Birthday Weekend on Black Coral

Hey everyone,

I've been getting some requests for some more pictures and some stories from everyone back at home. The requests came at the perfect time because I have some awesome pictures to put up here.
This past weekend a group of us traveled out to Black Coral which is a very small island on the barrier reef surrounding Pohnpei. It is one of a few protected reefs around the island. It is protected because it is a grouper spawning area. I spent almost all of my time in the water enjoying the pristine snorkeling which you will see from all of the underwater pictures. I saw the most fish that I have ever seen while snorkeling. Just to name a few... I saw schools of barracuda, trevalley, sharks, parrot fish.... It was the most amazing snorkeling I've ever seen. The channel was about 20 feet deep and had a sandy bottom that made it great for snorkeling. The visibility was almost perfect. Here are a few pictures from the channel.








The channel at Black Coral was really awesome but the ocean was even better. If you swam out of the channel into the ocean you got to see bigger fish and a lot more than in the channel. Once you swim out into the ocean you can see the drop off into the abyss. The depth of the water goes from about 85 feet to over 1000 feet. These drop offs are the best place to see big fish.
On the way to the drop off I saw white tipped and black tipped reef sharks. Here are a few pictures of the sharks. These were all between 4-6 feet long.
There is also a picture of me underwater.












Once I reached the drop off I saw some of the gray reef sharks. There were about 5 of them swarming around in circles at about 100 feet. If you look in the background of the last picture you can see the bigger gray reef sharks. Some of the sharks were around 6-7 feet long!!
This last picture was taken at around 50 feet. I've been practicing free diving for the past few months and I have been able to reach between 80-85 feet. This last picture is the only reference that I can give you to showing the depth that I can dive now. I was able to touch the coral that is in the following picture. I guessed that the depth was around 80 feet?! It is pretty awesome being down that deep. However, it is also pretty scary. It seems like an eternity emerging from the depths. It seems as if the surface is never getting any closer. Pretty crazy. The current world record for a free dive is 122m which is 400 feet!! I have no ambition of reaching that crazy depth but the free diving is making spear fishing much easier. If you can get down to the deeper water..you can get the bigger fish.




I hope everyone enjoys the pictures! I also wanted to thank everyone for the birthday wishes and packages. Talk to you soon and have a great Thanksgiving.

Tyler

Hey everyone,

The internet is pretty sketchy right now so I'm just going to post the pictures that I was able to upload. I will hopefully a more extensive blog soon when I get some internet that actually works.
But...here are some pictures of my latest deep sea fishing trip.
The first picture is a picture of Bird Island. Bird Island is a part of Ant atoll but it is at the farthest point from Pohnpei. The island has no rats so all of the sea birds nest there.



Here is a series of pictures of the fishing that was done at Bird Island. We were casting a big lure towards the breaking waves and we were able to catch 2 GT's (Giant Trevalia) and 1 Red Snapper. This is one series of pictures when we caught on of the GT's.

Allois catching the second GT.



Me gaffing the GT.



GT with knife in head.



Me with the GT.



Ok so catching the GT's was really awesome but the real excitement happened a few hours later when we were trolling for Blue Marlin. We trolled around Ant atoll for about 2-3 hours and did not get any bites and then a huge Blue Marlin bit on the line. Once the fish was hooked it took off running and never stopped. The fish ran and took 500 yards of fishing line. While it was running the reel started to smoke. White smoke from the drag mechanism was pouring out of the reel. We were frantically trying to pour water on the reel to cool it off and somehow slow this giant fish down. Unfortunately..the fish was way too big. It kept running and took all of the like off of the reel, destroyed the reel, and took all of the line with it. This was definitely the biggest fish that I have ever lost. It was the craziest thing that I have ever seen. The boat captain estimated that the fish was upwards of 500 pounds..maybe more. Then about 10 minutes later after untangling all of the lines and recovering from all of the mayhem we dropped the lines in the water. About 5 seconds after they dropped in the water another marlin was playing with the bait. I was watching it about 5 feet behind the boat. Unfortunately it never actually bit the lure.

Here is a picture of the mayhem when the first marlin was on the line. It doesn't really capture the craziness but.. its the best I could do.



Thats its for now. Talk to you soon.

Tyler