The Lionfish is native to the waters of the South Pacific and Indian Oceans, but in the 90’s they mysteriously started appearing off the coast of Florida. With no natural predator, a veracious appetite and the ability to reproduce at a staggering rate, the Lionfish can now be found as far north as Rhode Island and as far South as Brazil, leaving devastated reefs in their wake. In this episode, we are joined by Nate and Alex of the Lionfish Extermination Corporation and they are on a mission to keep the Lionfish in check so the beautiful reefs of Southern Florida can be enjoyed by future generations.
[00:00:25] Welcome back to Around the Buoy, Broadcasts from East Passage, BoWrite Studios.
[00:00:30] I'm Carter Richardson and I'm here with Tyler Fields of Tyler Fields photography.
[00:00:36] Tyler as quickly as it started its ending.
[00:00:39] I know we say this every year but this year it was fast.
[00:00:43] It was wicked fast.
[00:00:45] It was wicked fast.
[00:00:46] I don't.
[00:00:48] I mean my summers are always a little condensed anyway because I basically like Friday
[00:00:55] and I said it is Sunday.
[00:00:56] I'm traveling somewhere to go shoot a racer to do something and then the rest of the week
[00:01:00] is like okay.
[00:01:03] I hold my daughter or edit video or photos or I need to get this like so everything is like
[00:01:08] I have something going on constantly.
[00:01:11] So summers are fast anyway but this year seems incredibly fast.
[00:01:16] I mean I would already haul the boat today.
[00:01:18] I've hauled two 12 and a half.
[00:01:21] So it's independent.
[00:01:23] The migration back to the Sheds have started.
[00:01:27] We went for a walk tonight after dinner and there's already leaves falling on the ground.
[00:01:32] It's it's here man.
[00:01:33] Yeah, we were a couple of weekends ago Tyler and I went out for the Iris Classic Yavigada.
[00:01:38] I took him out on the 24 and we were taking some pictures.
[00:01:43] Trying to get pictures without the cruise ships in the background which is very difficult in Newport
[00:01:48] and the late summer early fall but it was an absolute gorgeous day perfect kind of early
[00:01:54] fall weather.
[00:01:56] And ever since then we kept taking the dog for a walk and it's like low 50s or mid 50s and it's
[00:02:02] a crisp.
[00:02:03] It's getting crisp.
[00:02:04] It's getting a little apple cider donuts.
[00:02:06] We're all getting excited about a PSL and it's awesome.
[00:02:10] What is PSL?
[00:02:12] A pumpkin spice latte come on man.
[00:02:14] Welcome to like 2016.
[00:02:16] Yeah, coffee's black my friend.
[00:02:19] That's the only way that's allowed to be.
[00:02:22] No, my daughter and I went to lows to we got a bunch of, I mean again,
[00:02:28] falls here it's going to cold.
[00:02:29] I've got oodles of projects to get done around the house.
[00:02:33] So my daughter and I are at lows basically every day and they've got all their Halloween
[00:02:38] decorations up and there's this.
[00:02:40] Yeah, what tall grim reaper skeleton.
[00:02:42] Yeah, I saw everything and my daughter is just.
[00:02:47] She's not scared.
[00:02:49] She's absolutely in love with this thing for really.
[00:02:53] And then there's there's a bunch of skeletons right next to it that are abandoned.
[00:02:57] So she has to go up and press the button and things and dances between that and the right
[00:03:02] and lawn mowers.
[00:03:03] It's like it's like an hour and a half in lows every time we go.
[00:03:08] Now my kids were terrified of those big giant skeletons in the green reapers.
[00:03:14] Yeah, we were from like end of August through November first.
[00:03:19] We just couldn't go to home deep out.
[00:03:20] They would be terrified of home deep out.
[00:03:23] Our neighbors are like really festive and they do like this Halloween.
[00:03:27] Not it's not the nativity scene but basically this gaggle of creepy creatures.
[00:03:32] And they had a bunch of really tall ghosts that would move their arms.
[00:03:35] And last year my daughter every night before before we got ready to go to bed.
[00:03:40] She'd run down the street, run to the neighbor's house, give the ghosts a hug, say good night ghosts and then to bed.
[00:03:46] It's super cute.
[00:03:47] That's great.
[00:03:49] It's a little creepy.
[00:03:50] Yeah, whatever.
[00:03:51] Whatever.
[00:03:52] We'll take it.
[00:03:53] We'll take it.
[00:03:55] Well Tyler today is beginning of season eight.
[00:04:02] It's September 21st.
[00:04:03] It's earth wind and fire day.
[00:04:04] We're releasing this.
[00:04:06] It's not September 21st yet.
[00:04:09] It well, as we're recording it's not but when we went through the magic of editing,
[00:04:15] we're going to get this out on earth wind and fire day September 21st.
[00:04:21] And the beginning of the season.
[00:04:22] How quickly do you forget everything we talk about a year ago?
[00:04:25] If only this show had a budget and we could afford to put that song in right now.
[00:04:31] It would really just tie all this together.
[00:04:33] And the production thought you would be through the roof.
[00:04:36] Do you remember?
[00:04:38] Did it?
[00:04:39] Did it?
[00:04:40] Did it?
[00:04:41] A little peek behind the curtain.
[00:04:43] We don't have a budget on this podcast so you're probably going to have to get, let's say, my singing earth wind and fire.
[00:04:51] I can do a good fill up, Bailey.
[00:04:54] I think I'm not entirely sure there's budget for curtains in this podcast.
[00:05:00] There are not.
[00:05:02] But as we came to the decision last year at the beginning of season seven, earth wind and fire day is determined the beginning of the new season.
[00:05:13] So we are in the obligatory and totally just kind of random.
[00:05:19] I think we're I think it's random at this point season eight Tyler.
[00:05:22] You're why not congratulations.
[00:05:25] Welcome.
[00:05:25] Welcome.
[00:05:25] That's good to be here.
[00:05:28] It's really good to be here.
[00:05:30] All right, so it's been a little while we had again summer is busy.
[00:05:34] We just chronicle that that it's it's a busy time and so we didn't get as many episodes that we wanted to do the summer but there's a couple news items if it had been happening.
[00:05:43] We're going to touch on them.
[00:05:44] The first one is a previous podcast guest, the SS United States.
[00:05:50] It's a luxury cruise liner built in the 50s.
[00:05:53] The fastest ship to ever cross the Atlantic.
[00:05:57] There's an update on her.
[00:05:58] She's been having some tough times.
[00:06:00] All right, and the other news topic we're going to talk about.
[00:06:03] It does it brings back the old cold war feelings.
[00:06:08] The Russian's nothing short of the next best.
[00:06:12] I mean, obviously he's gone.
[00:06:14] Rest in peace Tom Clancy, but the next best like early 1980s Jack Ryan novel.
[00:06:21] This has got it.
[00:06:21] It's just everything in a good book that needs to be there.
[00:06:26] But the beluga whale, uh, have Vladimir, which was we don't know if it was trained by the Russian military where it is not really quite sure.
[00:06:36] But it was a very friendly whale up in Norway and unfortunately it was found dead.
[00:06:41] And I think anything we know now with Russia becoming Russia what it is again.
[00:06:46] We don't have any downloads in Russia Tyler.
[00:06:48] So we can say is whatever we want about Russia right now, but there's a pair of there's bad things happen.
[00:06:57] There is an air of suspicion on the death of this whale.
[00:07:04] How could they not be?
[00:07:05] How could they not be?
[00:07:06] I can't wait to talk about it with Russian oligarchs and out of their multiple high, you know, they're high rise windows and
[00:07:13] they're not going to be blown over by buses in their bathroom.
[00:07:17] Like everything that could go wrong is going wrong.
[00:07:20] Like the chances of this being an accident is just it's impossible.
[00:07:24] It's gotta be next to near next to zero.
[00:07:26] So those are the new topics, but before that we're going to get to our guest.
[00:07:31] Way back in 2011 with the Bramuda America's Cup Race.
[00:07:35] I remember watching on like the broadcaster like the coverage of it that 11th hour was sponsoring a
[00:07:42] death's throw down featuring six chefs from around the world preparing lionfish for competition,
[00:07:50] highlighting the dangers of the fish and what it represents to the local habitat.
[00:07:55] I do nothing about it, started doing some research and it's really interesting.
[00:07:58] Since then over the past 13 years, it continues to be a huge problem and it's getting bigger.
[00:08:04] Coming up we're going to be talking to Nate Sorenson who is leading the Lionfish extermination corporation
[00:08:10] down in South Florida and he is on the mission to keep the lionfish at bay.
[00:08:41] The lionfish is a beautiful fish native to the water south Pacific in the Indian Ocean,
[00:08:46] but in the early 90s they mysteriously started appearing off the coast of Florida.
[00:08:50] With no natural predator, a verocious appetite and the ability to reproduce to numbers that would make
[00:08:54] rabbits jealous, the lionfish territory quickly expanded. Today we are found
[00:08:59] at this far north is Rhode Island and in South as Brazil.
[00:09:02] We're joined today by Nate Sorenson and Alex Porcusky of the Lionfish extermination
[00:09:07] corporation and they are on a mission to keep the lionfish in check. Nate Nowix,
[00:09:12] welcome to around the buoy and thanks for coming on the show.
[00:09:15] Hey, thanks for inviting us. That's awesome.
[00:09:17] Let's start with a big picture question.
[00:09:19] Talk to us about the lionfish and why are you hunting them down?
[00:09:23] Well like you mentioned, there are extremely invasive
[00:09:25] and when I first started diving Alex quickly kind of was a boat captain at the time and he told me,
[00:09:33] you know these are not supposed to be here and they're bad for the environment.
[00:09:36] So although I've been an animal advocate for years and years I've been a vegan for over 20
[00:09:41] some years, 22 years now, I just thought hey this fish has got to go and by killing
[00:09:46] this fish I finally realized I'm actually helping a lot more than I am hurting.
[00:09:51] By killing this fish you're actually saving millions and millions of others.
[00:09:54] So that's really what it came down to. They're they're not supposed to be there.
[00:09:58] They have a huge appetite like you mentioned. They eat everything and anything that will fit in their mouth.
[00:10:04] They can eat something that's a third of their size basically around that amount
[00:10:08] and also they can eat up to 90% of their body weight I think in the day.
[00:10:12] Oh, wow. So Alex, you have a first spot. How do you guys know each other?
[00:10:19] I've been in other diversions in South Florida since the mid 80s and about mid 90s,
[00:10:28] took me 10 years to find out this little town called Bointon Beach that they have a magnificent
[00:10:33] riffs and I love them. So I moved to Bointon Beach and since the mid 90s I've been diving in here.
[00:10:40] In the early 2000s is when I've made a, in 2016 or yeah,
[00:10:48] but I've made it. Yeah, Nate's wife in the 2010 in that time and then somehow
[00:10:54] made sure up and I'm click right away. It's like,
[00:10:58] hey, this is what we have.
[00:11:00] I was able to see this riff before lionfish during the peak of lionfish and what it is now
[00:11:08] that at least we're controlling an area of about, I will say, 4 to 5 miles.
[00:11:14] That is under our control and people can't know and almost find lionfish anymore because
[00:11:19] we're going there every week and is made a difference.
[00:11:23] The reef is starting to look what it was like back in the 90s.
[00:11:26] Well, that's where I was leading with that question. So you started there when there was no lionfish.
[00:11:31] What was, well, first of all, do we know how they got into the area?
[00:11:37] Yeah, basically people like to say that maybe it was from ships ballast waters where they,
[00:11:42] the ship just includes a lot of water up into the ballast tanks and then doing so brings eggs.
[00:11:50] That is not really true to me in a way.
[00:11:53] The fact that there would be a lot of other creatures here that weren't supposed to be here.
[00:11:57] So there would be a lot more invasive species if that were the case.
[00:12:00] I think like a lot of people think that a very few number of these lionfish were released
[00:12:05] either from a storm where they knocked out the power and some people said, hey, Johnny, the lionfish is going to die if I don't throw them somewhere.
[00:12:12] So they threw them in the ocean and they thought, hey, one lionfish is going to hurt anything and two other guys thought,
[00:12:18] one lionfish is going to hurt anything and pretty soon seven to ten fish are responsible for all of this.
[00:12:23] They've actually tested the blood and they've genetically determined that seven to ten fish are responsible for this entire nightmare.
[00:12:31] That's incredible.
[00:12:31] Yeah, they have done a DNA test on all this fish and they all belong to some great great great-grandfather dad.
[00:12:39] He's not with us anymore. Oh, like, how?
[00:12:42] So let's up the 15 here so great. He might have just died a couple of years, you know, a few years ago.
[00:12:47] Now I have an idea of personally about the aquarium trade because this fish they eat everything in this criminal totally.
[00:12:57] Is that a word?
[00:12:58] I just made it up. But they have no restrictions about eating.
[00:13:03] So imagine you are a person that has an aquarium and I say, oh my god, I saw this James Bond movie and I want to put a lionfish in there because it looks so good.
[00:13:11] Suddenly now you realize that fish is eating everything else in your aquarium. What do you do?
[00:13:16] Get rid of it.
[00:13:17] You don't want to kill it because he said, hey, you put it on the ocean 20 years later, it's an infestation.
[00:13:22] A lot of people attribute the movie to do some big low male jig alone, which is a big one for the younger crowd.
[00:13:29] I thought I was a person.
[00:13:31] The first lionfish movie was James Bond movie.
[00:13:35] Yeah. I remember that one.
[00:13:37] Yes. So do this one.
[00:13:38] It was very much showcased in the lionfish and it's so expensive.
[00:13:44] When you say that, people go, oh, I got to have one too.
[00:13:47] And then they do every other thing.
[00:13:48] That's from the ocean and then there we are.
[00:13:51] It's an exotic fish. It's a beautiful fish. It's actually very, very sad killing them.
[00:13:56] But if you don't do it, it's like what nature said.
[00:13:59] We will lose millions and millions of other fish.
[00:14:02] And this guy is being categorized at the perfect invasive species.
[00:14:06] I mean, we can talk for hours that I don't want to bore you.
[00:14:10] But they have so many developed tools to be an invasive species that is amazing.
[00:14:16] When they release eggs that they release eggs in a year, in a millions, right?
[00:14:22] Those things are even covered with toxin.
[00:14:24] So not too many fish will eat them because they're not appealing.
[00:14:29] So now the eggs knows how to survive.
[00:14:32] They are ambush hunters.
[00:14:34] So these guys go in there hunting.
[00:14:36] They're just hanging there and waiting for something to go by.
[00:14:39] And the eat day, the eat 90% of their body weight.
[00:14:45] Yeah.
[00:14:46] They can't eat them.
[00:14:47] You see what's in there belly, and you'll be surprised not only on their amount of fish,
[00:14:51] but either you have a big lion fish with like 70 little fish inside.
[00:14:56] Or maybe you got a little lion fish that has only one fish.
[00:14:58] But it's almost the same size that they actually like on fish.
[00:15:02] It's the beginning.
[00:15:03] The lion fish, their native waters are the South Pacific and Indian Ocean.
[00:15:08] In those areas, do they have a natural predator?
[00:15:12] Are they able to keep that population in check?
[00:15:14] Or are they seeing the same explosion and numbers that we're seeing?
[00:15:19] Not at all.
[00:15:20] In fact, I went to the Philippines twice this past year, past couple years.
[00:15:25] And in the Philippines, the only red lion fish I saw, which that's their native home, was in a shipwreck
[00:15:32] inside of the shipwreck where it was very safe, where there wasn't a whole lot of predators.
[00:15:36] And it was just one big one in there and maybe one little one.
[00:15:39] And that was the only ones I saw for the whole trip.
[00:15:42] They do have a lot of other species.
[00:15:44] I think there's 12 or 14, I think it's maybe 12 species of lion fish.
[00:15:48] But then an additional 200 other scorpion fish species, which is in the same family.
[00:15:54] And we have scope them from colder waters.
[00:15:59] There's so many different types of there's the flat heads, there's the scorpion fish,
[00:16:03] there's the bearded ghouls and the stone fish.
[00:16:07] They're all the same family.
[00:16:11] And curing's out, all of those scorpion fish can eat each other.
[00:16:16] So lionfish are kept in check by members of their own family.
[00:16:19] They're kept in check, I think, mainly by the white tip reef shark.
[00:16:23] Now, the white tip reef shark hunts the reefs indiscriminately at night,
[00:16:27] hunting anything that moves in acts of several sharks, maybe up to 12 more than 12 sharks.
[00:16:33] And then once it scares any fish out of the reef, including lionfish,
[00:16:38] the gray reef sharks are waiting to ambush those fish.
[00:16:42] So it's a nightmarish frenzy on the reef every single night,
[00:16:45] and the lionfish are being killed all the time,
[00:16:47] and it's hard for them to live because they also hunt at night.
[00:16:50] So I think that's the main predator.
[00:16:53] Also different species of eels and groupers that we don't have that haven't evolved here,
[00:16:58] and don't have an idea how to kill this fish.
[00:17:01] They've evolved over there to eat this fish.
[00:17:04] They have a lot more fish like the corn that fish and the trumpet fish.
[00:17:08] We have varieties, but there once again different.
[00:17:11] And if we have two species that maybe eat a couple lionfish,
[00:17:14] that's not going to cut it.
[00:17:16] We need several.
[00:17:17] We need many, like the frog fish can eat dozens of lionfish if they want to in a night,
[00:17:23] without any problems because it's just adapted to it.
[00:17:26] But out here, we just don't have the species to do it.
[00:17:30] When you're talking about an eye-alcs, this might be for you,
[00:17:33] because you saw the reefs before during and kind of currently,
[00:17:37] how quickly does, so they essentially take over the reef just by eating all the other fish around.
[00:17:42] How quickly does it happen?
[00:17:44] Are we talking like within a month,
[00:17:46] you go from one lionfish to 1,000,
[00:17:48] or are we talking about over kind of a span of years,
[00:17:52] do the lionfish really take over?
[00:17:54] Well, I can remember, but first of all, experience,
[00:17:57] at the time, I used to have another job that ones that are really pays,
[00:18:03] not to be a captain, right?
[00:18:05] And I used to dive on the weakens.
[00:18:08] So I remember back in 2005, class of minus a year, too,
[00:18:12] that I saw the first lionfish in this area, I'm going to be,
[00:18:16] and I came back to the captain and said,
[00:18:18] oh my God, I saw one lionfish.
[00:18:21] And then we think it laps of seven years per se.
[00:18:26] It exploded.
[00:18:28] Because at the time, oh, the lionfish invasive,
[00:18:30] no big deal, right?
[00:18:31] I mean, nobody even thought about killing them.
[00:18:35] But certainly exploded and exploded,
[00:18:36] so we started to learn more about the lionfish.
[00:18:39] And we realized that damage that we're doing.
[00:18:42] And certainly we saw the same places where we used to go,
[00:18:44] that it was packed with little fish.
[00:18:46] They love little grunts and little snappers all congregating in an area.
[00:18:51] And certainly all we see, lionfish.
[00:18:52] So it took in this particular area,
[00:18:56] I will say an average of maybe seven years to get out of control.
[00:19:01] And then that's when we say we have to do something about it.
[00:19:03] And that was actually before-nade.
[00:19:05] So we started organizing Derby's and giving prices for people
[00:19:08] to catch the lionfish.
[00:19:10] And at the time, my belief was, you know what?
[00:19:14] We lost this barrel.
[00:19:15] This absolutely nothing we can do because it was
[00:19:19] an interstation, total interstation.
[00:19:21] And then they showed up one day with this,
[00:19:23] it proposed to do this lionfish extermination corporation.
[00:19:26] And I say, man, you know what?
[00:19:28] I'll give you a hand, but you know what?
[00:19:30] It's a lost bottle.
[00:19:32] I really didn't believe it as much as he did.
[00:19:35] And I say, but hey, if you want to go and do only this,
[00:19:37] I'm going to do it.
[00:19:39] And I say what?
[00:19:40] It took maybe a year or two when I started seeing the results.
[00:19:44] And now, suddenly, it's a small area like I say before,
[00:19:47] maybe four or five miles, that's a point on grief mostly.
[00:19:51] But it's under control.
[00:19:52] It's to a point that the regular divers that this are recreational
[00:19:56] divers they go to the reef and they bring all the lionfish gear, right?
[00:20:00] To catch lionfish because now they realize that they also taste very good
[00:20:04] to it.
[00:20:04] So they won lionfish.
[00:20:06] They can find them.
[00:20:07] They can find them because the last one, for years,
[00:20:11] we've been going every single week and killing and killing them.
[00:20:15] We started on the reef and slowly we moved it to deeper waters.
[00:20:19] So now we have an invisible barrier in about 95 feet that is of the reef
[00:20:24] that we don't let them go by once in a while, this Nick in and divers will get
[00:20:30] a recreational divers but we, that are not recreational anymore.
[00:20:35] Where it's just trying to stop them.
[00:20:37] So now finally after all these years I can tell you that yes,
[00:20:41] you can make a difference in a very control environment.
[00:20:44] You know, in a very control area.
[00:20:46] Now I don't know if you heard but this lionfish can be found
[00:20:49] I'm 2,000 feet and we cannot die that deep.
[00:20:53] So I can imagine and I can only imagine the areas that are packed
[00:20:58] completely infested with lionfish waiting to move into a reef to do their job.
[00:21:04] But hey, we'll be here waiting for them right?
[00:21:07] So what got you in the spear fishing?
[00:21:10] Were you in the spear fishing before this or was this?
[00:21:14] And entirely because of the lionfish you decided to take a stab at it.
[00:21:20] Well, me personally I had been vegan forever so I haven't hunt any other fish for years and years.
[00:21:26] So Alex was hunting fish before this but now recently he's kind of moved back to hey we can get our fish food
[00:21:34] or food from getting lionfish so why try to get any other fish if we have all these guys we can get.
[00:21:39] So me personally I never stabbed a fish in my life before that.
[00:21:44] And then 2016 I started diving and pretty soon I started sparing them and then I went I cleared out the inside reef
[00:21:50] and went out to the outside reef and then Alex said hey they're out there at 95 I started going to 95 and the pretty soon
[00:21:56] I got my own boat and Alex started helping me helping me out and we started going further and further
[00:22:01] out from the regular boy in reefs and wiping them out and wiping them out and then we have this things called upwellings
[00:22:08] which basically are cold water coming in from the deep and those lionfish that are in the deeper waters keep getting pushed into us whenever this happens it's rare
[00:22:16] but maybe once or twice a year you get this really cold spell where the water just kind of just gets swirled and swirled in from the.
[00:22:25] the what do you call the.
[00:22:28] The stream the the Gulf stream from the Gulf stream and it kind of you know diverse its channels and pushes this cold water in and pretty soon we got.
[00:22:37] a whole new fresh load of lionfish in fact a couple years ago it was crazy we wiped them out so much to where we weren't finding them anywhere and it was just like kind of annoying like we must have did it really good job.
[00:22:49] Then I went to my honey moon in Africa came back a couple weeks later and there were lionfish everywhere the water got down to 58 degrees or something like that and that upwelling brought in 600 pounds of lionfish and we just went.
[00:23:05] Hey, wire and just you know the ball in that in that week yeah it was great.
[00:23:09] Listen July.
[00:23:10] Yes.
[00:23:11] For some.
[00:23:12] What does a typical dive look like then you'd mentioned there's some depth contours you were following but are there.
[00:23:19] Is it just that one reef that you focused on or on this reef going continuously from Delray Beach through point beach over to.
[00:23:28] The long beach almost through through Lake Worth Beach and goes up to Palm Beach so it's probably more than five miles really we cover probably more like eight miles.
[00:23:36] Yeah, maybe I was in the middle of mind and some of the areas of the reef just don't get replenished as much as others but you said contour you've got the inside reef which is.
[00:23:45] It starts in the stand and there's a little then it goes up to the reef so it's about 60 feet and then it goes up about 10 or 12 feet to 45 feet and then it tapers down to the fingers which are all these really they look like fingers kind of coming off the reef inside of each finger there's caves and things.
[00:24:01] And those are good spots to find my fish back in the day but not anymore because we've wiped them out so good and then you go across the stand gap to the deeper areas where it's 85 you know 75 85 95 125 120.
[00:24:15] And we wherever there's reef we go and try to hit it and we wipe out anything that's on those and that's where you find a lot more of the fish because there's not anyone doing it in those areas.
[00:24:25] So we like to do the more advanced dive that we can do and then let any fish that slip by get eaten by you know taken by some other divers.
[00:24:34] Right now I mean we're limited to these five miles areas that native talking about because mostly we have a very little boat that it can go that far and we have a very little trailer that we can.
[00:24:45] Once in a while with like a gamble and we drive all the way to a daily beach and even farther to keep his gain but that's just about the limit that we can go because.
[00:24:56] You know resources I mean it takes a lot to do this lionfish thing and and at the end of the day we can barely pay the bills I mean we do it because it's the passion for the reef and it passion to.
[00:25:08] Where a little fish will want to make them live longer.
[00:25:11] Yeah, what kind of what kind of depths are we talking about and does that then kind of shape your day where you only can dive once or because I know you got to come back up on to the surface and kind of let your off gas and get ready for the next dive.
[00:25:24] Are you doing two or three dives a day or are you going down a depths where that becomes a problem typically the deepest we go is about 130.
[00:25:32] And that's not very often usually it's 95 to 100 almost every diver here in boiting area or even further south we hit 100 that's typical.
[00:25:42] But I'll do three dives and Alex usually does the two dives so we get five dives and we're talking you know if you add up that I mean that's a lot of hours out on the boat.
[00:25:52] So you know we always get an hour between dives which is about the right amount you're supposed to have even though we're going to that deep we're also using scooters which help to alleviate a lot of the.
[00:26:02] And the tension and the pressure that you know you're you're kicking in her you know trying really hard to kick around and hold your breath you know not always breath but you know not use too much of your gas.
[00:26:11] And when you have the scooter it's just it's a leisurely breeze you know it makes it so much easier to to get around the reef and hunt these lionfish and the more comfortable you get it's really not you're not really working at hard to be honest.
[00:26:22] It's pretty easy you know the reef we go out and we just come back and forth wherever we find a little re-chunk and we can kind of see the little fish that are little silhouette that's a fish that around it we just learn to sniff them out you know we learned to find areas.
[00:26:38] Where it's just really nice and we find like oh crap there's going to be a bunch here we get our spear ready because we know they're coming.
[00:26:44] It's the state at all doing anything towards incentivizing I know growing up on the west coast there were a few species.
[00:26:52] And the fresh water lakes that were incentivized to catch and to remove from from ponds and you know and the lakes that we had are there any sort of government lands to do that with the lionfish.
[00:27:08] There there was a really good program then somebody cheated and and was lying and taking money from the state.
[00:27:16] And then they got really strict on it and then I to my knowledge if they've just kind of ceased doing it because it costs them money and they don't know whether people are being truthful or trying to get around it.
[00:27:27] I think it also COVID really kind of put the final nail in that coffin.
[00:27:33] It just at that time there wasn't a money to keep it going.
[00:27:38] It was decent it was just a pain in the butt though you had to you know apply for the money and then that you could take pieces of that money until it was gone and you had to apply again otherwise you lost all that money.
[00:27:48] It was just a huge pain in the butt and then you know there's also tournaments and stuff.
[00:27:55] I'm kind of on the fence for the tournaments personally I think they're they're kind of incentivizing people to just kind of wait until the tournament to kill the lionfish.
[00:28:05] And I believe that doesn't really help that much in one way there are eventually getting removed some of them but it would be nice if people care a little bit more and just got them at all times and a lot of the divers do.
[00:28:17] A lot of the divers throughout Florida are very awesome about this and there's tons of people that do it so without all these thousands of people hunting hunting these lionfish throughout the entire state and throughout the Caribbean and other islands all over the place.
[00:28:33] They wouldn't be a lot worse problem because I found that we are removing so many that we're we're making a difference in other areas because we're removing so many from this area because they travel they move in on the currents and they release eggs and if you're killing them they're not able to do that.
[00:28:47] And it is a bit of a time sensitive issue in the fact that their reproduction timeline is so condensed.
[00:28:56] What is the number one lionfish can reproduce in a single year?
[00:29:01] I think it's one or two million.
[00:29:03] But that's a lot of fish.
[00:29:04] What?
[00:29:06] Yeah and that's just one fish, one female.
[00:29:08] And the survivability of those eggs is also extremely high compared to other species.
[00:29:13] Yes because of this like Alex was saying with the basically poisonous eggs they have like a toxin to them.
[00:29:21] But if all of these eggs were living then it would be even worse but obviously all of them aren't making it which is good.
[00:29:29] And hopefully nature will eventually try to figure out some sort of you know way to stop this.
[00:29:35] We've noticed actually randomly you'll have maybe it's just the genetic inbreeding but you'll see some lionfish with missing spines even one spine on the back instead of the you know 13 or 14 they're supposed to have.
[00:29:50] Just all this looks like a saddle just missing all of the muscles that create these spines just gone.
[00:29:55] Now I can't say that that's making a huge difference, but you never know what the future would be like.
[00:30:01] The fish that are missing those spines do they have banjos.
[00:30:06] Man yeah, can't I.
[00:30:08] Are they easier to find because of the music?
[00:30:11] You know the funny part is that the other fish they still live these fish I've actually seen lionfish with missing tails completely bit off by a eel and then there's just fine and dandy you know they get poked in the face but they got the tail and they fit it off and they just still keep on.
[00:30:29] Trucking these lionfish are I mean you're going down there and searching for them and hunting them are they difficult to track and hunter I mean what's.
[00:30:38] What's the if you or as you said you know they like hiding here and so that's where you can find them or are they an elusive fish.
[00:30:47] Get it anything very quick about that need actually has this visual nose to find lionfish.
[00:30:54] He can't he can't to Melbourne it's amazing this guy can find the where you don't need them.
[00:31:00] Deliver or not one of the patients that they're done is we have in here kind of the soft coral coral is actually not a coral is his sponge is the viral sponge and they love to hang in those viral sponges but sometimes they camouflage so well that is very hard to see that native actually.
[00:31:17] I let him explain it because I don't know how he does about he finds but I tell you another tip.
[00:31:24] You can tell when a lionfish is being hunted before and it's never been touched by a human being because I go down the roof and you can tell when a lionfish sees you.
[00:31:35] Before you even get close they start running away from you that means some other diver wait and try to catch them and they miss and they chase them away so now the lionfish is learning to run away from us when we go to deep waters those lionfish have run you they have no clue whether it's coming today.
[00:31:51] I noticed that in a number of your videos where if you've got two or three in an area and you pick the biggest one first.
[00:32:02] The other two don't seem to care whatsoever and even if you miss with the first strike they just hang out wait for me.
[00:32:11] I think that's the report yeah let's they were actually like hit with the spear then they go whoa whoa whoa what's going on.
[00:32:17] But you're able to grab three or four within you know a five by five square box and oftentimes in your videos they just don't seem to care at all.
[00:32:28] They are so arrogant because they know they have an expectation word nothing is going to bother them you know they've adapted through millions of years of evolution to know that sticking those spines up at whoever's trying to eat them will work.
[00:32:42] And it has worked pretty well for them but they're also you know there's part of the food chain so.
[00:32:49] They stick them up and something can eat them but here there's just not that option so it's crazy yeah you spear one and he looks at his friend goes like that couldn't happen to me.
[00:32:59] I suppose he's on the monkey I suppose and then boom so for a typical day on the water.
[00:33:07] What is is a normal hall how many fish are you actually removing from the reef at a time anywhere from 50 to over a hundred sometimes.
[00:33:17] You know sometimes it's we've got 150 to 100 in a day so it just depends on how often we've been to that area of the reef a lot of times it looks like a lot less because we've killed all of the big ones for so long and all the fish for so long that we're only seeing small ones we used to find.
[00:33:34] Six or seven 15 inch fish you know in a die in a day maybe eight or nine 15 inch fish some up to 16 17 inches and now in this area we're finding you know eat inch fish five inch fish three inch fish you know we're finding.
[00:33:51] Three fish worth selling the whole day but we got you know 80 fish in the cooler so it's just we're fishing ourselves out of making any money selling them for food.
[00:34:02] You know because they're great to eat but you they're not going to the restaurants any restaurants not going to buy a tiny fish it's just not going to work but we still do go fill all those small fish and the really small fish I give to a lady who really likes to eat them and then I'll you know just out there bellies and throw them in for the cat fish so somebody everybody's getting the bite.
[00:34:23] You're your videos are great and you definitely get the sense that not me you encounter as you were saying Alex said the the fish are coming back to the Reese which is amazing.
[00:34:32] But we talk about the the lack of a natural predator you do the on some of your videos you do feed the line fish to some eels and other fish are.
[00:34:45] Do they just not know and is it just a case of as nature's got to catch up and the eel in Florida has to realize oh I can't eat that without getting hurt.
[00:34:56] Yeah the life is just well protected and once you try and you get poked you back off and you say never again I learned that this is going to hurt me.
[00:35:06] Yes that's a rough fact that let me add stuff into that in you know we have a big group around here called Goli at Gruper.
[00:35:15] Don't guys they will eat everything because on as a guy they will eat whatever you get in the will it does guys to get to be a 500 600 pounds their big fish.
[00:35:25] And at the other day that I caught a lionfish and I said, Goli at it say hey let me feed it to the Goli at right.
[00:35:30] So with a pair of shears I caught all the fines then I removed the head out of the lionfish so all the meat was exposed it was I tell you why if I wasn't on the water will be eaten in my stuff will look awesome right.
[00:35:45] The guy he never got closer to me to 10 feet he looked at me he turned around and he didn't want to know anything about it I dropped that and it went down to the bottom and eventually some grants.
[00:35:56] And I got a lot around and they did but the point I'm trying to make is this fish delivered and all they can smell the toxins that the lionfish has and they maybe got hoped before they don't want to deal with it.
[00:36:10] But then how like the fish in the Philippines or the shark the the reef sharks and the Philippines how to make it pass the toxins and all the worries about getting the big the big reason why is is basically first father hunting in the night they're hunting anything that moves in their hunting with competition.
[00:36:29] And our sharks are solitary feeders we got bull sharks we got little reef sharks they don't hunt and packs they hunt so little they try to bite something lemon shark tries to bite the lionfish it gets hooked in the face and backs off.
[00:36:43] And then it learns not to do it but these these little white tips you know they don't even have to move to breathe they can get inside holes and flush things out and say one goes after him gets spoke to the nose next another one goes after him gets spoken in those third one gets a bite in the tail fourth one gets a bite in the head then they tear it to shreds.
[00:36:59] And that's any fish on the reef so it doesn't matter if they get hooked because there's competition yeah and eels the ones that eat them here sometimes they will go after them just because they're startled by our spear all of a sudden you'll shoot and you'll miss the lionfish it'll look over at the wrong direction.
[00:37:17] Just enough to where this eel can get a bite on and they want to eat them but there's no way they can eat them without them being distracted or big shot you know if something's scavenged any animal in the ocean will eat a scavenger thing eventually something that's already dead something that's already wounded.
[00:37:37] But when it comes to eating the fresh live healthy animal it's just not going to happen they're just they get poked and once bitten twice shot.
[00:37:46] Yeah we've talked a little bit of why there's a lack of predators eating them and a lot of it has to do with the toxins in.
[00:37:55] The lionfish itself and the effects of when they bite it they get stung in it hurts but much like beekeepers and snake tamers sooner or later you're going to get bit or stop have you been on the bad end of a lionfish yet and what are the effects that that causes when you do get stung.
[00:38:13] Well Alex is that worst thing than me and it wasn't from his fault in fact it's never the fishes fault it's always a human error.
[00:38:21] lionfish don't attack you you try to touch them and you get poked so if you're doing this like we're doing this for a long period of time it's only inevitable that you're going to get poked in somewhere another.
[00:38:33] It's usually from being stupid it's usually from thank you not now it's not now.
[00:38:41] Alex was in this case Alex was working on the boat as the captain and he was trying to help somebody onto the boat and they handed up a lionfish on a shaft and a shaft is like a spear gun shaft instead of a pole spear so he didn't have the right tools to do what he was doing but he said I'm going to shoot this lionfish.
[00:38:59] So he brought it up and handed it up with a bunch of other gear and it was just as jumbo stuff with a lionfish and it's slid down the shaft hit him in the hand and it was absolutely horrendous his hand blew up into a balloon and he was in such hell.
[00:39:14] For four hours four hours of unadulterated like you want to cut your hand off hell taking I mean honestly I do someone should up on that point and say.
[00:39:26] You know we have to I'm getting us all taken I don't know what it hurts that bad is something similar to like a bad jellyfish stage.
[00:39:33] No, here's what it where here's how it feels so basically you have a guy with a hammer and you got your hand it's on a piece of wood and the guy just.
[00:39:43] Swings back and hits you in the hand with a hammer now it doesn't feel like that like right away you feel a sharp poke then the pain comes on so you don't feel the initial smack from the hammer but you feel the pain that same pain slowly creep on five ten minutes in and your hand just robs and just urge the surges with pain.
[00:40:03] So much so that you want to cry and you can't think of anything else you can't do your next dive in fact it's dangerous to do so because you're you know your bodies and stress and you don't want to get bent.
[00:40:15] It's actually been proven that people are really stressed out from a life is sting and they continue to dive that can actually have a higher chance of getting the bends.
[00:40:25] So that's not very good to do it from personal experience I'm so lucky in life that I also have kidney stones.
[00:40:34] Recently I mean a few years ago, I had a kidney stone that you must have heard I don't know her it's a lot of you.
[00:40:40] You may be it's a very intense pain, but you know what I jump on my car I drove to the emergency room and I say hey here take my keys do something because this hurts a lot.
[00:40:50] We're the pain on the line fish it was so much sharp and it's constantly it's almost like you got in nail that keeps coming in and it's.
[00:41:00] That's good stuff for four hours I mean the best thing you can do as soon as you get stung apply hard water but you're in the middle of the ocean on the board that we don't have had water so by the time I got to the dog to apply they had water it was a little too late you know to half an hour I think and there's nothing you can do but just there pain.
[00:41:18] But there's no worry it's not like a snake bite where the venom gets into your blood system and goes all around there's no worry about that it's just so it's localized it gets stung at the hand it hurts your hand like a mother.
[00:41:30] Yes, it's very localized but it all depends the different humans means to react differently right let's say that you happen to be allergic to a bee sting.
[00:41:38] I was saying that you're going to be careful man because did think I won't point I was breathing so heavy because of the pain that suddenly I was hyperventilating feeling like.
[00:41:51] I wasn't getting enough oxygen to my lungs you know even though I was breathing but I was like.
[00:41:56] He's like so I won't find he's like I can breathe now. Oh, maybe this is how I go.
[00:42:01] But there's a lot of other species of scorpion fish that can actually cause death.
[00:42:08] And lionfish if you were to get poked really really bad in the wrong place it could it has caused death in the in the world.
[00:42:15] But the stonefish and other members of the scorpion fish have a lot much larger glands that actually inject venom whereas the lionfish simply is they have spines that are coated with venom and then there's a sheep keeping that venom up next to that spine.
[00:42:30] And when you are poked the sheath gets pressed down and exposing that tiny little amount of venom.
[00:42:37] And that tiny amount of venom can go from your finger up to your elbow and almost up to your shoulder like the pain is surging on your arm over in the next couple hours.
[00:42:47] But if you get poked by scorpion fish here that we have there there said to be much worse and if you get poked by more like the bearded ghoul or the bearded goblin or however
[00:42:58] There's devil scorpion that all of all these crazy names or the stonefish the stonefish that is the most venomous fish and it's set part of the same family they have large glands and hyperdermic needles that actually fire.
[00:43:12] Large amounts of venom into you and that is deadly yeah, you could actually die from those ones.
[00:43:19] So in your videos you bring up a ton of cooler or a coolers filled with lionfish and you you take them to restaurants and so obviously you could
[00:43:28] get a lot of offset the cost of what you're doing is that I mean you're we'll talk about raising money and getting donations.
[00:43:35] But is this a major part of your funding to keep this thing going?
[00:43:40] Not that major okay, because a lot of times it's tough to have people people kind of forget about you if you just never bring them fish and it's it's not really nice to promise a lot of people but just stuff if you can't deliver.
[00:43:53] Because we don't know what we're gonna get and yeah, and it's hard for people to have this on the menu or even to even venture.
[00:44:00] To having a steady thing like this, we said we say okay we're gonna try to do one restaurant at a time and try to keep them satisfied.
[00:44:08] And luckily right now we have a restaurant that that gives us some pretty decent money for a fish and they it's a rich one called sushi bar in Miami Beach.
[00:44:16] And they do some awesome stuff they age their fish. It's a very very fancy place very good stuff from what I understand.
[00:44:25] I don't know like is that I only line fish so unless they give me a spread of lionfish, I'm never gonna be there.
[00:44:31] What mate? That's a brings up a good point. So you have broken your vegan vows for lionfish. What's your favorite way to enjoy lionfish?
[00:44:42] You know, I always tell people I'd rather have to fill with the end of the day but it's still really pretty good. It's really good though.
[00:44:48] I mean, it's super white and flaky that's hardly any fishiness to it at all. It's insane.
[00:44:54] What the best way I like it is either blackened or blackened whole fish. So you take the whole fish and cook them nice big one with cuts in it.
[00:45:03] Super you know carnage for me being a vegan to just dig into this big ass fish with you know just rip it in a part and pick it out the bones.
[00:45:12] But it takes like fried chicken to me almost because it's just so long since it had chicken that you know if you if you cook a
[00:45:19] it on a bone it has a different flavor to it. It's like it's something else man. It's like it's almost like you're picking meat off of the chicken carcasses crazy.
[00:45:28] Yeah, it's a little weight of eating it is on ceviche. ceviche. And the one thing I have a customer on one of the chartboards that I drive
[00:45:37] that he brings the whole thing of people on the one who goes out for life is so I take them to those special places where they can get a few.
[00:45:45] And the guy brings in a few containers all the components to make ceviche. So they dive, they get out of the water, they clean them right away and right there on the boat
[00:45:54] where we're driving back to the dock that it takes a while. They guy puts together ceviche everybody eats it and they love it.
[00:46:01] That's awesome. It's like getting candy pretty much.
[00:46:03] Yeah, yeah, it's really like the ceviche. Oh my god. The ceviche is so good.
[00:46:09] He's used to eating fish for many years. He's you know, groupers and like big he's very good at shooting fish.
[00:46:15] He's actually shot too cobbie at the same time off of a chart like he's done crazy stuff and
[00:46:20] he's got a friend named Wilbur, a glyph grouper that he's grown up along side years the year to go.
[00:46:28] He used to bring him some snacks and you know he had groupers eating out of his mouth. I mean,
[00:46:33] he's like a fish whispered down there. He's got his like face friends of all the fish and except for the ones he was shooting
[00:46:40] but now he's got a team down to where he's, please do he's one with me now. He rarely shoots anything else.
[00:46:45] You know, but yeah, on as a guy, since I knew Nate, my garage at home is the looks like a
[00:46:52] immune system of spear guns because I have them all hanging on the wall. You know, they're nice and
[00:46:57] the only thing I use now is the post beer and I that is why my girlfriend for fish by just getting lionfish.
[00:47:05] I mean, there's nothing you cannot do with the lionfish you can do without the fish.
[00:47:10] I mean, plus or minus it's an awesome fish. I've seen people pet those gigantic groupers,
[00:47:16] but I guess you're not petting lionfish, so that's one thing.
[00:47:18] I asked them before. He's always you're not touching their spines, you know, the whole side of their body
[00:47:24] has no spines on it. So the big side fins that they have are used to cural a little fish into
[00:47:31] corners and they also, they use them to kind of like push back as they move forward with their jaw
[00:47:36] and create extra propulsion. So the main thing is they use them to kind of bedazzle the fish and
[00:47:44] kind of mesmerize them and push them into a corner. Like it's like a big curtain that they're just kind
[00:47:50] of like a tarp. They're going to crowd them into a corner and then just pick them off. So those guys
[00:47:56] have no venomous spines in them. In fact, down at the base of those side of the, I think they're
[00:48:01] called the pectoral fins, they're actually like little fingers and they can hold onto the
[00:48:07] reef. Also there, there are after an underneath cave, like a bat hanging on from above. And also
[00:48:13] they use their air bladder. You know, if they want to suck them to the surface, it's always like
[00:48:17] use their air bladder to be a little bit more full and then they'll float upwards and just stay
[00:48:22] clung to the surface of the reef. But you'll see them occasionally walking around with their
[00:48:26] little fins and several members of the same family like a finger drag and nets and things like that.
[00:48:32] They also use their little fingers like that to crawl around. So it's pretty interesting. So you can
[00:48:37] add a little bit. If you had to guess, if you had to add up all the line fish over all the years,
[00:48:43] how many do you think you've spear? The number I tend to go with is 50,000.
[00:48:50] It's right about there. And that's from when I started kind of and with all the people on my boat,
[00:48:56] all, you know, me and Alex, all of our number kind of combined, I'd say right around 50,000.
[00:49:00] This is a kind of mass I put together might be less might be more. But then, even if it's 20,000,
[00:49:06] it's pretty dang good. Yeah, I'm going to strip off my stretch of reef. That's a lot of fish.
[00:49:11] Oh yeah. We do go down to get a lot of fish from other areas as well. We've got down many,
[00:49:17] many trips to Danny Abition wiped out a four or five mile area over there and then we went down to
[00:49:23] um keep it. Keep it's getting, we we knocked out a small area. But we're, every time we get a chance
[00:49:28] we go down there and we clean up we get quite a few fish out there. We got some big ones.
[00:49:33] And those areas where people don't go very much they grow to a ripe old age and those fish are
[00:49:37] big. We end up getting, you know, some 15, 16, 17 inch fish sometimes. That's huge. But if you put it in
[00:49:45] perspective that's what we used to get in point or maybe four years ago. Yeah. It says that
[00:49:49] point turned into the change that we've made is unbelievable. I'm so surprised. I never thought
[00:49:54] we get to this point that we have to go someplace else to really get big fish and a lot of them.
[00:49:59] When you guys started this whole thing, I mean you started what was the inspiration to get on
[00:50:04] social media? Because I first discovered you, I think it was about a year ago on TikTok and
[00:50:10] watching your videos. And it's shocking. I mean you've got like nearly like a half a million followers
[00:50:18] on TikTok to follow what you're doing. When did that come about? When did that side of the program
[00:50:24] come about? At first we were doing videos on Instagram and Instagram doesn't grow nearly as fast
[00:50:32] as TikTok from what I've understood. I've had it for a few years and I didn't get massive
[00:50:37] followings. And also when I started narrating the videos and editing them a little bit better,
[00:50:43] kind of showing the whole dive and short edits in the narrating like I do now. No music,
[00:50:47] you know, originally I put it to a little music and without the narration people didn't really
[00:50:52] like it. And people have commented the narration they really liked the voice that they find it soothing
[00:50:58] and they people say that it helps there. Anxiety, they go to bed to it and I've heard people thank
[00:51:05] me that I mean I'm not even kidding that people have said you know like this helps me a lot my
[00:51:11] depression and all kinds of stuff. That's great. They really live videos. Now we're over to
[00:51:16] where what is it? 540,000 followers. So in that's great because most of our listeners say we
[00:51:24] give them depression so that's gotta be a nice one. We'll do our best to help out. Yeah, you're
[00:51:31] great. You're doing great. Only a year and a half now I think I've been on TikTok and in it blew
[00:51:37] up from the first video I posted it got 3.5 million and then a couple of videos later.
[00:51:42] 4.3 million right now we're up to I think 36 or 37 videos with over a million views,
[00:51:47] one being over 11 million. So definitely gone really quickly and really well, the algorithm is
[00:51:54] tough to chase down. That's really hard to you know but that's also another source of being able
[00:52:00] to get money for this is from the views on TikTok. They actually pay you when you have enough
[00:52:05] followers you can apply to basically have a job and the TikTok employees you know but I would
[00:52:10] I would willing to guess over a million people to some extent of their you know money they're
[00:52:15] through TikTok. There's gotta be other tons of tons of people making some or if not all
[00:52:20] of their money from it so it's a really cool platform and it took off right away and we have a lot
[00:52:26] of people that watch your videos a lot and it goes comes and goes you know sometimes we'll have tons
[00:52:31] and tons of viewers and then it'll kind of taper down to some videos when we're only getting 40
[00:52:35] 50,000 you know 60,000 views and then back up to you know million and then 500,000 million
[00:52:41] it just goes all over the place. It's really you just gotta keep doing it you know just
[00:52:46] if you ever ways yeah if you can figure it out Nate let me know because I get the same I
[00:52:52] get the same frustrations from from both these passage around the buoy so I pick up what you're
[00:52:58] putting down there oh yeah just to paint it but yeah well this has been absolutely fascinating
[00:53:03] Nate now like thank you so much for taking the time and talking about what you're doing
[00:53:09] it really is it's incredible and it loved us here that when you go down diving you see a difference
[00:53:17] and you're actually making an impact in your environment that's fantastic.
[00:53:22] You know take a lot of work but yeah I mean our days are started about 630 in the morning probably
[00:53:28] earlier for Alex because he's much better getting up than I am by the time we get done I'm not
[00:53:38] everything I have to do Alex is you know he helps you out for a good portion of the day but
[00:53:43] I just can keep that with him I mean because after all these you gotta go clean fish clean the
[00:53:47] boat you name it on and I can't have more than a 12 hour day but he puts an 18 hour days amazing
[00:53:54] sometimes it's 14 hours I mean it's crazy and then you know you got to deliver the fish to the
[00:53:59] restaurant and you got to clean the remainder fish that wouldn't work so then you got to wash the
[00:54:04] boat and then you have to wash your gear and then you have to wash yourself and then
[00:54:07] maybe by the time traveling back and forth and all the times getting up at the morning it's like
[00:54:11] it is a heck of a day and then making the videos yeah but I'd say well the reason why I mean
[00:54:19] personal I'm doing it because I can see that we're making a difference and definitely I wouldn't be
[00:54:24] doing it if this thing was worth and the ceviche for him. Yeah and I want to really thank you guys
[00:54:31] for this interview because at the end of the day if you help us to spread the word a overnight
[00:54:37] is another late and not like see never single area of the reef all over south Florida and
[00:54:42] North Florida you name it and we should be able to control these until a natural predator
[00:54:47] shows up right that sounds like a good deal. What's the best way for our listeners to keep
[00:54:52] up with you too? Well I would say probably the TikTok or the Instagram and Lionfish
[00:54:58] termination corporation so you just type in lionfish and it's the first thing that shows up so
[00:55:03] it's not too hard to find. Hey well thank you thank you guys appreciate the time and appreciate
[00:55:09] the talk is been great. Thank you thank you guys. Welcome back to around the buoy Tyler let me check
[00:55:39] my around the buoy recording bingo card to see if I have a doose big allow, male jiggleow reference
[00:55:47] you. I was just gonna say that I never expected doose big allow to come up in an episode.
[00:55:54] I have some sort of foggy memory of James Bond a James Bond mentioned of a lionfish but
[00:56:01] I don't remember what it was but I remember clearly the doose big allow with the lionfish in a blender
[00:56:07] thought that I totally forgot about that to mention it and there's like that's exactly where I
[00:56:17] is in 80s Roger Moore Bond and I also remember I'm getting it mixed up with the octopus and
[00:56:26] octopus when it goes over and sucks the guys face off but that's the way that word sucks.
[00:56:33] Why is it trot? Yeah don't need to trombone the name of that film off. I don't think so it's a
[00:56:38] name of a movie but that's great you know one of the things that I was wanted to talk to
[00:56:47] about and they were very quickly the very quick to kind of answer that question was
[00:56:52] man because I've heard a description of the lionfish take over a thing out of nightmares like
[00:57:02] you go down below and it's just a field of lionfish and how he keeps on getting up and doing the same
[00:57:09] thing over getting going down and diving but how quickly he said we're making a difference we can see
[00:57:15] huge difference in the reef and that's a great yeah do you know how he stays motivated?
[00:57:21] Oh that has an Alex. Yeah. Yeah. Alex he's kind of like he's a drill sergeant kind of.
[00:57:31] You have an Alex in your life that guy is going to keep him lonely. He is the best.
[00:57:37] That was great. Yeah but just that's great I mean that's fantastic news that go down there and
[00:57:45] they can see a difference they go to a place, they wipe it out and come back a couple weeks later
[00:57:50] and it's still kind of clear and there is a couple of lionfish there but for the most part it's
[00:57:54] clear that must be so satisfying after seeing those nightmarish films or nightmarish
[00:58:01] and it's such a I mean I think work I can I can foresee us getting emails and comments about
[00:58:11] this method of eradication of a of a species and there there's just so many
[00:58:20] examples of the solution being worse than the original problem and this just doesn't seem that
[00:58:29] getting rid of a species by targeting that species there's no bike catch there's no you know
[00:58:36] there's no other damage to the reef at all it's not like they brought in another species of fish
[00:58:44] that was non-native to the area to deal with this and then that becomes a problem and then after
[00:58:49] bringing something else to get rid of like into the point where I don't know this but like specifics
[00:58:56] but for some reason I remember studies of back west where they had a species come into a
[00:59:05] fresh water lake that was non-native it exploded so they brought in something else
[00:59:11] whatever it was I think it was the it was a carp yeah it was a carp and there's a carp where
[00:59:17] there were so many non-native species causing such destruction that they just
[00:59:22] nuked the lake they poisoned the lake they killed everything that was their solution
[00:59:28] this that's not a solution but this seems like such a smarter environmentally friendly way of dealing with it
[00:59:35] well you know and our history is rife with stories of that just thing I think in the early
[00:59:42] America's down south of Louisiana and they had trouble because the land wasn't
[00:59:50] firm enough to build on so they introduced a plant called a cutsu and it's basically
[00:59:55] it's an ivy and it went absolutely bonkers and it's now literally everywhere like the entire
[01:00:03] state of Louisiana is covered in it and the carp is the other one where they introduced it to
[01:00:09] fight off something else and then it jumped lakes and eventually made it to the Mississippi and now
[01:00:14] it's a massive problem all over the country and you see people driving boats down rivers and lakes
[01:00:23] like and the carp should just jump literally jumping into the boat there's so many out there so it's
[01:00:29] it's there are very few things more entertaining than watching water skiers level by a carp
[01:00:35] those are well worth the invasive well worth the damage of that's good damage that it's causing yes
[01:00:43] but yes I would agree with you Tyler there's probably people all pissed off and I'm sure
[01:00:48] Nate and Alex deal with it quite a bit that people are pissed off that they're targeting these fish but
[01:00:53] really and truly what the alternative is not because the alternative is they go eat every fish on the
[01:01:00] reef to the point where they now have the the line just starving I just kept having in the back
[01:01:06] my mind oh search in our interview and the fact that the reason why they're protecting sharks
[01:01:14] is because they want fish sandwiches and the reason why these guys are taking out the line fish
[01:01:20] are because Alex likes grouper parrot fish and he likes damsel fish and all these other species
[01:01:27] that are being decimated because this hungry super villain of fish is just taking over so
[01:01:37] hey they found a problem they're going after it they're making some ground they don't good
[01:01:42] good on you guys that's all good on it's good all right let's get on to the news
[01:01:47] the first one the SS United States for those who haven't maybe gone back and listened to actually Tyler
[01:01:54] this is a this episode the SS United States episodes that we did represents a milestone as we're
[01:02:01] sitting here on the eve of season eight this was the last episode I did without you
[01:02:09] man here here's the thing that's a wonderful anniversary but it makes me feel personally much better
[01:02:18] because I knew there was an around the buoy episode but I had no memory of it whatsoever and so
[01:02:25] I've been trying to rack my brain oh you're too like good you thought you were involved in it
[01:02:29] because I couldn't remember anything that we talked about that's hysterical though I was
[01:02:35] Elena and I'm over here free based in a globalobaloba trying to kickstart the neurons and it just
[01:02:41] was not coming to me if you haven't gone back to listen to that episode essentially what the
[01:02:50] SS United States is it is one of the last great ocean liners and it currently holds the record
[01:02:57] for the fastest Atlanta crossing but it's truly a magnificence ship but unfortunately her future is
[01:03:03] in doubt and she's going to have to move and the time is ticking because it is like as we record this
[01:03:10] they've got two and a half hours to do an half hours to come up and I think they're going to
[01:03:17] keep the engines up in time but she was launched in 1951 and her kind of her what she's known
[01:03:23] as her nickname or not necessarily nicknamed but there's kind of her slogan is the most
[01:03:28] famous ship that didn't sink um she hasn't sailed on the Atlantic since 1960 and she's been
[01:03:38] totally stripped everything's been stripped off her and they just don't know what to do with her there
[01:03:43] is a conservancy the SS United States Conservancy that is trying to raise money to figure out
[01:03:50] how what's the best use of the ocean liner going forward. He said be Boa Ra what is she overall?
[01:03:59] It's about 1000 feet long so when I went down and visited the battleship new jersey you could see
[01:04:06] her funnels from the deck in the New Jersey way. Oh that's right because it's right across the
[01:04:10] river from Kansas the river yeah and it's it's it's a big boat it's a sight to see for sure.
[01:04:17] Really yes um amazingly enough so when she was built uh in the 50s or late 40s early 50s
[01:04:26] she was built with an idea because this is in the height of the cold like the cold war was starting
[01:04:32] and the the Gibbs who was the disnabel architect went to the government said hey we can also
[01:04:39] use this as a troop transport ship and the military and the government gave them a ton of money
[01:04:46] and there's a bunch of secret of stuff like about the the pay the propellers were totally
[01:04:51] revolution at the time no one saw them they were totally shrouded in mystery the whole design was shrouded
[01:04:58] but amazingly enough they could they say uh I love it's true but they say in a period of 48
[01:05:05] hours they can shift it from a luxury ship to a troop transport ship that could carry 18,000 troops
[01:05:12] over 10,000 miles without refueling. Believe that that's a lot yeah but I mean the standards are
[01:05:20] pretty minimal I mean I think when my grandfather came back from Europe at the in a world war two
[01:05:27] I mean they were just on top of each other on the you know the deck of a they were
[01:05:33] the ship or yeah or ship that they had converted for that use so it's not like they had to have
[01:05:39] 18,000 first class cabins I mean no no well shoulder to shoulder on deck that's what I'm more
[01:05:47] concerned about the fact that you've got this luxury liner with all this like a castle art and all these
[01:05:53] expensive stuff I was in the military I've been together on ships and I know people walk away
[01:05:59] with like a like a you know burn butter plate or like a dinner plate or a napkin or something
[01:06:06] something 10 is going to tend to walk it's all this luxury stuff military soldiers going to
[01:06:11] it's all going to say any names for legal reasons but we have a gift from my family friend when
[01:06:21] passed away that we cherish it is the the eyeglass from a ship that a family friend had stolen
[01:06:29] he captain of the ship and made him upset so he stole it from the bridge and he hung and he
[01:06:34] hit it above his bunk and it arct on a couple wires oh ship lost power and he kept his mouth shut
[01:06:42] hit it brought it back so when he passed away he gave it to my father and it still has the marks
[01:06:48] with the ronson art on the wires and had melted both ends of it it's really cool that's really cool
[01:06:55] and it's not stealing it's acquiring no that was theft yeah 100% well anyways so they're trying to
[01:07:05] figure out what to do with the boat she moved to Philadelphia 1996 and she's been on the pier there
[01:07:11] and she has a lease but the lease was open ended with no end date and also there was no talk
[01:07:18] about at any point that the you know is the rent ever going to get raised and then in 2021
[01:07:26] all of a sudden the rent got doubled and the conservacy was like hey we can't afford to pay a double
[01:07:33] rent so they just kept on paying what they were paying before and so obviously the the company
[01:07:39] that owns the pier the landlord took them to court and it's been in court for quite some time
[01:07:44] it then earlier this year in 2024 the courts determined that a the rate hike was illegal and should
[01:07:52] him have done but also b the ship was ordered to move it's like okay now you know you're going
[01:07:58] to have to raise the rates you got to get the boat out of there and unfortunately it's guys were
[01:08:02] recording on September on today as we're recording today it's got to move by tomorrow so
[01:08:10] and again 100 feet you can't just move that and recently battleship New Jersey which is just
[01:08:16] across the river from them has moved into dry dock and has come back out to get the ship
[01:08:21] under the Walt Whitman Bridge they had to take off all the upper radio antennas the radar all
[01:08:28] that radar raising things like that and then they also had to balance the ship down like four feet
[01:08:34] to get under the bridge so the SSU nine states can make it close at low low tide but again
[01:08:42] it's just one more thing that you can't just say okay let's go we'll go find some place else there is no
[01:08:48] place else. Well yeah that's the other thing it isn't given it's length there's no dock in Philadelphia
[01:08:55] or even in no far Virginia down in Florida that can take such a large vessel and with even
[01:09:02] I think I think there are but not for not for freezes you know not without some sort of money making
[01:09:10] venture behind yeah so they have flow to the idea of making turning the because I want you
[01:09:25] to know that's not what I was going to say they flow to the idea of turning it into a luxury
[01:09:30] hotel condominiums retail space and then having it on a dock like or appear in New York City which
[01:09:38] is a really cool idea but again we're talking hundreds of millions of dollars to do something like that
[01:09:45] and then the latest idea is that it's going to be towed down off the coast of Fort Walton Beach
[01:09:52] in Deston Beach down in Florida on the Panhandle of Florida and then sunk and used as an artificial
[01:09:58] reef slash fish habitat. They announced that just a couple weeks ago and it was a shock because
[01:10:06] up I mean again up until a couple weeks ago they were still posting via their social media in
[01:10:12] their website they had just received a grant from the US government for those like a thousand
[01:10:17] dollars or something but towards that inevitable multi-purpose retail space you know they were
[01:10:25] still trying to save the ship they were trying to come up with a new spot to put it in a new
[01:10:30] new mission for you know they're concerned as they don't want this piece of American history
[01:10:35] just to disappear to the scrap that don't want to lose that piece of history. And they've done it
[01:10:41] I think I were in reading theoretical the Oriskinny which was an aircraft carrier in the
[01:10:47] Vietnam era that one was sunk off the coast to Pensacola for the same thing as a dive
[01:10:55] something to attract divers and it's like when we talked to Eric about the Andritoria it's something
[01:11:00] that's going to bring people to dive on the ship tourism and then also a natural fish habitat also
[01:11:07] alongside with the artificial reef in dust and then they would also then make a museum so people
[01:11:14] have come learn about the ship you could dive on at least learn about the ship. The vote so this
[01:11:22] all the whole let's see the Ogolusca format time. So the Ogolusca County was going to vote
[01:11:29] on the fact that it's going to cost them nine million dollars mostly environmental fees to the clean
[01:11:35] level. They were also paying the consumer and see a million dollars for the ship.
[01:11:39] So a million bucks for the ship. The government are the county inflow it for four
[01:11:44] Fort Walton beaches they got together and they were going to have to raise and take nine
[01:11:50] million dollars out of their budget to buy to buy the S S United States and get it down there
[01:11:57] and then mostly clean all the environmental stuff off of it and it came up to vote recently
[01:12:04] and everyone agreed we should delay that vote until the budget comes you know later on in the
[01:12:11] year which is what is causing this delay. That's why the vote still on the peer right now.
[01:12:17] And the judge who made the final decision that okay September 12th you gotta go also left it a
[01:12:25] little open in the end knowing that it's not so easy just to move a ship especially at this time
[01:12:30] year when the Atlantic hurricane season's going to go in a little bit. There's currently a hurricane
[01:12:36] in the Gulf that it's not just quite as easy as toe it out and move it they've got to work around
[01:12:42] something so yeah it does sound like it's progressing up until this last vote but I think
[01:12:52] from everyone that has some say in this and some control over the ship's future that this is kind
[01:12:59] of the best option if they can get it down there and then it would become something that not only
[01:13:07] is useful and would bring in millions of dollars in revenue for that area of Florida for
[01:13:17] the people that are going to come to dive and to see the museum but it also somewhat saves that piece
[01:13:22] of history. I don't know like a scene moving forward I mean it's it seems like a really
[01:13:28] the best option available. I I grew through because if you look at it financially the luxury hotel
[01:13:35] condominium that's just not going to happen no one no one wants to spend like a 500 million
[01:13:42] $800 million to do that to make it happen although if it could happen would be really freaking cool
[01:13:49] but it's just not going to happen and I don't find that it's such a disgrace that you're syncing
[01:13:55] the ship ironically with its motto of the most famous ship that hasn't sunk. If you sync the ship
[01:14:03] it's better often having it just whether on the vine on the pier and become an ice
[01:14:10] orb because the boat no one's taking care of it right now. It's just a pain's peeling it looks
[01:14:15] like crap and just sync it and make it an attraction I don't think it I don't think it's
[01:14:24] scraping the memory of the ship by sinking it and putting it down the bottom of the ocean.
[01:14:30] Given to the second second chance of life for sure yeah definitely because as you said the
[01:14:37] last resort the final straw is selling it for scrap and I don't want to shave with it down
[01:14:44] the road and that just seems that's that's the worst case scenario that's the most disgraceful
[01:14:50] they can take it down tote down the golf they can cut off the the wheelhouse they can cut off
[01:14:55] the observation tower and they can make that part of the museum. The museum. I think the rest of
[01:15:01] it it becomes an incredible habitat for a variety of fish you know it becomes an artificial reef right
[01:15:10] and then you the millions of dollars of income for the local economy of people coming down
[01:15:16] to stay a hotel to go dive the wreck the charters to get out to the wreck the you know the restaurants
[01:15:23] everything that comes with that it would be a huge boom for that area yeah to win win all right
[01:15:33] Tom Clancy well first but before we get into this speaking of Tom Clancy
[01:15:38] rest in peace Admiral Greer oh that was a loss that was a big loss that was a loss coming from
[01:15:46] somebody who grew up with the sandlot and home for a red October star wars I mean
[01:15:55] field of dreams you for the always skip over ever watch field of dreams oh my god
[01:15:59] Jesus you've got kids now you have to watch you'll cry
[01:16:03] sourced I love it it's the best it's the best move for those those who are unfamiliar to
[01:16:09] as to what we're talking about we are more in the loss of actor James Earl Jones who played
[01:16:14] Vice Admiral James Greer and many of the Tom Clancy series comfort October Patriot games
[01:16:23] any number of those classic iconic films he was also the voice of Darth Vader he was the voice
[01:16:30] this is where my generation it's a really good hit home he was the voice of Simba's dad in the
[01:16:37] Lion King big time the Sam Lot he was the neighbor in Sam Lot so incredible catalog of films
[01:16:44] and just an iconic voice that is everywhere yeah he was he was the best seen in breaking news my entire
[01:16:52] life of Mr Jones and that has always been just when I hear breaking news it's his voice of
[01:17:02] him this is CNN but wildly enough Disney has recently within the last year to purchase the rights
[01:17:12] whatever you would call that to his voice for perpetuity so he with BAI they're able to use his
[01:17:22] voice on any project they want move out so Darth Vader will always be voiced by James Earl
[01:17:28] Jones which is so freaking cool I love it all right I mean I'm having some struggles with AI
[01:17:36] currently I don't know how I feel about it I feel good about this one but if all of the things
[01:17:42] this seems like it's okay yeah except one like the Terminator robots that T1000's T100's
[01:17:50] whatever come and get us and they all sound like James Earl Jones then I'll be conflicted well
[01:17:56] in the last year one of my one of the most iconic country music musicians ever Randy Travis
[01:18:04] has released a new album and he's had health problems for decade or more and is non-verbal
[01:18:10] and he just released a new country music album wow that's the thing right so I believe there was a
[01:18:19] singer who recorded it and then with AI they've reproduced it in his voice so he has a new album
[01:18:27] how about that I'm against it I'm against that I'm against the 100% I think I think you just
[01:18:34] against country music and jazz that's all such a thing I think as we lead into this this story
[01:18:40] I will say I think our world in terms of like action adventure movies and literature is better off
[01:18:54] with Russia as our adversary well I think we need to have an enemy that we can all get behind
[01:19:01] right we can all get behind a hundred percent the Soviet Union was that for for decades now we've
[01:19:06] still have Russia now same same thing you know kind of the same feeling but what we're talking
[01:19:14] about is there was a blue go whale that crashed into the scene and pre-pandemic days 2019
[01:19:21] like 20 years ago and we were seeing this internet sensation of this blue go whale playing
[01:19:27] batch with like a beach bar it was a rugby ball rugby ball wow people in a skiff with toss it
[01:19:35] it would swim out bring it back there was a couple young girls who had gone down to the
[01:19:42] dock to go meet this whale and she dropped her phone off the dock the blue go swim down to the
[01:19:48] to the to the sea bed pick up the phone brought it back to her like there was just story and
[01:19:53] story and story after this about this this whale and when they found this whale it was wearing a
[01:19:59] harness that had stitching on the said equipment of Saint Peter's bird when it seemed to have
[01:20:04] a GoPro mount on it the theory was it had been domesticated and obviously trained by the Russian
[01:20:09] government and so they were thinking it was a spy whale that got loose yeah it was friendly it was
[01:20:17] very personable it had personality it was okay with humans a lot of times it would come up and it
[01:20:23] would you know it would really enjoy like he would scratch its back whatever and it would or
[01:20:34] it would be a personable of wild animal almost personable to a fault to a point where there was
[01:20:39] numerous local organizations that had feared because they didn't think it would survive on
[01:20:44] its own they didn't know if it would hunt and to be able to feed itself so they'd actually worked
[01:20:49] there was a number of different organizations one whale being one of them that were actually
[01:20:58] feeding this beluga and ensuring that it stayed the state health is it could be but they also
[01:21:04] were doing a lot to mitigate the the tourist interactions and they didn't want tourist feeding it
[01:21:10] and you know all that kind of thing they still wanted to keep it as protected as possible
[01:21:17] even though it was so friendly to people but sadly it was found dead on August 31st
[01:21:24] and the internet and the world being what it is the theories of Russian assassinations
[01:21:33] blossomed are huge it became almost more viral than the original videos of it playing rugby
[01:21:45] one whale found it Regina and excuse me a pronunciation H.A. U.G.
[01:21:51] hog I guess who close it on had posted on Instagram a photo of the deceased whale with what I mean
[01:21:59] and I'm not I'm not a marine biologist I'm not anything near qualified enough to make this diagnosis
[01:22:08] but it seems like there's bullholes in the side of this world yeah I don't watch into the CSI shows
[01:22:14] but I agree with you it seemed fairly clear that there were three gunshot wounds to the to the
[01:22:21] body or to the the torso and some blood coming out they so they found it and they've done
[01:22:28] an autopsy on it they were trying to figure out why it died and they say there was no
[01:22:36] foul play the autopsy the the released statement from the law enforcement from the region
[01:22:43] the people that did the autopsy it was they found a 14 inch wide or 14 inch long stick
[01:22:49] wedged in its mouth and what they are saying is that it was unable to defeat itself
[01:22:55] so it's basically starve to death yeah they all topsy did say it's stomach was empty
[01:23:01] and it's the the organs her internal or his internal organs were starting to deteriorate meeting
[01:23:08] he just starve to death and the reasonable explanation of it playing fetch with people and
[01:23:16] somebody through a stick I mean it's basically the science field episode with the whale in the golf
[01:23:21] 100% the series that day my friends and it is my absolute favorite science field episode
[01:23:29] and I'm so glad you bring that up so probably an accident the whale got the stick stock
[01:23:37] and that was the end of it however Russians being Russians yeah and the number of
[01:23:45] Russian oligarchs and military personnel and business leaders that accidentally died in horrific
[01:23:51] ways is a lot and this just seems to kind of follow that so maybe the whale knew too much
[01:23:59] the way maybe it did so here's my here are my thoughts on it as I was you know right now all
[01:24:05] up going through it they go that's really unfortunate exactly tired just as you said
[01:24:10] some guy had a stick or someone had a stick and it was throwing it and it just got lodged in the
[01:24:16] whales mouth so it's obviously an incredibly smart whale it would retrieve stuff and bring it back
[01:24:24] why didn't it open its mouth saying hey I forgot a problem here about side effects maybe maybe it did
[01:24:32] who knows where that I don't know where that stick was stuck the blue whale's mouth is not
[01:24:36] 14 inches wide you know where that was stuck and whatever I just think that this and this
[01:24:47] much like the immaculate conception of this stingray we've been covering unbelievably I can't
[01:24:55] believe you brought it back up it there was a star let one star whale give her the respect she deserves
[01:25:03] so the organization one whale which was established in 2019 to basically protect this particular
[01:25:11] blue guy there are also the ones that posted the photo showing the dead whale and what seems
[01:25:19] from this from this picture it does look like there's a couple of bullholes on the side of this whale
[01:25:24] but you know they're they're pushing that story of it being gunshots and that the whale was
[01:25:31] murdered and not so much the the more realistic story of it got a stick stuck and wasn't able to eat
[01:25:42] anymore yeah so maybe some different priorities there on why we're seeing what we're seeing but
[01:25:52] I hear I think you're in Russian assassination plot is just a more intriguing story oh my god
[01:26:01] I'm so here's what I think happened I think you're a blue or from Moscow to Norway had the stick
[01:26:09] the 14 inch by one inch wide stick was playing with the whale and then got the opportunities
[01:26:16] stuck the stick down the whale's mouth and it's like hey I'm out of here now it was it was a hit
[01:26:23] and it was a hit to make it look like an accident I'm I'm putting I'm putting a couple chips on that
[01:26:31] on that on that one well you can put 50 thousand crooner on it if you want because there is a
[01:26:37] supply that if you call with information leading to I don't I don't know leading to the
[01:26:45] conviction of the whale murderer you get a not a prize but you got 5000 croona what is
[01:26:55] just like you get a reward a four or thousand croona this comes out to about 4600 bucks you
[01:27:02] what is 6000 bucks I swear to god if there's a title is involved oh my god if there's a title is
[01:27:15] well you know and this the story continues on it gets a little bit longer than it should be
[01:27:21] but this this story totally reminds me of the story of Andre up in Rockland in Maine of the
[01:27:29] Harbra seal that was like the most friendly Harbra seal in the world no bad no there was no what
[01:27:35] are you talking about Andre the giant no Andre the seal never heard of it oh my god
[01:27:44] next time you're in Rockport or Rock Rockland there's a statue of a Harbra whale or a
[01:27:54] Harbra seal named Andre and this guy in the 70s it was legal to go pluck seal pups off the rocks
[01:28:03] and take it into your house and raise it and so we did he had this seal and that first winter
[01:28:12] he had it in the basement and I was in a tub and on a winter storm Andre broke out and
[01:28:20] went back into the ocean and the guys like you know what he's he's back where he should be
[01:28:25] long that's great and then next spring the seal came back and this guy would teach it tricks
[01:28:34] and it eventually every single winter it would go offshore and it would mate and live the winter
[01:28:40] life that they do and every summer would come back to this guy his name was Harry and it would
[01:28:45] come back to Harry and entertain townspeople and visitors it was amazing oh my god I that I was raised
[01:28:53] on the story of Andre I'll have to get it to you it's a great freaking story that bottom line you are
[01:29:01] this is just a really unfortunate situation and you don't think there's foul play so I think
[01:29:08] the bottom line of the story is it's it's sad you know obviously it's a way to become a really
[01:29:15] beloved piece of quite a bit of that coastline it traveled quite a bit and it had become
[01:29:21] friends with the local salmon farms they would feed it and it became a part of the community
[01:29:26] and it's it's a sad loss for sure but it does have some national intrigue
[01:29:37] see you you've got a couple chips on the Russian on Yuri coming down from Moscow how could you not
[01:29:45] how could you know it's it's a better story first of all we're all about the story
[01:29:54] I think that's it all right well that wraps up episode 89 as always thank you for the support of the
[01:30:01] police subscribe to around the buoy on iTunes and Spotify it's free and who doesn't love free stuff
[01:30:07] also if you like what you hear please rate the show and leave us a review for extra content on our
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[01:30:18] and of course do not forget to look up Tyler Fields photography and ease passage but right
[01:30:22] on the ins webs as well they are both great follows that's it for episode 89 for Tyler Fields
[01:30:29] I'm Carter Richardson and this is around the buoy