South Padre Freediving

On saturday, Keith, Lilly & I headed out towards blue water in the Panga. We got a bit of a late start, so we went 35 miles out straight to a rig that they have been in the process of disassembling. When Keith was out there a week ago, it was laid over on its side and there were fish all over it. We ran for over an hour and a half to get to it, and when we got there, we realized that they had finished taking it out. Apparently, there is a new deal that any non-producing platforms in the Gulf have to be removed. They're taking out every single platform within range of SPI... they were working on the 17 mile rig, and Little Sara (the 10 mile rig) is coming out next week. Pretty sad.

Anyway, after running all that way, we decided to go to the Liberty ships. We ran over there, and when we got there, the water was too green to do any good diving.  From there, we went to the 17 mile rig and dove there for about 45 minutes until we got run off by a crane barge coming to take apart the rig. Keith shot one snapper off that rig, and the current was ripping. From there, we went to Little Sara and traded off with Keith's big Ulusub gun and the camera. He shot another snapper, and I skewered a barracuda. There were lots of cuda and snapper, but most of the snapper were 50+ feet down. All in all, it was a fun trip, but we ran a long way for not very many fillets. Here's some pics & video...

Here's the shot on the cuda:

Here's Keith trying to ruin my camera by taking it down around 50ft deep!