Now the Lord made a whale, long and wide
Lord, Lord waddnat a fish
And he swallowed up Jonah, hair and hide
Lord, Lord waddnat a fish.
-Louis Armstrong
By Randall Grantham
It was the dead middle of November. The first cold front had come and gone. The weather was typical Tampa perfect. Highs in the upper 70s. No clouds and a light breeze out of the north-northeast. We’d had no significant rain in over a month and a half, so the water conditions and visibility were great. Peter and I set out from Tarpon Springs with a new set of numbers and no curfew.
I had seen my buddy Ray Odor earlier in the week to get a new stringer and got to talking to him, telling him where we were going that weekend. The man was in a good mood and, as I was leaving, he looked at me with a grin and said, “Do you want a number?” Having tried and tried to get a few coordinates out of the old master before, without success, I jumped at the offer. “Come on in,” he said as we sat down and he booted up his computer to find us a spot.
Heading out towards Pedestal Rock, the barges were on the way so we decided to roll-over on a couple of them before heading out deeper. As I hit the 68 degree water and surface for my spear gun, I tell Peter, “Thank God for wetsuits,” before descending.
The first barge I dropped on was pretty well decayed. A few struts and plates and a lot of fish. I watched a few legal-sized grouper swim off and bagged a nice Sheepie and a Hog Snapper before coming up to let Peter take a look. Before I came up, I saw what I thought, at the time, to be a pretty nice sized goliath grouper, or jewfish, as they used to be called. It was about five feet long.
After Peter came up, we motored over towards a second barge, but before we got there, a huge mass popped up on the bottom-feeler and, with the water as clear as it was, we could see that we were sitting on something big. It was another, newer barge. From the surface it looked like a tall mound of white rocks or shells. But when we dropped on it, we found that the “shells” were actually millions, or even billions, of shiny threadfins and other baitfish, massing around the barge.
I followed Peter in and, as I swam nearly blindly through the masses of baitfish, I kept hearing a “WHOMP” sound. As I ventured into the barge’s midsection in hopes of getting out of the cloud of bait and maybe finding a decent sized fish, I startled one of the biggest goliaths I had ever seen. I say I startled it, but let me tell you, it more than startled me.
I found that it, and its brethren, were the source of the “WHOMP” sound. The fish are so big, and they can displace so much water, when they are feeling “territorial,” they pump their swim-bladder and cause a “sonic boom” under water.
There were no fewer that 10-12 of those giants on that wreck. The five-foot one we had seen at the other barge must have been a baby that had wandered off from the family picnic, because all of these were at least six feet and up to eight or more feet long. And they were everywhere! Every time we got too close to one, we would hear and feel the “WHOMP,” as they maneuvered out of our path.
Peter and I worked the wreck for awhile, taking turns running into the giants at all parts of the structure until we decided to surface. Once on board the boat, our eyes wide with wonder, all we could do was shake our heads in disbelief. Finally Peter put it into words that seemed to do it justice. He said, “That was like Jurassic Park, man!” Indeed. Those creatures seemed like dinosaurs, each one outweighing us by several hundred pounds.
This was only the second time I’d dove with fish bigger than me. The first time was at Disney’s Living Seas at Epcot and there I felt safe in the perimeter of an amusement park. This was no amusement park. [Very large goliath grouper have been observed to stalk divers and even conduct unsuccessful ambushes. Large individuals of this species should be treated with caution.]
A couple of decades ago, they said jewfish, or GG, were on the brink of extinction. Well, from what I’ve seen, the species has made a great rebound. And, just like alligators, I think they‘ve come back enough to be reminded of who sits at the top of the food chain. Because grouper is grouper. And no matter what you call it, it’s good eats!
Randall C. Grantham is a lifelong resident of Lutz who practices law from his offices on Dale Mabry Highway. He can be reached at . Copyright 2010 RCG.
