Ia Ora Te Natura - It's Lobster Season

UA PAU TE MAITAI NO TE FENUA
RE ZAI NOA RA TE ORA O TE MITIE

"Bounty of the land is exhausted
But there's still abundance on the sea"

So goes the end of Jimmy's "One Particular Harbour", a nod to Cook's Bay in Moorea - listen to this clip from the end of the song, and you can hear the soprano voices in the background with those Tahitian lyrics. With that in mind, Fred and I hit the open water in search of spiny lobster as the mini-season for lobster began at 12:01am Wednesday morning. ("Mini-season" is a 2 day event that preludes the official commercial lobster season that starts next weekend) It's a lot easier to rise for the 5am wakeup call when there's diving and crustaceans involved, even if it means heading out before sunrise while passing shipping containers on their way into Port Everglades.

The water off the first of Ft. Lauderdale/Dania Beach's 3 reefs was packed with vessels and divers, so after floating behind the boat (Doreen's cousin Jeff drove) and running into divers left and right, we headed a little further south towards Hollywood and ended up with a nice spot without a boat for a mile in each direction. It was my first experience diving for lobster, and it was quite a rush. It takes some patience and a good eye to locate them in the underwater terrain, but once you get used to spotting them, the fun begins. You "tickle" them out of their hole with a stick, then pounce on them with a net as they shoot away from you. I got the hang of it quickly, Fred was an old pro and was digging into the coral outcroppings to get the real stubborn ones. I had to abandon the fight when my oxygen tank hit 50 PSIs (a full tank is ~3000, so there were only a couple minutes of air left) but floated to make sure Fred was OK and was able to get those last few. Plus, he had the catch bag, so if anything happened to him, I needed enough air to go down and get the bag (I mean, help him out)...

In the end, 14 of those suckers put up a good fight but lost the war, and only 1 got away (plus one more female that we didn't notice until back at the dock and let go; luckily we didn't get stopped on the way in b/c that's a pretty substantial fine). Fred and I had a great time and we'll eat good over the next couple of day. And I made it to work by 10:15, which assuredly was not nearly as much fun as diving for lobster. Full pictures here.