My buddy Conner (and his wife Dianne and son Van) flew into town just a few days ago. Conner moved from San Diego to Tampa about 6 months ago and no longer has surfing daily as an outlet. Looking for something healthy and fun to obsess over, he started skin diving with friends. After shooting a few big fish, he was hooked.

Yesterday, we woke up at 5:00am and cruised over to the Puntas side of the point with waterproof flashlights, masks and our spears. It was a very strange feeling, walking down to the pitch black ocean, but somehow I was very comfortable. We used the buddy system and explored a bunch of holes and little caves in about 15-20ft of water. The biggest fish we saw was a Puffer fish, which would come in handy if we wanted to commit suicide. Almost all pufferfish contain tetrodotoxin, a substance that makes them foul tasting and often lethal to fish. To humans, tetrodotoxin is deadly, up to 1,200 times more poisonous than cyanide. There is enough toxin in one pufferfish to kill 30 adult humans, and there is no known antidote.

It was really cool seeing the eyes of the lobsters glowing as I moved my flashlight around the dark water. We only saw one lobster that was big enough to take out of the water so we asked him to come home with us and jump into a scampi I made (egg noodles, butter, garlic, white wine, diced tomatoes and LIME juice). He was cool with it. Yummy.

Tags: skin diving