To be honest the we have noticed that the big ones stay down pretty deep. They do come up to the surface however they are very smart and they are not often caught on the squid jigs that the fishermen use. The squid that we attached the camera to came up with about 7-12 of his buddies swimming in a fighter plane formation but when they saw me swim over to him to try and remove the camera they faded back into the deep. They could tell that their buddy was in trouble and none of them were about to come near me.
Here is a nice shot that shows some of the ring teeth on the animal.
As you know, as a diver you have bail out systems that can be used in case of the remote possibilty that a squid bites through a piece of equipment that causes a major problem. We spend our money buying body armor protection because you can go get new scuba parts at the store but the body is much more expensive to heal. We rarely see them larger than 6 feet but have observed some much bigger.
The show is in June, Im not sure what date it is yet. As a matter of fact I have no idea how its gonna be made. I do know that we put a small camera inside a squid and filmed its blue blood, we attached the camera to a squid and got some video (not stills) of a massive squid comming in. There are some interviews with fishermen who know of squid causing damage. They shot alot of footage and we shot some great underwater stuff. I cant wait to see it.
Except for one thing, I might as well come clean before the show comes out. On the first dive day I had a very bad dive.
I had several problems with my camera, it had been accidently left on and the battery was dead, after I had to surface (full body armor, full face rebreather with comm set, HD camera) and get slammed around in the chop I went back down to get some shots. Then the light battery had come loose from the hectic stuff in the boat topside. I had to surface again to have topside fix my light holder because I could not mess with the little retainer with my hands covered in armor and gloves. I go back down and start my decent. I am sinking but my ears are giving me trouble now because of all of the up and down and thrashing I have been taking at the surface. I have trouble clearing but finaly get my left side to clear. I am dropping down and I can hear Scott on the OTS system calling out his depth to our tender. I am calling out my depth and I notice I am dropping way faster than him. I look down at my gauge again and I have dropped to 70 feet, 10 feet past my first stop on the way down. My saftey line should have stopped me but somehow the "D" ring had come off of the clip and I was free falling to the end of my line (288ft). I realize that I am falling too fast so I stop my decent with my BC. I look at my PO2 guage on my rebreather and it has gotten up to 1.50 O2. Now I am on the verge of being hit with a high O2 mix. I decide at this point to scub my dive because nothing seems to be going right. With all of this type of gear and the situation I knew it could get much worse real fast. I head up to the surface and my O2 levels drop to safe areas, I dont care.... Im done with this dive Ill try again tomorrow. The only problem is the reverse block I have in my left ear that feels like a small gopher is digging his way out of my head. I slowy make it to the surface where I hand in my camera and commence to get hammered some more by the chop. Our dive saftey officer sees that the film line to the squid below has somehow become entangled in my rebreather and is in danger of squeezing off one of my hoses. He grabs my saftey strap on the top of my rebreather when I am on the surface. At the same time, someone else on the boat decides its a good time to pull my saftey line in. Now I am being pulled in two directions by two people trying to help me and still getting thrashed around in the chop, effectivley stuck to the side of the boat. My dive saftey officer hears me on the comm to let me go, he untangles the video line and drops me back in the water where I am pulled under quickly by the guy pulling on my saftey line. I go under the boat and grab the ladder. I hand in my fins and climb on board. My head is spinning like a merry go round on jack daniels and I pull loose my rebreather mouthpiece and get a breath of fresh air. I then take off my full face mask by leaning forward.
And thats when it happend.
I sit back up straight and see the pitching horizon, my ear is killing me and my head is spinning like a CD....Im gonna get sick.
I procede to loose all of my lunch over the side of the boat, feeling like a beaten puppy I turn around to look behind me. What do I see?
A big HD camera right in my face recording the entire thing. My heart hit my feet.
So I imagine that they will take the footage and put it in the show so everyone can see what a wuss I am
Not the kind of first day I wanted.....Day two was better.
GTB
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