Well here it is another Saturday, and another dive day. Well this week is as good as it gets.

We decided on doing a two tank dive this week. The weather was perfect at the beach. 75 degree’s a slight breeze and sunny. What better time for the shore support team to enjoy the beach right? Our shore support team consists of my wife Amy A.K.A. Goobs as we call her, my 2 daughters Amber and Ansley, and my Newest edition to the clan, Grady, our 1 year old son. Granted he don’t offer much in the way of support, but he sure is cute all full of sand walking around the beach. Our goal this week was simple, 1st round up some nice Fillet of Tautog, then on to some Buffahogs. The Tautog fillets are pretty straight forward, but the Buffahogs need a little explaining. You see, my Son and dive buddy Greg II is a fanatic for Hot Sauce, much as many boys in the age group of 10 – 16 seem to be lately. Everyone I talk to with a son in this age group says the same thing, that their kid has an unexplained desire to drink it straight from the bottle. We were beginning to wonder if he was “normal” or if he had something wrong with him. Well turns out he is normal, so if your son suddenly is sneaking around with a bottle in his pocket, as long as it’s good ole’ hot sauce, he’s normal. If he is not, you need to buy some and let him try it, you never know. Well anyway on to what a Buffahogs is. You take a medium sized Quahog, steam it until it is nice and open, then while it is on a half shell, use a butter knife to totally separate it from its shell, put a pat of some real butter under the clam meat so it melts, add a good splash of Hot Sauce, and just a dab of lemon juice freshly squeezed onto it, and slurp it from the shell. You can also add things such as some fresh chopped Cilantro or whatever herb you like best. Let me tell you, this is an addicting little treat, so much so that even my daughters are starting to cut into our supplies.

Ok now back to the main story. We planned on rounding up some fresh Tautog fillets so we could make some delicious fish sandwiches. We take a large grinder roll about 24” long, some mayo, some lettuce and some thinly sliced and pan fried Tautog Fillets. Seafood is a very healthy food choice; problem is getting your kids to understand this, and then trying to get them to eat their fish. Here are a few tips. Not all fish taste the same, as a matter of fact, they almost all taste totally different, some are fishy, some are not, some are firm some are not, and you get the idea of what I am saying. If you kid don’t like a particular type of fish, try another type. Fish such as your Tautog and Flounder are always very mild in flavor and very delicate in texture, you would be hard pressed to find someone who thought these varieties taste “fishy”. So try them out, heck I recommend you try all the species, but try to stick to the ones that are not wrecking the oceans when they are harvested. Some species are heavily over fished and you would want to avoid adding to this problem. It is not hard, for every species of fish humans love, there are 3 more species that almost mimic them in every way. So search the internet for sites like this one http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/fishwatch/ and try to pick an eco friendly species to dress the dinner plate with.

Well our first tank was set aside for some fresh Tautog, we headed to our favorite local spot, Point Judith Breakers. Giant boulders with delicious treats around every corner. Man o man, were the Togs lurking today. Our limit is 3 per person, with 2 of us diving. If you do the math, you will clearly see out limit is ………….3 fish. Why 3 not 6? Were a family of 6, each Tautog in the legal size range is 16” and about 4-6 pounds, and each fish of this size yields about 1 – 2 lbs. of fillets. So 3 fish equals more than enough to feed us all and have a little extra to give to a friend. I mean why try to kill them all today? What would we do next week when we go Diving for Dinner right? So we headed for the tip at the breakers.

As you can see from the photo, we have a terrific spot. The black X indicates where we will descend. The number indicates the expected depth depending on tide, and the red arrow indicates where we will be looking for these tasty little fish. Now it may not look it from that photo, but that red line actually covers about 1/3 of a mile. This area is huge, and littered with the exact type of landscape that Tautog love to hang out in, and let me tell you, this is a prime spot for them to hang out too. We got to our decent spot, descended, and did out normal safety check. Everything was at 100% and we gave the signal to each other to move out. What we do is this. I will take the lead, shoot a nice legal Tautog, and while I am putting it on my stringer, my dive buddy will take the lead and look for a Tautog to put on his stringer. This works well, because only the guy in front is allowed to fire his weapon. This ensures that no one gets shot, or that safety is not an issue. Plain and simple, if you’re not in the lead, you’re not shooting at anything. See how well this works out for all involved. Today was particularly fun because visibility was at least 10’ maybe 12’ – 15’ in some spots.Well 15 minutes into the dive and wham, nice 18” Tautog on the spear, so as I try to get him on my stringer so I can remove the spear, my dive buddy moves up to try his luck. On a side note, I highly recommend using a stringer system that allows you to get the fish secured well before you remove it from the spear. This way you never have to worry about the fish getting loose and swimming off into the boulders to die. After securing my tog and reloading my spear gun, I moved up to find my dive buddy and see how he was making out. He was reloading his spear gun when I came across him, so I moved into the lead position again with him hot on my trail. Again, wham, another Tog on the spear, a nice little 16.5” fish. Again with the string/reload motions while my dive buddy moves up again. After I reload, I start to move up looking for little Greg again, again, he is reloading his spear gun after another near miss. So I take the lead, and wham yet another tasty little Tog on the spear. He is also around the 16” mark and on the stringer he goes. Notice I skipped telling you about my misses, yes I miss too, just don’t dwell on it. The reason my Dive buddy was missing so much is simple, it was his 2nd time out there with a spear gun in hand. You see, it is his 40th or so dive, and just recently he says he would feel comfortable doing a little hunting down below. Oh don’t get me wrong, ha has been dying to get off a few shots, but he waited until he was positive he would not be dangerous, he wanted to make sure he had a firm command of his gear, his navigation, his new regulator (a New Scubapro X650 too mind you!!!) I cannot tell you how proud of this little fact alone I am. I mean what teenage boy doesn’t want to get out there and do his own shooting right? He was smart enough to know to wait until he could truly enjoy it and not be worried about any safety issues. Fantastic dive buddy, safety first, period. Well poor kid ended up just having a great time, he told me afterwards that he learned a great deal about how to shoot a spear gun while underwater. Oh sure you think, heck it only shots out to 6’ or so depending on the gun, how hard could it be? Well imagine this; it is like trying to thread a needle from 6’ away, by throwing a large piece of metal rod at the hole in the needle, tough to say the least. Takes a little practice to get it right, but once you master it, it is dinner on the table easy. So with a stringer full of fish and a young mind full of excitement, we headed into to change out our tanks and do a little Quahogin, or as my son calls it, some buffahoggin’ . We did about an hour surface interval, then strapped on some new tanks with a 3300 PSI fill in them, and started out for the Quahog beds. These beds are pristine and no one even know where they are, That’s good for us, bad for the rest. As you can see from the picture below, it is just a matter of moving 100 yards or so in any given direction as to what is on the menu tonight. The area in red is where the eel grass beds mix and match with the sandy patches the quahogs love.

We found 2 nice little spot that were loaded with Quahogs and started to get to work. I don’t know about you, but sitting in one place and digging underwater really helps a diver maximize their air usage. I can get about a 1 ½ hours out of my tank and still surface with 750 PSI or better doing this. The water is nice and cool, it was slack tide, and the visibility in here was pretty good. While scrounging around the bottom, I tend to look for small little animals that I know live here in the eel grass beds that are less than 1 foot away from where I am feeling along the bottom. You would be surprised what you could find. Like for instance, I noticed these little fleshy barbells just swaying in the current. I knew that had to belong to some tiny little creature, so I started to focus a little better and within a few seconds, a seahorse became quite visible to me. Well I been telling everyone they are native around here, just very very hard to find. So I had to show him to everyone. I figured if I was very careful, and respectful, he probably wouldn’t mind a little day trip. So I moved my hand up close to him, because it is my experience that if your careful, they will release the weeds they are holding and hold onto your finger, as long as your careful with the little guys. So I did this, and sure enough he/she saddled right up to my little finger and hunkered down for the trip. I carefully swam him all the way to the shore, loaded him into a bucket, and let every kid on the beach CAREFULLY have a look. Many of them were in awe and wanted to go show their parents, they assured me they would be more careful than anything they had done in their life, so I agreed to let them show off the little guy. After a cheer filled whirlwind tour of the beach, it was time for the little guy to go back home, so again ever so carefully, we escorted the little guy back to his home in the eel grass beds exactly where I had found him. He was none the worse for wear, and even had to be coaxed to leave my finger, I remember thinking as he rode off into the sunset, “how cool is that, this is why I dive”. Truly a very cool diving moment. Well onto to our Quahogin efforts. We had a request from some family members for some quahogs, so we decided to get 2 sacks of Quahogs. 2 sacks are still well within our Limits for Local laws on shellfish harvesting, and in fact is much lower than is allowed for 6 people, but as always, we only take what we need, not what we can. I always believe that if everyone only took what they need, and did it ever so carefully, the oceans would be in far better shape than they are in now. Well we had no trouble in gathering the amount of Quahogs we wanted. We planned on making some Buffahogs, then have my sister and her family over for some Spaghetti and clams with garlic bread sticks for dinner.

As you can see from this picture, it came out picture perfect. Delicious to the very last bite. I tell you, add a little cilantro, some fresh summer squash and zucchini and the kids won’t even know they are getting their vegetables. Well that’s all for this weeks dive adventures, and already I can not wait to see what next week brings for adventure.

Good Luck and Stay Safe.