Man oh Man I love Mother Nature and the way she toys with man. The Blackfish season is open again here in Rhode Island. I love hunting for Black Fish. They are actually called Tautog but their common name is Black Fish. Whatever you call them, they’re delicious. Nice thick fillets, tender mild flesh, no matter how ya slice em, they’re good for everything from Fish and Chip’s (my favorite), to some good old fashioned Fish Chowder. We love to hunt them in one of their favorite haunts in this area. Sure you can find them at Fort Wetherill, along the cliff walls that drop down to 50 feet or so and are littered with boulders everywhere, But The breakers at Point Judith are tops.

That long strip heading southeast, is about a mile long, made of boulders, and all of them are covered in Tautog food. Mussels, Lobsters, Crabs, heck you name it, it lives in the boulders here. We start at the beach you can see in the picture above, on the eastern side of this wall. We swim all the way out to almost the tip of these breakers. At high tide it’s about 25’ – 35’ deep, and loaded with fresh food for everyone. We tend to descend about 25 – 50 feet from the tip, due to the fact that the current at the tip can be some of the worst Rhode Island has to offer. To explain this area better, to the east is another breaker, not much chance of being able to miss them if you tried, to the west is Europe.

We were very pleased that the waves on the surface were almost non-existent, on the inside, this usually means an easy dive with fresh fish and chips for dinner in our books.

Well let’s just say we had chicken for dinner! The descent went as planned, perfect, we did a gear check before descent, confirmed our tanks were full, confirmed all our gear was secured, confirmed our Pony Bottles and Pony regulators were fully functional, and gave the thumbs up and descended. We met on the bottom after keeping an eye on each other the whole way down. A double thumbs up, and we loaded the spear guns as Tautog started to scatter everywhere. These were smaller ones, about 14” or so. The smaller ones usually hang out on the inside of this wall so we headed around the front of the wall, like we normally do.

Well after rounding the tip and all the boulders that litter the bottom out here, the current picked up with a vengeance. I mean were used to some heavy surge, push you 10 feet one way, before pushing you 10’ back to where you started, yea yea big deal were used to it. Well this time, the current was more like being stuck in a glass of water that someone is pouring out, and I mean pouring it out like they wanted it empty. Before I knew it, I was sideways in the current heading to London. I looked back to see how my buddy was handling this sudden turn of events. As I looked beside me to see how my son was doing, he too was sideways in the current, with his fins bent like sea fans on rock.

We quickly realized one thing, this is bad, very bad. We figured ok, it’s going to be a big surge, any minute now it will start going back, any minute. Not a chance, London here we come? I think not, we didn’t spend all this money on gear and training for nothing, and besides, we have our safety sausage, our surface signaling device, a pony bottle and a full tank of air, Fantastic fins as proved in the past, and above all else, we had skill, practice and training. Besides, we been here before, and when the crap hit the fan, our training kicked in and we did fine. But this time was different, this was a strong current heading south.

As you can see from this picture, South is NOT good. Not good at all.

As soon as we realized that this was no heavy surge, and the bay had to be emptying out all at once, which was after five minutes of sideways drift diving, we realized time for plan B. Yes we had a plan B, why, because we are not into the dying while diving thingy. We always view NOAA charts of the area we dive, we always plan for a worst case scenario, and we always have an emergency plan. In this case, we discussed the fact that the current in this area can be unpredictable to say the least. We figured hey, if we go around front and get swept away we can always

A.) Hit the surface after making sure a boat is not in the shipping lane right to the south of that tip.

B.) Swim our butts off for the North and try to hide in the rocks and snake our way back to the tip.

C.) Swim to the rocks, head north on the outside, and hit the rocky shore or climb the rocks in an emergency exit.

D.) Hit the surface in the open ocean after clearing the shipping lane, deploy surface signaling devices and wait for rescue.

 

Well anyway, you get it. Either way my point is this, we spent money on the Safety gear for a reason, so we would have the confidence to sit back, relax and save ourselves and know we had the ability and gear to do it. Hey I don’t fear dying nearly as much as having to tell my wife I last seen our son somewhere out there, and point towards Europe. Don’t forget, he’s not just my diving buddy, he’s my son too!

Well anyway, after about five minutes of getting to know what a feather in the wind feels like, I figured it was time to try and save the coast guard some money on a long drawn out embarrassing rescue. I reached out for my dive buddy with my Spear gun sideways, as to keep the tip pointed well away from him so he could grab it. I reached out, and he looked at me like, are you kidding? Take your own frigging gun I got something going on here. He later told me he thought I seen a large lobster, and despite the current, he assumed I was going for it, and wanted him to hold my Spear gun for a second. Actually I was reaching it out so he could grab hold and I could pull him into the rock I managed to snag on to. Either way, he grabbed the gun and didn’t let go. I pulled him behind a very large rock. Here we used pre determined hand signals for this area in particular, to signal that we are going to stay in the rocks, rock hoping from rock to rock to reach the main wall on the outside of the wall rather than turn around and head back into that current.

Thanks to the Twin Jet fins we were sporting, this was surprisingly easy to accomplish, and we quickly realized this was going to be the best water park ride ever. We were darting back into the strong current at the perfect angles, and darting back out to the next rock that looked like it would provide enough cover from the current to meet up and do a check up on each other.

You see, we quickly gathered our wits, didn’t panic, and assessed the situation according to our skill level. Sure I thought about turning around and making a bee line for the tip so we could get back inside that wall where the current was non-existent. This was quickly determined to be a fatal decision. You see, at the strength of that current, all anyone would have accomplished was to run out of air trying to win an unwinnable fight against such a massive current. Were no idiots mind you, we knew we would just burn off air, have to head back to where we just were, and then try the rock bouncing after hitting 500 psi in air left. No thank you sir, if that sounds like a plan to you, you need to get back to a re-fresher class in scuba safety.

When I pulled my partner into that rock crevice, we were a full ¼ a mile out to the sea, and well away from safety. But we did have this, My dive buddy had a Scubapro X650 with an MK25 that made breathing under a heavy workload a piece of cake, and I had a Mares Abyss MR22 that darn near does your breathing for you. Both top of the line regulators, and top of the line gear all around,(Again thanks to my very patient wife Goobs here. And yes I’ll get you that new vacuum you’ve been asking for!) We had proper training in this area, and the confidence the proper safety gear in reserve gives any well prepared diver. Oh we seen lots of Tautog, and I swear, I don’t know how well they can use them fins of theirs, but I know I seen a few point and laugh at us on the way by at 10 – 15 MPH steady.

The Tautog that popped out from the rocks were swept sideways, but quickly darted back into the rocks for a break from the current. This is what gave me the idea to try to get behind a big rock for a break from the current. When we were tucked in behind that rock, we determined each other’s air supply. 2100 PSI for him, 2000 PSI for me, more than enough. This plus a 19 CF Pony for me and a 13 CF pony for him. Plenty indeed for getting back to safety.

We decided that the best course of action was to head North East and try to return to the rocks of the breakers. We darted from rock to rock, keeping a close eye on each other for safety sakes, and after determining that we must be getting close because the rocks seem to be guiding us UP and the current was getting to be a lot less. Up is good, very good. We carefully kept darting from rock to rock in and out of this freakish current, until we were well into the giant rocks that make up the breakers. Once we were sure we were close enough to not be in the path of an oncoming boat, we decided to hit the surface to see what was up topside.

We surfaced about 25’ from the breaker, and had the chance to talk. We were very glad to see that our training and equipment, coupled with a solid dive plan, made this dive go from dangerous, to “man that was fun”. After realizing that we were in control of this situation, we decided to actually head for the rocks and try to practice a heavy surf emergency exit. We approached the rocks cautiously making sure the surf wasn’t going to throw us around. We were more than able to control our movements. We let the heavy surf near the rocks do most of our work for us. This we learned from reading article after article of how to exit the water in just such a situation. We let the waves lift us when we needed it, and push us when we wanted to be pushed. We were so careful, that the people fishing on the rocks, looked at these two divers in full scuba gear just suddenly appear on the rocks below them, and simply started asking “see anything down there”. I was shocked to see that they didn’t assume we were in any trouble. When I asked them later why so casual, they said “you looked like it was something we were just used to doing.” They said we just “looked like it was all in a day’s dive”. I took this as a compliment, although I sure would of liked it if once we were up on some of them slime covered rocks they would of helped us haul up some of the gear we had to lug up 10’ – 15’ of seaweed covered 70 degree rocks in full scuba gear. But when we decided to try an emergency exit, we knew the risks, and yes this included running into people with questions.

After 25 – 30 minutes of climbing up, going back down, and grabbing my buddies gear, and climbing back up, we were on top of the rocks, in the middle of 50 or so scup and striper fishers lining this massive breaker. The dive was one of the funnest dives we have done yet, and are looking forward to next week, and possibly some fish and chips, as this dive was all about safety and skills, and not so much about Tautog hunting. Not like we even had a chance to take a shot. But the main thing is that we quickly knew we were possibly in over our heads, and went to a safety plan that we knew would work, and scrapped the Tautog hunting because we were swept away.

My wife was on shore, me and my son/Dive buddy figured if she sees us up on these rocks, she is going freak and think something is wrong, so we quickly, but safely walked down the rocks until we found an easy way back to the water on the inside of the breakers. When we got back to shore, right where we had left, just as my wife had expected, she had no clue anything was out of the ordinary, since she never looked at the rocks and only watched the tip of the breakers for our dive flag to reappear. When she found out later what we had been through, she just said “are you sure about this diving stuff”. Oh yes, were sure about this. Diving is the best thing I have ever tried. I can’t imagine why anyone wouldn’t want to be a diver. You just need to call your local dive shop and give it a try, what do you got to lose? We were so tired from the ordeal, that we scraped the second tank dive which is usually reserved for Photos and decided to eat dinner and head home for the day. We always pack a dinner and plenty of liquids for the trip, as this is usually a family affair for us, the whole family enjoys the beach and watching us dive. It is one way to get a good family day in that everyone is sure to enjoy.

 

P.S. We seen a ton of Tautog as we went by at Mach 2, next week the tide will be in our favor…Mother Nature providing!!! Please?