The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 350: Sharks in the Oreos

Episode Date: July 18, 2022

Steven Rinella talks with Greg Fonts, Brandon Hendrickson, Mike Raabe, and Chester Floyd.  Topics discussed: Chester the Dive Master (pronounced "Mester"); the Makah tribe wants to start killing whales again; how Rep. Clyde's RETURN Act, which would gut Pittman-Robertson, is simply not the right way to go; California now says bumblebees are fish, and why that's interesting and important; the industrial harvest of menhadens/pogies and a clarification from TRCP's Whit Fosburgh; dealing with sharks in the water; explaining the Oreo; oil rigs as major fish and wildlife magnets; rig reaping and losing incredible habitat; shrimp boat secrets; cobia pass bys; how losing good reef is like losing a friend; it lives in the water, is furry, and has eyelashes; and more.    Connect with Steve and MeatEater Steve on Instagram and Twitter MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop MeatEater MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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First Light. Go farther, stay longer. Okay, Chester's new nickname. It's tricky. It's Chester the Dive Mester. Mester? Well, it's supposed to be Dive Master, but that doesn't rhyme. So, yeah, it's like you got to kind of mash your E and A.

The Mester. Chester the Dive Master. What about dive meister? Chester the dive meister? Yeah, that works. Chester's like a phenomenal freediver now. Chester's like a better freediver than me now all of a sudden. It's not true.

It is true. It blows my mind. What was the day you couldn't really get under the water? You couldn't break get under the water you couldn't like break the day before yesterday so yesterday was what saturday so it would have been friday yeah so friday he can't really get underwater and on saturday he's a 50 foot diver 50 foot hanging out hanging out looking around relaxing What's your secret, Chester? The first day, I was flailing around like shark bait. And the second day, I just was like, I don't know. I just got to relax because I can swim and I can hold my breath.

And I think I know how to clear. So I just have to relax. So I relaxed. And I think I only made three dives, like three or four dives all day yesterday, but like just tried to make sure my heart rate was low and yeah, just relax. And then when I was diving in Hawaii, the thing that hurt the most was I'd go down, and I didn't know how to equalize my mask. And my eyes were getting sucked out of my head, basically. And that was like very, it limited me a lot. Yeah. But now that I just pushed a little bit of air into that mask and relaxed, it was sweet.

And just diving. pushed a little bit of air into that mask and relaxed it was sweet and just dive in so in louisiana there's a muck line and not all the spots but a lot of the spots we were at and you can't see anything so you just it's kind of freaky but you keep swimming down keep swimming down and all of a sudden it's like clear. You start seeing fish around. And then I was able to then watch you guys do what you do, and it just helped. You know, everyone's moving nice and slow and smooth and relaxed.

So watching helped a bunch too. Do you think you're going to give up on walleye fishing now? Nope. This still is going to give up on walleye fishing now? Nope. This still is going to be interesting to you. I think you might try to start hunting walleye. Staying up in a boat, not knowing what's going on down there. All your fancy electronics when you can just go down there and look. Well, you know, I don't think anybody in those walleye circuits scout by diving.

You would learn a lot. Yeah. In my freshwater diving in Arkansas, the walleye and striped bass, everything, you get a complete different perspective of what it's like versus what the rod and reel guys see. For sure. It would be amazing for scouting. Yeah. Brandon, everybody introduce themselves.

Brandon, introduce yourself. Brandon Hendrickson, Ecstatic Sportfishing, Venice, Louisiana. So tell everybody what that is. What is that? Not Venice, but tell everybody what your business is, your line of work. So I run offshore sportfishing charters here. Tuna, swordfish is our primary thing. Love to spearfish though. That's kind of how I got into it. It's been my main thing for years. But you don't guide spearfishing? I do not. I do not guide spearfishing. Only because of liability issues. Got it. Yeah yeah we can't get insurance that'd

be tough yeah is it that you can't or it would make it untenable like it would just be like totally impractical oh i could do it in a heartbeat i get probably half a dozen requests no no i mean from the insurer's perspective like you could but it would just be like outrageous it'd be outrageous yeah it's it's difficult to find the insurance and i mean my insurance is already crazy and it could it would double what i'm already what i'm already paying got it yeah and just make it that it's out too expensive to get clients yeah your average client wouldn't be able to afford it got it so and you were saying spearfisherman or tightwads a little bit? Like more so than two-year fishermen? More so than, yeah.

Very thrifty. I think the average freediver spearfisherman is pretty thrifty. It's a younger crowd. The cost of getting into it is not super high versus, you know, our middle-aged average rod and average ride-a-wheel client. It's a scrappy, more dirtbaggy kind of... Not dirtbaggy like dirty, but dirtbaggy like just a little more... Just a little younger. Sleeping on coaches.

Yeah, it's a lot of young kids. Not like old yachtsmen. They're not yachtsmen. No, not your average one. Greg, introduce yourself uh greg font's distributor for rob allen spearfishing products and that's about it mentor to steve here and there if he listens yeah come on he's the mentor mike uh mike rabe underwater cinematographer uh shot a couple episodes with you guys. This is my first with you.

You prefer to be filming underwater. I do, but I do above water stuff too. Yeah. How long have you been diving for? Since 2005. Oh, really? Yeah. So you didn't grow up with it?

I mean, I always snorkeled in the lakes and stuff. It wasn't until I moved to California. And as soon as I moved, I took a scuba course and bought an underwater camera. That's why I moved to California to be an underwater photographer. Because the school I went to had an underwater photography program. So I left school in UNC and moved to California. So you're a trained underwater photographer? Yeah.

You ever been bit by a shark? Not yet. Almost yesterday. Got close yesterday. Two bull sharks. Justin, have you been on the show before? I have, yes. The Hawaii episode.

Okay, you joined in. I was on that one, too. Another underwater cinematographer. Yep. My name's Justin Tarkoski. I'm an underwater cinematographer. I was on that one, too. Another underwater cinematographer. Yep. My name's Justin Tarkoski. I'm an underwater cinematographer. I'd say camera operator, but I learned the underwater camera stuff later on from Kimmy. Kimmy taught me it.

Yep. Yep. And, of course, Chester, the dive master. Dive master. Chester. He's going to be the next sponsored athlete from Meister. Sponsored from Meister in Greece. Meister. Chester. He's going to be the next sponsored athlete from Meister. Sponsored from Meister in Greece. Meister athletes.

Oh. Carbon fins, wetsuit. Yes. Chester's going to quit working here. He's going to have too many options available to him. Chester, are you allowed to talk about being on the, you and Seth? Seth's got gastrointestinal problems right now and can't join. Are you able to talk about what it means to be the Angler of the Year?

Not that you are the Angler of the Year. We're not the Angler of the Year, but this is for the Montana walleye tour that Seth and I are fishing, which consists of four tournaments in Montana. And ideally, you want to fish them all. So that would up your odds to become angler of the year, which means they take your top three tournament finishes and you get points. And I'm not quite sure how the point system works, but obviously if you do better in the tournament,

you're going to get more points. Um, And we have done two out of the three tournaments that have happened so far. I think we're sitting in 17th place which is pretty good out of quite a few boats, quite a few teams. We have one more left. We get back from this trip in Louisiana. We have a day to unpack repack get the boat rigged get all that stuff say our hellos and goodbyes to our wives and head out to tiber for the last one and if we do well it'd be sweet to place top 10 in anger of the year if we do well it could happen you never know it's great man you guys are tearing it up just fish hard yeah good luck okay you guys got to bear with us while we got

to talk about a bunch of new stuff first off this isn't really news it's like hundreds of years old we recently covered something where we were covering some guys looted an ancient archaeological site in Titewad, Missouri. We got to talking about how did Titewad, Missouri get its name? A listener writes in and says, I thought I'd share the local history on how Titewad got its name as it was taught to me my entire childhood by every old man within 30 miles so tightwad was once of a time once upon a time called edgewood missouri here's how he's got his name a postal worker long ago stops into a local produce shop, fixing to buy himself a watermelon to give to his wife.

You tracking, Chester? There's a big, huge bin of watermelons, and they're priced whatever. He digs through and finds the best watermelon he can find, brings it to the counter. The shop owner tells him, well, that watermelon is unusual for the bin. Unusually nice. Therefore, the watermelon you selected

is actually 50 cents more. The postal man was livid about this and returns to his mail office. The town has like 69 people in it so every time a piece of mail was coming into edgewood the postal worker would scratch out edgewood and write tightwad on it and send it along as a snub to the watermelon salesman. He says in other versions of this story, it was a chicken, not a watermelon. So there's that.

You think that's true? I don't know. I don't know. I got to think about it longer. Every time in the summer, we get into summer summer we always get a lot of letters from people who are having access problems while fishing like real mean people in florida that set up sprinklers and shit to like if you go fish by their dock their sprinkler kicks on or you go to fish by their dock and they go out and turn their boat engine on and idle it to scare away the fish whatever they can do to harass fishermen listener writes in about this now he

he's a respectful chap who wrote in and he's being purpose purposefully vague in his explanation of where this is because he's like for all i know the guy's right but it's a big lake in lake county florida he says there are several springs that feed into canals that connect to this lake. The canal that he's referring to has been a public waterway for as long as he's been alive. And in fact, he knows it's been regarded as a public waterway for at least 30 years. Presumably it was public many decades before that. There's crystal clear water, a lot of hybrid bass, so it's always a popular spot for swimmers and anglers. A single landowner owns both sides of this canal, and he's always been unfriendly, and lately he's been really waging war on users bass fishermen

now he's gone so far as to go ahead and erect a motorized drawbridge to once and for all block the canal huh this guy's like is this an illegal deal now in all fairness i can't tell you that's illegal and i don't know the story uh it's aggressive i mean he's blocking public waters or not right i mean we really have no right time about this because i don't know well it were right but think about it i didn about it. I didn't do my research. Think about in Montana if someone put something like that over a river where you used to be able to get a boat through.

But I don't know that that's the case here. Right. It's interesting to me, but I don't know. Anytime someone tells me a story, it always pisses them off, so usually I don't say it. But you know what I'm always thinking when someone tells me a story? I'm always thinking, it's probably another side of that story. yeah so i don't know two sides to everything if he was more if the if the person wants to write in and be more specific about which canal it is i bet you

we will get a lot of more dedicated vetted feedback about what the legal play is here but with without you saying where this is, it's just too hard. We're not going to be able to go get a bunch of professional opinion on it. We need you to drop a pin. He needs to drop a pin. You can still get a canoe through there. Yep. You can slip a canoe through there.

See that picture. But you don't know if there's going to be some pistol-waving canal owner on the other side of it. On his little drawbridge, he's even on his little drawbridge he's even got like this little extra board hanging down is it connected to the bottom no there's no way uh so yeah you get more specific and i'm sure a lot of people because whenever we do this like people weigh in they're like i know that spot and here's the deal with that spot and you'll get a lot more feedback you guys could probably all sneak through there with your wetsuits on

and no one would ever know. You guys would look like SEAL Team 6 going through there. Now, here's a real super interesting story. It's an old story, but it's been made new again. And I'll make it relevant by saying on on our last episode uh recent episode we had the writer photographer commercial fisherman from alaska seth kantner who as we explained grew up in assad igloo he brought down to our studio whale meat and we enjoyed bowhead muktuk so blubber with a little chunk of skin attached was kind of right now my favorite food um that coincided nearly in time with a real development for the macaw tribe of washington

who is a step closer to this is in northwest washington the macah tribe, they're one step closer to legally resuming the hunting of gray whales. Let me give you a little background in understanding this. The Makah tribe in 1855 signed a treaty with the U.S. government, which ceded a bunch of their historic lands and secured for them certain things, including whaling rights. So they had a treaty negotiation with the U.S. government who never, ever, ever defaults on an agreement that they would be able to continue whaling.

And they did continue whaling they could they wailed until 1928 when they voluntarily abandoned whaling in 1928 now you might be like why would they do that well here's why they did it at that point in time commercial whaling enterprises had greatly reduced whale numbers they were historically harvested harbor seals some other marine mammals but they targeted gray whales there was global efforts at that time to curtail and end whaling and also the tribe had been you know influenced by like americanization programs right Like everybody get on the same program, Great American Melting Pot. So culturally they moved away from it

and there were very low whale numbers and there were global pressures for governments and others to end whaling. In fact, the Macaw quit whaling before some countries ended their own organized whaling programs. Fast forward from 1928 to the mid 90s and gray whale estimates at that time gray whale population

estimates were up to around 20 000 animals so a lot of whales and the macaw announced their intention to resume whaling they were going to resume whaling by getting a whale. But in all that time between 28 and the mid-90s, whales had become like cultural deities. They had become almost, if you want to understand how our culture feels about whales, they revere whales almost as much as they revere dogs. Dogs are the new whales now yeah like you definitely hear save the whales yeah but i mean like dogs like now like you know in the old days like my dad would talk about being made to

go down and and put puppies in a bag with a rock and throw them off the pier in lake michigan jeez to get rid of extra puppies if you had a dog that had extra puppies that's that doesn't fly anymore absolutely not so like like dogs have entered this almost like human class right oh yeah i feel like a lot of people are having dogs and not having kids anymore because they're kind of just satisfied with the dog they don't live they don't last as long dogs yeah you have kids it's like there's still be around you die you get a dog it's like the end's in sight you're like for i'll have this dog for like 13 years then i'll die not a big deal when when our dog dies it's gonna be a bad day in the floyd household really oh your wife's gonna take it

hard she loves that dog more than she loves me. So when they wanted to get back into whaling, whales had entered. Like the Save the Whales thing had become so effective that it had become, people would be more mad about you killing a whale than you killing a person, by far. And they had to put up with that.

So there was kind of like two primary viewpoints came out about tribal whaling. And it came from both sides. It was kind of coming from the right and the left in a way. Where people were like, for the tribe to choose a resumption of, what the tribe was saying is they're saying like we're going to resume this like thing like our culture is based on whaling so we're going to resume

something that has great societal importance to us and we're going to resume whaling as taking up our ancestral culture assuming our ancestral rights um, reestablishing our treaty rights, having a cultural connection to our forebears. These were things that they articulated as being very important to them. And the blowback was varied. The blowback to the tribe came in two ways. One, it was sort of like this idea that if, if you're gonna take up slave trade practices why don't you resume human sacrifices why don't you resume intertribal warfare okay the other take on it was well then you should give up everything that modernity has given to you if you're going to take up whaling then you better give up electricity you better give up basketball shoes you better give up welfare assistance like if you're going

to be like the old times you got to give up all the new stuff and this is like the heat that this tribe took there was more legal wrangling than i care to get into here and to be like too hard to track the whole damn thing but they went ahead and killed whale in 1999 uh people got great glee out of the hypocrisy that they used a traditional canoe with harpoons yet they had backup boats and a 50 caliber rifle that after they harpooned the whale rather than killing it in traditional practices which would have been basically getting up and lancing it behind the skull where the spine hooks up they shot it with a 50 caliber rifle which apparently came on the recommendation of a veterinarian so

people had a heyday with like oh it was kind of traditional but kind of not and how hypocritical and people turned into a fiasco for the tribe they had all the usual suspects right humane society um they had pita on and on totally bent out of shape about them killing this one whale they had to contend with news helicopters. They had to contend with protesters and boats trying to run them down. Just a total disaster for everybody. But they got their whale. A bunch of people got their first ever taste of whale blubber, right?

And then it was given a lot of press that a lot of the whale meat rotted on the beach and they had they didn't know how to take care of the whole thing but they were like stepping back into getting back into this thing a family tried again in 2000 to kill a whale and they were again hounded by news helicopters coast guard was involved apparently a woman was trying to harass the chase was trying to harass the whalers in a jet ski and she got hit by a coast guard boat and was litiginous about that uh again made it a total hassle for them they haven't done any whaling since because they've been waiting on the federal government to give them the okay to resume whaling for real like with all red tape eliminated when they came when they did the marine mammal protection act you had in a for instance native

alaskans have all these carve outs for the marine mammal protection act um siberian eskimos have carve outs for the marine mammal protection act where they're allowed to resume whaling for traditional practices the macaw didn't but for like 13 years they've been doing an environmental impact statement on whether they can get one of these legitimate carve-outs from the feds to do their whaling and they just released an early like a draft of the environmental impact statement which suggests that in early 2023 so coming up early next year they'll get to green light for a six-year period to kill 12 wet to kill 12 whales over a six-year period and now we're in that beloved period of all this shit called the uh public comment period which you always wonder like is anyone who do they listen during the

public comment period the problem with the public comment period is you know they're gonna you know that the save the whales people you know that they're like radical animal rights movement is just going to dominate the public comment period oh yeah it does not sound like a peaceful gathering or comments coming their way by any means no it's like the the the the anti-hunting crowd will dominate this period. A lot of times I always find that like non-native, like non-Native American hunters usually aren't that interested in Native American hunting rights because it's like, because legally it's been set up to, legally it's been set up to legally it's been set up to put at odds right like people

of euro-american descent um often have like your hunt like if you're of euro-american descent your hunting privileges are regarded as much less important than native american or native alaskan hunting privileges which creates a lot of resentment. There's this kind of idea that whatever happens to them doesn't impact me, and if I'm a hunter of Euro-American descent, they're not going to have my back when it comes to my disputes for my rights. That was lightning. Got quite a boomer there. And thunder.

We're in a rainstorm, so if you hear a little the whole time, it's just pouring down rain. Sets the mood. And if someone's of, if you're like a hunter, like a hunter in America

of Euro-American descent, you're going to view like, why do I want to have the, this is a common perception I hear from people, like why would I have Native Americans back on their hunting rights issues? They're not going to view like why do i want to have the this is a common perception i hear from people like why would i have native americans back on their hunting rights issues they're not going to have my back on my hunting rights issues or this is this idea that like it's these two things like native americans are negotiating their hunting privileges in a just a completely different realm than what than what the american population at large is doing to protect and get their hunting rights.

And in fact, often people of Euro-American descent, or let's just say non-tribal, I think it's cleaner to say non-tribal individuals. Non-tribal individuals get their hunting privileges and all their bag limits and everything is set through state wildlife management agencies. And tribal organizations like tribes and tribal organizations often negotiate directly with the feds. So we occupy these completely different realms. We live under different jurisdictions.

So I think that a lot of people would look at like what the macaw have going on with whaling and would just think like what does that have why does that have anything to do with me like why would i care if they can whale um they're not gonna look out for my right to fish in fact their rights to fish often trump my rights to fish so if it's good for them maybe it's bad for me my view on it is if you look at who's opposed to them it's like it's like the radical animal rights movement is opposed to macaw whaling and you know how you often can like pick your friends by your enemies i would just say like the people who are opposing them are not your buddies.

So I reflexively looked at this and I'm like, I hope that they are able to resume their whaling. And that's not, and I don't think that what that means is it might open up whaling down the road to dudes like me. Well, that ain't ever going to happen. Yeah. And it's like,

I would be hesitant to go get a whale for fear that it would be hard to, that, that I wouldn't be able to eat anything but that whale for the rest of my life once you fill the freezer with a whale you need a big freezer you're done hunting and fishing yeah that'd be that'd be a lot i think if they're recovered and if you look at what they're proposing, 12 whales over six years, if it's done responsibly, like great. Yeah. It's just, there's, there's a thing we've been talking about over the course of a couple of days. We've been talking about like, this is a good segue actually to, to these waters. The other day we were i was expressing this view that that the world is more it's sort of like it's wildlife management it has to be considered in

sort of like locally specific areas and it has to be considered in terms of like you have to get down to the gnat's ass on a lot of wildlife recovery issues. We're discussing that globally, right? Like as a collection of species, as a collection of many species, globally, sharks are in trouble. Meaning there are shark species in trouble, like specific shark species are in trouble in specific areas of their range. But that doesn't mean that all sharks are in trouble across the entirety of their range. It's more complicated than that. And I think that the whale movement created this thing that sort of like,

that they've lumped all whales together and they've viewed them globally. To say that a lot of whales are imperiled across much of their range. In the 1980s would have been like a very true statement. Certain whale species were imperiled. Some were imperiled in particular areas of their range and some were imperiled over the entirety of their range. But that in no way meant that all whales are imperiled everywhere that whales live. Yeah, just like the sharks. Just like the sharks.

And you cannot come and make an argument that in Northwest Washington, gray whales are imperiled or that it even has any bearing on global gray whale populations that this tribe were to kill a whale or two every year. It's not an issue. It's just public perception. It's a public perception battle. If a couple killer whales or orcas, they got like rebranded as orcas. If a couple orcas kill a gray whale, it's the greatest

thing in the world. It's going to be like Davidid attenborough be like this is so cool or however he puts it they love it but but a native american tribe kills one it's like oh my god those same people watch it in monterey every year that there's always a couple gray whales get killed by workers there and they it's the circle of life they love it yeah well i think it's it's kind of my mind it's it's interesting because i life. They love it, yeah. Well, I think it's... It blows my mind. It's interesting because I think there's too many times where if like, well, I can't... If I can't take advantage of that resource, I don't want anyone to be able to take care of that or take advantage of the resource. And we saw this in the closure of the abalone fishery in Northern California where you'd go to these DFG meetings and...

Explain what DFG is. Department of Fish and Game, which has now changed its name. California where you'd go to these DFG meetings and explain what DFG is uh department uh department fishing game which is now changed its name but um oh that's right what is it now uh this is a big issue it's so it like there are a lot of state agencies that just have wildlife in them like our our state agency yeah um montana fish wildlife and parks so fish wildlife and parks they never called it game yeah it was always wildlife so no one cares because it's always wildlife but californians resented the idea that fish animals are game so it's fish and wildlife so they changed it to be like well it's like a value judgment you're placing you're saying that like wildlife resources are like game for the taking yeah and so they

wanted to make it wildlife as part of california's grant and i'm not trying to hack on you boys i'm not hacking you boy i'm not hacking on you boys at all yeah i'm just saying that california is gradually but steadily transitioning away from consumptive use. Correct. I would agree with that. There's no example where they're not. Right. They're phasing out consumptive use of wildlife resources. Yeah. And when you look at something like the abalone fishery, you have these meetings after meetings and people would bring in videos of

these areas that are completely healthy. And we're talking about specific areas just because one, one area is unhealthy doesn't mean there isn't an area that's sustainable and that you should be able to harvest from. And you'd go to these meetings and you'd have all the passionate abalone hunters out there. But then I don't even know where these people would come from, but you would have this line of 50 people that would talk about, well, I think we need to close it because I want it to be here for my kids. And I like going to the ocean and whale watching. That's nice, but you're not using the resource. And if you're not using the resource, you don't really understand the resource.

So it's one of those things to just kind of paint broad strokes of, I want it closed because I want it to be here for my kids. That might not actually not be the case. It's one of those things if you let areas be overpopulated or you don't monitor them, they can actually become more unhealthy and collapse even more. And my big issue with that was when they were doing surveys,

they would survey specific sites over and over and over again. They would never go out of those sites and go, okay, hey, what are in these MLPAs? How are the MLPAs doing? They would never survey the protected areas to actually see what an untouched area was doing. So I think it's just interesting that, you know, just, it's just so general of like, oh, this one area is bad. We should shut it down. Or

I don't want you to have it. So I, you know, I don't want to have it. So you shouldn't have it. And it's one of those things that's because you don't actually use the resource. I don't, I'm not going to rush out and go hunt a whale i'll tell you that much if i could it's one of those things that's culturally important to a tribe uh you know that's you know if healthy populations persist then they should be able to harvest one but i do feel that the the whaling spirit resides deep in my humongous though because when we're out fishing and you're like cruising along out to a fishing spot there's a whale out in front of you reaching along I do some part of me is like my god like you just like what like to think of people in a skin canoe oh yeah like to think of people in a boat made a walrus hide paddling up with homemade

tackle made entirely from bone and wood yeah and animal parts paddling up fixing to sink a harpoon into that son of a bitch it's like that is a level, that's a level of grr not often achieved by modern man. Well, I think people discount the amount of effort it takes to do some of these things, right? You know, like, again, the abalone fisher fishing the rigs out here. I mean, hey, you know, put a seven mil wetsuit on and get in 50 degree water that's super murky and go try to get abalone. It's one of those things of of i think people just think everything's easy yeah you know you just go oh you just go out there and go whaling or you know you just go out there and shoot the rigs up or go get abalone or whatever it is and it's just like there's a lot of effort and put

into it it's it'd be impossible to do and it some and in many ways it would sort of subvert democracy and it would subvert the North American model of wildlife conservation but if I was emperor of the world or even just emperor of the country I would enact a system when it came to wildlife management

issues and they got into the public comment period I would send out legions of people to go assign value systems to opinions. And you do an interview process. And my surveyors would go to every American who said like, I have something to said, I have something to say. I have something to say. You'd raise your hand. I'd send one of my researchers to your home,

and they would interview you, and they would assess your education on the issue. They would assess what you had at stake. This is horribly un-American. That's the way it should be. It is, but it'd be the new America. It'd be the new America, but I would find a way to pay for it. I'd pay for it by

Is that the president? I don't know. I'd up fishing licenses. I don't know what the hell I'd do. I'd figure out some way. I'd like steal it from other shit that I don't care about that much. So I would they'd do an interview with you. Like, what is your knowledge, actual knowledge of the issue based on some like, based on like empirical data,

what do you understand? And where does your understanding align with sort of an objective reality as determined by like an impartial group? And then like, what's at stake for you? And then I would rank the importance of your input on a sliding scale of one to 10. And it'd be like the bonus point system in tag allocations.

If you were a 10, your vote counted by 10. If you were a one, your vote counted once. Then I'd do all that shit. Way better program. Yeah, things would be a lot better. Way better. Very un-American. Hey, folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada.

And boy, my goodness, do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew! Our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking a high-end titty there, OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in on x are available for your hunts this season the hunt app is a fully functioning gps with hunting maps that include public and crown land hunting zones aerial imagery 24k topo maps waypoints and

tracking that's right you were always talking about. We're always talking about OnX here on the MeatEater podcast. Now you guys in the Great White North can be part of it, be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function. As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services handpicked by the OnX Hunt team.

Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. OnXMaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. Here's two more things that sort of fit. This is all well-themed. You know, Corinne puts all this, like,

we always have a lot of stuff we want to talk about, and Corinne puts it together. Yeah, she does a good job. She's putting it together. I have observed, and it's been observed by many people that the that the pitman robertson act like which we talk about every episode in some capacity or another has become like this over-observed thing um and it is all the money that ammo buyers and gun buyers, all the money that they put into conservation. And usually some of the groups,

some of the firearm groups and ammo manufacturers who are hit by Pittman-Robertson are most eager to let the public know about what their contributions have been. Federal ammunition, every year we'll release what public expenditures on federal ammunition has pumped into Pittman-Robertson, which is an excise tax on sporting goods equipment.

There's a parallel program in fishing called Dingle-Johnson, so it's like marine fuel trolling motors all kinds of fishing tackle has an excise tax attached to it it's been around pippin robertson been around since 1937 and it was put into effect because hunters and gun owners asked for it to recover american wildlife and now pippin robertson kicks out, you know, like a billion bucks a year for access, disease research, wildlife management, and it all goes as matching funds. So all the guns and ammo you buy, you could be like an anti-hunter in New Jersey who buys a pocket pistol. You just paid into Pittman-Robertson. Funds.

And it's dished out through uh matching grants so for a state to get pippin robertson fund they have to kick in their own money they get that money by selling hunting and fishing licenses okay so they want to do a thing they want to do an access program they want to do a research program they want to put in water tanks to improve wildlife habitat in the desert whatever they're like we got 200 grand for this project we'd like to get 200 grand of pitman roberts some money and they look at everything it lines up with mission and bam they give them the money it's a wonderful program well not if you ask georgia congressman Georgia Congressman Andrew Clyde and his 53 co-sponsors who want to repeal, so Republican from Georgia,

he wants to repeal Pittman Robertson. He's got an interesting argument that I dig the argument, but I just don't like the whole thing. I'll talk about why both. The interesting argument is that he's saying you can't tax a uh you shouldn't be able to tax a constitutional right

and he thinks it's like an that pitman robertson is an infringement on constitutional rights where he's coming from is that there are right now people trying to fight gun ownership and fight second amendment rights with these sort of like retribution taxes against gun owners okay so a democrat from virginia don byer congressman from virginia he's introducing this bill that would put a thousand percent tax, a 1000% tax on semi-automatic weapons. Okay. And also like anything beyond rimfire ammo would be under these huge taxes. All right.

So in trying to fight that, they're like, well, let's just overturn the whole program and get rid of Pittman Roberts, which has been around since 37 1937 that that bill is so i think pitman robertson is so perfect and does so much good and has been around so long i don't think you should go back in time and attack old shit as a way of attacking new shit that's coming from a very different perspective. Remember, it was the hunters that wanted Pittman Robertson. And Pittman Robertson's been serving hunters for that long.

Now, again, hunters aren't synonymous with gun owners. In fact, most gun owners aren't hunters. But look ahead. I don't think you should look past on this, man. It also starts to mess with Dingle Johnson. So, for instance, like electric outboard motors would reduce excise taxes on those from 10% to 3%. There's no constitutional right to have an petroleum motor.

So you pay excise tax on all your spearfishing gear. Sure. It's the same thing. To support fisheries. Yep. An old program that came from the good guys it didn't come from the bad guys i get the argument but i just think it's like it's just i think it's like and he knows it won't pass it's almost like we're like giving it the we're sort of falling into the trap by talking about it because there's no way it's going to pass

but it's like it's politicking it's politicking it's like bringing things up for discussion i think it's a bad idea to go through with this last one i'm gonna get into before we start talking about something else um nope two more things but they both have to do with fisheries sort of there's all these news stories out right now about how i even even read it in the Wall Street Journal, where this guy's all fed up, like, oh my God, now bees are fish. California now says bees are fish. What will happen?

Where will the chaos end? What's next? Here's what happened in California. I'm sure you've seen headlines. If you're a newsreader in the morning, I'm sure you see headlines like, my God, Californians, so stupid. Now they're saying bumblebees are fish.

Well, when they, okay. It's actually an interesting thing. When California built, like it's California Endangered Species Act, they put in place like what could be covered under the Endangered Species Act. And the California Endangered Species Act expressly protects birds, mammals, fish,

amphibians, reptiles, and plants. The California Endangered Species Act does not define fish. However, this is where it starts to get rich. However, the law, the California Endangered Species Act law, is part of the California Fish and Game Code. So people reading the law went in to see, like, when they say fish, what do they mean? Well, we have to go one step deeper and go,

since it's part of California's Fish and Game Code, what does California's Fish and game code mean by fish? If you go into the fish and game code, here's what they mean by fish. They take fish to mean any mollusk, crustacean, invertebrate, or amphibian. Now that definition, mollusks, crustaceans, invertebrates, amphibian. Now that definition, mollusks, crustaceans, invertebrates,

amphibians, doesn't specify whether they're talking about terrestrial or aquatic. Some people are saying the definition of what they mean would definitely include bees, bumblebees,

because bumblebees are invertebrates. Other people are like, but dude, they were talking about shit in the water, man. They were talking about fish. They weren't talking about that. It's like clearly they meant shit in the water like fish, but they would be shellfish, whatever. Snails, shit in the water other people are like no it says

uh any mollusk crustacean invertebrate amphibian therefore under that fish thing we have the ability to say that bumblebees are endangered so what does that mean does that mean you can't swat a bee or else you'll get a ticket? No, what it means is there is a, like however they're going about it, here's what they're after. There is a pollinator crisis. Yeah, I know that.

No one in their right mind, no one, like whatever you want to do, but if you want to do something about it or not, just like no one in their right mind can tell you the planet is not getting warmer every year whether you're going to do how you define who's the blame for that is up for debate what you're going to do about it is up for debate but you cannot argue you cannot argue that the planet isn't getting warmer every year right it's just you can't argue anymore that you can say that i don't give a shit or you can say that it's not my fault but you can't say it's not happening and no one no one does anymore no one's like it's just you can't argue anymore that you can say that i don't give a shit or you can say

that it's not my fault but you can't say it's not happening and no one no one does anymore no one's like it's getting colder pollinators are vanishing at an astonishing alarming rate that's just boy it's just fucking true like i don't give a shit if you want to do anything about it or who you want to blame but that is happening they are i shouldn't say alarming because that's a value judgment pollinators are declining bumblebees are declining if you care or not i i don't know but that's an it's an objective reality so they're trying to find a way to do it who's pissed about it agricultural producers because of insecticides. Insecticide application.

That's why they're duking it out. So when you see a headline that Californians think bees are fish, good lord. That's what that's about. Since we got a couple Californians here, you guys got any comments?

It's just a little more complicated. It's a little more complicated. I ignored it when I heard about it. I was like, yeah, whatever. They've been kicking it around the courts. It'll get appealed again, I'm sure. But currently it stands, not that bees are fish, but that bees are covered as a thing that can be listed

right now as it stands in California bumblebees can be listed so are they saying just bumblebees or bees in general well right now they're worried about seven species of bumblebee do you guys know that honeybees aren't not native to North America

European did you know night crawlers aren't not native to North America. European? Yeah. Did not know that. Did you know night crawlers aren't native? No. When you're way ass up in the mountains and you're in a little meadow and you dig down, there's a night crawler sitting there. That son of a bitch is not native. Where are they from?

Eurasia. Really? Yeah. Canadian crawlers, not Canadian. Isn't that wild? What about the red wiggler? That I don't know about. I have a feeling, and then we will be corrected by a thousand million people,

I have a feeling that the red wiggler is a non-native invertebrate. Would love to know. We'll find out. I bet you some sly telephone user right in our presence would be able to figure out if red wigglers are native or not. One last thing and this is bringing us closer in you'll see that we're narrowing in on what uh we're narrowing our focus uh brandon tell us what we witnessed yesterday by the pokey boats yesterday two

days ago whatever the hell it was we were watching a bunch of commercial uh what's a pokey oh the pokeys those guys were working the menhaden the menhaden fishery it's a pogey? Oh, the pogeys. Those guys were working. The Menhaden. The Menhaden fishery. It's a big thing here. Yep. The Persane. Yeah. The Menhaden. Would it be fair to call it like it's an industrial operation? Absolutely. Like the industrial harvest of Menhaden, which they hear about is called

pogeys. Pogueys. What is it? Three inch? They get up to about five, six inches at full size. With the dots on them? Yes. Yeah, they have a dot up towards the front shoulder. Hunting and fishing type people would look at it and be like, a bait fish. Yep.

It's one of our most common bait fish here. But they use them for, they press them for oil, for fish oil. Yep, fish food, all sorts of, you know, a lot of products. Fish food, pet food. Yeah. They process it. You don't go down to the fish store you don't go down to the you don't go down to the whole foods fish counter and get a couple pogies buy some pogies but pokey sandwich you probably have gotten them in products that you've purchased absolutely uh we had a guy right in so we we do this thing every year with with uh every year a couple times a year we do like a state of the union on conservation issues

with whit fosberg who's the ceo and president of the theodore roosevelt conservation partnership of which i am a board member on a recent state of the union episode we spent quite a bit of time talking about the striped bass fishery all up and down the eastern seaboard of the u.s i know that you guys and just bring it home for you californians you guys have a striped bass fishery as well but that's a non-native population striped bass and in fact a lot of people like to see those go away and they'd like to see the ones where they're supposed to be do better. Striped bass? Yeah.

Oh, yeah. It's a huge debate. Yeah. So it's a non-native, it's like a deleterious exotic in some areas, but on the eastern seaboard of our beloved country, it's the primary fish, it's the primary targeted sport fish. In terms of like man hours spent, striped bass dominates eastern fishing, saltwater fishing. Witt talked a lot about why striped bass populations

are just not doing great and why they're in decline. And a guy wrote in saying, how could he have dared place responsibility for that decline on the shoulders of recreational anglers he points out how i expressed a level of skepticism that how could it be recreational anglers impacting that industry impacting that fishery and he said he was aghast almost fell off his seat that wit didn't talk about the commercial menhaden harvest as being largely responsible for declines in striped bass. Not only that, but cobia, red drum, sea trout, many other species.

We put it to Witt, and Witt thanked us for forwarding the comment along. And he goes on to say, the listener is correct that the menhaden harvest definitely impacts striped bass populations. He says, the current harvest in the Atlantic depresses striped bass populations by about 30%, meaning if it was not, they estimate that if it was not

for the commercial menhaden fishery, striped bass populations would probably sit about 30% higher than they are right now, which is real significant. But he goes on to say, six million fish. So the last year that we have full data is pretty old. This gets into an interesting thing around fisheries.

We have solid data on 2018. Okay, full data on 2018. In 2018, six million fish were killed between the recreational and commercial fisheries. Guess how many were caught by sport anglers? This is astounding. Five million. guess how many were caught by sport anglers this is astounding five million there's not many fisheries like that six million are killed five million are killed by sport fishers that's the united states eastern seaboard you know are we talking about specifically to strike bass or yeah yeah so i yeah. So I'm saying normally there's not even close to parity between commercial and recreational fisheries in saltwater,

meaning you go look at what's the sport catch on said species and what's the commercial catch on said species. The commercial catch far outweighs the sport catch. You go look at salmon, right? If you believe the data. If you believe the data. Some of the data we see here on the Gulf, I don't even believe it. Oh, really?

Yeah. I think the numbers are skewed. Meaning it's more, meaning it's high. You think the recreational has a higher impact? No, I think the commercial sector has a higher impact than what they lead us to believe. Oh, than what is even put out there. Than what they tell us. Yeah.

Maybe that's the case here. But this is what people are looking at the numbers and saying that like recreational fishermen are hitting it bad. Now, what Witt goes on to clarify is that TRCP and many others are very interested in trying to curtail the Menhaden fishery.

Right now, it's managed. It was managed. Like in the gulf for instance right now they don't have good management in place in the gulf of mexico it's managed by how many can they take without totally collapsing the fishery and it's not looked at how many can they take without having major impacts on other fish species And they just need to re, they need to rethink the fishery altogether. He says, Witt goes on to say, they need to shift to an ecosystem management. Well, the current harvest in the Atlantic

depresses striped bass populations by about 30%. Although we have had significant wins in recent years to reduce the allowable catch of manhaden. The Atlantic does have a catch limit for manhattan the gulf of mexico does not have a catch limit and he says what we need to do is shift to ecosystem management meaning that catch limits are now being set based on what the ecosystem needs and not just how many manhaden can you kill before you crash the stock we're also now trying to reduce or ideally eliminate the harvest of menhaden in the chesapeake bay which is the nursery area for juvenile menhaden and striped bass that's been

a big subject here in louisiana over the last couple years. It came up under to vote here about a year ago and it's trying to not eliminate the fishery because we know that that's that's not not possible but try to extend the boundary of how close they are allowed to come to our to our land which basically is our estuary because it is affecting our our trout and our redfish and everything else we saw a dead shark yeah we did was i think one of you guys said most likely the cause of those saners it was right right by where those saners were at they pump out a lot of bycatch yeah most most of these fish that they get caught in there do not survive so it's a big problem um you know there's a lot of people out there fighting for to improve it

and we just have to hope for the best that that will change because it definitely affects the fisher here wick goes on to conclude that every credible study shows that striped bass are overfished and that overfishing is still occurring. He says, as recreational anglers, I'll point out that Witt is an avid striped bass fisherman, we have no choice but to put in strong conservation measures to ensure that we end overfishing and allow stocks to rebuild. Are there any environmental issues that they attribute to the population i mean like in california right we're we're fighting about salmon versus striper versus water temps of the

rivers and salt water intrusion into the delta and loss of the delta so a lot you can kind of pinpoint california stripe populations by environmental changes i think like everything probably probably some like everything probably probably some like everything is like a death by a thousand cuts right i mean with every imperiled fishery whatever you can look and and go numb i think you can go numb by like how many things are contributing right like does warmer water matter um damming irrigation i mean damming destroyed straight bass runs in many rivers right so like damming irrigation um water quality and then you can sort of be like ugh screw it let's not do anything or you can look at like major contributors and try to attack the problem in

some way that makes sense and maybe attack the problem across a wide variety of things i can tell you that wit with trcp is anything but an anti-stripe bass fisherman dude's an avid striped bass fisherman um all he's calling for is like they're they're working their asses on the menhaden issue which is a thing and also that they he whoever people that are doing that need to think about their catch in a way that's pretty common for fishermen to do give me guys theory on sharks i'm not talking about how many sharks around let me put we're jumping that goes back to your your talk about the whaling and how no i didn't even i didn't even mean shark management i just meant like dealing with

sharks in the water oh so yesterday real quick i look i hear a couple yells a couple well we we heard a couple i've never yelled like that before i heard it and i was in the water and a quarter mile away yeah your hearing is a lot better than mine. I couldn't hear all that hooting and hollering. Anyways, once we heard you guys, we got over as quick as there was people in the water. After your photo shoot. There was a lot going on. There was a lot going on.

But what I do recall, I look. Can I set the scene a little bit? Can I set the scene a little bit, Jesse? I'm trying to set the scene. No, you left off all the parts about everything. No, I'm getting Can I set the scene a little bit? Can I set the scene a little bit, Chester? I'm trying to set the scene. No, you left off all the parts about everything. No, I'm getting there. You're going out of order? No.

You're like Quentin Tarantino all of a sudden? This is getting interesting. It's like watching Pulp Fiction. All right, so on. Keep telling the story. These guys are diving in a sweet spot. I had just shot a fish. You left out a part.

You left out a part. You left out a part. You left out a part. Okay, what part? So we have two rigs. Two rigs, side by side. Only about 50 yards apart. And so we put two divers on each rig. Way more than 50. Maybe 75. Let me set the scene.

Then Chester can pick up. When rigged... Give me a minute. I'm going to... Give me a minute. I'm going to go back to the 70s. In the 1970s, they started building big-ass oil rigs out in the Gulf of Mexico. These oil rigs are fish magnets.

They are man-made reefs. And you want to talk about objective realities these rigs create life and create and enhance the fishery normally when you're fishing when you're diving a rig you dive a rig right we're gonna go dive this rig and you go to the rig and everybody that's gonna fish jumps in and dives the rig then you go to another rig it just so happened that our captain, hey, do you know what the difference between a captain and a skipper is? No.

The skipper owns the boat. Okay. Our skipper, Brandon, took us to a spot where we're going to dive two rigs at once because they're so close together that the boat could tend to both people. That was an anomaly well it's not uncommon it's not uncommon but that was this trip it was an anomaly to have two right

next to each other they're normally like spaced far apart correct so we we did that. And not just, a couple people in the water, groups of twos, right? Yeah. Separated by 100 yards. Go ahead, Chester. Well, I'll let these guys go and then I'll end it.

So I don't miss anything. The Oreo. This is coming down. Oh yeah, no. Someone's got to explain the Oreo and then we'll get into the Sharks. Double stuffed. Yeah, so this is an area where we got, got to explain the Oreo, and then we'll get into the shark. Double stuffed. Yeah, so this is an area where we got, we call it the Oreo.

We got dirty water on top. There's a clean layer down underneath the dirty water. It warrants an explanation of dirty water. Dirty water meaning like less than one foot of visibility. You can't see the end of your gun. You can't see your hand. You can't see your hand in front of you. I can't even see my camera in front of my eyes. Yeah, you can't see the end of your gun. You can't see your hand. I can't even see my camera. You can't see the camera.

If someone's breathing up next to you, you might be touching shoulders of them, but only be able to see their hand. Yes. Was that you that hit me? That surface layer of dirty water might be five feet. It might be 60 feet. You don't know until you drop through it. So this area.

That's the top cookie. The top wafer. The top wafer was about 5 to 10 feet at this spot. The frosting. And then it got pretty clean underneath there down to about 50, 55 feet. And then it got dark again. So this is kind of the area we were diving. And they say sometimes there's single

there's traditional and sometimes there's double traditional and double stuff double stuff oreo is a nice big band of clarity this was a double stuffed oreo we were doing once yesterday at that spot we're looking for mangrove snappers and uh greg had greg had been on this rig and had got himself a nice mangrove. We were having a hell of a time over on our rig. Huge school of mangroves. I had been staying on the boat prior to that, letting these guys get a couple of fish, and then Greg got back on the boat,

and he's like, hey, you want to get in? I'm like, sure, why not? I thought you said you wanted to get in i'm like sure why not i thought you said you wanted to get in yeah greg greg failed to tell me he'd also uh shot one that had gotten away yeah i ripped off one and then he chanted one yeah he sort of chummed the waters per se so uh mike and i jumped in uh i did a little test dive to check it out on the first dive. Everything looked good. Lots of fish around. And second dive, went down and found a nice mangrove. Mike's following me.

He's right above me. And pulled the trigger. And I'm fighting this fish, getting it out of the rig. And all of a sudden, from the lower wa lower wafer the dark side here comes the bull sharks two two very grown bulls which would be nine nine footers probably eight nine foot pushing 350 to 400 pounds and that's a big one those are big ones and they were not happy, you know, acting very erratic. So then as we come, I'm fighting the fish, not letting them get to the fish,

but then we get back up into the top wafer where we can't see anything. And so that's where it gets a little scary. And what I see, we hear some yelling. We look over, and I see two men, and they look like wet coons treed. With an arm waving. Screaming. Hanging on to the oil rig. We're hollering.

We're hollering for the boat to come over because we'd like to get out of the water at that point. I've got a bleeding fish. Brandon is up the ladder of the rig. He left you behind. I'm just in the water with my camera because I can't climb up the ladder with my rig screaming for you guys. And there was a little delay. I think there was a

photo shoot going on on the other rig. It did not happen. We watched you guys. No. I watched. You guys were letting drivers into the water as we were yelling. Definitely was. That would not happen. We watched you guys. No. I watched. That's not what was happening. You guys were letting drivers into the water as we were yelling. There's a lot going on at once. So, yeah.

Anyway, we were successfully recovered. But it was a pucker factory of 9.9. That's one of the things that most surprised me about uh this this whole thing of of uh being in saltwater with sharks is that it's not the presence of sharks that matters but it's the demeanor of them absolutely which is like very true of grizzly i'm totally used to that with grizzly bears yeah they're sort of like oh that's a grizzly bear mining its own business yeah doesn't matter that's a grizzly bear that's scared and we dove that we dove the shrimp boats the days before and dealt with hundreds and hundreds of sharks and nobody went crawling back into the boat. It takes a lot to spook me.

No, but big-ass sharks. When they act like that, that's another story. Yeah, I mean, we were on the shrimp boats, and we were getting within, I had a couple bull sharks come within a foot or two of me, and it's just one of those things that you, they're not aggressive, though. They're just being inquisitive.

And I don't recommend, and we spend a lot of time with these things. So, I mean, if you dump me in the woods, I would have no clue how to read a grizzly bear. But I have spent so much time in the water with a lot of different types of sharks that I have a pretty good idea what's going on with them. And for instance, when I got in there, the first day, I didn't know what I was doing. And I, when the sharks came came in you guys were around me but i'd start kicking a little more yeah and like because yeah they feed off your energy if you're if you're fidgeting or kicking erratically or creating bubbles and they were coming yeah coming to check me out where you guys are just calm yep and shortly after you had told me hey it's time

to get out of the water yeah yeah yeah there was there was one bull that was getting yeah a bit bit agitated and you know it's one thing if you're if you're by yourself or you're within another person that's really experienced with sharks but uh yeah when you have that many people in the water you gotta just kind of call it safe and not have to worry about it there was a thing that also reminded me of grizzly bears which is uh you and i were swimming back to the boat one time yeah and a in a big bull shark came up behind you yep and i was screaming and yelling to you yep and then he left and then he came up behind me and you literally pushed me out of the way and charged him.

That's mentoring. Yeah. I was there for you that time. You were there for me. Like, I almost like swam over me and ran at him and he like took off. Yeah, and that's so...

Which surprised the shit out of me. You know, if they're not in a feeding mode, they're just cruising around looking at stuff and they don't see people all that much out here and it's one of those things of if you think of it this way if you're kicking away from it especially with like carbon fins and a you know a spear gun and all that stuff they're you look pretty big you look pretty big but they're also like what the heck are you so if you're swimming away from them they're just gonna like keep on going what the

heck's swimming away from me and um he wasn't being, he was inquisitive. I wouldn't say he had any aggressive body language. No, but just like too close for comfort. And they get to a size where like, if they bit you, it'd be a big deal. Oh, bull shark. If a bull shark lays into you, you're in trouble. Yeah.

No, those aren't a shark to joke around with. So yeah, you got to square up on them. And it's one of those things of last, the last thing you can do is a bailout. you have a spear gun you can you can poke it away which will generally get them to kind of go away but sometimes it'll piss them off a little bit but yeah you gotta you gotta square up on them let them know that you gotta think you're you know say six feet tall with three foot long fins you're nine feet long you're pretty imposing uh you just gotta kind of not show that you're trying to either

flee or you're not scared of it yeah mike you had a when we were watching the bull shark footage yesterday you had an interesting observation about their call you said they're cautious oh yeah sharks are i think it was i did a Guadalupe trip and did great whites. And the sharks would never come in close. It took them a long time. They'd swim around. They'd swim under. And they'd watch us look this way.

And then they'd sneak in because if they get hurt, they're going to die. So if a shark has an opportunity and it thinks that it's good it's gonna take it but otherwise I feel like they're pretty cautious and calculated yeah observation like if he gets messed up he's dead yeah they can't afford they can't afford to lose an eye or something like that yeah exactly yeah so they're not looking to be dumb yep no and they're old I mean big ones are old yep yeah they're they've been around yeah they don't they got that way by not making dumb mistakes what's an old shark depends on yeah i don't know the lifespan of a bull shark yeah great whites are pretty long-lived well some of the green like

greenland sharks and stuff like that they're extremely old i think a great way can be like 30 years old ish something like that do that research. Just to catch up, the red wiggler is native to Europe. How about that? Yeah, so I was looking here real quick. According to the Chesapeake Bay program, haven't heard of them before, 14 years for a bull shark?

Is average? Life expectancy. Life expectancy. They can live to be at least 14 years old they grow awful fast then yeah now the oldest so the oldest known bull shark 32 average of 16 years in the wild it seems like a lot of things in the ocean life spans about spends about 30 years bigger animals chester doesn't look good for your ass life expectancy of things in the ocean i know why sea bass is a 30-year lifespan too i got two more years what are the um what are all the kind of sharks you see in this in this environment like like brandon how

would you describe like like sort of like ecosystem-wise you would say we're in the Gulf, we're at the mouth of the Mississippi but in the salt water? As far as what type of sharks do we have here? Where would you say we're at, right? On a planetary sense.

Louisiana. No, I know. You start out like geopolitical,ical dude i'm not talking about geocity mississippi river delta you start like you start into a delta that turns into a full-on ocean right yeah and then you motor out how many miles and you hit the ledge well here around venice we're as close to the continental shelf as you can get in the Gulf of Mexico. That's what makes our fishery, well, that and the river delta so special. Our proximity to close to deep water and to the loop current. So we have shelf rigs and we've got all our near shore rigs that are being fed by the

delta. So you've got a lot of nutrients coming out, a lot of bait, which feeds the fishery. And then proximity to that 1,000 foot. And your very close proximity to that deep, deep water, to that loop current that also then pushes the pelagics and things like that in. Is there a lot of natural reefs, or is it a lot of mud because of the delta and and stuff coming in we have very little natural reef here we have a

some more more to the west but um mostly mud and then we've got the oil rigs so the oil rigs have are man-made reefs basically i want to get into that you want to get into that now sure there are in the gulf some estimate of 5 000 oil rigs i don't know for sure on the number but that's that sounds feasible that's what our research turned out i'm sure someone could tell you down to the down to the down to brass tax but at some point i'm sure that was was accurate so around 5 000 they're uh they became very popular like however one felt about offshore oil extraction in the gulf and fossil fuels and all that you can't get around one fact is that the rigs created a lot of sea life accessible sea life accessible fisheries

congregate around the rigs so as rigs are brought as these all these 5 000 rigs are being brought offline taken out of production as they've moved operations or whatever the hell there's been a big question what to do with all these things and they're enormously popular with fishermen at a time they had the rigs to reef program correct that came about in the 80s and they they've done a bunch of things with rigs so i'm gonna try to just based on my understanding from talking to you guys and others and reading um they toyed with like trying to make them not a navigational hazard so cutting them off what 50 feet down 60 feet down i think it varies a little deeper than that typically i think about 75 feet is about, 75 AD is about as below the water level.

So the biggest vessel could- Or even deeper. Even deeper. So the biggest vessel could pass over- Correct. And not tag the top of the reef. So it's out of the way of shipping. Correct.

But it's down there providing fish habitat. They've also messed with just, many they can just tip over. It's in deep enough water where you tip the whole thing over at its base, and they would dynamite them. And that created a lot of controversy because that kills every damn thing on the rig. Yeah, they'd have these huge just miles of fish just floating, which was... Rather than cutting them off at the base,

they would dynamite the bases and pull them over. That was something of the past. They've gotten rid of that. The blasting. Yeah. Now they cut them off. They shear them off, cut them off, whatever. And then during the Obama administration, they started the Idle Iron.

Idle Iron Act. Which was a push to just altogether wholesale remove them. And as your deckhand put it, when they're done, there's not even a beer can. Yeah, return to natural state. On the bottom. Correct. It's all hauled to shore.

They'll run like a heavy-duty trawl over the area when they're done removing it to make sure they got rid of absolutely everything. Even subsurface. They cut it down subsurface. All the way to the mud. If not below.

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months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet on x maps.com slash meet welcome to the to the on x club y'all and i think last year alone they removed like a couple hundred rigs out of the gulf i think uh i heard our friend ronnie and uh he's got a good friend who works in that in that business of actually removing these he said they were scheduled to take out another 150 this year yeah i've heard 150 to 200 a year there's boats out plying the waters called rig reapers yep and they've been doing destroyers they've been doing

that they've been doing that in texas for years texas the landscape of the fishery has completely changed they don't have many rigs over there anymore yeah and you'll pull up on i we pulled up on rigs that you had on your gps to find that it was gone it was like that scene in star wars and they go to that planet that ain't there anymore yeah because the death started like blowing it up they get there like it's gone yeah and it happens fast habits fast i would be like i was fishing here a couple weeks ago yeah this is not there anymore like it's gone that's why just to put it into perspective too on the life around these which i was so surprised at when i was i didn't have gloves on one day and you can swim up to these and hang on to them and kind of rest and i had my hand on these barnacles which are like heavy duty barnacles yeah anywhere from a penny to like a big silver dollar kind of size maybe a lot of them um and they have holes inside of them and

i had my hands on there and i was like i was like what the heck's going on was there a crab inside of one of them i was getting bit by little fish and yeah everything you put your hand on it's live justin has a video where you can see like five of these little fish just sitting in those holes. So it's cool to put it into perspective. You can see anywhere from the smallest little microorganisms, then it gets these small little fish, attracts bigger fish to eat those fish, and it's just all the way up to bull sharks and goliath grouper. It's just this whole ecosystem.

Each one is a reef from the tiniest organism to the biggest it's it's its own ecosystem and presence of presence of sharks is a healthy ecosystem yeah they're very healthy i mean if you if you were to see and you could go to a lot of places in the world and not see the life that's on these things. It's a very, very healthy ecosystem. And when they remove them, it's completely gone. What is the main argument? Do you guys know of why they want these out just to return it to a natural looking state? I don't think you're going to get a clear answer. I think there's a lot of theories.

I think there's a lot of money behind it. I think there's a whole industry being fed by making millions off of removing these and the scrap value. There's no way the scrap value pays for pulling those things out of the water. But the cost to pull them, they're also getting paid to pull them out of the water. Oh, yeah. The industry of recycling them. There was Lena, which was one of our very, it was a deeper water rig.

It was about 1,000 feet of water. It was removed a year and a half ago, two years ago. Yeah, I dove it right before they removed it. And I believe that the numbers I saw that the cost to remove it was $2 billion to remove it. And that only, they just took the top deck off and then they cut it at the base and teetered it over in a thousand feet of water. $2 billion. So there is some serious money involved yeah but i don't but the people tasked with removing them are not driving the policy

i don't like i'm pro-rig i think they should be left as habitat i do too and i put a look like i said i told you my oh i'll share with. I'll share again my solution. Cut off whatever number, 50% of them, 75% of them, but then put them all in a pile somewhere else. So cut three off and pile them on top of every fourth. Make a reef. This subject's been revisited over. I mean, when this started happening and there was a lot of people that were very passionate about fighting against it because

you know as you lose a rig that you've been diving for x amount of years and then it's gone and you know how much life's on that rig and i think a lot of people would would agree if if some of like you know the environmental groups or you know you know people that are passionate about conserving nature were to drive any of these things they would go why are we removing these things but obviously there's there's something bigger at hand here i mean it's not like the the the divers that dive them are just passive about them being removed yeah there's been a lot of fighting and research and um it's not like they didn't try to put up resistance oh yeah i don't want i don't want to seem like i'm underplaying like right anyone's

anyone's stake in the game or like how it's been approached i but i but i if i had to get in the mind of um like like get in the mind of their side of it it would be that this sort of ideal and like this idea in certain political circles that sort of like like that mining drilling infrastructure is bad and that when you come in and do an operation like a coal mine oil drilling whatever it is that in the end you um you do your remediation right right you bring it back as close as you can to what it was before you did it and that is driving sort of like the reduction of this then you probably have also like people can probably make a case that it's like human health hazard because as they decay they could fall over a boat could hit them so

they got that and they're weighing that and um obstructions on the bottom of the ocean for current uses and later uses and so like and that's driving the conversation and that people who are looking to the fishery are being undervalued or their input isn't being listened to. Yeah. There's definitely a lot of things at play. Yeah. You got to...

You're looking at the oil industry, right? I mean, that is a massive animal. It's one of those things of... You could be passionate about a recreational activity but i mean yeah at the end of the day you're not going to have the funds well it's a lot more than a recreational activity i mean you're talking about an entire fish well it's an industry down here it's an industry as far as sport fishing goes sport sport fishing uh charter

fishing the recreational side the commercial fishery you know you remove all of these out of here then it's going to completely change that whole industry yeah across the board it's a little bit like an unintended consequences thing oh is it i don't think anyone probably maybe i maybe some biologists and maybe some biologists when they're putting all that stuff in maybe some biologists is like someday this is going to be a fish mecca because of all of the reef habitat you're creating a lot of the remediation you're talking about maybe when it comes to like coal mines and things like that uh this is different because the what has resulted has been what has been left from it is a positive they've created something positive by building these they've created a new ecosystem that is

wonderful that's different than like drilling a coal mine and then just leaving it as is this is a positive yes there is a navigational hazard are there ways we could could go about uh fixing that and yet still maintaining that ecosystem. Well, I think electronics is taking care of that problem for you. I would think so. I mean, everything is on the map. We run radar. Everybody's got eyeballs.

The type of ships that they're worried about hitting these things have the electronics and the technology to avoid them. And there's giant horns on all these rigs so yeah i mean it's one of those things that um no it's it's trust me it's the the fight has been going on for a long time it's just not gaining traction how they're putting new rigs in because not really really so we the only ones the only ones I see going in are deep water. The floater rigs out there? Yeah, you got some deep water ones.

They're drilling new wells out there. Because those drill ships that we were near are just basically idle? Those are sitting idle right now. Those are waiting to be deployed. Huh. So the drill ships that are active are out in three four or five thousand feet of water right now drilling new new wells and the big thing with these rigs is that and you saw it not every rig is as good as you know there are some rigs that have been removed

that were in i mean alina i was lucky enough to dive l it and it was this massive structure that was absolutely amazing. It was right there on the shelf. It had coral, tropical fish. It had everything on it. It was, it was amazing. Yeah. Yeah. I was lucky enough. I did. My friend Joe Wegman took me on a deep scuba dive there just to see, you know, as a free diver, you touch the surface of it. And then when you do like a deep scuba dive on these things, it's just amazing.

I mean, the size of the Amberjack and the size of the Red Snapper and everything, it's just, I mean, it's from top to bottom life. And the size of the tiger sharks from what I heard. Very big tiger sharks, very big tiger sharks. On those big deep water rigs. Yeah. Well, they're around, but like on this, the biggest tiger shark

I've ever seen was off of Lena I mean it was it was like a scene out of Jaws just yeah I did a triple take on it so how many feet deep was that one it's in the thousand it's in the thousand feet so you're saying if you

it's at a thousand feet but if you dive down a couple hundred feet you're still encountering more and more and more fish down that deep so i think we did a we did a deep scuba to about 230 and it i mean it didn't didn't stop really everything got bigger the deeper you went i mean this this amberjack had i mean it's just these huge jowls it's the biggest amberjack i think i've ever seen it was just just a monster. It was just, I mean, it's all out of reach for freedivers. You're talking about like 100 plus? Oh yeah, well over 100. With smaller ones behind it and Red Snapper and Grouper and I mean, that's all.

Yeah, it's just amazing. Like you said, if you went somewhere and just did a reef dive that looked like these rigs look, I mean mean it would be absolutely jaw-dropping well that's why i had asked brandon i'm like why don't i see more scuba operations around because this is like the ultimate place to scuba dive if you want to see fish and then you brought up the the liability issue yeah huge liability issue and people you know people that are really experienced rig diving dive these rigs and have issues so it it's one of those things. What are the issues you run into scuba diving? You get hung up. Well, one, it depends on how deep you're diving.

But a lot of people push it on these rigs and do deep scuba and they get narked out or they don't do proper decompression times. Why is that peculiar to rigs? It's the spearfishing side. Yeah, the spearfishing side. The spearfishing side. spearfishing side you're in deep water you know you might be scuba diving a 400 it might be 400 feet to the to the bottom yeah you can easily lose track of how deep you are yeah got it and the water's so crystal clear right you saw some of it's just you can keep on going and like oh shoot you know i'm

a couple hundred feet you know know, 200 plus feet down. And then you got the variability of our water with that dirty water on top. You know, it doesn't necessarily attract your average recreational scuba diver. And then the cross currents are an issue too. I mean, there's people that get blown out of these things, right? There'll be a top current going one way, they'll drop down and then the current will be going the other way and then you know say you're you shoot a fish or the some of these currents like we were

lucky these currents were pretty um calm when we were in there but they get really going and you'll get blown out of the rig yeah if you're doing a like a safety stop on the way up on a scuba and you're let's say you're off the side of the rig, you could easily pop up half a mile away. We have these free dive and scuba spearfishing rodeos every summer. Just a couple summers ago, we had

a diver lost. Fortunately, he was able to be recovered, but it was quite the mission. He just came out too far from his boat? Yeah. He was doing a safety, and that cross current got him. Yeah. So when you're doing these deep scubas, right, if you drop to 200 feet, you have to decompress at a certain point.

So say you do a safety stop at 50 feet or 30 feet, and the current is so strong that you get pushed out of the rig into the open water. Well, you have two choices. You either surface and get narked. You have to go into the decompression chamber or you continue on your safety stop

and then pop up, which can be a long ways away. And the surface, so the boat, the current at the surface may be different than what it was down where that diver was at. So the boat's going to be looking down current, thinking that the diver's over here. So the boat's going to be looking down current

thinking that the diver's over here. Well, he's not. He actually went that way. So that creates a whole other hazard. Got it. Is it hard to hang out on the surface with those tanks? I guess you ditch the tank. Oh, like if you'd blown out?

You wouldn't ditch the tank. You'd blow your BC up. Oh i see and you just you could float but but you're just bobbing yeah i mean who knows it's gonna be you're pretty small out there in a big big ocean yeah no the other danger that i was uh never used to is having to ascend with my hand above my head because the water seems so clear it's just like you can reference where you are you can look up but then that whole murky layer oh yeah you know you could be running into different things like you're saying like offshoots of the rig and that kind of was a nervous factor every time you're going up you know there's a try to swim away there's been a lot of divers that have been been killed that way you know hitting their head

on the way up oh really like oh now it knocks you out and then knock you out and you sink how much like like how much of a trade secret how well can you basically describe the whole shrimp boat thing shrimp boat thing there is a thing called a shrimp what yeah i think yes it's very well known yeah it's very well known it's very well known i can't talk too many details. You don't need to talk too many details. But if you go behind a shrimp boat, there are fish behind them. Okay.

Look around. And why are those fish behind those shrimp boats? There's a lot of bycatch that the shrimp boats offload. And shrimp heads? A lot of shrimp heads. Because they head all the shrimp. In all manner of everything else. Everything.

Shit, man. I think it's a 10 of 1. A couple turds. Yeah. There was a couple turds. Taka agua. Yeah, coming out of the vessel. And then just like, holy shit, the fish.

There was a lot of fish. We were blessed to find some of those anchored up moored up shrimp shrimp boats i think they were taking the day off probably just shrimping at night and uh got a little bit of chum and if you go to the right one there's fish can be fish there can be fish more often than not you got to hunt around it's not every everyone that's for sure yeah and uh i came down here with i mean i had you know i'm not like i don't i seldom go to do something where i'm like i'm my goal i wanted to get a kobe uh-huh um i wanted to get a kobe real bad it's like a kind of a sort of almost one of my favorite

fishes definitely one of my favorite fish made my favorite fish. You got a little tease last year, right? I missed one last year. It kind of like almost like ticked him a little bit. It made like a little noise. Yeah, it was close, I think. I went down in the water and then like looked up and somehow, I don't know where he came from, out of the murk.

He was right above you. I was behind you and he came right above you. He passed like over my head and I remember holding on the bottom of his throat like under his jaw yeah and touched one off and like it made like a slight sound as it deflected off the side of his of himself yeah and i was tantalized i was titillated titillated and uh this year we jump in. I was like, oh, you know, at some point I'd like to get a Cobia, you know. Everything happens fast underwater. Yeah.

But I jumped in the water and all of a sudden just like there is a Cobia. Yep. They're inquisitive. In my face. So. Like coming in to hang out. To do a pass by. Noise, bubbles, thrashing. Came in noise do a pass by noise bubbles

thrashing came in to do a pass by Yep, and I got a Kobe but too quick I Got it too easy. Was it too easy? Right now. I'll say that is too quick to stick and then I got another Kobe those also too quick. I Just say I try again So I think what I want is I wanted i wanted to dive down and have him come by a bunch of times and i dive down and you come by a bunch of times and i dive down and i'd get a shot but it doesn't go like that no call him in yeah oh the one you shot was a a writer on

one i had my second one your second one yeah yeah i shot a kobe that was chasing greg's shot kobe which happens and then i uh the first shot of kobe was chasing your kobe the first kobe i shot just came came blasting through that was on a shrimp boat huh yep yeah that was a big one too it was a nice one yeah so i scratched that itch and ranella family lore uh my mother there's like old black and white photos where my mother when she was a a young woman caught a big kobe in mississippi and that's an often talked about thing it's often probably because there's an old black and white photo of it. So it got like, you know what I mean? It kept its, it has traction over the years. It was the Colby I caught in Mississippi.

So now you need to get the Steve in front of the shrimp boat in a black and white with a Colby. And put it in front of there. So we targeted Colby. Red snapper management here is interesting. We targeted a red snapper where last year when i was here yep it was correct me if i'm wrong friday saturday sunday yes friday saturday sunday is a recreational snapper two two per day 16 inch minimum or 18 it was two per day last year it went to three this year it is 16 inch 16inch minimum. 16-inch minimum. So you can target red snapper Friday, Saturday, Sunday.

And on holiday weekends, like 4th of July, you also get the Monday. Oh. Or the Thursday if it happened to fall on that holiday. So we targeted those. Mangrove snapper is much more liberal. Yeah. Seven days a week ten a day ten a day within your there is a cumulative aggregate so you could have let's say three red snappers and seven mangroves

to make an aggregate you can't have three reds and ten mangroves yep very similar like waterfowl is managed that way it will'll be like six ducks, not more of which, right? Yep. No, no, no,

no, no, no. And then we, then I kind of talk about the last thing we targeted. Yeah, of course I can. Sure.

We targeted triple tail. There are pictures. We targeted triple tail, which sport rod and real people get a little touchy about because they want that to be just for them. That's okay. They didn't see the lily pads we found them. It's not like a general spot. You just have to go find the spot.

Yeah. Much guarded. A guarded secret. Triple Tail spots. We target Triple Tail spots. That's really something dirty water like so dirty it's just you can how can i even describe like the best you can see is to kind of get like if you're looking up if you're down at 20 feet looking up toward the sky you see shadows you see no fish detail it's a shadow yeah everything is just like anything you might see is like it's either mud or kind of a shadowy it's very spooky it's not it's like rummaging

around it'd be like rummaging around in a dark closet with a really shitty flashlight it's pretty close and there's a guy there that wants to be in the head with something there's a guy somewhere and there's a guy while holding your breath somewhere there's a guy with a bat and they hit you in the head and you gotta hold your breath some big bull sharks yeah yeah that's the guy with the bat yeah that's the guy with the bat i like that you came on the boat and you're like that ain't for the faint of heart it is really intimidating really intimidating yeah yeah i've had i've taken a couple of close friends that have dove all over the place to do that and they did one dive and they're like nope

right back in the boat i would have i would have dove down if someone wasn't saying it's possible out of dove down and said you like what's the point you're like absolutely cannot do it you cannot do it that's how we target them we find the lily pads in the right depth of water and they're right underneath them. You had to push the large mouth out of the way. So out of washing out, washing out of the delta, our uprooted water, you like this?

There are massive, which is true, big huge chunks of lily pads. Floats them. Yes. Everyone caught. Like huge chunks of lily pads. Yeah, absolutely. Like boat size caught. Like huge chunks of lily pads. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Absolutely. Like boat size, and they're coming out of the delta, and they get out into the muddy water of the delta, and this attracts a lot of life. Weed lines. It's just like the mahi. It's like the sargassum weed lines. It's just the near shore version of it,

that the mahi would be offshore, but you'll get the triple tail and small jackfish under the lily pads and they are in some muck yeah they are in dirty water very intimidating yes sneaky I didn't I didn't even follow Steve with the camera because I'd just be bumping into him the whole time because I had to stay so close to him so yeah he had to go with the GoPro yeah yeah making me nervous yeah we had a plan originally we were gonna ride on my back hang on to your belt while we explored around in the dark that was good that was awesome um i don't really know because i don't know but i mean this has to be uh i mean this has to be up there with the richest fisheries.

I think so. I mean, I've been all over the world. You hear that band around Southeast Alaska is sort of the richest marine ecosystem on Earth, like that latitude band. Yeah. In terms of just pounds of life the water supports when you get into plankton on up right like like per unit of space pounds of life that it supports is is high

yep and in some areas like you know people might think of like hawaii like so many fish right but hawaii like you have areas offshore in hawaii which are regarded something as a desert yep it's like something of a marine desert. Massive, massive amounts of very deep water inhabited by very few fish. They're there, but they're concentrated in select places. If you didn't know what you're doing, you could go along. You could spend a ton of time drifting along on the surface, staring down and not see shit.

Like out in the middle of the pacific yeah even though you think like oh tropical no one around must be loads of fish that doesn't necessarily mean there's loads of fish everywhere um but here man it's incredible the gulf the gulf is incredible it is it's one's one of a kind. That's why removing the rigs is such an issue because it's a special place. And every time you come down here, you need to enjoy it because the next time you come back, that rig could be gone. And it's one of those things of it's... You can come down here and take a lot of it for granted,

but it's one of those things of... Some of the first rigs that I dove are now gone. And it's one of those things of... Yeah, you some of the first rigs that I dove are now gone. And it's one of those things of, yeah, you have to have to enjoy it while you're down there. Ronnie, Cajun Ronnie, who's been on the show before, he described losing rigs as, he said, it's like losing a friend. Yeah, it is. To lose a good rig.

I wonder what it was like here before the rigs, like the historical data on it. I'm sure they're the same fish, but not the same fish. Yeah. I think they were just obviously, we have a few reef areas, so I would assume that they would be more congregated to those small reef areas. Probably spots that were spectacular.

Yeah. I mean, I've seen some pictures going back to like the 50s, but mostly of like tuna and things that they caught back then, which the rigs aren't necessarily that relevant to the tuna fishery. I mean, they are to a certain extent now because it concentrates them so we can go target them. But back in those days, I think maybe before the rigs, it was more of a trolling.

You know, you'd go out, troll a rip, things like that. But now the rigs are what's attracting them. I just think they hold the bait. Yeah, at risk of beating the subject to death, I think you have to, whatever it was before, let's say you could go back to 1900.

You go back to 1900 and we had some kind of baseline date about the fishery in 1900 i don't know that that's come like that's not necessarily coming back you know like removing the rigs isn't going to return that because of because of why because of a thousand things it could be better now like it well you don't even want to yeah it might it might be better now with the rigs but if you look at like like someone even if someone did come and say like oh no no no it was spectacular and the red the red the the red snapper fishery was amazing in 1900 okay but shit's changed since 1900 i mean you have uh a lot of industrial pollutants that

come down the river you have habitat degradation in other ways you have over overfishing in international waters i don't know on and on and on and on so i don't know that's come back but what is working right now it's like what's working right now is the guy the rigs yep so it's like to to think that to chase something you're the even if someone said it was great 100 years ago it's like there's no guarantee that that's where you're going if you have a thing that's like a bright shining spot right now hang on to what you have it's good totally tell you what's not working right now here is our shark problem we have a serious shark problem offshore uh you guys didn't see it where we're out of balance it's way out of balance because there's absolutely no shark fishing beyond three miles.

Like it's illegal. Correct. There's no commercial shark fishing. There's no commercial shark fishing whatsoever. And it has gotten out of balance now. We're dealing with certain areas where we, you know, let's say you go tuna fishing. You hook 10 tuna. You'd be lucky if you land one.

All the other ones got eaten by sharks. It's really a problem. I'm not saying that they need to cull them, but they need to bring some kind of balance back down. Take a more localized approach to the management. Yeah, exactly. Open some areas where they're doing great. Yeah, that's what I was talking about.

More localized management of it would be ideal. Florida's having the same problem. I mean, they're having a shark tournament in Florida this week because of the same thing. And they're getting a lot of blowback. There's a lot of people that, I mean, there's a lot of people that have never even been in the water that, because they watched Nat Geo, they have this opinion on sharks,

and they watch too much Shark Week. My Instagram blew up last night because of that shark tournament in Florida and all the shark people I follow. I love sharks, but if there's an issue with too many sharks, then it's like in California. I talked to a marine biologist that studies all the sharks, the great whites, and he said that in recorded history, there's never been so many sea lions on the California coast than there is now. And the sea lions are an issue.

They're never going to go or do anything to the sea lions, but because they're furry uh people you don't like them too much yeah furry charismatic megafauna it's got eyelashes no if it's got eyelashes and lives in the water and blinks people's and can you imagine if it blinks uh so brandon tell people how to, even though they can't book a spearfishing trip, that's just your recreational passion. Yeah.

You can get a hold of me. Yeah, to go fishing. Yeah, Instagram, Spear Brando, or Ecstatic Sportfishing, either on both of those, or Brandon Hendrickson's uh sport fishing and spearfishing on facebook i gotta warn you though you gotta be ready to be in a boat with a guy that wants to catch fish brandon savage no messing around yeah i do like to catch if you don't want to catch fish go somewhere else but you want to like be very focused on the capture of fish i would go to this guy yeah it was great brandon thank you it's fun like like hanging out these great you learn a lot um

you're you're intense about your discipline which i think when people are paying to go out somewhere that's what they expect and you produce look at how much i hope so my fish yeah we crushed it every day yeah we had three days of amazing amazing weather amazing diving we had a good team of good divers too yeah but i imagine as a guide like you'd expect say like you're versatile meaning like you're going off you're obsessive about current information yep not the way the water's flowing which is part of current information but you're interested in like what's going on with the weather what's going on with water temperatures water clarity be flexible do right there's a lot of that don't work you do that if that don't work you do that that don't work you

do that like there's a lot of things all the stuff you need to be to be like good at fishing yeah as your deckhand put it there's two kinds of people in this world there's fishermen and those that wish they were. There might be a third out there. I think I met a couple, but... Does that cut bait? Isn't that just... Tell that to Chester. And then you got your chummers. You got Chester the chummer.

All right, thanks. And tell folks where to find you, Greg, or where to find your product assortments. Yeah, it's roballendiving.com. So anytime you look up Rob Allen spear guns, something will pop up that has to do with me. And if you have a question about Rob Allen stuff and you're in the U.S. of A, you'll probably wind up talking to Greg. Yeah, if it's in the U.S., you'll end up talking to me or my wife or one of the guys at the shop. And then if it gets fed to South Africa, it'll probably get sent back to me okay so you'll probably get you'll talk so if you email someone

in south africa they'll want you want to talk to greg anyway yeah and uh mike you i imagine because you're a photographer and all that you're on social yeah uh rabe photo and rabe photo.com so spell it for people r-a-a-b-E-P-H-O-T-O If you need a picture of something taken underwater I'm your man. He's your man.

And Mike's working on a cool White Sea Bass documentary right now. documentary. Yeah. Pretty cool. Actually at the end

of this month hopefully I'll be done filming and then on to editing and hoping to have like a premiere this winter December, January

and then I'm going to submit to film festivals. You're going to call it All About White January, and then I'm going to submit to film festivals. You're going to call it All About White Sea Bass. So I'm going to do like a photo, a contest on Instagram and see what people, names people can give me. And the winner will get a print. I just haven't done it yet. Sweet.

Because I don't know what to name it. A White Sea Bass documentary. That is the hardest part. It's like soup to nuts on white sea bass, right? Yeah, it would be like behaviors, and then it would be human impact. From the natives to gill netting to the recovery of white sea bass.

Yeah, natural history. They stopped gill netting in 92, so it's been 30 years. So it's kind of cool. It's 30 years of lifespan of white sea bass. So we're kind of seeing what gill netting, the stopping of gill netting, what it's done of cool that's 30 years of lifespan ycbs so we're kind of seeing what gill knitting the stopping of gill knitting what it's done oh nice and yeah the gill net decimated ycbs and uh justin yep married to kimmy warner so if you go look at kimmy warner stuff it's

mostly taken by justin yeah you can find me at kimmy Swimmy on Instagram. Just kidding. No, but we do. Yeah, I'm on Instagram too, Cinematowski. But we have some exciting things coming out with Meat Eater coming out this fall. So working with my wife, Kimmy, on that and my son, Buddy, on that too. And so this fall, there will be some cool episode series and videos and things like that. All right. And then Chester the Dive Master. I'll be here.

Still at Musky Chat. Musky Chat. Did you know Tommy Edson, after he came in and did trivia and performed so well, the guys at work have dubbed him the Blue Collar Scholar. I love it. Did he change his at? He went and secured the, he went and secured the, yeah. Did he really?

The Blue Collar Scholar. The Blue Collar Scholar. Fork truck driver, trivia master. Did he change his app? He went and secured the blue-collar scholar. Fork truck driver, trivia master. I like it. All right, everybody. Thanks a lot. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law, but hear this. OnX Hunt is now in Canada.

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