three tiger sharks ate her in front of her family recently. There's no video of it, but they killed her. The parents saw it. Three of them. Three tiger sharks gang up on the daughter, a hog island right there where the hogs go swimming. Yeah. Oh, yeah. In the shallow water, she was in there swimming. What? And they got her there. There's a lot of, there's a tiger beach in the Bahamas. There's a lot of tigers there.

And they, you know, when these things are hungry, they're not dassa. They can pick up speed. and they're devastating predators. Do you think there's a, let's watch this, yeah, full screen that video. And the Red Sea. The Red Sea has, when you're off the shore, just a little distance, it drops to incredible depth. Oh, really? So you could be on the beach and you can see an oceanic white tip. Because you swim 100 feet from shore in some places and it drops thousands of feet.

So you have these ocean sharks that come in here. There were three attacks in the Red Sea. not too long ago by maco shark and oceanic white tip. The maco, they caught them later on with human remains in his belly. Because you go off, there were divers, you go off the reef, you know, 100 feet or so when you're ready in the middle of the ocean. Right. So the pelagic sharks can visit you right there.

But the red sea has tigers, mecos, and oceanic white tips. Yeah, and I think this was like the third tiger shark fatality in like the last two years off of this same beach in Egypt. Yeah, it's... So what is going on in? It's not full screening? What the frick? There you go.

There it goes. Right there. Not full screening? That's okay. It doesn't matter because we're not going to see it anyways. So what is the shark doing to him right there? Removed, cutting them to pieces.

They recovered his body the next day. He's screaming. He screamed for help. They might have bit a leg off already. Oh my God. This is horrible. There he goes. Oh my god.

Understand that a... Oh my god. He's attacking like if it's a turtle. He's barely moving. Okay, a tiger shark's teeth. Look. Oh my god. Okay, you can pause it.

A tiger shark's teeth look like this. They aim this way and then they also aim the other way. So what it does is designed for cutting turtle shells in half. So he saw us back and forth, they can slide through bones and everything like this. That's what the teeth saw. It's not just like. a giant saw one after another goes like this so he does this and then he'll they'll eat they'll keep sawing until they cut a piece of turtle shell they eat the sea turtles so it's a tiger shark is

is designed it's a devastating predator yeah and I guess this was a this was actually a pregnant from what I read this was a pregnant female that was like roaming around they had footage of the shark actually on Twitter swimming like around the docks very slowly and they saw it like up to an hour before this happened. Looking for food. Sometimes, you know, they don't find fish to eat the person. So what do you do? What would you do in this situation?

Well, if you were this kid out there. Don't go into water. If it's clear water, which it is out there, don't go into water without a mask, snorkel and fins, and bring a shark billy with you to push a shark off, to discourage his attack. You know, make them go somewhere else. Fight them, something to fight them with.

But if you don't have any, any of that like if you're just swimming with no got no fins no no no do it but i'm saying if you already are what the hell do you do nothing you can't do anything about it that guy no he's a sitting duck he can't do anything about it that's in you know pray pray to the god that he changes the sense of sharks a miracle only a miracle can save him at that time what about like if hypothetically you're you're in that situation do you try to charge it do you try to swim towards it what do you try to do grab its gills if he's in shallow water and you can run up to it and see him you can kick him when he comes near you or something like that the water's like

this deep but if you're over your head and everything you you you he's come from below you don't know where he's coming from you you don't have a mask on you have no idea you're you're sitting in the blind you're sitting duck you're totally helpless but a skilled diver like those guys are hunting the the cobbias or myself whatever you can fight him off I've had to fight off sharks many many times on the attacks I mean super intense attacks if you're on the beach watching this I was too comfortable out there doing this kind of stuff. Way, way, way too comfortable. All my life, it was like a second nature to me.

To be in a middle of a shark feeding frenzy, it's like being in a party. It was just enjoyed every minute of it. But that's part of it too, though, because you're so calm. The sharks don't sense any sort of fear. Well, if you get excited, sometimes they back away, it can affect them in different ways.

But the whole idea was for me to get the sharks fired up, so they will come in aggressively to get footage. They're off in a distance. You're not getting anything. So you want the sharks on you. Now, what that does, it puts everybody who's ever working with you in severe danger. Right. And people start to get scared, too.

Well, whoever's, if you have people with you, they're not scared, they'll be right there with you. There are people that are like that kind of stuff, and they'll stay right there. Not everybody is willing to do that. But I give people a false sense of security when I was in the water. Yeah. Steve was saying whenever they were his in the water with you, he wasn't as scared because you were. were there. He felt protected. He wouldn't pay attention. I call it

it's a false insecurity, but it works. You get that, you know, he's more comfortable there. I put him in bad stuff on a surfboard with a bunch of sharks biting fish around a surfboard. Didn't you tell me that he want him or Chris Pontius? They wanted to be trolled through Boko Grand in a tarpinsuit?

They, we, they told, they did, I'm trying to remember everything they did. They come up with bunch of ideas that I didn't do all of the ideas they had. I noticed one thing we did troll Chris through a pack of killer whales in Alaska, which is probably the worst thing ever. Everybody thinks killer whales are just, no, killer whales are dangerous. They're dangerous. The thing about I can bluff a shark.

I can defend myself. You believe most of those guys can, but killer whales are after you. You're going to be able to do anything. I've never heard of a killer whale attacking a human being. Have you? well and and sea world one killed three people right yeah that one murdered three people because of what they fucking did to it they put it in prison what about if a kill a whale in the ocean decides it doesn't like you where it feels like it doesn't have any laws he doesn't have a rulebook okay

I'm not supposed to bother people where does that he can just like any animal listen a horse can come up and kick him and bite you right okay a dog will bite you sometimes sometimes they won't kill of whales they have different personalities don't Don't they like gain up on great whites? They kill great whites. They know they're smart. They know how to kill everything out there. Just, you know, like if I'm going to catch a fish,

strategically you figure it out how to do it. They strategically figure out, okay, that wheel is bigger than us. Well, we're going to gang up on it. We're going to attack it this way. They figure out how to do their hunt and how to get it. So when you were, oh yeah, and they beached themselves too. They literally freaking swim up on the. beach and eat seals and stuff look at that god yeah those things are crazy the wild world is a

dangerous place you swam with orcas right yeah in alaska walk me through that day and what you were doing and what made you decide to jump off the boat well with a bunch of orcas we're making a show we need action i had the the we're doing uh wild boys and we went out whale watching so i put on my suit they go okay there's a pot of killer whales coming this way and I told the captain okay they're heading that way take your boat pull up in front drop me off and their path so so they'll intercept me and that's how we did that and they came real close to me the water's very dirty so I could only see them and they were very very close to me what visibility was like what four or five feet I don't think I could see you wow that's how dirty it was but I could see the fins and all that coming up and then finally two of them

approaching where I could see the black and white on them real close up to me like that they stared at me up close investigated me but like I do is just bite you that's it and he turned down they just grab on you and just drag you down but when your adrenaline's running or doing a show it's like the pressure is on let's make make things happen you know you want to do the best of what you're where you you want your job to be the best what was going through your head when those orcas were something right towards you were you scared were you comfortable what were you just full of adrenaline I wasn't it was full of adrenaline I was full of adrenaline but I shouldn't be comfortable.

I shouldn't do that again. But at that time, the water is very dirty. People did it later on in clear water, but I did in dirty water. And some people think everything, nothing is fine. You feel like for a while, okay, we're okay, we're okay, we're fine. Didn't hurt anybody. We're fine.

Keep going. Okay, we got what we want. Let's just get out of here. It's enough is enough. Oh, what is that? An orca attacking a human at SeaWorld, yeah. Jeez. Yeah, that's brutal, man.

See, everything's okay one minute You don't know what a killer wheel is thinking sometimes That's going to tell it an animal Every animal, every alligator We haven't talked much about alligators I'd spend many years among the alligators Daytime, nighttime Diving with them at all hours

Everything big ones, small ones Hand-catching, riding, levitating Tonic mobility, you name it Well, let's go into that I want to watch that video of you With the Makos real quick Okay Let's one of the tabs where he's

That's the one right there So what were you guys doing this day? This was filming for... We're looking... We're on the middle of the Pacific Ocean. You can full screen this one, I think. Yeah, in the Pacific Ocean. And all the time they're asking me to talk about it.

I don't want to talk about it until it happens. I don't know what's going to happen. This is off the coast of California? Yeah, see, that's a... That's a Mako right there. But you see, I hand feed and I put my hand underneath them and I lift up on them. Okay, that's a smaller maker. We have six Makos and three blue shes.

sharks that day. So you guys are chumming up barracuda and yeah they show me in here but what really does it see that fish right there yeah I'm gonna take my knife and work it right see what I'm doing right there that's what makes it happen that's what draws the sharks in okay the knife is a secret for all that that's a small makeo so yeah that was the first one that showed up and you guys are just you guys are literally surrounded by a chum tornado I I grabbed this one and another one and then I flip a big one on his back. This one, I lift him out of the water

and I show him to everybody. It is the fastest shark in the world. The Mako. Yeah, so you don't want to move fast. So you want to let them get comfortable. Like right there. You want him to go slow, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

You just got to take it easy and don't move fast. Let them come around you. You don't want to scare them. This one bites the float. They get feisty. Maco is very dangerous. But see, this Mako is never going to see another human being again. He lives in the middle of the ocean.

Right, right. So I like working with them because people say, well, mani, you're working these sharks around the beach. You know, the blues and makos are not coming ashore. I've worked coastal sharks before, but it's been a long time and I won't work them again. If I do sharks again, it'll be open ocean. That way, they don't, whatever I do with them, they don't learn, they don't pick up custom. They won't attack people on the beach. They stay out in the ocean.

So people are safe. You don't want them getting comfortable with humans. See what? Oh, yeah, you flipped it on its back. Wow. Those little teeth are up. You're hand feeding this little mako, and he's just shredding this fish right out of your hands.

That is wild. So, yeah, that's the fear, right? That's the fear when you interact with all these sharks all the time, and you're swimming with them and spearfishing with them all the time. They get used to human beings. They're not afraid anymore. If you're spearfishing, you're worse off because you're busy struggling with a fish

when the shark comes from behind and gets you. The shark's an attack from behind. when you don't see them. Look at that thing. What's that, like a 10-footer? Probably about eight. That's a nice-sized makeup. Always exaggerating on the show.

We're not sure in a size, but it's probably about 300 pounds. They're very heavy, a lot heavy than they look. They're dense. They're very muscular. Were you ever close to being bit that day? Or did they, like, try to bite you? One, a blue shark almost bit the producer. A blue shark almost bit me in a stomach.

There's a scene in there where I'm pushing off a blue shark off my stomach as I'm feeding a mako, and the blue comes in to bite both at the same time. Okay. Oh, what is that a blue? Blue shark, yeah. We have three blue sharks. What is the store with blue sharks? They're deadly.

As deadly as makos? They're different. They're both very dangerous, but a blue shark, if you offer him your hand, he'll take it. Go here, are you going to bite this? Just come up and he'll grab it. Yeah, they're a weird looking. I'm hand-feeding them right there. So you did this with Steve-O and those guys too?

We did not this part. What I did with them is I put them on a surfboard one time in the Gulf of Mexico. We put a bunch of fish on them. We had about 25 silky sharks and eight huge tuskis showed up. I had them there. I also had them with a mackle and hammerhead and mackle. I put them with a hammerhead and meiko in Louisiana also. I did two in Louisiana and also put them before with a lincoln.

lemon shark in shallow water swimming around them. So I've had them about three different times with good, good shark stuff. The make almost bit his leg off. That was a classic. Is that when you got bit by the lemon shark? No, I got bit by a lemon shark when we used to dive on them from the boat. Oh, okay. At what point were you riding those great hammerheads?

That was, I sat one day and I looked at the footage and said, I can write these things. And people said, you're not, no, you're not going to build it. They're not going to let you do that. and I went out planning on doing it and I did it. Where were you? In the keys. In the keys. So after that, I just rode plenty of hammerheads.

He doesn't have a bad temper. I discovered that. I wrote a bullshark, and I rode a short distance. And when I let go to the bull shark, bullshark went after me everything he had. Really? I had to fight him off. What did you have to fight him off? My kicking him, punching him, everything you can imagine.

You didn't have a spear gun or anything, a knife or anything? No, that time because we had a, we had pole spears for getting bait. But we were, you know, a lot of times we'd drop everything and we were in there with our hands, you know. But we were getting bait. We had some stingrays that we had a kill down there and they devoured the stingrays in the old time. A bunch of bullsharks showed up that devoured out. The water was very dirty too. And I went down and I caught a ride on one of them.

It was a huge one. And I knew that not to stay on it very long, a very short ride where he's going to come and get. Same thing on the lemon. Right. He'll come back and get you. Can you find the footage of him riding the hammerheads? Because that footage is wild. Because the hammerheads are interesting too.

Would you, like the hammerheads, they never bite humans, do they? They'll never ever attack a human on the beach. I've never heard of a hammerhead. Yeah, the hammerhead will attack. They will? Yeah, yeah. All right, so we wanted to, we were just looking at, we were trying to find the footage you ride the hammerhead, but you rode a meiko. So this is footage of you riding.

Hand-catching. Hand-catching. It's hand-catching a maco. Your hand catching a maco shark. Holy shit. Yeah. Take it from the first. It shows you how I grab them at first.

So if you rewind like a little bit, maybe a minute. Okay, look at that thing. How big is that maco shark right there? That maco is about, I say, five and a half feet, about 100-something pounds. This is a very strong shark. It looks much bigger than five and a half feet. It might be. It might be.

It's very, I understand it very dense. It could be 180 pounds. See how I... He just hugged. My hands on him. Yeah. Because there he goes. He's like, what the fuck is happening to me?

Yeah. So this is how you can catch a mako shark. He's not trying to bite you at all. If you give him the chance, you will. Mani, that is the most insane thing I've ever seen. People that are just listening, Mani is hugging this six-foot Mako shark, and the thing is swimming full speed,

and Mani is not letting go of it. I'm going to let go when I get back. I told the guy, I'm going to end up back at the boat. If I didn't have camera with me or something I needed to eat, we would have kept them. Instead of letting him, I'm going to let him. There's a producer right there. Okay, now is his mouth open? Yeah, I'm going to let him go.

But I would try to keep him. But, you know, we got the footage. You know that Maycoe stayed with us the rest of the day. Did he really? After you did that to him? He hung out the rest of the day. All the Maikos stayed with us. He's like, hey, man, he come back.

I want seconds. No, they don't really care. This is another one that showed up. They kept getting bigger ones and bigger ones. That's a blue. The blues are kind of goofy looking. They're like little torpedoes. Yeah, yeah, they are.

You know what else is a weird-looking shark? It's the thresher shark. They're kind of goofy looking. I've never seen one. They can hit you with a tail. That's what they do. Yeah, they have a massive tail. This is a classic shark, though.

This is like, for fishermen, when it's hooked, they'll jump 20 feet in the air, land in the boat, bite the fishermen. Jamaica? Oh, yeah, they'll jump right into the boat. Yeah, there's that girl, what's her name, Ocean Ramsey? I think she rides Great Whites. Like, she'll be, like, holding on to this Great White riding it in Mexico.

I think it's in Hawaii. Oh, that's in Hawaii. There's Great White's in Hawaii, really? Yeah. I think that some of those sharks, if they're well-fed and all that, they're not hungry, you can put your whole family on there. You know, they're not going to do anything. Her videos on Instagram,

are absurd. She is swimming and like kissing these 20-foot tiger sharks on the mouth, like on the nose. And they're like... They're all... There's a lot of people doing that right now. I was in Hawaii messing with them 20-something years ago before they were. And she picked up where Jimmy Hall left off and everything, those guys. But I was out.

I opened the door for the tigers. Click that top one. So you can't do this unless you know for a fact that shark is well fed, right? You can. They show the dossal side. I would fire the sharks up, so I did it different. Right, right. But still, to ride a great white.

You can ride one tomorrow. If you get the wrong one, the wrong time, it might not come out as well. So they have like different personalities each one. Well, the shark is not being aggressive. It's not being hungry. It's none of that. He's just cruising. Yeah.

She dives down and she grabs this great white by the dorsal fin. At that point, if he wants to kill you, he can. Oh, my God. At that point, it's like... Jesus! At that point, it's like riding a whale shark. How big is that thing, Manny? That's about as big as they get.

15 foot? 16, maybe. More. I think the biggest one they were taken was 19.5 feet in Cuba. It was long line when they were hunting for the liver. Sharks were depleted back in 1945 completely. The ocean was wiped out. Then they came back.

that they're depleted again, and now they're back again. So it's always been depending on the harvesting. There's been a bunch of tiger sharks attacking people in, I think, in Hawaii recently. You saw the video, the tiger shark attacking the guy in the kayak. Yeah. The thing just like torpedoes and grabs his kayak. Hawaii in the old days, they've always had shark attacks there. They have a higher tiger shark population than other areas.

They don't have bull sharks in Hawaii to compete with them. This is it, yeah But that's crazy For a tiger shark to do that To a kayak Look at this You just had it full screen See, when that shark is acting like that

I've had them before Where they attacked the lower unit of the boat They attack the cameraman See, if you jump in with that shark At that moment It may not be as dossal It may be if that shark sneaks upon you It's not going to be pretty

Right See the speed of where she comes. You got to know people who know they know who to play with, who not to. Right. There was that there was a, I told you another story recently there was this film crew that was out off one of

the, one of the outer islands off Oahu, and they were like scouting for a film shoot or whatever, and they had one of those inflatable motor, what is it called? What are the inflatable boats called with the motors on them? Oh yeah, um, Zodiac. Yeah, the Zodiac. They were in a Zodiac

and a tiger shark bit the zodiac like a bunch of times the thing was deflating so they had to like haul ass back to shore they were like 300 yards or something off the beach so they had to like take the zodiac full speed back to the beach they got back just in time the tiger the tiger sharks these animals they have

behaviors the humans beings have never seen before when people think they know everything they don't know anything they're gonna do something you never seen and do before they seem hungrier than they've ever been though like they seem like they're fucking with us more and more well if there's more sharks they're gonna wipe out their food supply.

Right, right. And, you know, it's just like normal. So there's more, the more sharks there are, the less fish there are to go around. Something like that. In Brazil, there was people, there was a slaughterhouse. They used to throw all the leftovers from the cows into the ocean, and the bull sharks are coming to eat them. They shut down the slaughterhouse, so the sharks moved on to the beach and started attacking

people. So that's another result of that. We've always fed animals. just in the last few years people say oh it's bad to feed you all that but men up for hundreds of years they fed wild animals we've always have right we fed bears we fed alligators we fed deer everything is out there then in my lifetime i saw an all sort oh that's a bad idea it became like a political thing illegal to feed animals is bad they're getting accustomed to this a custom of that back in a days that's like yeah people went to the yellow stone to feed the bears they went to the keys to feed the

key deer and the everglades national park and fed the alligators That was normal behavior for humans to do. It's a political thing because everybody is so against killing the sharks. Like, don't fuck with the sharks. Before they wanted to kill them all. This is Euphoria Calvin Klein, the new elixir collection, featuring three perfume intense scents, inspired by a unique orchid accord, paired with vanilla, each with its own distinct attitude, each with its own universe, bold elixir, sensual, woody, addictive, magnetic elixir, sweet and romantic,

like a lingering touch solar elixir a radiant expression of joy ultra concentrated for amplified impact and lasting power find your euphoria discover the euphoria elixir collection by calvin klein let's see that's politics now they don't want to kill them when everybody was killing them when i was trying to film them and i say guys i told my friends you know we're going to fish don't kill them over here but you're trying to get footage you know they're dead we can't film you know right yeah we need more i need i need sharks you know to you know it's like go get them somewhere you know. That was my mentality. I'd find a honeyhole.

Okay, leave this spot alone for me. Let me go to work this area where I can find them. Because we'd go out time after time we couldn't find them. And I was an expert at drawing in sharks. There's a shark ten miles away. You're chumming them up, you couldn't find them. And I'm an expert. I was the best shark chumber on the planet.

Right. I mean, I'm stupid of many things, but I was good at that. So if the president of the United States came to you, if President Joe Biden said, any quig, I want you to be in charge of all of the fisheries around the world. You're in charge of conservation of all the sea life. What would you make the rules for sharks? I would do the smartest thing to do.

You know, I don't want any species going extinct. I would divide them up according to numbers and say, we can take this, we can't take this, so many of this, so many of that. And I would encourage, like, harpooning so people don't get the wrong type of shark. Spirit fishing and harpooning. Spirit fishing, harpooning. So you can target exactly what you want. target exactly we want a lot of people you know

I'm not going to go against rot and real guys and everything but you know some of the sharks they catch them and let them go they're going to die anyways they've ran into death anyways but you know you kill one shark and other ones born to take us place none of the species that I know have people made extinct

we didn't make the hammerhead go extinct we didn't make the lemon go extinct the bulls are not extinct the great whites didn't go extinct a matter of fact they come back so we haven't hunted a species in Florida into extinction. The only thing we ran to extinction in Florida was a black wolf, the gray wolf and the red wolf. We wiped those out. Now we got coyotes. Now we got coyotes. Now we got coyotes. But our bear is still here and good numbers, lots of them. Our Florida panthers coming back,

which is a Florida mountain lion. That's what it is. It's those animals are widespread over North America, including Florida. But everything else, yeah, the boys were brought by the Spaniards. 500 years ago. The boars? Yeah. They're good, the hogs. They're good because

that's what the panther eats. If you get rid of them, the panthers are going to eat the farmer's cow. They're going to eat the deer. The hunter's going to get pissed off at them. Is they killing all the deer? Right.

So don't wipe out the boars. I don't want the panthers extinct either way, so don't wipe them out. I see everything as renewable resource and a game animal. If you cut a tree, another tree will grow, but you don't abuse anything,

but you can harvest so many pounds of fish, so many pounds of this as food. The ocean is not a natural park. You know, God made us so we could catch fish and eat, you know. I have my views. This planet is not overpopulated. We can have dense populations in one place like Miami. Maybe there's a lot of people there,

but overall, the entire planet, we're not overpopulated. That's fallacy. We have a lot of wildlife. We have a lot of good land. A lot of this planet produces a lot of food and properly managed. We got room for, Double what we have and triple what we have as far as human beings.

I was reading something recently. There was like a study or there was a statistic that if you took all the human beings on earth, shoulder to shoulder, you could fit them all inside the city of Los Angeles. That's how few humans there are. That's like $9 billion. Yeah, you can. Population has dropped. The last 10 years or so, we're losing people.

Yeah. It's a lot to do with like the plastics and shit. So we drink the water out of cans, not plastic. But the thallates and the plastics and all the chemicals. It's a lot of, it's a culture. You know, people are not having kids. Yeah. And some people, yeah, they're bent on wars.

You know, probably in Russia, Ukraine, it's about a quarter of a million dead people. Both sides are easy. You know, so, yeah, that's a lot of people that would have been alive. It wasn't for the war. You know, you get a war, people die. You know that, that Tiger Shark that killed that guy. That was a Russian guy. and there was a footage of him when he was right before he got eaten by that tiger shark

I guess he was piling around in a kayak like 10 minutes before that and he was talking shit about Ukrainians and then he gets eaten by a tiger shark yeah you know people in all reality I don't know I respect human life I'm a Christian I do uh animals you can kill him for food I don't believe in abusing animals torturing or anything but yeah hunt for food growing cows for food is fine growing crops harvesting lumber it'll slow down the fires trees grow back recycling a forest makes everything humans are not just damaging when you clear land let's say for cattle in florida that brings more grass when you got more grass you got more deer more hogs and you got more panther more bobcat right when you have a very a virgin forest

it has less wildlife we go in the ocean we sink a wreck that's a fish come and live there. Right. So a lot of what we do helps out. We dig a canal. There's a drought the fish go in the canal. If not a lot of the fish would have died. So not everything, the deer, there's more deer around the farm than in the middle of forest because a farm has got sources of food. Right. So for every deer we had in North America now, we got 30 more than at a time when the European settlers first got here. Right. But poplanger deer has grown 30 times over. For every one they had, we got 30 now. That's so much deer we have because woods and farm, woods and farm, woods and farm.

Yeah, one of the biggest, one of the most controversial topics surrounding this debate is the Amazon rainforest in, like, down in Brazil and in the Amazon. It's a bunch of baloney. When I was a little boy, you know, I can go back. The Amazon was going to be gone in 10 years. So it was completely destroyed. They were cutting and burning it like, you could see from outer space. I was like, I was, oh, wow, they're going to wipe out the Amazon.

That's terrible. They're going to be no animals left. They're going to do it. This is me back then. When you were 10? Yeah. Now, the Amazon is the same, if anything, is bigger. There's animals like crazy.

Look at Pantanales. Every 10 feet is a jaguar nowadays. Well, they wipe out all the Cayman. So the Jaguars started attacking the cows, and they shot the Jaguars. Now the Cayman are back. The jaguars are laying off the cows, mostly, and eating the Cayman in a Pantanau. But the Jaguars, have you seen the footage? is just like this. They're like 20 feet away from the guys. No, I haven't. Oh, yeah, I can't. Look at my phone

every day. So there's, um, my buddy Paul Rosalie, he wrote that mother of God book. He, uh, he moved down to the Amazon, like when he was like in his late teens and he started living down there. And he's been like following what's been going on. And it's crazy how many more roads there are now, 20 years later and how many people are coming in. Like they're, the Chinese and the, well, are coming in and contracting all the locals there to cut down all the trees and sell them off. Well, they're going on an Indian land. That land belonged to, you know, if you own a ranch, it's your ranch. If the Indians have a plot of land, you know, that's your ranch.

You know, private property. Yeah, they're just stepping on, well, they're bringing the Chinese. This communism kicking in there again. They're going to wreck the place. But, yeah, they're, but all those roads, guess what, the jungle will grow over that. In 10 minutes, you will leave it alone. Right. The wildlife will come back.

Right, but they're not going to leave it alone. Well, they will sooner or later something will happen. They'll leave it alone. If you clear a forest. Like our species will get wiped out. If you clear a forest, like in the Amazon, when the grass starts to grow, all the animals of the forest will be there eating that. So when you, yeah. In Florida, when you burn a field, you burn it down, you go back three, six months, and all the deer and hogs are there.

They're eating the new grass growing. So the forest has to be. recycle. So when you do that in certain parts of the Amazon, they get burned, they get cut down. When it starts to grow back, as where the animals go, the pure, pure virgin forest doesn't support that much wildlife. In Russia, yeah, it doesn't. They go to where the people are. In Russia, when they started cutting down all the trees, they saw them, oh, wow, they're destroying the tiger forest. There's more grass. The stag population exploded. So then the wolf population went up to 200,000, because that was so much stag.

Wow. In other words, if there's a lot of fish out there, you're going to get a lot of sharks. If there's a lot of hogs in the woods, you're going to get panthers. You know, it's an area with a lot of fish in game, you're going to get alligators. The animals or the deer, if you have a cornfield in the middle of forest, all the deer are going to be there. Right. And they're going to grow bigger eating that corn. Right.

So whatever, like the Native Americans, they live in the East, they didn't have to go in the woods to get. a deer they grew corn so they had to do is wait on the edge of the cornfield with bow and arrow and they could get all the deer they wanted right because they were going to come there that's nobody ever thought of that but that's typical if it's like that now it was like that back then nothing has changed right that's interesting people have a lot of fallacy about everything about the wildlife and and what to do about it and how to manage it and this and that they go from extreme to extreme yeah they go from exterminate everything to overprotect everything they don't seem to do things properly the way it should be done over the years I've taken a lot

of interest and that kind of stuff is I've been watching it all my life and I kept track when I was a kid there were 8,000 polar bears I was into it back then I looked it up now there's between 30 and 50,000 when I was a kid by time as in high school the leopard population in Africa sub-Sahara was about 50,000 they were getting wiped off of the skins now it's about 700,000 liver The tiger population was down to 2000. Last year went up to 3,000 overnight, one year in India. The Java tiger, when I was a kid around, completely extinct.

So a few areas, they were completely annihilated, but other areas, grizzly bear populations, 120,000 worldwide, including 6,000 in Japan. Most people don't know that. There's 6,000 grizzlies live in Japan. Whoa. Does anybody talk about it? No. there's a are people worried about grizzlies being endangered they were back then the mexican grizzly was wiped out

when when i was a kid there were still some there i kept track of that a lot of a lot of different species like that mexican wolf i think it was completely wiped out they're trying to bring it back jaguars in north america there's a few in arizona they used to be in texas there's no cayman up there in some of these areas there was a few alligators, but they're eating cattle, so the ranchers shot them all. So there's none, except a few in Arizona. They're crossing the border from Mexico. Mountain line is found from Canada to Argentina, Patagonia, southern Argentina.

Through the Amazon deserts, every type of terrain you can find. They're there, mountains, lowlands, everything. Wow. Yeah, it's crazy how much different information you can find. when you try to search for this kind of stuff, it's just like it's really hard to find the information people do are just all over the place. You got to go to old information from the old days

so they don't change it. And go to the archives because somebody will grab the book and rearrange it. Right. So I go back to what I knew back then. I'm a history fanatic. Most people don't know that. But I like to read the history.

I like to read my Bible. I'm a firm believer in Jesus Christ. definitely we're supposed to manage the fisheries, the forest, food and all that not to destroy it and not to wipe it out or not to treat it like a god

where you can't, you know, some people want to make the entire ocean to a national park. It's like, what are we going to eat? Do they really? Some people do, yeah. They want to save everything, and they think the humans are a scourge of the earth and they need to get rid of the world population and get rid of the world population and get, you know, get rid of people because they're bad.

As a Christian, I don't believe that. But people don't, you know. Well, I mean, it's, it's, I can see their perspective for sure. I mean, we are kind of like a cancer on the earth. We're just eating up the earth. And our history, look at what we've done. Like with the way we just devour everything. Because we're sinful.

We're sinful. We kill each other. Never mind what we do, what we do wild animals. We're killing each other. We have, uh, people need to respect us. other people respect life in general. But no, wildlife is a renewable resource and certain areas need to be protected. Other areas need to be open and back and forth. But there's nothing wrong with raising cattle. There's nothing wrong with growing rice. There's nothing wrong with fishing. I used to

commercial fish myself and we sold the fish. So back then everybody, oh, meat is bad for you. So everybody's eating fish. And then they're complaining, oh, they're eating all the fish. But before, there was fish everywhere. Nobody liked fish. Everybody wanted beef. And they started telling beef is bad for you. It became a little thing. You got to eat fish. It's healthy. So the next day you know, everybody, the commercial guys on the ocean, then they ravish, wipe out the sea. And everybody goes, whoa, you guys said, stop eating beef. He started eating fish. Now they're complaining about it. You know, see the insanity of the whole thing. Yeah, it really is insanity. Do people really eat barracuda? Yeah.

How many people? Cubans. It's a Cuban thing. I've eaten a lot of barracuda in my time. It's one of my favorite fish. You said it tastes good. It's really good fish. But what about Sigletera poisoning?

That's the problem. Now, why do they have Sigletara, and what is cicatera poison? Sigeltera is a toxin passed up the food chain. It starts a little fish eating it off the coral, and in a barracuda. The older the older the bigger he is and older, the more of that toxinicum. When he has too much of a toxin in his body, it becomes a poisonous to human consumption. It doesn't hurt the fish. It looks perfectly fine.

But if you eat it, you'll get real sick. And why do barricudas have it? It ain't just barricudas. Grupper, Snapper, Amberjack, kingfish. They all have it. Any big predatory fish in the tropics can have it. It's called tropical fish poisoning. Oh.

It grows in the tropics. The further north, the less likely gets you out there unless they're very much. Barracuda swam from the Bahamas to North Carolina. Right, right. Which it could happen. And then somebody caught an eater over there and he got sick as they'll get out. But if they're up in that area, none of that grows there. So it's less likely they'll get up there.

But eat at your own risk. But it seems like people associate Sigatera with barracudas more than anything. It's like it's politics. Is it? Yeah, yeah. A lot of people never got it from a barracuda. They got it from a grouper. Hmm.

I never got it from a barracuda. I got it from a grouper. Oh, really? Yeah. What is it like when you have it? What were your symptoms? Diarrhea, nonstop, things that are cold, feel hot. It affects your nerves.

It's really messed up and it takes a long time to get over it. How long? It could be years to finally get over it, you know. And if you eat another fish, there has a little bit on it, you'll get their symptoms right back. Really? So you've got to lay off a fish for a long, long time. I was eating freshwater fish for a very long time. What does barracuda taste like?

It tastes like, I compare to snook. Really good, huh? Better than kingfish. Oh, way better. That's wild. No, it's a great fish. In certain places, like in Central America, I talked to them people, Siwatara, I never heard of that. They ate all of barracudas they caught.

There are places that people eat them, and they don't know. Siwatera doesn't grow everywhere. It's only in certain areas. So if you catch one in like the Carolinas or in Florida, Florida, a small one, you should be fine? You should be fine. You should be, but, you know, I'm not responsible for it. Right.

You don't condone it, right. I don't know. You can do it. I just don't, like I tell people, you want to swim with sharks is a great idea, but they're dangerous. So they bite you, you know, I'm giving you a heads-up warning. Well, you told me it was fine. No, no.

I'm telling you right now, swimming of alligators or sharks is deadly. Picking of venomous snakes is deadly. All that. Free diving for spear fishing, you can black out. you can get attacked by sharks sharks are not misunderstood put this in your head

it's a very dangerous predatory animal you know it makes it the sea unsafe simple as that do I like sharks yeah I think they're magnificent whatever

but they are dangerous and same thing with alligators they're magnificent and all that but they're dangerous now alligators are very well managed in Florida they're not protected

they are protected unless you get your license. When season comes around, you get a tag, you get your license, you can hunt it. So they don't just go out and fill up a truck with them. You've got to follow the rules and regulations, which is orchestrated to protect the alligator as a natural resource and a game animal in Florida. You know, it was big money on gator hunting and gator farming and the whole nine yards.

It's a valuable resource, but he's also a very dangerous resource. The alligators, 400 years ago, when the French naturalist came to Florida, he couldn't cross St. John's River in a canoe without getting attacked by alligators. They attacked Indians in broad daylight. They're very aggressive, very dangerous. After 400 years of people shooting them, they tend to shy away from people. When I was a kid, alligators didn't attack people. You could read in a book, they don't attack people. As soon as they were protected, and their numbers started coming back, and it started getting more abundant, attacks started happening. and right. So, Aligatives do attack people. Look at the history. They did. He just, when they came back, they started doing it again. So then they started hunting again to slow down the attacks. But for a while there, they were attacking people left and right. Now they got a nuisance control that if he's in the city, he's in your swimming pool or in your canal in your backyard, whatever,

they remove him. Before he attacked somebody, kills your dog or your kid or you. you know just last month somebody got devoured by an alligator un ripped off I saw this video of it yeah there's all kinds of people getting attacked all the time I've been attacked a bunch of times by gators I spent I spent more time in the early days with the alligators than even the sharks really my I encountered sharks they started working hunting sharks at 25 in my 40s I started interacting with sharks but I was hand-catching alligator since high school all the way until until you know the leader years. Now, what is your process if you're, you know, one weekend, you feel the urge to go catch

an alligator in the wild in some lake in Florida? What is the process in going about catching a gator by hand? Well, back in a day, I would dive on them. Has somebody hold the light on him? I come running and dive on them and tackle them. At night. At night. Tackle them, hold on any which way I could. Suicide attack, basically. Now I levitate the alligator. I back away from, grab him, back away from him. And when he tires a little bit, then I take him down. So you only at night, though? No, I can do it in a daytime.

I'm underwater now. I can go get an alligator underwater. Okay. Anytime I want, do I do it nowadays? Not really. I haven't done it since TV shows. I've avoided it. I'm an artist.

You know, I already lost a finger to a rattlesink. I got bit by an alligator on the back. The good Lord told me enough is enough. I was swimming down a canal. I got ambushed. So I got bit by rattlesink, I got bit by an alligator, and corked by a hog all within a couple of years towards the end of my time doing all this kind of stuff. It's sometimes, okay, the Lord does something, keep you humble. It's slow down.

I got a family now, so I got more responsibility, so I do, I focus more on my artwork. Right. Pull up one of those videos of Manny Levitating a giant alligator. Was that the Canal monster? I think there might have... Monster is one of my biggest. I have a tab pulled up for the canal monster, I believe. I got two biggest gators.

One is in North Florida and this one is in South Florida. Okay. Can you miss a little bit of volume? Hey, I'm gonna see if I can locate him. Yeah, he's already gone under, so I'm gonna turn. Okay, so you already spotted him. This canal is full hydrilla on the bottom. Yeah, I seen him from the van.

I encounter him twice. Carefully watching for any signs of the monster. Like a ghost, he'd be gone. begins to materialize. He has left the bank and is facing directly at us. What you're seeing is a surface. Yeah. He is about to mount a full attack.

I like the voice over. It continues to move closer. He is arching his back as a threat. Is he really arching his back? Yeah. This thing is literally swimming right towards you. Right. But if he's going to attack you, he's not going to just be chilling on the surface like that, is he?

He's going under now. Oh, now he's going under. As he sinks below the surface, I dive all over to the bottom. Oh my god. You just grabbed him by the shin. Oh my god. This stops the attack, but now I have a dinosaur on my hands. You just grabbed him by his like his neck fat. Their skin, yeah.

Skin of his neck. It sounds like a what, 15 footer? 13 plus. They haven't seen a 15 foot alligator, I think in Florida. Oh really? The record is 14 foot and a half around there. He glides, so I stop near the bank. Not much bigger than that.

So if you move it forward, uh, it's gonna be, he's gonna, I'm gonna run him out of there, but I'm still killing time. But he goes into hydrola and I levitate him one more time all the way to the surface. Oh, wow.

Yeah, just move it, move it, a little bit. So he's hiding in like a little cove right now and like the mangroves. Yeah, no, he's gonna, he's gonna,

he's gonna, I can't get to him. So I'm gonna try to get him out of there. I can't even, I can pick up by the scoots just when he's so big, I can't. Oh my God. And he's not even doing anything. Mm-mm.

Even though you're fucking with him, he's just laying there. Yeah. Alligators that big are great to work with and very deadly. If he bites you, he will crush everything in your body. That thing will kill a horse or a cow. That will kill the whole, drag a whole cow in the water. An alligator that big little. Oh, he's trying to escape.

He's trying to run away. Yeah, I'm going to run him out of there. Oh my God, the thing's a Goliath. I'll pick him up once or two or three times and no more because then he'll attack you. Still trying to escape on the very bottom. Well, no, he goes into the hydrilla. Now I've got to go find him in the hydrilla.

He's like, man, please just leave me alone, bro. I'm just trying to take a nap. How long can they hold their breath for? The whole day. One that big forever. How long? Hours after hour. Hours they can hold their breath?

A big one. like that. That's incredible. Are there any other animals that can hold their breath for that long? Sperm whale. Oh yeah, whales, obviously, yeah. They go one hour on the bottom, a mile deep to find squid.

Look at this. You just got him right out of the hydrilla. See, when I put the head straight up, he goes to the tonic immobility, just like a shark. So when you put his head vertically like that, he's like sort of in a trance. Yeah. He gets for a few seconds, he's out of. But see, once I hit the surface, he exploded.

Right. But you can see the size of him as he spun around him. Oh, my God. But I've done that so many times over the years. I had so much time with the alligators. Now he's gone. No. He's gone on. He's cruising.

Yeah, a producer's running. He's got the camera on him right now. He's chasing him, looking at him. He's talking about it, see? do you think that you're more... By that time I told quit, no, no more. Leave him. Back off. Right, right, right. He's pissed now.

Do I think what? I'm saying, are humans more vulnerable in the water with a gator or like right next to the shore? In the water, probably. Because I'm sure you can jump back or do something. You're more clumsy in the water. The alligator is very agile in the water. You know, he can catch fish on the water. He's super fast.

But they can run extremely fast, can't they? Short, no, just a short burst from here to here. Just a short burst. He's not gonna catch you. If you see him coming down the road at you, you just run the other way. He's not gonna catch you. Really?

Everyone, I've always heard that, like, if you run in zigzags, like they can't make sharp turns. Just run straight. If you're behind a tree or something or a post, you get behind him, he's gotta get around it, so you can always get around it. And he can't get around, you know. Levy's here, he's got to attack this way.

He's got a back way. so you can get on this site. So you're going to be around the post all day long. Oh, okay. Like a telephone pole. He can't get you. No, if you use your brain, he can't bite you. Right.

If you get behind the telephone pole, it goes this way, you go this way. Right, right, right. He can't get you. And what happened when you actually got bit by one? I felt like somebody hitting a baseball bat across my back. I was swimming down a canal and I was looking for fish to a hand catch. I really levitated a couple of alligators that day. and I got lazy, didn't look behind me.

It's supposed to look behind you in case one is sneaking up on you. And sure enough, one came behind me and bit me on the back, I felt like a bomb went off on my back. He didn't get a good grip on me. If you had got a hold of my army, he would have ripped it off. But he kind of like slipped away from a wetsuit, pulled away with, and he put 12 scratches on my back

and a bruise here. He didn't get a good grip on me. And I was able to get away from him, and I came out pretty good from that one. I went after him. chased him off. Oh, you charged him? Yeah, right after he did that? Yeah, grabbed him by the neck and all that and went with him to the bottom and then he took off. What? Well, in order to turn around over,

so he doesn't come after me again. And then I was able to get on the airboat and I said, if I could get an airboat, you know, kick up on it on the side, I might be okay. When I pulled my wetsuit back, they took a picture, okay, it's not that bad. But I said, I got to get in and put bleach on it and everything's like. Because they can infect you. Yeah, but when I saw it wasn't that bad, it came out very good out of it. They just pour some liquor on it and you were good? Yeah, it came out very good from that one. Good Lord.

Now, what about crocodiles? What's the difference between crocodiles? Have you ever fucked with a crocodile before? Crocodiles are faster, but they don't have the endurance of an alligator. That's what I know about them. The alligators, a guy from a fishing wall, I told me a long time ago, when they used to capture them for tagging and all that, the alligators fight twice as hard. Really? that's fascinating i know in like costa rica the crocs are a big problem even when you surf near the river mouse

like they they chill out there it's the same crocs we have here i've never seen the crock here um they're here i've seen them really not on the beaches though i've seen them underwater uh and key lago the mangroves um a flamingo it's a good place to see them okay um yeah they're all over Turkey Point Key Biscayne Coral Gables There's a lot of them around coral gables

And all that Miami and the canals Right And Biscay Mm-hmm You know Florida Bay All that area

It's got all the way In the Keys Right All the way to Big Pine And all this Crocodals all through there Right

They just can't handle They swam over from Cuba So it's invasive Right Right Listen everything is Invasive Everything is

Yeah Yeah Yeah, either we brought them or they came on their own. Coyotes came on their own, manatees came on their own, and crocodiles came on their own. They all came from Cuba. Yeah. And they were in, what a coincidence. They found in South Florida, Cuba, and Jamaica.

What does I tell you? In Haiti. Right. American Crocs and in Costa Rica. And both sides of the Pacific. But it's the same crocodile. The acutist American crocodile. Right.

It's a very big crocodile. by way. What is, are there a lot of deadly snakes in Florida, like rattlesnakes and stuff like that? Where is the biggest population of man killer snakes? In Florida. Or in this the U.S. in general? Probably California's got a lot of rattlesnakes. Really?

They got Southern Pacific rattlesnakes. I've played with those before. That thing bites you. You're going to be bleeding out of your eyes, nose and ears and everything dissolves your brain. It's horrific. Now... Those are in California? Yeah, in Pacific Rattlesink.

Now in Florida, we have the biggest rattlesn, the eastern diamond back. It's dangerous rattlesnake is found here. We have the cotton mouth and we have the coral snake. And we have the pygmy rattlesinging. The smallest, the biggest. And then in North Florida, you get a few copperheads and timber rattlesnake, which is a cane break in North Florida. But South Florida is only four species. Okay.

Two types of rattlesnakes, coral snake, and cotton mouth and water moccasin is the same animal. Yeah, those things are swimming around in the lakes and stuff. Yeah, now if a cotton mouth bites you, it'll rot your way. A rattle sink, if you get bit by Eastern Diamondback, you don't go to hospital, you're going to die. Simple as that. You get bit by any venomous snake. Just go to the hospital. But what?

If you don't die, you may lose a hand or an arm or who knows what. So a cotton mouth, if you give it by a cotton mouth, there's no saving you? Yeah, go to the hospital. go to the hospital, you could potentially be saved. Yeah, yeah, it'll save you. Survive it. You may get permanent damage in your hand and leg. Is there any snake that if it bites you, there's no chance, even if you do go to the hospital?

If you have everything right there ready to go, you'll survive. But if you get bipped by a cobra in the jungles of India, you don't have anything to save it. You're going to die. A coral snake, it'll kill you unless you get any venom or get an respirator. because it paralyzes your lungs. Coral snake is like the same venom as like a cobra. What kind of snake did you get bit by when you lost your finger? Western Diamondback, which is like the second big is rattlesnake.

And you were, where was that? Texas. Texas. What was going through your mind when that rattlesnake bit you? When that rattlesnake bit me, I said, I messed up. I'm calm, but it's like depressing. Okay, the trip is over. all the plans you had are over

you're in big trouble if you look at the video when it's on when it shows me getting bit real wild yeah it shows me getting bit I look real calm

I'm holding the rattlesick at my hand I told producer he got me and he goes you're kidding no I kind of like I don't want to tell him but you know I got to tell him I was like embarrassed to tell him that it got me you know that's it right there that's the one Yeah,

and I was very tight into the snake The snake filled the entire frame And as he reaches in to pin its head And he got me to see it It was so lightning fast It was so powerful That everything just went crazy And I could see Mani did get control of it

But my heart was racing And I was really hoping that he hadn't been bit But I couldn't really tell He had no clue You can see it, see her Oh no, I missed it Well, you had that the little camera in there. Yeah.

Turn the volume up a little bit. Really hoping that he hadn't been bit, but I couldn't really tell. So I saw Manny's hand reach in and grabbed the snake by the head. Oh. That snake just started moving and twisting, and it was such a powerful animal. And I knew that Mani was in trouble. I just didn't want to believe it. Oh, my God.

For him to come up and say, okay, here's a snake and bring it up. Instead I heard him say, I got hit, and it just my heart sank to my stomach. Look at that guy. That's Mark Mellee's famous. He's got a great beard. I mean, he never misses a click. So as I watched him, his methods and its techniques, I knew he was going to be able to get it done. So as he went for the grab, the snake was so huge.

He got the grab perfect. I mean, the snake's head was this big. And the grab was perfect. but the snake was so strong. I needed to be closer. And he twisted in his hand and actually sunk the fang into one finger and into his hand. See you right there? Oh, yeah.

Oh. This is going to be a fight for his life because the snake was just giant. And the venom of mouth was just huge. I mean, it had to pump everything it had into him. And he calmly looks me in the eye and says, he got me? You're smiling. A chill ran down my spine. It was like being kicked in the chest.

And I knew what man he was in. for him. He was in serious trouble. And we are a long way from a hospital. We're 50, 60 miles from the hospital. You got that? Yeah. From that moment on, I knew it was critical that... What is that sound? Or he's going to die. I mean, this wasn't a little snake bite that when you're dove hunting or just out walking around and he gets you, you know, because that's just a quick strike. And the amount of venom is just enough to kill like a small rat or a rabbit. This was a huge fanged that in josephor. everything he had into Manny. Give me the Tons, give me the snake Tons.

Let's go. We got to be back. Once we realized what had to happen, our main concern, the entire crew was get Manny to the hospital as quickly as possible. Every second counts. To the guy, let's get going. Come on. Buck, I need you to pick up all the... So what was going on right here with your hand? How did it feel?

So the pain is a unbearable pain. Just like, you know, you want to shoot yourself a pain is so bad. if the pain is so bad. So you're immediately after that, you're rinsing your hand with water. They're all getting you to the car, and it's just unbearable pain in your hand. Unbearable pain. Then go to hospital, and the pain lasted for months and months. Just wouldn't go away.

So right away, what did you do? Did you hide a tourniquet around your arm, or what did you do? No. That's supposed to do anything. Really? I put a cold chicken on it, but not even supposed to do that. You're supposed to leave it alone. No tourniquet.

No, it's supposed to leave it alone. No, turnicet. No, turnic will rot you out even more. Really? Yeah. So you just let it roll. You just sit there. Let it roll so your body can fight it.

And how long was the car ride back to the hospital? They did it pretty fast. They were going 110 miles an hour. They did, like 70 miles away, but they got me there and like, I don't know, real quick. Oh, my God. It was about 45 minutes or an hour before they started getting the venom and made me probably about an hour. I was sitting around. Come on.

Could you imagine having to get to the emergency room? Like, oh, yeah, sure, take a number. Wait in line. Yeah, they were like real relaxed to the hospital guys. I need about 55 gallon drum of anti-venom. Yeah, I'm going to be dead in like 15 minutes. We need you to hurry up. So they went in there to put anti-venom in you and then what happened after that?

Then I stayed there for several days, four days. Buck took me into his house. I was in his house. I couldn't get an airplane and go home. I was in so much pain. So two weeks later, I went home. and my brother-in-law saw me cleaning my finger and he saw a finger he said you need to go to the hospital took him to the hospital and then the doctor said you got to take that finger off it's rotting away

how long after was it probably about a month it was rotting away so it was just all black where you're where you got bit yeah you can take them off if you want yeah my ears hurting no it's okay we can take them off so you went to the hospital yeah and what was that what did they do the same day you went in they amputated it no no oh when i went to amputated yeah they they kept me overnight come a little closer they kept they kept they kept me overnight and they amputated uh uh the finger and i told doctor we'll do it as quick as you can so i can get over with this you know and i said uh he goes well i can take the whole bone out and make it look better no i don't care how is the hand more efficient i don't care what it looks like he goes if the finger

to survive it's going to be like a hook you're going to get in a traffic accident when you're driving so to make your hand more useful you got to take it off so that was it and how long did the pain last after the amputated it when I levitated at a large alligator I was already missing the finger wow

but was like the sharp pain there for a while after the amputation month after month after month I forgot how long it was it was just a never ending and a hand was swollen forever it was swallery morning and try to stretch it the pain was unbearable it was just like I couldn't

pick up a cup of coffee and they would fall out of my head hand I don't have a hand was so weak good Lord no more of that you're retired you're officially retired from touching snakes and alligators and sharks and uh you're just focusing on your art now uh focusing my art um sticking with that that's a gift that god gave me was art i was an artist since i was a little boy i was always in school i had terrible grades except for art class i was always a number one student in the art class so i was into art wild animals That's what I like.

I wasn't into sports, you know, basketball, baseball, or any of that. I mean, it's great. I like it. Athletes are great and all that. I'm happy for them, but it was never my thing. I'm not into it. The wild, the sea and the forest was always my thing. Now, do you ever just, like, do you ever just, like, want to go out and just catch your fish on a rod and reel, like, traditionally?

Or is that just too boring for you? Sometimes, like, I go out with my friend, sometimes gigging tilapia at night from the airboat, throwing a triton at him. And that's like, okay, we go out and have a great time with the guys, catch a bunch of talafia, take them home filet them and eat fresh fish. That's more like my idea of hunting nowadays. Right. I don't want to get big fish anymore. I want to get medium-sized fish, just stuff to take home to eat. My idea, before it was the action for the video, but I've done so much of it that why am I going to do anymore?

I'm not going to top what I've already done. Right. Pretty much. So I've done it. Everybody's out there messing with sharks and everything right now, but I was doing that 20-something years ago. So I was ahead of the game and all that. I mean, God bless them all and they're all into it now, but it's, yeah, it's a dangerous thing. But everybody wants, but there's so many people doing it, it's kind of like you want to do what nobody else is doing. At the time I was doing it,

nobody was really into that kind of, to the point that I was doing it. What made you want to specifically design these tridents? Like, what is the tactical advantage of having a trident, these three prong? For people that don't know what it is, once you grab that Trident, you just made me for me and show, and I'll pull it up so people can see it. This is a Trident. This is one of my specialties of work that I do. I make this out of 316 stainless. These were done to catch fish to hunt. The first Triton, I designed a big one, was to hunt wild boar.

Because when you throw it, instead of one point, you got three points coming out. And that's like that giant one on the wall back there that you made me. That's for catching a wild boar. Wild boar, alligators. Yeah, that one's probably got a. alligator C4. That one's heavy as shit. I can barely hold that thing.

Well, you use a weight momentum for a hunter. I caught alligators by hand, but when we took out, you know, I guided, take out alligator hunters. These guys, okay, they want to get an alligator, a trophy gate or whatever. They can use a gun or they can use a trident on private land. And a lot of them would use the trident. They would mount the gator, pack the meat, take the skin or meat home with them. and then a lot of times they bought the trident.

Now, when you hit a gator with a trident like that or like this, do you have to like aim for a specific part of their head? No, if you hit them in the head, it'll bounce off. Oh, you can't hit them in the head? No, in the body. So it'll hold them. And then you got to cut the vertebrae here with a knife or an axe. So when you hit him in the body with the trident,

like in the back or something? Yeah, it's got a rope on it and you hold them. And they take off? No, they don't take off with a trident. They take off with a harpoon tip and then you've got to follow him for a while. When you hit them the Trident, they stay in the same place and they just spin around and twist. They don't maneuver well.

It does it quicker. Oh, okay. The Trident actually, the harpoon, they use it, actually kill them. The Triton does. So after you hit them with the Trident, they twist around, then they tire out, and then you have to jump on them and you have to... Well, pull them out and have the guy... You know, this is a guy is hunting.

He wants to go on a primitive hunt. He could use his rifle, he can use a bow and arrow, it can use a Triton. We left the option for him to do, we want to do a primitive hunt with the trident and you know a lot of times they do but i like medieval stuff i like history i like ancient weapons i mean tridents are used for fishing that was originally for they were four but uh the roman gladiators decided to use them on each other so you see that in the arena gladiators are fighting each other with these things which is you know it's a horrible thing to

do but to attack another human being you know having each other so for entertainment going at it you know right uh i guess some people still like that kind of stuff they haven't changed i there was a gladiator event and they were fighting show i don't want to see it no i'm at that point in my life no i'm not interested in seeing two people go out of this right uh you know that's ancient roman mentality no so once i hit the gator with this say hypothetically if i'm going to go try this and i hit the gator with it and he's twisting around how do i go in there and like actually like you pull him end his life you pull him and usually i have an extra triton an extra harpoon he's taken the other one in, it's a process

and then pull them out and then another, so it's like three tools and then a hatchet to hit them in the back of the head, which I also make. But I have a harpoon. Once he's there, you stick the harpoon to double secure them. This will usually hold them. Okay. But in case he goes, if you hit him in the back,

if you hit him on the side, the skin closes in around this. So it doesn't come out. If you hit on the back, it can come out the same hole because the skin in the back doesn't contract. It's like stays the same. So it can pull out sometimes. out of the middle of the back but the tridents

they hit the side here once you get off the scutes the skin will wrap around this and it'll hold it he won't come out oh wow sometimes you have to surgically move it out of there

so that's the reason this is barbed it's really to catch a fish so when you're catching an alligator you're catching you know a large fish you know it would probably if you're in the shallas

you could probably throw it at a shark or barracuda well that might be too wide for a barracuda huh no that would work for a fat barracuda Yeah, the pens. Anything will work on anything. That other one will... That little one over there? That'll work on a barracuda very well. But like, if I hit something like that with a shark or whatever, I'm afraid it would take off and I would have to dive in after it and go get the fucking...

No, no. You put a... No, no. You put a... See this hole back here? That's for a rope. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You put a strong rope to here. And you just tie that to something. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that's, yeah, you tie that to... It depends where you're going to get... Yeah, I mean, if you're in a flats, you can get a shark. with this no problem. You hit him from the boat. Yeah, it'll, and you put a buoy on it. Yeah, he's not going over. You're going to get him, you know.

Right. But if he gets off, you've got a line and everything on it. So you pull, you try to back up, you know. This is pretty strong, you know, I mean, this is hard. Yeah, it's industrial strength. Yeah, industrial. This is three, this one here is three quarters thick, solid stainless.

It's got a tail that goes here. This is crunched, smashed in here. All this, I do it, dig this out by hand, Handheld grinder. That's what I do all that. And you make these to order for people? Like when they hit you up and you know what they want to try that? Yeah.

I can get them. The fishing tried them, which is more like when you got over there or this one. Those are the two that I'm making. So they pick, they tell me what they want. And we'll take care of it. How long can you hold your breath?

I used to do five and a half minutes, 5.35 to be exact. Now I haven't done a long time. So I seriously doubt I'm going to hold my breath that long. How long do you go right now? not much long at all I haven't trained for it you know how do you train to hold your breath longer

you train a little bit but a lot of it's technique is preparing when you're out of shape you got to prepare better when you're in good shape you can get there quicker you know as your deep slow breathing but that's what also gets you to pass out on the water and die but like how would you like before you go out in like a spearfishing competition like free diving competition in a tournament or something like that

how would you actually prepare to do that to hold your breath Well, you exercise, you train, you go and do underwater laps, you do sitting still, you know, people spot on you, you hold your breath as long as you can without moving. You do your breathing exercises and everything. And then I had a method I do when I was going to be underwater a long time, 40 breaths. 40 breaths first? Deep, slow breaths. Now, what can happen?

You can black out in the water and die. So it's a deadly game. how do you black out you don't you're underwater swimming around you're relaxed you're fine all of a sudden you don't know what happened next day you know you be you're put but rescued you and you what are you doing and you don't remember what happened you total blackout does that does the blackout happen only when they get to the point where you're like really close to being out of breath no the brain doesn't tell you how much oxygen you have it only lets you know how much carbon oxide you have So you've been exhaling and breathing fast,

you could be out of oxygen. You don't know. So when you run out, the brain doesn't let you know. You think you got plenty of air and you don't have any. You don't have any more oxygen left. You fooled your brain. And does that happen from just holding your breath too much and doing too much free diving? Mainly from the deep breathing.

From the deep breathing. From the breathing, fast breathing, hyperventilating before you go down. You deep breathing, you hyperventilate to get rid of the carbon. To be able to relax on the water. You got to get rid of your carbon dioxide. That's what makes you... When you want to breathe, it's not that you're out of oxygen

as you have too much carbon dioxide in your blood. So the trick is you fool the brain, then you can stay down as long as you want until you die. Have you ever blocked out free diving? Yes, I have. In a swimming pool. In a swimming pool? Yeah, yeah.

The girl I was training for free diving pulled me up. And I asked her, I asked her, what are you doing? you're disturbing my routine. And she goes, no, you blacked out. You're completely out. So I would watch her. She watching her training in a swim pool.

Our team at the time, is working with Mark and Megan. She was Mark's girlfriend. She was free diving champion. Megan, free diving champion. Oh, really? Yeah, for the U.S. at that time. She held a record for male and female at the time.

after you blacked out what did you do did you did you just like take a break for a while or did you go right back in did you go right back and start diving again no next day i was diving again the only thing i was more cautious because i've Right. Make sure you have somebody watching you and spotting you. If you're close to blackout and you don't black out, you'll get like a dizziness. And that's a samba. When you black out, you won't get that. You go all the way. You'll never get that warning. But I've had that.

No warning at all. You just black out. But if you came close and you survived, you're, whoa, you could feel it was a dizziness. So that's like, I did that too many times. Diving by myself, going down 100-something feet to shoot fish, free diving, waiting on the bottom to shoot a fish. I would go 110 feet of water and lay on the bottom for like 40 seconds. At 110 feet.

Yeah, just lay in the bottom down there. I would start counting at the time myself when I was on the bottom. And then I swim back up. So all by myself. With weights on your weight belt? If I had a speed on, I would use four pounds because I was very lean back then. If I had a wetsuit on, depending on the thickness, I would put more weight depending on the thickness of the wetsuit. I could swim 400 feet on the water.

swim 400 so you could go you can dive down 200 feet and 200 feet back no but swimming both ways when you go down you don't kick it's only halfway you fall you only kick on the way up right because you're fighting against the weight

the weight belt once you put a little bit of weight once you break 30 feet you should be able to free fall and then you just line yourself and the deeper you go as your lungs compress you speed up down and you keep clearing after a while I can't get air into my ears

and I got to stop I blew an ear drum doing that How deep How deep were you when you blew an ear drum? Man, I could have been 180 feet Or 200 feet There was a marker at 220 I could see it I was trying to get to it

And the watch only marked To 165 After that I quit marking That was a gauge So I kept going after that And it boom Sound like a firecracker going off in my head You lose your equilibrium

And shit when that happens right You do but I got up so quick Before I lost my equilibrium I aimed and shot for the surface A million miles and off Can you hurt yourself doing that? Yeah Yeah, well, I mean, when you go home, you blow your nose,

the air comes out of your ear. And I blew another one with a powerhead, too. So I've blown both of my, I've blown both of my eardrums. Blewn with a powerhead? Yeah. It just blew up next to you? I fired it and it went off in the water and the concussion. Gosh.

Up the ear drum. That's insane, man. Well, Manning, thanks for doing this. I really appreciate it. This is a, I thank you for the Trident and bringing the t-shirts and all the photos. Yeah, we'll do something in the future, man, you know, get some other client. here.

I would love to get you here again, man. I'm a huge fan of what you do and your artwork, especially. People that are watching and listening, where can they find some of your stuff or how can they contact you if they want to get a tried end or show your knives too. Hold your knife up. Mani Pugge on Instagram. Is you just contact you, message? Yeah, there's a picture of me holding a shark jaw.

I got my face in it. A bull shark jaw. Just man just contact me and let me know what I'm interested. I got T-shirt. shirts. Hell yeah. I got knives. I got necklaces.

All kinds of goodies. Look at that. Tiger shark teeth. Great white. That's a great white tooth right there? Great white. And also have fish hooks. Oh, that's cool.

I make two. Hawaiian style fishhooks. That's incredible, man. And I make crosses too. Oh, yeah. My cross. And you carve custom shit into them, like people's names or any kind of custom messaging they want. Yeah, they can custom their name on there. That's beautiful.

This one here's got 316. It's 316 stainless, right? 316 is also famous verse in the Bible. You know, John 316. That's cool. That's cool. Definitely. Awesome, man. Well, thanks again. I very much appreciate it. I'll link your Instagram below. People to contact you. And we'll get you back here to tell some more stories. Definitely. Cool. Goodbye, World. Great time. Take care.