A Hearty “Welcome Back!”
Written by Eric Keener
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Dive Date: December 4, 2021
Dive Buddies: Mr. Kevin, Wasen & Keener
After 3 long months of not being able to dive (or lift, or sit, or sleep, or walk correctly), I was highly anticipating the next reasonable opportunity to get back into the water. Loading up the car with dive gear the night before even caused me to sleep poorly. I was worried about reinjuring my back while duck diving or hopping back up onto the kayak. On Sept 22, 2021, I tore two disks in my lower lumbar, one of which bulged into the nerves in my spine and caused my foot muscles to not work correctly (or at all, early on). It was excruciating and the docs put me on ludicrous amounts of medication to try to help counter act the pain and nerve issues. Suffice it to say, I did not want to prolong recovery any longer than needed. However, I’d been frothing to get back into the water, if for nothing more than to snorkel and look at the pretty things.
My very good friend and stellar dive buddy, Mr. Kevin, said he would help me load the kayaks on/off the car and even helped me get my gear down to the water. It was a tremendous act of friendship and helped me get over the worry about reinjuring myself that I had in the back of my mind. We started off a bit later than usual, grabbed the kayaks, got to the dive spot, unloaded them, set them up for diving and then started to get our wetsuits on. Word to the wise: don’t leave your essential dive gear at home…
As Mr. Kevin was driving home to get his wetsuit top (which he swore was in his hand just minutes prior and most definitely was not left at home), there were 2 divers setting up a nice red Hobie kayak with an outrigger and a gas motor. It was interesting because it was a single seater, but there were 2 divers. I had to ask. Turns out it was a hilariously genius idea that they wanted to try out. One diver sits on his DIY dive boogie board that is perched across the outrigger bars while the other one steers the motor from inside the kayak. I couldn’t wait to see them launch. It was such a rad set up! Turns out one of the divers was even rocking the Fin + Forage fiberglass blades! It’s such a neat feeling to see other people spend a significant chunk of money on something they believe is a really special product.
One of the divers was asking about how to find scallops, so I shared my experiences about looking in obscure, hard to reach holes in shallower water, preferably ones that had room of the roof for scallops to grow.
Just then, I saw a bumble bee, black and yellow kayak pulling up to the spot. There is only one guy on the planet that would be pulling up with that rig, and I was excited to catch up with him. Since he was planning on diving alone, I invited him to dive with Mr. Kevin and I.
Not too much long after the bumble bee was ready to launch, Mr. Kevin came racing back, threw on his wetsuit top (which was laying neatly on his bed), and we got the yaks ready to launch. It was high tide on a +7 foot king tide, which was realllly high but also helpful for easy launching. It was also helpful that much of the kelp was now underwater which made using my Bixpy electric motor easier. Before, we teased (and I’m sure were teased by others, too) how funny it was to fly by our dive buddies who were paddling hard to get to the dive spot. The electric motor definitely made us feel a bit guilty but arriving at the dive spot without exhausting yourself getting there was a really big benefit. Now, I was just super thankful that I got to rest my back and not struggle so much. The motors connect to the rudders on both of our Yellowfin 120 and Shearwater 125 Kayaks from Vibe and are well capable of lasting all day out on the water (I still haven’t had the battery go below 70% even on the longest commutes). It was a blast looking over the side of the kayak on the way to the spot we were scoping out earlier in the morning, and seeing all the way to the crystal clear, ocean floor. So long as there is great visibility, I know it will be a great day even if there are big swells and cold water. Which, to our sheer joy, ended up being the case this day.
I anchored up my kayak, put on my Ocean Guardian Shark Shield, mask and fins, hopped in the water and bam, surrounded by schooling fish. We were on the fishy spot, that’s for sure. Right as Mr. Kevin hopped in the water, I saw a large fin appear less than 5 feet behind him. I immediately swam toward him with my shark shield turned on. It was an adrenaline filled 90 seconds before we confirmed it was a dolphin! So off to hunting we went. The water was uncharacteristically clear and the surge was powerful. My dive time was noticeably less than my last dive on Sept. 18, 2021 where my buddy Em and I spent over 5 hours in deep water. I was just stoked to be back in the ocean on this day but never made it deeper than 40’ or longer than seconds over a minute. We made quick work of a couple rock fish, just to ensure we had some contribution to the catch and cook taco night later that evening at Bamboo Reef, but we were definitely in search of lings and scallops. Up to this point, Mr. Kevin had only ever taken 3 lings home with him so when he popped up hooping and hollering, I knew he found a nice one. He held it up, shining bright blue in the light. It was a big one all right. He swam over to the kayak and put it on the stringer than hung over the side to keep the fish cold and off of our belt stringers.
The 2 divers on the red Hobie kayak were on their way back from their spot and decided to hop in with us for the last few drops of our day. Knowing we had more than enough meat for the event that night, I switched gears to finding a scallop in a hole for the guy asking me about it earlier. I figured I would swim in shallower, find a scallop, drop my gun with a float-line on it as a marker and then call him over. When I swam toward shore, the waves definitely got quite a bit stronger and I was getting tossed around pretty fiercely. I managed to find what appeared to be a textbook scallop home in around 10 feet of water. It had a nice flat rock on top of 2 smaller boulders with a mouth of the hole being around 12” wide and it seemed to go back a good ways. I got down, grabbed the roof of the hole for stability, and shined my light in. No signs of scallops. I didn’t occur to me that since we were on a +7 foot tide, I was technically in what would normally be around 3’ of water and that might be too shallow for a scallop. It also didn’t occur to me that the face of a sea dragon was staring me down from on top of the hole. It was just laying there, in the sea grass, in the open, in the massive surge… None of it made sense to me and I was totally unprepared to see it a mere foot from my face. I had the wrong grip on my gun and wrong body position for the shot. I have never shot a fish “from the hip” before. So in one tacky motion, I pushed backward from the hole, swung my gun up and quickly pulled the trigger. Bam, hit the spine just behind the brain. Super lucky but thankful for my fairly heavy Charlie Spears gun that he made me earlier this year because the weight of it allowed me to predict when to pull the trigger a bit better. I bled it and brained it and quietly swam back to the kayak thinking that this fish was probably smaller than Mr. Kevin’s. He was already loading gear and fish back onto his kayak when he saw me with a smirk on my face. He promptly hopped back in to check it out first hand and a final celebration ensued before we went back to the shore!
A massive success for the first day back in the water, 2 personal bests, and a lot of excellent memories made. We went back to my place to clean all the fish and get ready to take some of the meat and taco fixens over to the dive shop. We had a great turn out and met some new friends. Alyssa made her famous grapefruit salsa and some killer fajitas, I made a spicy avocado crema, and several others brought great sides and snacks. The food was delicious. By the end of the evening, I was utterly smoked and ready for about 13 hours of sleep!
Watch the Video of the Dive