SPEARBOARD OPEN 2007

[Shooter]

First dive of the day is the U. SS curb at 185 feet to the sand.  Â  It takes us a couple at times to anchor up on the wreck.  The last time, the captain of the boatdove this wreck, He encountered a large tiger shark :o.  So tensions are running a little high, plus for me,  It will be my deepest logged dive to date.  The other two more experienced divers drop down the line like anchors to the top part of the wreck at about 150' by the time I reach the bottom.(Maybe three minutes)  They both have fish on and strung up.  The rest of the fish are now noticeably spooked.  I see a huge school of giant mutton snapper, or at least what I thought was mutton snapper.  So I put a shaft in one as I'm stringing up this fish.  I see what we dove to these depths for about a 40 pound grouper. by the time I am done fumbling with stringing up the fish and reloading(Narcosis bells are ringing in the background and my fingers feel very thick).  I pursue him off the top of the wreck and down to the sand.  It turns out, he hasn't gotten to be 40 pounds by being a stupid fish.  And even though he has a pea sized brain , his survival skills and knowledge of the wreck are far superior to mine.  He disappears around the corner as the bells start to get louder.  I check my air and realize it's time to go, but I spot another large snapper,  As I start to ascend and take the shot.  At this point I am still on the sand @ 180 feet with the wreck overhead.  There are entanglement hazards everywhere, and I managed to find one with my shaft.  I also know it's time to go, but instead of calmly reaching for my knife and cutting my way out.  I somewhat panic and start pulling on my gun to get untangle this only lasted for less than 10 seconds, but it seemed like 10 minutes.  Fortunately, the surge of adrenaline, managed to snap the fishing line.  so I made my way to the anchor line.  I was very upset at this point and breathing rapidly probably adding to my narcosis.  I finally managed to calm myself down and start the long slow ascent.  Unfortunately, when I left the bottom to get to the anchor line I violated my ascent speed and my computer wanted me to stop for five minutes.  Since I have an air integrated computer.  You would think it would realize that I couldn't afford to stay there that long and still make my safety stops.  Nice and slow the rest of the way up with about a 12 minutes stop at 20 feet.  Lot of time during that 12 minutes to think about a lot of things.  I decided not to make any more dives to that depth today.  I got on the boat and hit the O2 for about three to five minutes as a precaution. The other guys managed multiple fish on their next to dives and put them in very good standings for the tournament.  I however had a very good learning experience and survived to compete another day :.  I dropped 30 points from last year to place somewhere around 100.  Overall had a lot a great dives and seeing that hammerhead was probably the highlight of the trip.