Saturday, May 1, 2010

Spear Fishing Spoils for March and April

So we have been going out a bunch over the last few weeks. We spent about 20 hrs in the ocean becasue the water was so clear, warm and crazy calm. We have seen all kinds of neat things such as Spotted Eagle Rays, millions of Sea Turtles, Tarpon, Barracuda, Squid, Eels, Grouper and so many other types that I cannot begin to name them all. My wife is quite annoyed that I have spending so much time out free diving but it is semester break after all.This shot doesn't quite do this fish justice. This is a Blue Bar Jack. I had a Dog Snapper cornered under a boulder at about 10 ft and I and gone down 5 times and just hadn't quite had a good shot at him. I went down one last time to get a shot at him and just as I got to the bottom this little beauty swam right in front of my cocked spear. I hit him well but he pulled off of my spear. There was a trail of blood that came streaming out of him. He was moving slowly so I hurried up and went down after him. I shot him again in the head and that was it. It turned out that I my first shot hit him right in the heart, he bled out quick.
This is a much larger Bar Jack. This one is obviously a black one. He tips the scale at about 15 lbs. The locals say that the black ones are poisonous, which we didn't find out until after the fact. With this fish we were swimming along and I went down after a small bar jack and when I came up for air, Greg was holding up this fish. He said that the big dummy just swam up to him and he shot it. crazy luck!
This is a Caribbean Spiny Lobster. They are larger than the typical Maine Lobster. Notice that they don't have any claws. We don't get chances at them all that often but when we do we take advantage of it. We have harvested some that had 3 lb tails and overall weighted 8 lbs! They are pretty tasty but not as good as the lobsters grown up north.
This is a Dog Snapper. Some have Black tiger-like stripes across their backs and others don't.This is a good sized one. He is about 5 lbs and as you can see they are all head. They do have a lot of meat on them as well. They are very good. They are the main focus of what we really want to kill when we go out spearfishing. It is a big treat whenever we get one. They are the hardest of all the fish that we see semi-regularly to hunt, they are super smart, but super duper yummy.(I wish that I could say that for all of the fish I have eaten here)
 
This is a Parrot Fish. They are very colorful and also difficult to hunt and kill. They come in all color types, from brown camo to blue and even green. Some are blandly colored but some are very pretty like this beauty. He too is about a five lb fish.

These are salt water snails. We collected about 25 of them on one calm day in the ocean. They ranged in size from baseball diameter to Lemon sized. They had no specific flavor, but were as rubbery as my Goodyears.
This picture was taken after they had cooked for about 45 min and then they would just pull right out of their shells.