00:00:08 Speaker 1: This is the me Eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely, bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You can't predict anything presented by first light. Go farther, stay longer. Okay, Kimmy Werner, explain where we are. We are in Kailua kona um in a house after three wonderful consecutive days of free diving and spear fishing. Now, uh, help help. I'm assuming that listeners have that some listeners have the same confusion that I had. Is that break this down? If you say you're going to Hawaii and then people say island. All the islands have cool names except for the one island, and you're supposed to say the Big Island. And I was asking you, why does the Big Island not have like why did the Big Island be the Big Island? Why is it not a traditional name? And the Big Island does have about traditional name in the same way where there's Maui and Oahu and nat the Big Island is Hawaii Island, and so it's a really cool name, if not the coolest name. It's just gets confusing because the state is also called Hawaii, and so when you say you're going to Hawaii, it just needs more specification, and so it just goes by its nickname more commonly, which is the Big Island. Because all islands have their true Hawaiian name and then they have their English nickname. Maui is, the Valley Isle, is the garden Isle. But everyone just calls it by the Hawaiian names, except Hawaii Island. Um just gets called by its nickname, the Big Island. You know, what I've found was interesting talking in the last couple of days is the um the difference like the mix of one disgusting fish for instance, the mix of common English okay, like state side English fish names Hawaiian fish names, but then sometimes you refer to fish by the Japanese Japanese fish names. Yes, is that? How were you brought up with that mix? I feel like every local person connected to the ocean was brought up with that mix. And and that's just one of the cool things about Hawaii is just um, we have just such a history of immigrants from all over the world that kind of came together and formed this melting pot of a culture. And because the Japanese were, you know, really good at eating fish, and that was already part of the cuisine. Um, they ended up making a lot of the food that became popular here, and so a lot of the Hawaiian fish, Um, they will have English names in Hawaiian names, but a lot of people here do refer to certain ones that are popular in Japanese cuisine by the Japanese names. And that's all just because of the immigrant days, the plantation days, and what real quick like give the names for octopus? Like what what is the what's the is there a there's gonna be a Hawaiian name for octopus? Right? The Hawaiian name is he, and you will hear it more often um these days. And I feel like that's because there is an actual intention for a resurgence of just really trying to bring back the Hawaiian language. So these days people do try and be intentional if they're saying hey, um. But the much more common name that almost everyone calls it by is taco, which is Japanese tacuaco. It was a stressful situation, Alright. We're also joined by I don't know, justin you're Kimmy's husband, I don't know, did you guys, like I don't know what the whole name situation is a lot of people will call me Justin. I kept my last name, Kimmy kept her last name, and our son, Buddy Kimmy gave him my last name. So it's the Buddy now with Turkowski. Oh ye, good deal. Alright, you guys gotta chime in. We gotta cover off on some things we gotta say at Cinematowski. At Cinematowski on the Instagram, on the Instagram. That's on the Instagram. That's me on Instagram. See some impressive work. Yes, Okay, Hank. Now, if anything we talked about catches your interest, chime in and we're gonna get back to you, guys. Heavy Duty. We got talk first off, you Honest, not here because he's off in a in a not less tropical location. He's off filming, uh with Clay nucom for media or Hunts. Not Meeting Her Hunts. First episode of this season, hosted by Yanni No No, none other than Yanni Um, is out to watch on YouTube right now, So go check that out. Everybody turned out real heavy duty for y Honest before and they will do so again. So that's our latest series on YouTube, Meet Her Hunts. Um. Okay, we're gonna talk about wolves. For a minute, Kimmy, do you understand that wolves wolf management, wolves very divisive and the Rockies very divisive in the Upper Great Lakes. Yes, I have a devisive animal here in Hawaii, like our animal everybody likes to argue about, not as nothing as controversy as that. I wouldn't say, like, we definitely have you know, a lot of um animal lovers who just don't really want people killing animals, and there's controversy kind of over that. But I don't think we have any one particular well I can think of access here. You know, there's controversy because it's an invasive species and it really does detriment to the land, but a lot of the population really likes to eat them and hunt them, you know, but nothing like wolves. Wolves is pretty pretty big, and that's devisive, biflate, that's on the same side, we're like, oh cool, Like it's a problem to the environment, so us eating them and killing them help save the land a good deal, you know. Yeah, a couple of interesting wolf bits in the news lately. The first one is kind of baffling to me. Um, I wasn't there, and I don't really know about how light these fellers got off. So a couple of guys um near Wisdom, Montana, had apparently had a permit two do kyote work of helicopters, So shooting shooting coyotes for depredation, livestock depredation out of helicopters, and they are mean to what we're seeing here. They mistook a couple of wolves for a couple of coyotes, shot him, then when and retreat him, retrieved him on a snow machine. Didn't self report. I get this tracking with your understanding. Cow didn't self report. A couple of game wardens go out to pay these guys a visit, and they have the wolves haven't turned him in Um. According to what's out so far, they didn't have landowner permission to hunt on that property. They did not have wolf hunting permits, they didn't have wolf tanks. They did not self report yet the fine, what would you get the fine flaunt up being a whopping fo bucks per person. No one had. I don't understand one had four and thirty five. They didn't four one four thirty five to the other. They didn't even They declined to say who the helicopter operator was. The warden quarter here was saying, had they told us the helicopter operator, we probably would have talked to them, But the suspects in this case wanted to leave them out of it. Normally, if you poach a gray wolf, there's there's like big game restitution in Montana, So if you poach an animal Montana, they'll look at like what the value of the animal was, right, so, and what restitution does? It makes it be that if you're poaching trophy class animals, it makes it that you could let's say you shoot a white tailed dough. You know, like your your family is hungry whatever, you shoot a white tailed doll in the summertime to eat it. Uh, the restitution end of that, it's gonna be way way smaller than you shoot a trophy class white tail. They're just gonna look at it different because the value to the states different. They paid no restitution. Normally, restitution on a gray wolf was a thousand bucks. No forfeiture of hunting privileges. They got breaks because they were rewarded for their cooperation. Yet they didn't self report baffling to me. I mean, I'm not I don't even know what I'm saying should have happened but I would just if you told me, if you laid out like someone had a helicopter permit to shoot Kyles, shot a wolf, didn't tell anybody got caught later, I would have been like, man, that is their ass. The baffling part is they've they said I believe they said that they didn't know they were wolves until the deed was already done. Um and then and and really at that point is where like the track record of of law breaking begins. So at that point they would be like, oh, I'm pretty sure those are wolves. They go out on their snow machine and go out and they go, oh, now we're on the ground proofing the fact that yes, these are wolves. At that that is the exact point at which they are supposed to call the game warden. You can't then retrieve them, take them back because that would really cast a lot of doubt on the fact that they misidentified a wolf for a coyos and the wardens were tipped off. Yes, their plan was the skin and they had no plan to even report it. But anytime you kill the wolf you have to report it. Yes, I mean, if you kill the wolf, legally you're supposed to report it. And I think this is just like a really weird gray area that that's not actually supposed to exist of what the social tolerance is. And and I know, for my personal experience of being in that valley, just just walking around being a new face in town, people are like, hey, do you you here to shoot wolves? You know? Um? And I then this is very tongue in cheek information, but I know it to be fact. The landowner I had no idea this was going on, but was fine with it. My only comment here is only that I would have said, man, that's gonna be their asses. Yeah, no, it you know. And and we've had some history in the state right where it's like, oh, I'm not sure if the law would have landed that way for me regarding wolves and the take of wolves. So when I went to read that article in the Montana Standard, I had to take a survey. Not what the survey was like, you have to like answer too, must you have to answer marketing question? To read the article I wanted to know of how likely are you to try to lose weight in the next seven days? I put down not likely, and then I was I was allowed access to read the article. Idaho speaking to speaking of wolves Idaho getting real explain all this cow alright, so on as as I read on the meat eator dot com on the gloves off taking the gloves off on wolf management. On Wednesday the fifth, the Governor of the State Idaho signed into law Bill twelve eleven, which is legislative action against wolves um And that's a big thing in the state of Idaho because the state of Idaho is supposed to have an independent fishing game and an independent Fishing Game Commission. Those commissioners can be and and typically are appointed by the governor of the state, but it's still considered independent of the general lawmaking of the state of that You get your appointment from the governor, but that doesn't mean you owe him your bidding. Correct. Same thing with you know, Supreme Court, right right, even though presidents get very annoyed when they're appointees, do not do their bidding exactly exactly and work very very hard to make sure if they have the appoint the ability to make an appointee, they're they're damn sure gonna make make it happen. Underneath. You know, I'm not supposed to say this, but you do understand exactly right, but so like your fishing game Commission is supposed to be balanced of UM, you know, some folks that understand the interests of the state. UM. So it's supposed to be representative of let's say, agriculture, recreation, hunting, and outfitting for sure, outfitting, yeah, bird walk. You know, it's supposed to be like a good mix right of of what the state interests are. UM. Anyway, so for the first time in the state of Idaho, we have legislative overreach, if you will. UM that says, you know, basically, this is how we're going to handle a big game animal, which is what the wolf is considered to be in the state of Idaho, a big game animal. It's also considered to be a big game animal in the state of Montana. And the reason for that is this wasn't an independent decision. In order to get state management of the wolf and get that animal off the endangered species list, the state's made an agreement to say we're going to manage this animal this way. They came out with UH management plan that was agreed upon, and then that's how states got the ability to manage the wolf UH and hunters got to be able to hunt the wolf and trappers gotta be able to trap the wolf. That was an interesting thing if you look back to that decision how you're going to manage It was interesting because when they were first talking about the delistening thing in states where need the states needed to come forward to say, Okay, if if we're gonna remove federal management of wolves, states need to have management planning proposals. And I remember Wyoming was an examsistent that they were going to manage wolves is a big game animal in a certain core area in the northwest corner of the state. But they wanted to basically take like a coyote style like they want to do like like coyote management the rest of the state. And I remember that was amazing. They stuck to their guns and got there. But initially I thought, man, you're crazy, Like why not just do what Montana and Idaho were doing and just do big game animal get the whole thing over with. But they toughed it out and got through and have like a management plan that's decidedly different in that state, and and that is core to this bill, right, the difference between a big game animal and environment. So a big game animal, wolves, big horn sheep, elk, deer, they're managed a certain way. Vermints which would be coyotes, skunks, raccoons, they're managed a certain way to where. Um, your big game animals have seasons, they have tags, they have harvest reports typically uh, and your environments are managed much more loosely to where they are UH an opportunity animal of opportunity if you if you will, UM, there's much more leeway on how an individual chooses to manage that animal when they come across it. So typically choose symbolmatic of like a low amount of public desire to yes, right, there's not there's not a big demand on the resources, correct, yeah, um. And so Idaho has the wolf listed as big game animal, which means tags are required and there's a harvest report and involved. What this legislation does is um says, yes, it's a big game animal, you are going to have to purchase a tag. But the means of take, the legal means of take, will be of that of the coyote. So it's going to be legal to pursue this animal in all the ways that you can legally pursue a coyote. So it's a much more broader means of take, but you still have to have the tag, you still have to commit to your harvest report. YEA. For instance, you can't run an elt down on a snow machine, but you can run and a coyote down on a snow machine. You can't use thermal vision thermal night vision to hunt an elk, but you can for a coyote, right, And so that's that's how these means of take are are being broadened. It says here that in Idaho, like in two thousand twenty, there was only eighty four confirmed wolf kills on cattle. Yeah, very small percentage when you're thinking of in the three year average, it's wolf kills per year um, which is like very very small, like point zero zero four. What's interesting is all these means of take that you uh can use to pursue coyotes, we're actually legal under depredation circumstances. If you had a depredation incident regarding wolves and you went through the proper channels, you could hunt wolves using thermal vision night vision, you could uh, you know, you could be very aggressive as if you were not hunting a big game in a case on a case by case basis, on a case by case basis. Same with those guys were just talking about they were able to they had permits or you know, according to them I think, and maybe they did, I don't know, had permits to aerial gun for coyotes. Exactly right, not just anybody can be like, you know what, let's run a helicopter this weekend, right, Um. So that that's another great example. So there's all these things where it's like, well, how did we get to this point of saying, well, we have to take legislative action to provide for these things, many of which are already provided for in the state's Predator Management Plan, of which wolves have a dual role of being a big game animal and a predator. Right. Um chets point of how much livestock depredation there actually is for how many animals are out there is very very low. What Um is hard to consider is the stress factor of livestock on ground where where wolves are just heavy predator numbers are where you could potentially have animals stressed to where they're not putting on the amount of weight that you would expect them to over a typical amount of time on a typical pasture because you get run ragged because they're getting run ragged. Um. You could also have so you could have lighter animals, right you know, weight means cash in the bank for livestock person. Or you could even have some instances where you are not getting the calf recruitment or lamb recruitment um that you typically would, so you have to um have way more rams or bowls in with your cows for a lot longer than you typically do. Um. You know, so it just it adds up to more expense for these producers. And a lot of this is being pointed towards wolves. That that's an interesting counterpoint because when I was looking at the egg well als looking at different states like the number of cows actually killed by wolves or sheep killed by wolves, the numbers are low. Oh then you go to people you're like, well one those are confirmed and a lot of guys that turn out livestock to run um, they don't see it for months on end. So you you go back and round everything up which has been out of your site for many months, and you get numbers to come back. There's there's an enormous like there's a question mark leaning what they'll happened to him? You don't go out there and it's like you get a mortality signal on a tracking collar and go out there and confirm every one. So those are like confirmed cases and they have to be confirmed to be compensated. So if you put three hundred out in two ninety, come back and you have no idea what the hell happened to the other ten, you then don't go down and get your money from the middle. The Wolf Mitigation program correct you. You have to bring out your BLM officer or US Fishing Wildlife person take come check out that kill site, determine if it actually is a kill site. And I'll tell you right now, there's a million ways a sheep likes to die. Growing up in my family, we saw it all the time, and that's what we just kind of chock it up to. It was like, boy, sheep just love to die, right, And then like the idea, but to go out with that though, the idea of like stress induced abortion of of fetuses, and then we're just the refusal to take yeah weight than the weight reduction. What it does is allows people to point and say, okay, yeah, I didn't lose that many that I know about. But wolves are costing me a lot of money exactly, yep. And then it kind of leaves a little bit of lingering. It's kind of proved me wrong, right right, And and you know, I think with most cases, like there's there's a there's some truth there. I'm sure like in in certain areas there's some truth. Um, there's there's a meet in the middle type of situation. Um. What's interesting though, and I would certainly point the fact that, Um, what's interesting to me is like, why is this being taken care of legislatively? When you look at the numbers of how Idaho Fishing Game has managed as an independent fishing game has managed wolves. Um. There. So if you look at it that when the very first season in Idaho you were allowed to hunt wolves, I believe you could have five tags. There was no trapping season, and it was confined to a very small area. As the wolf population grew, there were more hunting tags and then trapping seasons. The area of take also expanded. Two. Now currently in the state of Idaho you can hunt wolves almost and this is before this legislation goes into effect, which I think is going to be Junior July. Um, you can hunt wolves three and sixty five days a year or trap wolves almost three sixty five days a year in all game management units throughout the entire state. That's already the case. That's already the case. You can get fifteen hunting tags fifteen trapping tags. You're hunting tags can be used for trapping as long as that season is open to hunting at the time of take. And and you know, to be clear that the trapping side of things is just a much more effective means of taking wolves. Um. And So you're seeing the state agency respond to the growth of wolves um and I think the biggest sticking point is, like, what we're seeing is a social tolerance that is being been exceeded with a very large, an influential group in the state of Idaho. We're saying, whoa, whoa, whoa. When the state Wildlife Management Plan four Wolves started, it was a hundred and fifty wolves on the landscape. Yeah, and it was funny about that number. Is that number at that time was unsettling to some people. Yes, yes, that's way too many. The estimated wolf population in state Idaho now is hundred wolves, right, And like wildlife management is just not an exact science, Like everybody loves numbers, but they can't wrap their head around the fact that it's like counting anything wild is very hard to do. Like, there's a bunch of wild chickens around this house. Like take a ballpark estimate of how many birds there are at six? How'd you come up with that? He was like, well, the first day, well I saw one softore. Yeah. Right, but uh, the state Idaho has a bunch of camera traps out there. They do aerial surveys. Um, there's as few as let's say, nine hundred, there's as many as two thousand, and in the middle there's the number. I think that I don't think that anyone imagined when they delisted wolves. Um, I don't think anyone imagined how ineffective human hunters would prove to be. I think they I mean, I don't think that the idea was that you would like manipulate this dial and turn that up and down. But it's like they've opened it wide up. I don't know if it's a lack of motivation. I'm part of the public. I think a lot of people buy the tags, like, oh, I'll run into one. I think the wolves have gotten very smart. They avoid people and those numbers just grow and grow and grow. And I think that people when when they started these hunting seasons, they're supposed to be the end of wolves. Oh yeah. In the headlines, right, it was like, the hunters are going to kill mall right. But and and I think you're wrong in the fact that there were plenty of folks that have similar interest. A lot of the people in this room do a lot of reading, and we're well versed on all the old trapper and mountain man books and stuff, and it's like, if you read those things, the way we got rid of wolves was pumping a bunch of carcasses full of strick nine, and whatever ate on them died, right, And a lot of what ate on those carcasses were wolves. And we did that everywhere the book I'm reading right now, I keep talking about I want to do a full report on Alaska's wolf man. When he was doing wolf work, he would go into an area where there was like a caribou herd that was getting too much predation on it, and any patch of high ground around he would shoot a caribou, lace its carcass with strick nine and then use also a little balls of fat that he would also poison and scare at them all around, and that was his methodology. Yeah, the plinking away at him, it was wholesale like, and asked him to how effective that was. He was working your cotsoby one time poisoning wolves and a guy reported that he saw a group of nine wolves. It was like two black wolves and seven gray ones calm off the sea ice and he's like, oh, it's interesting. A couple days later, goes to check one of his bait stations. There's all nine of them, two black ones and seven gray phase laying around his bait station. Very effective, very effective, And I don't in any way think that we need to return to that. But that was it wasn't shooting at him. Doesn't say what else he's killing. He well, there's a picture of him doing a grip and grin with a wolverine that turned up as one of his bait stations, So I bet you can only imagine. So basically, the legislation here, which which is going to become law in in junior July UM provides for a lot of things that we're provided for with the intended purpose of mitigating live scott livestock damage. UM now it's up to the state agency to you to figure out how to implement this program that that's been handed to them. And the scary thing to me, and this is I'm not like trying to fearmonger here is uh before you get into the scary part in the bill. The frustration is that from the state legislator, it's that the frustrations that effishent game isn't doing enough. Yes, but if you look at the numbers despite all the things you laid out that they're doing, Like but but that's the criticism, Like if you won't do your job, I'll do it for you, right, And it's a lack of patience, right and and and really, yes, thank you for keeping me on track, Like that's the problem wildlife management. Right. It takes a lot of time because what they're doing is they're making incremental adjustments to a growing population and they're trying to figure out like the magic number for wolves is forty. You have to remove fort of a population in an area. There's only one study that backs this up, but that number is forty. If you can remove fort of the population, you'll see a decline, a gradual decline overall in the wolf population come in. That's surprising to me. And that's a lot of animals, right fort of a total and overall population is a shipload. If you did that too, if you did that to a population of mountain goats, they'd never recover. Oh no, no, So but last year, the state of Idaho, under the current regulations, removed over thirty of the population of the overall population of wolves in the state of Idaho, which if you put that in the context of big game animals, of which it's classified like, you'd be turning some freaking heads if you were removed of the white tail population someplace, right. Um, But that's not an apples to apples. So um. The scary thing here is here is a social response two, a scientific management situation that says, what, by god, if you're not gonna do something, we're gonna do something. I have very very very serious doubts that the legislation is going to result in some magical sixty percent reduction of the total overall wolf population in the state. And what happens when that happens, is there going to be another shoot from the hip social legislative response that says, Okay, then we do need to start poisoning on public land. You can poison through uh you know, uh certified agencies on private land currently. But you know, you take the state Idaho. You got hundred wolves in the entire state of Idaho. Dead center in the state is this impassable chunk of ground that connects with Hall's Canyon, um the frank Church Wilderness, which is two point four million acres. Do the math on fred wolves covering two point four million acres. Right, it's no big surprise that people aren't running into wolves left, right and center. Right. You can run into a lot of wolf tracks, but actually putting eyes on one is tough. Um Like, we're not. I just don't think we're gonna get to some astounding amount of wolves with this legislative tool that all of a sudden got pulled out of the toolbox. And what happens when that reality sets in? Are we then going to see this slippery slope which is the analogy we love to use in the hunting world of more managing wildlife through legislation. The headlines around this would tell you that it's gonna be very effective. Writers. I had a whole lawmakers pass bill to kill most of state's wolf population, it's like, yeah, I don't think so, no, no, no, I mean the we know some things are effective, right, we know trapping is effective, but effective trappers the overall trapping population is very low. The very effective trappers within that population is very very low. And I mean it's a full time job through through the hunting reports, you know, because it's a big game animal. You gotta report your heart of best in the state of Idaho. UM, there's been one trapper who's filled his twenty tags, and that that was from last two two thousand nineteen season, I believe, where you were limited to ten hunting tags ten trapping tags. Talk to that guy, Oh, I would love to too. If you're listening, please right in. We'll give you a hat or something, because that's an amazing feats. Would love just to get a little bit of intel from that guy about what he goes about doing. Yeah, and I guarantee it's not like, oh, well one weekend I went out. What's their end goal with that? Just to like the people that want the wolves gone gone? I mean, if you think about eight in two thousand and twenty, going back to that, there's a D two confer cattle that's pretty good in my opinion, but it's those other unforeseen things. And then there's also there's also sort of like proxy stuff, right, Like, there's an enormous amount of like it's it's not even a debatable fact that it has ramifications for big game hunting, right But if a hunter says, hey, my problem with having what I would call too many wolves is it lowers the get the pool of animals out there for people who want to hunt, because the people looking and be like, well, that's an illegitimate argument. So I think it's in a little wait, there's sort of like taking a thing that has some level of public sympathy, which would be a livestock producers ability to stand business, right like, that seems important. And you take all of these different anxieties about wolves, whether they come from people who have what I would argue to be very ill founded concerns about human welfare, legitimate concerns about wild game populations, legitimate concerns about cattle shoes, and you kind of put it into a place that seems like the best way you're gonna win um for hunters to say, like, I want there to be a lot more elk around because I like to shoot at them. People like are very unsympathetic, even though that to me seems like an extremely rational argument, people are very unsympathetic to that. And from the Clearwater North all the way, which is essentially the Panhandle, Idaho, if you look at it as a as a handle with frame pan on the end um from the Clearwater North there there's unmistage, Like there's no doubt there's been a reduction in elk numbers in those zones. But that's also where the bulk of the authorized wolf depredation like aerial gunning, has gone on. And that's that's where like the big the hammer, sledge hammer sized tools and the tool kit are coming out to reduce those those wolf numbers in those zones. There's also the issue if you're still running around with from the mid nineties when they began to do reroductions, people had to put numbers out there, and you're you're at zero, right, You're at like effectively zero wolves. So people say, what does success look like to you? And they threw out some numbers that now seemed like astonishingly low, but they were. They threw out numbers that people could agree with. They're like oh, let's say hundred fifty, you know, like low asked numbers, and then people are like, wow, I guess if it's only a hundred fifty, I can get on board with that, right, I won't resist that as much. And then time goes on and they have es a predict protection. You hit one fifty, and then the states say, okay, we're there, We're gonna go back to state management, and then people use lawsuits to block those management plans for twenty years, and all of a sudden, the one fifty we were talking about is one thousand, five hundred, and people get real used to that number. So then this number that everybody agreed on one fifty, some of the proposals we go back to one fifty. And how are you treated in the media. You want to kill nine of the wolves and I don't know, I didn't come up with the number. You guys came up with the number even even in this discussion. Right, what we're looking at is this vacuum where it's the number of elk versus the number of wolves, and all the other factors aren't being taken into account. Right, So from the Clearwater North, that's like the Densest thickest pine forest in the state Idaho, which at the time of Lewis and Clark, they were like, you know, the natives around there, the Nez Perce were like, oh, there's no food up there, Like you're you're gonna starve in the mountains. Right then, we had major catastrophic fires um the big burn era right that ripped through there, along with heavy timber management, like heavy timber management with which opened up a ton of country. There were elk re reintroductions going on, so we you had fresh growth, rehab growth in that area and then constant timber production, more big burns in the thirties, constant timber production. It was much more. It was a much better place to be as an elk during that time. That very well could have been the heyday of elk in that region, and it very well could be this real terrible meet in the middle situation of less timber management. Some of that has to do with with um the lawsuit type of situation around timber harvest, and we haven't had big burns and you got wolves that are just really freaking hard to get on in in big, dark, dark timber, and that area grows really big bowls and really big bucks because they're really hard to get on in big dark timber two. Um. But you know, I was talking with a buddy of mine and he's like, and I'm not making fun of this guy in any way, but he just said, he's like, my family has been hunting in the exact same spot, killing elk for thirty five years and we haven't seen I haven't seen an elk in uh, you know, ten years or something like that. And it's it's hard to say, but it's like the only thing that hasn't changed in that scenario is the fact that you guys put your camp in the exact same spot. Everything else has changed, forest management practices, everything has changed. Like it's just it's not you don't live in a vacuum, and it's it's so hard to contextualize all that stuff. Now I'm really done. No, that's great. Here's the interesting one. This this is like one of those things. Uh, this is one of those pieces of reporting where someone does something kind of crazy, has no chance of passing, but it still makes the news everywhere. In Oregon. There's a bill, Um what's it called. It's called the It's an initiative called the Abuse Neglect and Assault Exemption Modification Improvement Act, which would make it in Oregon. This is a bill put out there. An animal could only be injured in cases of a human self defense. A veterinarian could still spay and neuter household pets, but you would not be able to make it illegal to kill livestock. Um. It would be illegal to force and pregnant, force impregnation on livestock, and would ban meat production in the state of Oregon. That's like an interesting, very aggressive approach, but again it's almost like not worth even reporting. Actually will never go anywhere, but it's interesting the sexual mutilation aspect of it. Uh, Chester instead of bitcoin? Yep, you know what you should have invested in? Well, everyone's saying doge coin for us? Off Hollos Bitcoin, the Continuing Adventures of Chester the investor. Come that's it come off? Um, It's it's just kind of up and down and up and nah, it's not petered out. It's just I think it's still smart to dabble in it. Well, we had our when we had our meat, did you buy a meatcrafter knife or did you get one for free? When we came out with our bench bade meatcrafter. I would have loved one, though listen, there was there's a limited number. They're all gone. They were sold for three hundred bucks apiece. A guy has put one up on eBay. He got, uh thirty seven bids. The bidding on that knife closed at one thousand, two five dollars plus twenty dollars shipping and handling. Thirty seven bids. Knife now going for one thousand two bucks. You got any more of those laying around? I just I just asked Casey how many we got, because we're gonna start our meat Eator auction house of oddities. And at first I didn't think that that because it's an auction, it's for conservation spending. We're auction off weird ship cool stuff. Like the first thing is Buck Bold, a birch bowl, a buckey bowl by Buck Bowing, all kinds of stuff. We gotta bring home something from this trip. Um and now we can put our own knives in there. And now that they're like collectors, I can't believe that. That's amazing. Uh, the suvied thing, even though I promise not to talk about anymore. Um, that's still interesting though. So the whole with everybody who listens is aware of this. The conversation about the guy that warmed his birthing his wife's birthing pool with a Suvie wand a pastor just wrote in he's always struggled with getting his baptismal well, what do they call it? Just calls it the baptismal three gallon Galvini I stock tank for baptizing people. He's always struggled with watertown got himself Suvie. This keeps a very comfortable temperature, but then pulls the wand out when he has the baptism, when he has to baptize somebody. This reminds me of do you remember when we were all sitting there freezing our butts off in the ripping wind on a super icy lake this winter. We're talking about methods keeping the ice hole from your generator in the Suvie one. We run a shipload of su VI's out there. So this guy right here, genuine pastor doing baptisms and Suvie heated water. He even send a picture. Uh, Kimmy, this I want you to win on this one. We've been had. We were having a debate recently about how why snap and turtles don't seem to want to bite you underwater, but as soon as you lift him out, they want to bite you. The guy was saying, this is this is apropo. Guy wrote, and I was in Hawaii a few years back. We decided to do a guided storkling trip. He says. His family is very scared of the ocean, so they were overloading the guide with questions about what all will bite you. They got to question about getting bit by sharks, They questioned about getting stung by urchins, and then one of his cousins says, do the sea turtles ever bite? The guide laughed, acted like it was the dumbest question he'd ever heard. Says he's been diving for forty years. I never seen anyone bit by a sea turtle. The guy goes on to say, I shoot you not. Those were the last words that beach Bump said before hopping in the water and immediately having a full grown, three pound piste off mama sea turtle latch onto his stomach. Do you buy that? I do. I know someone who got bit by a turtle. My friend Angela's a spear fisher in Um. A turtle just came up to her and bitter right on the butt and they through the wet suit bolke skin, but still love bite. But yeah, why do you think they're they would bite? I honestly think that because that turtle was kind of known, like it was in this place where we'd go a lot for blue water diving for oos and stuff. But in that type of diving you have chum and and and turtles will eatum, they will eat octopus, will eat all kinds of things if if they're fed it. And so I think a lot of times people have kind of got to know that turtle and maybe we're feeding it, And so I think it was just kind of a hay feed me thing. And so that story that you just told, I bet if they're taking tourists snarkling there, you know, there could be someone feeding the turtle. And I think that when they become like pets, they want to ask for a snack and they don't have any other way to ask. So as I've had one bite my fin before ye diving and scared the ship out of me, I didn't know what it was. And there's a curiosity bite, I think more and anything. It wasn't aggressive, and it's also pulling on your friend. Yeah, just real rightly though. Uh, this is interesting from Nature's metal there day the sex changing tongue eating ocean house. You know about this cow, Yeah, it looks like that. A little alien. There's a bug. It's not a bug, there's an ocean house lays eggs on a ficious gills. They like snappers. His his Linarian name is Simon thoah x Agua Xegua. I don't know they live inside uh so that this picture is out of South Africa. Their offspringer born in the ocean. A group of attached themselves inside the gills of a fish. They like to target snappers. Once they're tapped, one individual from the group will become a female, a proto Andriddick hermaphrodite. She grows larger, so one of them decides to become female. That one girls big moves onto the tongue of the fish, clamps onto the fish's tongue, feeds off its blood, eventually cuts off the blood supply to the tongue. The tongue atrophies and falls off. Then the parasite assumes the responsibilities of the tongue and lives there as a tongue permanently. Everybody else stays a male, and they all are. It's sort of like bivy of mates hanging out on the gills. Boys, it's like the females. It's her little harem of males stuck to the gill. The great picture. Oh here's the one last thing that caught my attention. I'm on the I get emails, and I used to I've tried to not I've tried, like subscribe it. You can't unsubscribe, and Non'm glad I didn't unsubscribe, even though I've tried a couple of times. From the Wildlife Conservation Society, they came out with like they're sort of like rolling with the social distancing thing, you know, and they're saying and they came out with this research about how we need the social or throwing out there that we should social distance from animals better. And it looks at non consumptive recreation and the impacts of non consumptive recreation on animals. And they're putting out distances at which your presence screws with wildlife waiting burns and song birds hundred nine yards hawks and eagles. You should stay four thirty seven yards away from them mammal threshold distances a thousand yards for large on that's like moose, you should stay fifty four yards away from small rodents. Well there's a get go. Just caught him off right here. Well, you're way too close to his ask is eighteen inches. It's from from a gecko fighting. That was an ambitious you should make a little video that sweet meal. We've we've had qualified captain and Nature is Metal in two days. Well I caught it right there while we're talking about how you shouldn't get so close to critters. But point being, that's a really ambitious ask. Like, I don't know what people are gonna do with those numbers. Boy, people in parks national for us getting them to read a sign I think is uh thousand yards from moves fifty yards from a chipmunk. It's a real hard Yeah, I can't picture just getting much traction be real good for folks in the laser range laser range finder industry that need to carry range finder with you. I think what this report will do is it I think that it will. It won't like it would be horrifying to see this enacted by law, but I think it does make people asked people to be aware of what their presence asked people to be aware of what their presence around animals do. But when I see an animal, I always want to go over there and check it out. Oh yeah, I very rarely moved by the desire to get farther away. And YouTube is full of people like you. It's like, I don't know. It's worst thing would be that you're worrying wildlife. It's the way I would sell as You're just going up there to have a look. Look look at that. Let's go and have a look. It's just my instinct, man. So seeing this felt like I felt really singled out. Fifty four yards from a chipmunk. My mom's head right now as she sleeps is about three inches from a chipmunk. Chipmunk. Then on the other side of the brick. All right, Kimmy and Johnson, give yourself, give you guys a better, more thorough introduction. Now Red Talk Shop, Red Talk Hawaii introduced myself. Both of you like give you like what your stick is, what's your spe you know your spiel? These are all Yiddish terms. I think, like what your deal is. I'm Kimmy Werner and I was born and raised here in Hawaii, Maui and grew up kind of tagging along with my dad when he would go spear fishing. And now I'm a spear fisher woman myself, and this is my husband justin. How did you guys meet spear fishing? No, I met on a gig. I got hired from Minnesota to come to Hawaii to be a production assistant, and Kimmy was the talent on the show. And we worked together for a while. And once work was done, we um hung out. Yeah, yeah, we did the wind up being that did that? How was that received by the rest of the production team? Well? Good, Actually we waited until it was kind of over, you know, just for the sake of well, nothing happened on production. You guys took a shine to each other. I just stared at him a lot and and and then after production wrapped, like we did some filming here and then we went to Mexico and then after production wrapped. Um, then we started talking and then I invited him to Hawaii. About him, I liked that he was really nice and that he worked really hard because it was um kind of a ship show of a production, like it was really bad, and and there was a lot of tempers and stress and egos and all kinds of stuff that you just really it wasn't a good feeling production a lot of times. And and Justin who had just taken a gig. He's he was a cinematographer for snowboarding and bow hunting, but he just took a gig as a p a just because he wanted to come to Hawaii. And so he was kind of working so hard rookie circles around a lot of people, and I just noticed that he was just always kind to everyone, and in the midst of all that stress, it was just like something I could tune into to not get irritated. And he had nice eyes, would you like, I remember just watching her goal pro. I mean she was very kind to everyone, of course, and she cooked very well, which is really great, but most of your kindness. But then I remember being blown away on one of our trips, like I'm so new at this point to the ocean. And when we were in Mexico, she was wearing a goal pro and she shot an ahi, And first of all, I didn't even know you could like shoot fish underwater, which spear fishing. I didn't even know what it really because it's still hanging from a tree. If you do that in Minnesota pretty much. Yeah, now I hear about shooting Walleye and then really um Montana, but so I remember watching that and I just thought like, holy sh it, this is the most badass thing I've really ever seen, you know, and her just like being able to do that in control and then learning more of out her. But then um, once we were able to just spend time with each other when she brought me, like I had like four days off in between hunts. She brought me to uh Maui, where we ended up getting married like eight years later, and she came over from a different island, and she brought venison, lobster and minpaci, which you guys learned about um. And then we fell in love and it was It's the same type of lifestyle that I grew up on, except for in Hawaii. You know, I was really attracted to lakes and wilderness and hunting, and she was everything about that, um, but in Hawaii, which was so foreign to me. So now being here eight years, I felt like a kid again, learning the ocean and learning a whole new hunting tactic of of spear fishing, you know, learning the oceans, learning how to free dive and things like that. So she really has changed my life in such a great way. And it was kind of neat because, um, when after our four day first date, you know, when we did fall in love and um, Justin, it was kind of an interesting situation and because we wanted to be together, I wanted to be in Hawaii, and so Justin was trying to figure out how to get here. But he was a snowboarding cinematographer and so it's not like the easiest career to keep living in Hawaii and um, and so it's just really neat that somehow I was able to take this Minnesota boy and just like train them to dive, and it ended up being the coolest thing to like mold this person from scratch to be this underwater cameraman who had no bad habits at all, and I could really just like teach him like where to lay, how to how I hunt, And it ended up just being really cool a good way to um bring us together first of all. But now that we still do that today, it's just it's pretty fun. Yeah, you guys worked together like a very fine tuned machine, but you know what each other is thinking. Yeah, without And that's one thing. In water, you can't really communicate right unless you stick your head up, and then you're burning energy yelling or talking. You're trying to get that person's attention. So it's just all like the more instinct you can be, the better, because there are so many times when I wanted to say things to to you and to cow in the water, and I just like I wish it was like hunting on land when when someone's helping me, they're always whispering in my ear, and that there's so how many times I want it's like whisper in your ear, But I can't because you can't talk underwater. And if I take my head out of the water to talk to you gotta take your head of the water. At anytime your head's out of the water, it's not good because you're taking yourself out of that world. You're taking your eyes off that fish. And so it's it's really um a difficult place to communicate with words. And so the more you learn to just watch somebody's body language and understand what they're thinking and what they're doing, the more seamless. You become like a pack. Oh yeah, watching you do is very apparent, like it's it's I mean, it's it's fun to see like the level of i mean communication and and just like flow that that's possible. You know what when you were what was your earliest exposure to the ocean. My dad says I was four. I remember it when I was five. But around four or five, my dad um started letting me take along with him to do what to go spear fishing. I wouldn't spear fish, but my dad, um, that's how he put food on the table. My parents didn't really have a lot of money, and that's like literally how he fed us was to go spear fishing and um. And he always just says it's because when my mom was working as a waitress, he couldn't afford a babysitter, so he just started bringing me along. And at first he would just told me on a bookieboard, but I'd always want off the boogieboard. I don't want to see everything. So then my job was just to keep up, and so all I would do is swim on the surface. I wouldn't help much, you know, I just tell him what I wanted for dinner and watch him go down and get it for me. But that was my earliest introduction. Were your parents married, They were married? Yeah, And then how far back he married was your was your father and mother both born in Hawaii. My mom was born in Hawaii. My dad was born in New Mexico. Yeah, and he came here and took to just eating out of the ocean. Yeah. He um, he was. Um. He went to Vietnam and when he got out he kind of didn't know what to do with himself. And he moved to Hawaii in his early twenties and he was taken in by this wonderful Hawaiian family. Um, we'll see a combat veteran. He was in the Air Force and um he was actually um um more of a mechanic in the Air Force. But um, but yeah, he got taken in by this beautiful, wonderful Hawaiian family who they just taught him. Um. It was a the grandma of the family that um that kind of got him into spear fishing. When so, when you were little, did you do you remember at because you gotta exposed to it at four years old sometime around then, did you do you remember ever registering fear of the ocean or did did you miss did you skip that step? Oh? No? I um. Everything about it was scary, like we would have to you know. We would pull up at these big tall cliffs and my mom would drop off. Sometimes my mom would drop off my dad and I and then he'd have to put me on his back and we hiked down these cliffs and we jump off these rocks and then we'd be in like crazy blue water that you couldn't touch and you couldn't see, and we would drift the coast down to another bay where my mom would pick us up. And so a lot of that was intimidating to me. And my dad would just like he would just play these like tricks on me that he would It's true, but he would always like look at me as soon as we pulled up and he knew I was scared. He would always just be like, wow, Cam, aren't you aren't you relieved? We just survived the most dangerous part of our day, the car ride, Like, let's go, it's all downhill from here. And he'd always like say stuff like that to kind of train me to think about things differently. And and yeah, and sometimes I would get in the water and I get distracted. I'd see a beautiful turtle or something, and then I wasn't doing my job of keeping up, and I would look up and there he'd be, nowhere in sight, and I would just be alone in the blue. And that was really scary for me. But I'd have to like look at the edge of my visibility, like just to see the bubbles left by his fins and just keep swimming that way. Um. But you know, I think it was just because I was so young, and I just my dad was like my Superman in my in my eyes, you know, he could in my eyes, he could do anything, especially at that age, Like he was just my hero. And so as long as I knew that I could see those bubbles from his fins, as long as I knew that I could see a silhouette, as long as I knew he was anywhere around me, I just felt like, um, nothing bad could happen. So I think that helped me overcome that fear, and he would always just really drive it into me to relax. UM. But those days didn't last forever because my parents did start making money very shortly after that. Um, they saved up money to put my mom into a community college when I was five as well. She was fourty years old, first time going to college. Um, two years later graduated, got a job as an emergency room nurse, and my dad's company also started taking off his construction company, and so then we made money. They worked all the time, and we lived. We moved out of the shock in nature. We stopped getting our food from the ocean. We got it from grocery stores and restaurants, and that kind of all ended. And so I didn't actually take up spear fishing until I was twenty four years old. And the fears I had to face as an adult, um rhein during the ocean trying to get dinner, they were they were definitely so you you didn't spearfish at all for all those years. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it almost felt like I felt like I was really lucky to have experienced that. But it's not something that everyone does, you know, and um, it's definitely not something that girls did. And and so I pretty much just grew up like knowing that that was a passion of mine, knowing that like I had comfort and skills in the water every once in a while, like you know, every time I got in the water, I try to go and hold my breath and do stuff. But we just didn't do it as often. And um, did you do the other kids stuff in that age? Like that's like the prime social age, right, like were you doing basketball or organized sports for for school where you're surfing with folks or yeah, I like playing in the ways and going bodyboard earting, I was on the swim team, Um, all these things that you know, we're never quite as exciting as that first thing I did canoe paddling competitively. Um, but those were always my favorite memories. And my dad and I would still go fishing bottom fishing for fun and catch fish that way, but we just we didn't spend as much time going diving in the way that he used to when he would use that to feed us. And and so yeah, it wasn't until later in life when I just realized, like, you know, that's not just this nostalgic memory. It's like it's not something because I would look up the word nostalgia because I felt like I was suffering from it because I really missed those days. And it remember it said like longing for something that no longer exists. And I just thought that time of my life of living that closely to nature and getting food that way, Um, it was a time that I was lucky to experience. But it doesn't really cist in this modern world anymore as much. Um. But when I realized that it still could, that was when I decided, like, I have to go see about this, you know, And I went and I got my own spear. Um. I couldn't get anyone to take me diving, to say, in my life saw spear fishing and kind of a negative light at that point. I think he had to do it. I think he he loved it. But I know that when I was twenty four, when I did finally get that spear, and I drove myself to the beach, and I remember I just had no idea what I was doing when in the water started swimming, got super scared, like I wanted to turn around everything, and like I had to use little tricks myself, because at one point I saw a little white break and I saw the bubbles and it made me feel calm, and so I keep swimming that way. But anyway, by the end of that day, I was able to get some fish. Just remembering what I saw my dad do and I was able to get five fish, just like there was a hole hole and coole and then pie gee. And that day I just knew like I'm a changed person, Like the woman that came out of the water was just like completely different woman. I felt accomplished. I felt like a lioness. And I just felt like to take this catch home and cook it, like this is the best meal I've ever eaten. And it made me feel like I was falling in love. And I called my dad up to tell him, and I remember being so happy and just like because he was always wanting to know what I was gonna do with my life, you know, like I just um, he knew like I was cooking, but I wasn't really into it. I would always talk about doing art and he was just like those are not careers, you know. And and when I finally told him, Dad, I found what I what I'm gonna do. I thought I would be so proud because it was what he taught me. And I told him I'm gonna go diving. I'm gonna be a spear fisher, and he was just like, give me, I don't know where you're looking for the answers, but they're not going to be at the bottom of the ocean. And I remember I was just so heart broke in like he just totally like dismissed the whole idea of it, and when I thought he'd be so happy, um, And I think it is because he related that to being poor, to being so poor and struggling to you know, to survive and succeed. And when they did start making money, I guess, you know, that's what you do, is you become successful so that you can give more to your children than what you had and you can see them go further then you went, you know, I guess as parents dreams. And so when he saw me like gravitating back to wanting that, um, it didn't sound like a very good plan to him. You know, you kind of answered the question. But earlier I was going to ask you if you know, you were just making a funny point or being glib when you said that he took you because he didn't have a babysitter, And I was going to press you on if that was totally fair or not. But I'm now it seems like he wasn't. In his mind, he definitely wasn't giving you like this great gift to teach you to be in the ocean. It was pragmatic. I mean, that's what he you know, that's what he says, like. But in my mind, he had to know he was giving me such a great gift because if he said we're going diving tomorrow, I was the one knocking on his bedroom door at five in the morning saying, I think the sun's coming up, let's go. You know, so he knew that I loved it. Were you an only child? No, I, Um, I have to older half brothers, but they're out of the house already, they're much older. And so it was my sister and I who are just a year apart. And she was always invited to come, but just never really took to it. And she also my parents gave us like the choice if we wanted to go to preschool or not. I chose no, she chose yes. So she had to go live with my grandparents to go to preschool. Yeah. Um, what other like what other ideas were you pursuing to to make a living? And then also what does it mean to spear fish for a living? Like, just tell give people a glimpse of what you're not selling fish, right, So so give people a glimpse of what that looks like. Yeah, well so the other ideas. I mean, I knew I liked cooking, and I knew I liked food, so I got a degree in culinary arts and I was working in the restaurant industry. But I was just so bored there, Like I just was working with ingredients that meant nothing to me that we're flown in from Afar and frozen, and I was making the same thing every single night and just feeling like this is not creative. Um. I also can I also tried to, you know, do art for a while, and I really enjoyed that because it gave me the freedom to go spear fishing. Um. But I really barely got by on selling paintings. That was very hard. Um. And I never really knew how you would make money as a spear fisher because I wasn't a commercial fisher. UM. I just knew that's what I wanted to do. I didn't even the approach it as a career. I just looked at like, if I can paint paintings and sell them so that when the weather is nice, I can get up and go, that's a win for me if I can survive just doing this. But eventually, um, I got better and better at it. I ended up winning the national championships and started getting attention for it, and then um it just ended up turning into a career where people wanted me to, you know, use their gear, use their their products, and give it a try and get photos with it. And took a long time, but like I would say, ten years after doing that, I finally started realizing that everybody was making money off of me, and I could probably start asking to get paid for it. Yeah, I got Can you explain a little bit the um where free diving plays into spear fishing and your challenges and emergen like going into that world free diving is how you spear fish. I know that you can definitely do it on scuba and do it with tanks, but I find it just so much more in tune to just hold your breath and go down and hunt like that because you're not you're not making all these bubbles and you're not scaring fish away like that, and there's not I just feel like it just makes the most sense to go down on a single breath of air and and try and get this done. Um. It's definitely challenging, but um, but it makes you more a part of the ocean, and I think the animals start to you. You learn to move different with that, and it just like it really teaches you this finesse that UM is all a part of hunting. And when it comes to free diving, I mean there's there's so many challenges that come with it. And I think just taking that drop into the unknown and just leaving air behind and getting further and further away from it, UM and then just trying to just trying to figure things out with this with this time limit, you know, trying to trying to understand things and stock things. And if you could just stay down there forever, it would be a lot easier. But the thing is that you always you always gotta go, and so it's UM, it's definitely challenging. How long can you How long can you hold your breath underwater? The longest I've ever held it underwater was four minutes or forty five seconds, But that wasn't like actively hunting at all. When I'm actively hunting, it's like I try and keep it around two minutes. And the main reason why is because you have to recover on the surface for twice as long so that you don't get hypoxic and blackout. And true, if you hold your bath for two minutes, you have to recover for four minutes. That's a long time stay on the surface. Um, and I wouldn't want that to be any longer. So I also feel like if I can't bring a fish in to me within like a minute and a half, I should probably try a different technique and try a different strategy rather than just try and wait it out. And what's the deepest you've dove, And what's the normal what do you consider like a normal comfortable maximum diving depth? The deepest I dove was a hundred and fifty nine ft and that was just like, oh, I want to see if I can go touch the bottom and come back. And that's all I did, just turn and burn. But it was just neat to be down that deep and feel that pressure. Um. But I would say comfortable. I mean, like yesterday's diving, we were hitting the bottom at about seventy five and watch you go down and lay on the bottom as a couple, and the water so clear you can see it from the surface. Steve and I as your support crew on the surface. Yeah, we go out of those like so, swim straight down seventy five ft of water, lay on the bottom, frown how long and what event? Just so cool to shoot one of those big cuckus. So but it's amazing. Yeah, And that's the thing too, It's like you you know, it's one thing to go down to seventy five ft and hang out, but you're not just seventy five and a big shark swims up to you, which we saw that yesterday, and like that can really take a lot of oxygen out of you right there is just having that reaction of fear um or you shule burn oxygen anytime you get flustered, Um that burns a lot of oxygen. And or having if I shot a fish and it ends up fighting me, ends up tangling on a rock. You know, all of that at depth can just wipe you out. So it's um something you gotta do carefully, can you uh you know you said if you can't bring a fish in within a minute and a half, but you don't have you're not like throwing lures or bait or anything to bring fish in, because can you explain what bringing fish in means totally, and it was so fun to watch you both learned that over the past few days. Is because a lot of people think that to hunt to fish, you know, just hold your breath in, swim up to a fish, and go shoot it. At some times Chester is just on them. They know he's on them. Sometimes that might work and he's just on them. But most of the time, like with smart fish or you know, really nice fish that you want to get, um, that's they're not going to stand for that. That you can't outswim a fish, and so if you start swimming towards it, they're just gonna outswim you and go away. Um. And so my strategy is I just I go to a bottom and and I know they can see me. It's not like it's not like I really am trying not to let them see me. I actually want them to see me. And I land on the bottom. But then that's when I just try and I try to melt into the bottom. I try and just mold my body around wherever I'm lying, if it's on a rock or in a sand pocket, I try and just become a part of that environment so that they see this creature come down and then they kind of see it disappear because that's going to peak their curiosity. That's gonna make them want to see what was that, you know. And and then I hide my eyes. That's important because the minute they see my big old eyeball is looking at them, that can really freak them out. So if I just keep hiding my eyes, they'll keep wanting to see them because I feel like when you make eye contact, that's like a part of recognizing, you know, And so so I don't want them to see my eyes. I'm always trying to hide my eyes, so I'm always kind of turning away, and it makes it like this passive or shy looking body language, and that can definitely bring them in. But there's also just tricks of fluffing sand, you know, just taking sand and just throwing up clouds of sand. Again, even that I want to do it so gently because I don't want to burn out my energy, and just this motion of fluffing sand, there's sometimes where I'm like, oh, that was a little too powerful, you know, like calm it down, Kimmy, Like, don't waste your energy. But so you want to use the least amount of energy possible to do things like fluff sand or just to kind of scratch the rock, scratch the coral um, do things like that, because all they mimic things. You know, the sand it mimics when a stingray is feeding at the bottom because its wings are flapping and it's fluffing sand and it's overturning food and nutrients that fish come in and want to eat, so it's mimicking that. Or if you like scratch rocks together, mimics fish that eat off the rocks, and and so all that kind of stuff will also help bring fish into you. When you're saying that you don't care about that, you'll come down. You're you're not trying to like hide your arrival, right if you were just in the last couple of days, when you're fishing together, if you're looking down and you're you're looking down ut below you a surgeon fish, you don't um, I'm sorry, looking down on a parrot fish. Give me the word um. So you don't think you're gonna drop down way over here and then creep in there. You're just like, I'm just here and I'm gonna melt to the bottom and I'm not even gonna try to like, you can do both. You can? You do try to stalk in? Um, you do, try to sneak up on. We didn't do too much of that these past few days, but I definitely do that well. Sometimes drop in one area and then just slither slither, you know, around the rocks and creep in. I try. I try what I'm on the bottom. I trying not to kick too much, so if I can just kind of pull myself forward, Um, I'll use my hands and do that. Um. But yeah, a lot of times I do. I stay low and I creep in. Does it work too? Because I always I don't think I ever did it successfully? But does it work? To be like the fish goes behind a rock, you like, now's my chance? Yeah, so you can really like get away with something. He doesn't know what went on thinking I was going to do that, but I don't know that I did that. Yeah. I mean it's it's trickier than you think because a lot of times they're onto you and they're going behind that rock to make you think they're coming around, and they're just digging out the other way. But every once in a while you can find one that's just not quite paying attention to you and you can see oh and definitely once you see them tuck away where they can't see you, that's when you make your move, and you make it quickly. If they're not looking, you move fast. I think it's hard to describe. So like if if you're a hunter, archery or rifle really in a place where you spot in stock game. The what we were hunt fish in was a very spot and stockable zone. So there's lots of variation and the landscape. There's drops, there's rises, there's there's little passes in the rocks, there's um lots of opportunity to to get behind things and and try to creep. But it's so it's like looking through spotting scope when you're looking at it from the surface, um through your goggles, things get flat and then when you get down on the bottom, it's amazing how all this how big it is, how big the terrain is um and it just I have like a finite finite amount of drops in me like breaking from the surface and getting on bottom, and you're trying to squeeze all the knowledge out of all of those drops to be more effective on your next one. But it's it's amazing when you get that the idea of how big that bottom topography is, and then it's like, oh god, how do I keep track of where that was? It's amazing to even hear you say that, because I feel like most people beginning at diving they don't even get that, Like they don't even get it at all, Like they're so fixated on the fact that they see a fish or they have to hold their breath and there. It's just the way that you guys were able to actually take the time to read the environment. It's it's it's so cool. It really just showed me how much hunting on land has to cross over because that's everything, you know. It's like that time when you're just like on the surface kind of checking out what you can see below and um and planning your job, planning like how you're going to approach, where you're gonna land, what shadows you're going to use, what structure you're gonna use In one like you have to pay attention because some rocks are way too big where if you land right in front of them, think it's a good hiding place, but you just blocked out your vision completely. It does you know, good? You know, and you guys are really choosing good approaches and good hiding places. Yea. And in lhunting, I'd always tell people that's a good spot to view nature, but we're here to kill nature. Like when you bear yourself into a treat and then you realize that there's nothing you can do. It's like a good good job you kind of laid out when you were laying out our our trip. I knew we had a few days. Um, you laid out a sort of progression for us, and it was a progression in terms of what we were after, how um, the conditions we were after it in the equipment we used. Can you walk through that progression? Definitely? And I really respect that you guys actually did it in that way where we started off, you know, basically with three prongs, you know, looking looking under rocks, looking for a small fry fish that that you really got to get close to you and m with a three prong a simple poll spear. There's no sugar mechanism, nothing like that. Just a rubber band on one end and three prongs on the other. And it's all human power. You have to hold it to keep it cocked. And um, you really have to get close to your prey, like you have to sometimes just get in there, let your eyes are I think it isn't. And if you have like an eight foot poll spear, what do you think it is in inches? I mean you're close close? Oh yeah, i'd say, I mean I wouldn't. I wouldn't take a shot more than three ft away. That would be really far, really far. Yeah. I just say a lot of that stuff is I feel like you're you're eighteen inches away from it. Yeah, even closer. Yeah, like the spear point is is close. It's not even not even really like aiming. You're kind of you're kind of pinning and pointing with your finger. You would be making them very uncomfortable. You've in their personal's face. That's good. But what I like about that is that you have to get that close to your prey and then you your prey. You know, these little fish they dart, they dart back and forth. Yeah, and and then it really tests like kind of your instincts and your reactions because the minute you let go of that spirit and let it fly, like you're committing to you know, to hitting that fish. And so you're really kind of leading the fish where you think it's gonna go, or just like you know, letting go when you think they're gonna stop. And and then when you do that, it's not over. Like it's just a three prong and so oftentimes you gotta then pin your fish and pounce like a cat. And so I just think, like just really honing those like responses, those like quick reactions are are so good to just hone your overall hunting vibe. But then the next step what we after three prongings, we did get spear guns and trying to hold different technique which is so much less aggressive you know, where it's stalking and it's waiting. And it doesn't mean it's at all easier because it's just a different technique, um, but I think that it's a really good progression to have to kind of start off like super primitive and just like instincts and jumping and you know and doing whatever you can throwing yourself at those fish. Really and you guys were throwing yourself on dry reef at some points, you know, um to then having to switch it and go to this like much more stealthy, much more quiet, much like less movement um type of hunting, and the spear gun will obviously give you more range, but um, I think that's just a really good way to keep stepping it up. Then, So go on to the next stage though, And also, can you help me with the what what the hell is that? Because we grew up when I was ten years old, I came to Hawaii and my family, my dad had He was a salesman, like sold insurance, and he sold enough insurance like win a trip through Metropolitan Life. I don't know if that's even still a company. He sold enough insurance to win a trip to Hawaii. So when I was Tammy came to Hawaiian he bought us a spear and I remember my brother coming in and had a giant, puffed up puffer fish on the end of that thing. But we took it home with us and realized that it was very effective on blue gills, but very illegal, and we grew up calling it the Hawaiian sling. But that's not what it is. It's I mean, people call it that all the time, and when they do, I know that they're referring to a three pronged post bear. But Hawaiian slings are a little different because they're more like these these old style like hinge guys that would have shafts that would just like free fly like bow and arrow kind and hit your fish. Um and and and I yeah, but so a three prong isn't really necessarily it's really the term as a pole spear. And it has a three pronged head on it. Yes, it's a poll spear. And then talk a little bit about the different species we were after. So we started off going after um manpachi um which live in the holes and have big guys. That's what the three prong and cole is on surgeon fish um. But then we then we moved up and we said, okay, today our goal is going to be parrot fish, who and and para fisher are tough to shoot in Hawaii. There's something where a lot of other species are gonna kind of come in and you gotta let them come and you just gotta wait and and if you take a shot at any of them, the parrot fish will go away. So you just kind of have to wait and pass and wait and pass. And that parrot fish well eventually maybe come in. But even the way that they swim, it's like it's something that um it isn't always the easiest to track, especially i'd say in shallower waters, like swinging a gun around in the shallows, it just um, it gets a little more difficult. And so yeah, we went after parrot fish and um. And then after we accomplished that, then we went after after job fish in the deep. Explain that whole process, because that was kind of interesting. Wasn't that fine? It was just so with that we went out. We went out to this drop off. We went out to like this sixty ft ledge that drops off into the blue and um, and that's a really good place to get job fish or or how we call them, you know uku in Hawaii, um gray snappers. And what we did we we brought out some bait and just started breaking off pieces and letting them fall to the bottom. And our goal was to get the uku to leave the bottom and come up and start eating the chum so that you guys say, just go down and shoot him from the surface shoodn't below the surface. That was that was the goal. On when it was amazing that we actually did get to see that. But they get smart so fast. I have to say, this is where like your calm, confident explanation of what was going to happen at the point may have um maybe cost us one encounter because it was like, Okay, so what's gonna happen is we're gonna go out, We're gonna start dropping little bits of chum these sardines, and then the trigger fish are gonna come in, and then some other fish are going to come in, and then the gray snappers going to kind of come in, and then then they're gonna get kind of competitive, and then they're gonna start eating up the chain. And it just like read out exact clear that way, like in a book, like and I think Steve and I were both sitting there like okay, so now the snapper are here, So what's going to happen in no time? And I was like, holy man, we're gonna get a lot of But I also said, I also said, and then they're going to go away, and then they're gonna get smart, Like I also said, like they're gonna come up, they're gonna do this, but after a while, like they're gonna get smart. And but yeah, that really happened fast. But yeah, it was one of those moments where when that big there's two of them, but one was just extra big when when I started coming up and doing its thing in like fifteen feet of water. Like if I could have been whispering in your ear, I would have just been saying, go go, go, go go. But you know, I don't want to freak you out. It's also new and it's hard to respond, right. Well, it's it's it's I mean, I have only recently dabbled in bow hunting, and I freeze sometimes, you know, when the opportunity is there. But the thing about spear fishing is that you also have to hold your breath, you know, And that's like, I feel like a whole another level when you get excited and you just realize like, oh my gosh, there's a fish. Okay, I gotta go and I gotta get ready, But then you actually have to think about leaving this beautiful thing called air. That really it's nice when you're kind of excited and you know, flustered, it's nice to breathe. Um. So it is a lot too to go for it. But um but yeah, there's some opportunities where it's like, you know, if you're hunting the reef and you see that parrot fish, where yeah, you can wait, you can plant you can wait till you're ready, and then the opportunities like yesterday, when that fish comes up from the depth, it's like, nope, sorry, you gotta some way. It's gotta go now. You don't have time. You just I think it warrant, like we have to bring up just how clear the the water so clear, it's it's kind of gets not there. I mean it is, but it's kind of it's not there. But you can be at the surface where we were in sevent water when you can see the rocks, you're you're you're in seventy five ft of water, but you're looking and if a fish did the right thing on the bottom, you would see it there. I mean, there's things you're gonna miss, but you could like feasibly see it. And it was overcast, so I can only imagine it feels full sun what you see. But you can see down that deep and Kimmy is taking anchovies right and you're breaking them in a half or breaking them in thirds, and they fall very slowly. They kind of create like a slimy cloud of scales. So you got to move off to the side because if you're looking down, like if you imagine you're in the water and you're dropping something that's falling slowly. If you're looking down the sort of shaft created by its descent, there's a lot of oil and scale which obscures your vision, so you want to you move off to the side, and then you're kind of you're you're peering in at this the cylinder stuff dropping um. And when something first shows up at the bottom, it's like when you hear I always talk about this. It's like if you hear a turkey gobble way off, or you hear it vehicle way off. You know it's there, but you don't. You look to your buddy to be like, did I just hear that? And the first fish you see, I'm like, you know, it catches you where you think you're hallucinating, And I remember Cali, like you saw one and I couldn't see it, and it's frustrating, but also in there it is. And then you guys are so good at shapes. I don't even know what the hell I'm looking at. When those sharks showed up, I'm like, hey, I know that fish, but I was like a lot of times you're like, I don't know, man, And then i'd get all excited about a shape and you you kind of like be like, that's not the right shape. And so the one thing that did show up that I like the second just because my very limited ocean experience, a tuna showed up in there and I was like, you know, and you were very much yeah that that was incredible. The sky and he just in there having his day so different from the other fish, Like it's almost like there's no fear, just bursting and shaking in there and these diagonal patterns and just coming right up to us because he's just so fast. And I drove, I've dove down to try to like and I got down eye level with him and this sun I hadn't thought of. But he's moving so quickly. The gun I had as a ninety I think it's a ninety ninety. What is it? It's a ninety shafts, but what is the measurement? I can't remember. It is okay, um, the fish is moving so fast and the resistance of the water is strong enough you can't track it. Like if he comes swinging by, you're not It's like you're shooting at a duck where you're like swing your shotgun through his line of travel, you physically can't move the gun on fast enough to track it, and so you're kind of like in this sort of intercepting it. And if I had had five minutes of breath, I would have gotten a I mean I took a hail mary at it. Yeah, that wasn't a hail mary. That was every one of us that we were watching you. We all thought it was in the bag. And that was justin woke up this boy. The first thing you said was God, oh my god, I would have been so cool if Steve just shot that. Do not like because it was that close like it was, that wasn't I would not because that's not a hail mary at all. That was like, oh, he's gonna get it. Like, but they're just so fast that even the people watching it happen from a distance, I think it's going to happen, and I just didn't, you know, speaking with Rick Smith about this situation, he made this comparison, which which is kind of right. It's like, oddly enough, the turkey hunting of the spear fishing world, where you get down there and you get set up in a certain direction for this turkey and the turkey's watching you so you can't. You can only move your guns so fast right, so you can't position yourself even though he's gobl into your right now and then to the left right you can do like how muchever you get all my situation pointed over that way exactly. Yeah, how do you can? You guys talk about how you know what the hell sharks or what, and then how you know what mood they're in and what their purposes are. I mean, I guess it's just it's a body language thing where if they come in and they're just like swimming slow, they seem calm. If their fins are kind of out like the wings of an airplane, that's a good sign that the sharks, you know, not really gonna attack or do anything to eggro Um when they are putting their fins down, putting them in a downwards and angle. If they start kind of arching their back, if they start um flexing their gills, um, that means they're pretty piste. And and if they're moving just really erratically and quickly and making these turns, um that that is not always a good sign either. Um off though sometimes Yeah, is it a competition thing, Yeah, it can be, so it can be territorial, it can definitely be Um. Some some sharks can just be big bullies, you know, and they just see you on their turf and they just, um, they just kind of want to bully you and um, and sometimes I feel like, yeah, they're they're the ones that just are there to steal your lunch, you know, so that they're coming in, they're checking you out, and they're telling you that they're the boss, and then if you shoot a fish, they're going to be the ones to take that fish. And still you kind of have to face the bully. And so that's why even with those, you know, the smaller sharks that you kind of just saw me going down there and just kind of tapping them, you know, I wasn't wasn't hurting them with it, poking them, but I was. I'm gonna interject here because that's not quite what I saw, because Yeah, from my perspective, was one of the favorite things I saw over a couple of days is in that you know, chum situation that Steve described very very well. Um, two black tip reef sharks came in and we're doing their thing, and to me, I saw it very clearly as the high school bully in the hallway, right, But in this scenario, Kimmy was the bully and she was swimming down and the black Tip was kind of like mixing around but gradually coming up, and they just like passed each other like two kids in the hallway, and she just gave that black tip a little elbow shot basically close. She kept going shark diverted this. I loved it. It was great. I got a shot of that, Like she just moved right through it, And I was like, did that thing hit her in the head, But she just like didn't even it didn't even phase her. She just by my head. So that's also why it was so close to what were you concerned when you asked her about that? I noticed that you asked her about how it came up to her face. Were you like concerned or you just curious? I was more curious. I was like, how close did you get to that thing? Because I don't know, I trust her. I have, like I feel safer with Kimmy in the water. Obviously she's taught me all that, but I have complete confidence in Kimmy in those circumstances where I do. I do have confidence by myself, but when I'm in the water with Kimmy, her knowledge is ridiculous. Even when we saw that bigger Galapagos, I was just like, hey, that's something I think I pointed to you. Ryan. I'm like, hey, that's something to just be aware of because it is decent size and it was moving quickly at the bottom of that laughed. Yeah. Was I was like, oh, man, like, because that one was a big shark, that was a goalopogus, and and the way that that one came in. But I also have to say, we're chumming, okay, so that's a different story. Like like I can't just call these sharks bullies. If I was just there minding my own business spear fishing or swimming, and the shark came in and started swimming like that, and then I'd be like, okay, like we really got a face off and and pay attention. When you say big shark, how do you what do you mean by that? What would you say? How will I know? I think I had said it. I thought it was like eight to ten eight ft. Maybe that's when you can really tell it's big. Is the thickness of it is what I could kind of seeking. Yeah, thicken and fast and and yeah, and the way it kind of came in and started eating chumm and doing those movements, and I was like, oh, man, were that shark? I was just like, Okay, how how are we going to tell this shark that he not the bully on the bully you know? And um, but it took off. But then when those when those other two smaller ones came. Basically, I'm not too concerned about those sharks biting us because we're so much bigger than them, and I just don't think that they would look at something so much bigger than them and say, oh, yeah, that's my prey. So I wasn't concerned about them attacking any of us are like that. But I was just thinking, I don't want them getting too confident in getting food off of us, because that's what they're doing, is they're just getting really confident in eating food that was coming from us. And then what if an uku comes up and one of you shoot it, then they're they're like, oh, we've been taking his lunch all day, this one's mine, and there goes your fish. And so what I was trying to do when I was going down there and kind of like, hey, stop eating that chump. Hey, you stop eating that chump. That's my chump. That's my chump. No, that's my chump. Is. I was just trying to mama in them and tell them like, um, this this food is just mine, you know, like, and I'm not okay with you taking it um, and let them know that as long as I was there, that is the presence I'm gonna carry because that way, if we shot a fish. Um, if one of you shot a fish and you're bringing it up in a fishing distress, that's what's gonna bring in sharks, and that's what's gonna kind of turn them into like almost that frenzy state is like those vibrations of a fish, and distress more than blood or anything else, it just hits their lateral line, those vibrations, and it activates that. It's they're gonna eat, They're gonna take a bite. And once one shark commits to a bite, you'll see sharks just come out of nowhere. Yeah. And so even though they weren't a threat to us, if one of them had committed to taking a bite out of a spirit fish, that situation can escalate quickly because the minute one takes a bite. All the other ones in the name hood are like, oh that's that's a buffet and you'll just watching get vaporized and and so basically I wanted to just show my dominance so that that way, if you guys shot a fish, I would know that all I have to do is just swim down towards your fish and just get bite her fish, and those sharks would know like, oh, she's back, not ours the menal ladies down here, Yeah, exactly. Steve kind of brought this up, um, but how often do YouTube spending as much time in the water as you do, like get concerned in situations like you know, it's it's hard for me because even just wh when you turn to me and you're like, hey, you know you see that, Like that's something to be aware of. Um, in my position, it's almost like I may as well never even seen the Glockwell shark, because like, now that I'm aware of it, what the hell does that mean to me? Like I don't know how right to me is it? Like Okay, don't even if I get a great shot at something, don't don't shoot it? Or right, I see, you guys aren't getting out of the water. So it obviously doesn't mean that. Yeah, I think what it more meant is we're still going to shoot fish, but let's all be aware. Maybe we should have to talk about this, but let's all be aware that when somebody shoots a fish, the rest of us need to protect that fish, you know, protect that person pulling in that fish, and just and and just swim towards the shark like that's that's usually if I'm concerned, I'll swim towards the shark, okay. And I feel like there's bigger concerns more than we usually have with sharks, Like a lot of the concerns most times like weather chain or where's the boat or oncoming boats or but I feel like concerns is of shark usually isn't at our top level for the most part. Would you agree, Yeah, Currents, currents are much more of a concern separating. You know, if you're like further out in the water, currents pick up and you separate, that's a bigger concern than most anything. But I definitely like you, definitely, yeah. I have been in situations where, um, where a tiger sharks swimming straight at you on the surface and you're not just gonna ignore it and turn around and say I'm not concerned, you know, and um, or you're on the surface in a great white swimming straight up at you, and you're gonna pay attention, you know, So definitely I'm concerned. I just think that there's a difference between reacting out a panic and just responding accordingly. And the number one thing I think I always just keep learning in those situations is I can't outswim a shark, you know, and so the only way that truly handle it is to is to face off with it. I mean, yeah, you could like just leave and get out of the water, but um, that's what I was gonna ask, Like, if if you see a great white or a tiger shark, that's not like all right, time to get out. It's just time to be hyper aware. But keep doing what you're doing. I personally, I think those encounters are really cool. And so, you know, Steve was saying earlier, like you see something like, oh wow, let's go check that out, you know, And so I just think they're they're they're pretty, they're pretty cool, and they demand my attention because there, yeah, they're frightening, but they're special and um, and so I just like to check them out and and see how it is. And like I said, if there's a tiger shark to swimming straight at me on the surface, it is nerve racking because now I know, oh man, I gotta swim right at this tiger shark, you know, and like I have no other choice. Like that is what I'm gonna do. And I'm going to meet you with the same energy you're meeting me. And you're not like you're gonna know that if you're curious in me, I'm just as curious in you. That's how I stand. And and so it's not always like what I feel like doing in the moment, but you just do it and you just and then next thing you know, you're playing chicken with a shark. But it's like that's what you you need to do. And then when it turns, it's like it gets kind of ticked off and irritated, you know, and it might do it again, but you just keep meeting just keep meeting it, and um. Usually you can just defuse the situation. Um. And then it's just it is a really cool encounter. Let's say yesterday we're chumming a fourteen ft great white starts circling around, blows you you like. You wouldn't have automatically called it off. It's mere presence wouldn't make you call it off. You have to see more and to figure out what was going on. I probably wouldn't be at all focused on Uku's anymore. I wouldn't be like, everyone, let's keep spear fishing, um, because all of my attention would be on that great white shark. Definitely. Yeah, yeah, there's difference in sharks, you know, Um and cal Hang on the chum bag. Tell people about your the story you're telling about the sperm whale. Oh yeah, so that was That was in Um Dominica and I was on the surface of the ocean um and and a sperm whale was was swimming along and it ended up swimming on the surface and we ended up like pretty much just meeting up head on on the surface. It was about thirty ft away from me. And there's a photo of this there is It's incredible. And um, I know because when I asked me how far away were you and I said thirty ft, I was like, I'm gonna look at that photo to make sure I'm not exaggerating and it really was. It was a very close encounter. Um. And as soon as it was about thirty feet away, it just used its tail, which makes a lot of bubbles and turbulence to use that big tail and use its tail, and it just flipped itself completely upside down and then it just opened its mouth and I could I could see I could see all its teeth, you know, even from there, and that was a pretty intimidating experience. But um, but then after that, I just gently rolled back over and very gracefully kind of didn't dive down, and just dove down into the depths and was gone. And later I learned from scientists that sperm whales, you know, they have huge heads, the hugest on the planet. And because I was just like right in the middle of its site, it could just it couldn't see me with both eyes, and so it had to turn upside down in order to be able to see me, see what I was. And then they're hearing it come from the inside, and so so they had to open its mouth so that it could hear me. And so it was just it was just a way of like shaking hands, you know, getting a better look. Yeah, and the photo kind of captures the moment where it's inverted. Yeah, in the gate, was that what's the scariest thing you've run into? Like the scariest moment you've had? Well, I mean when it comes to animals, I think, yeah, my first time with a great white in in the water. Um, they're just so big, you know, They're just so big and so fat, and I just always thought of them as these ambush predators that he's gonna eat you. Um, and and so I think just like having that, you know, that idea in your head and knowing that like that is what they can do and do to their prey. When you see a fat, big, great white shark in the water with you, yeah, it's it's pretty intimidating. Um. But that experience ended up being just a really beautiful, peaceful one where I just got into a groove with this shark and ended up being a really cool shark. And that's one thing that I've noticed too, is a lot of times the bigger the shark, the more calm their presence. It's just and and like the little ones, little pesky ones, they can be kind of more like the bitey, punky ones. They just got more experience what they're dealing with them. I don't know this because you said it to me. I know it just from having read about you when you started out in spearfishing, Um, you in some way registered or had the feeling of like not being taken seriously by guys. What does that? Probably maybe I'm putting words in your mouth, but I know that it's like a thing that you've lived through. I mean, I mean I can't really say that completely at all. Um, I don't know if I ever really said that. I mean, I know that, I know that I definitely yeah, I mean there's truth to that. I know. I caught a lot of guys by surprise because they just aren't used to seeing They weren't used to seeing a girl who spiritfish is Yeah, okay, there's definitely a lot of guys who didn't take me seriously and probably because um, I was a girl and they just wouldn't associate those two things together. And even if I say I spear fish, they probably just don't quite believe me. But um, so, like, what does it look like? I mean, what does that exchange look like? If you're in if you're in a thing, is it just that that you don't that you're not invited to go along or you mentioned it and people think that you can't be serious. Yeah, but I hate to even just say like, oh, guys, because because it was guys that that taught me to spearfish too, Like it was it was the guys that did believe in me, that took me more seriously than I ever could have taken myself, who mentored me, who just like believed in me, believed in me, believe me. It was you know, it was all men who who took me under their wing and did that. So we're just talking about different humans, and and yes, out of out of like all these different humans there, there were definitely some men who just couldn't register that a girl could be doing this um and it just looked like things like we'd be at like spear fishing tournaments and they'd be talking about like, oh man, I'm gonna go do this trip in Cabbo and get yellow fantuna and I'm just like sitting at the table and like nodding my head and then then look over and they'll be like, oh, like, I mean what we're talking about, Kimmy. It's like equivalent to you like going on all expense paid for a shopping spree, and I'm just like, ball, It's like, what are you even talking about? Like I was into the tuna story, you know, I like things like that, and and and it's just funny, Like you know, some guys are just like they just can't quite figure it out, like how is that possible? It can't be possible that that, um, this girl can do that whatever, So they just ask you really funny questions. Then you can just tell that they just don't quite believe you. You know, do you take it as a is it damaging? Is it amusing, you know, to get the like to get the flak or or to be that to feel like you're treated as a sort of special individual because of being a spear fisher woman. Um, I mean m I think it's for the most part, like all the uh oh, the silly stuff with the irritating stuff is just not even it's neither just not really worth my time. And it's just like that's when you know, like those aren't my people, you know. And and then like I said, and then I just I've had I just had way too many of encounters of the opposite though, of like people who just treating me like a diver like that's and that's what I always wanted it. That's what like I love before about like you know, sometimes just putting your your hood on and whatever you kind of just like look the same as everybody else. And and I think that was it more than anything, is that I didn't want to be I didn't want to be just good for a girl, which that was one of the weird like compliment you again from the ones that were intimidated by you. And I didn't want to be like, oh yeah, that's that's pretty good for a girl exactly, like oh yeah, she's good. Oh yeah, I heard she's good for a girl, you know, And I just like don't. I don't. That's not I didn't like that, But I also did it like, um, the idea of like oh I'm trying to be better than the boys, you know, Um, I that would be like ascribed to you as a motivation totally yeah yeah, And I mean it was always sad and like good hearted fun and that's fine and didn't bother me. But the truth was, it's just like I just wanted to be a good diver, that's all. Like I wanted to be and and the guys that um I ended up just like, you know, becoming super friends when it became my mentors, like that's just how they saw me. And and it was just that was just the best feeling in the world, you know, just to just do just to be part of this club where um, yeah, you're just you're you're just trying to be a good diver. Do you like sitting here having this conversation like this part of this conversation. Is it annoying? Like could just be totally honest, I'm just like I'm always curious how to navigate this like that sort of question. Is it annoying to you that I asked you that? No, it's not. I mean I think, like I think if I first thought when you asked me that though, if I'm honest, was like, oh, are you trying to be considerate? You know, like is that like a like is that like, um, like a polite thing to do is to like look at how things are for women these days and and this and that. I don't know. That was like one of the first things I went in my head. But it doesn't at all annoy me because I think, Okay, another thing I have to say, I think it is an important question. I think it's a very important question. And before I used to not think that, and I wondered why people ask me that so much. Um And an example would be that I used to always enter co ed um dive tournaments, right, and so it be me and a bunch of dudes basically, And and then more girls started getting into these tournaments, and then they started like having um like like protesting them or whatever, like they needed a women's division, and they saw it wasn't fair if they didn't have a women's division. And I was the first one that was just like no, no, no, no, no, like, why the heck would you do that? Like are you kidding me? Because I was just like I want to be a good diver, and and I was just like I go home, and I just remember just telling my sister like, oh, man, like I really liked all these girls, but now they're getting all crazy and wanting to have like women's division. I don't get it. Why so that like three of us can enter and three of us can walk away with trophies? Like why would they want to do that? Why don't we just dive as divers? And my and that was seriously my point of view. And then my sister she just looked at me and she's like, oh, it must be nice. It must be nice for you to say that, and and I didn't quite get it. And then she's like, okay, me, don't you get it? Like she's like, you're the exception to the rule in so many ways. And she's like, she's like, dad took you in the water since you were five years old, and like, granted it didn't happen all my life, but it did happen for like a good few years pretty solid where I was in the water, developing this comfort, developing this belonging, you know. And she's like, can you know how many other guys do you know that their dads did that for them? And I could think of everybody, you know, if not their dad's, their uncles or someone. And she's like, okay, now, how many other girls do you know where their dads did that to them? And I honestly could not think of a single person, like, not one single person, And that to me just like change yourself. I was like, oh my god, you're so right. Like every single guy that I went to high school with, I grew up with like they were the ones that would die because their dads or uncles taught them. And I don't know a single woman who like was given that same opportunity. And and then she's like, so, now think about like, you know, it was already intimidating for you to to get back into it on your own, but the thing that got you through was those early years of being taken along like with someone that you felt safe with, you know. And she's like, if no girl has ever experienced that ever, And now they see you achieving what you're achieving, and that inspires them and they want to get into it. But they didn't. They didn't have like what you had, you know, and you don't even want to give them their own division. I was just like, give it, give it to us a little gut check. I think that in asking it just or in talking about it, for where it's interesting to me is that participation rates and some of the activities that I hold near and dear and that like participation rates are so overwhelmingly male. And I think that you would you would look at it and find that you know that there's that there's probably some physiological underpinnings to explain some of it right in some cases, like like I think if you removed any kind of like social cultural aspect, do I really think that of the population of people that hunters fishes would be male? Like I just feel like it's probably still tilt that way, just in terms of I don't know, man like like like physiology or or something like maybe I can't really speak to diving. I think that for free diving, I mean I would have to say, like I think women would really Yeah, I think when I get at that, like a couple of things that reasons when I say physiological is is if you look at different cultures around the world, Okay, Um, even cultures that hadn't had contact with one another for perhaps tens of thousands of years would develop along these similar lines where you had had that that like the hunting class, like the members of the society that gauge and hunting and fishing. Um, if you look at indigenous cultures and age jow in Africa, South America, North America, you want up saying that all these independently developed cultures also developed this thing where it was predominantly it was predominantly men, right, not for free diving. Now, free diving it's the women like Um. Justin and I actually we went to Korea to meet the Henon and they're these like old lady divers because they're kind of they are the last of their kind. It's something that hasn't really been passed on. But Um, for centuries they've been the one free diving for um, for sea snails, for um, abalone, for horn konk and um sustaining their whole island, you know. And they finding the Japanese culture too with the Ama and they were like shellfish diverse, pariol divers. Yeah, and UM. And it turned out that UM, I mean the story I hear is that for the curree yuh. Actually at first it was the men that that would do it, but then UM, But then I think what happened is Japan invaded Korea, put this tax on on the working people of this island, Jju and UM. And so there's kind of a loophole because attacks only applied to the men because they were the workers. And so the men taught their wives to dive. But then they ended up being so much better at it anyway. And the reasons why it's because they had um the more fat and so they could stay warmer in the cold water, but they also could hold their breath longer. And then so the women kind of did it because they weren't getting tax and then they ended up being so much better at it that they became like they were the ones that sustained the family. To this day, there's still the ones. We went and we interviewed these women and talked to them, and they're the ones that they they put their their husbands into college or whatever it is. They they take care of the whole family financially, they take care of the commune nitty because they're the ones that make the money because they're the ones that can dive. And so I really think that there's something different about about free diving because you don't need to be like that physically strong. I feel, you know, like I probably can't load your gun and cow like, but I don't need to because I know I can bring the fish closer to what I was gonna get at with the what I wanted to get at in the long run. Around. The thing about physiology is I'm saying like, even if there is some physiological element or something just about like aggressiveness or whatever, to hell, right, then I think that we've had, like we've had social and cultural overlays that have definitely impacted that. And what originally got me thinking about it was, Remember I was talking to a guy that looks at democrat hunting and fishing demographics, and he was pointing out that, um, that uh, a woman who hunts and fishes, there's a greater likelihood that they are in a family where there were no boys or where were they were the first child. That guys will like that that guys have historically been like basically, oh, I guess you can go because I don't have a son to bring, you know, And I think that that's like a that's an actual thing. I mean we've tried to I I perhaps um and having a daughter, like I feel like I perhaps try to overcompensate, um under like instructions from my wife too. The minut she found out she's having a girl, She's like, you are not going to treat her different than the boys. And so to hold up on that, I feel like I, um maybe do the opposite and lean on her a little more heavily or like have hot like have higher expectations to sort of demonstrate how, um, how good I'm doing right, like I need like I want my progress to be measured by hers in a way that winds up putting a little bit of unfair you know, like an unfair expectation, you know. So my like when she was eight years old, like this year, I really was like, we're gonna get a turkey. We'n get turkey, We're getting a turkey. It was coming from me very much like that. I needed, like I need you to do that to undo the stereotype that you're not responsible for, you know. So it's just become a thing of interest to me. And then we hear from people who feel um no, well oftentimes here from people who feel like like unwelcome by guys who sort of seem to want these this this world to be guy centric or find comfort in that. I don't know, Yeah, I guess I can. I can relate to all of that. I think that, yeah, because I do see like some guys just they're used to it being a certain way, and they're afraid that if a whole bunch of girls come into the scene, it's just going to change the vibe of it, you know, And it's just interesting, like on the edge of a recruitment type conversation here and yeah kind of. Um so, could you speak just briefly, um, as like spear fishing as a community is it would you say it's a welcoming community? Um? Is there part of spear fishing that like wants to like mentor people and bring more people into the space or is it is it kind of an insular community that it's like, hey, man, there's only so many fish in the ocean. I think it's both. I think you gotta earn it. And so it's like it's not gonna be handed to you. Doors might not just be open for you. You know, it's not something where it's like, hey, welcome, let's show you the ropes and um take you to our fishing spots and teach you how to do this. I don't think that, you know, it is fishing that people are going to be protective and secretive and keep to themselves in a certain way. UM. So, maybe getting a foot in the door isn't just like an easy hand out. But I think that if you want it bad enough, like if you try hard enough, and if it's just something you're really passionate about. UM, I guess I'm just telling my own story, but like, and you do it, You're gonna earn the respect of this community. And then all of a sudden, doors are gonna open and invites are gonna start coming. And and I think I kind of like it that way, like I just you know, um, and I think maybe in a way that's even why I was like, now, you guys gotta go three pronging first, you know, like you know, it's just like you don't just roll up here and put a spear gun in your hand and I'm gonna take you and shoot a big fish like you didn't earn it yet, you know, And so so so I guess I think it's a very wonderful, tight knit, beautiful community that I do think is welcoming. But I think it's the more you earn respect, the more welcoming it's going to be. Do you see a similar path in your bow hunting career? I mean, honestly, with bow hunting, I feel like I've spent um. I feel like I feel like I've earned respect as a spear fisher woman to the point where bow hunters look at me and say like, oh, you know, like and and they I feel like the doors have opened almost too easily where um, like you, your spear fishing credentials have have put some sort of like have got to me at least my spear fishing credentials have all of a sudden made like to me, it feels like a lot of people welco at me, welcome me into bow hunting. Yeah, and I think that's nice, But I think I almost shy away from it because I it just sometimes feels like a little too spoiled for me, Like I, um, you know it's really I really appreciate it, but um, but I feel like sometimes when things are just like handed to you, it just doesn't feel right, I guess I could say. And so I've actually shied away from it a lot because I have been I have gotten a lot of offers and opportunities and and gear and stuff. When I get and I'm like, I'm such a big cook, Like I don't deserve this, Like this person deserves this, Like you should really be giving it to this person because I see her working her butt off, you know, whereas me like I didn't earn any of this, and so I kind of have shied away from it. And what has actually made me um crossover, just in this past week was that it was all those old dive mentors that I just speak so highly of who really trained me and diving. They're all bow hunters now and um, and they called me up and they said, you know, hey, let's get together and do a sheet punt. And like those guys they're gonna tell me to do anything, I'm gonna do it, like and so I just said sure, and they're like, Okay, have you been shooting your bow? Like nope, Okay, Well meet me at the range. And I just like and I'll just listen to them because I don't know, they're just like they're my they're my teachers. And so then it just clicked naturally. And these guys, um, yeah I met you know, help me dial things in with my bow. Um, I'm just yeah, And I just like maybe I feel like I somehow with them. I feel like, oh, I have paid my dues, you know many times, fay my dues in this crew, and so when when they're gonna tell me to do something, I'm just gonna listen. And it was just such a cool learning process. And and then um, when we did go on a hunt, it was really neat because the sheep that we saw you know, my my friend Calais, who was my dive mentor, he just say, oh, Kimmy, like they're sheep up there. But honestly, there's not enough trees. That's all all lava really crunchy and noisy. The only way you could possibly close this gap is if you go alone. I can't go with you, like go. And that was like the first time I felt like confident in myself because he's the guy that he would tell me like, I know you never told this deep before, but today I know you can do it, go to the bottom. And he would he would do that to me. And so when he told me go, it was like this nostalgic bliss and like prime anything. I'm like, I'm going, you know. And and so now I feel like, yeah, like I I feel like ready to embrace that, whereas before when it's just like people I don't know, like it's so nice and I'm not at all complaining. I really am happy that I have bows and stuff, you know, but just like sending me stuff, I just started to feel a little too privileged, where um, it made me kind of even back away from it more. I can't speak to the gear end of it. But in terms of the invitations and stuff end of it, I think that what you're experiencing is, like we talked about the transfer, is that you've hit um level of extreme competency at something that is recognized as being hard. So it's an easy jump for people to make to assume that if you can do that, if you can excel in that space, UM, that you would be a great asset to have along in this space. If I hear like, if if I'm hanging out with a soldier right who's gone through and done, you know, like they became like a special Operations soldier UM and lived in that world and excelled in that world. I have like zero apprehensions about going on a backpack hunt because I'm like, I don't really know that, but understand that to be like some hard ship you obviously are really good at that. I can imagine that that would jump over and then you'd be welcome here because it's it's it requires spatial awareness, acquires like organization acquires, an ability just to stay calm and think, it requires an ability to get along with other people around you, um, and so it's like easy to to make the jump. So I think that you're probably just being uh. People are like, maybe I don't even know that much about that ship. I understand that's extremely challenging. If you're that good at that, this will be a walk in the park. Yeah, I guess, I guess you're right. And I just, um, I guess I never really thought it would necessarily cross over the same. And it wasn't until those guys who have pretty much like well you know, trained me from scratch, who they pretty much said that exactly like what you just said, they said it to me. Um, No, you you've got this like if you said, like all of a sudden, like I'm gonna be like way into tennis. Um, I don't know that you would then right find that you would infiltrate that world just because And then it was so neat when I when I did stock that sheep to see how much it did cross over, like it really like I had no one else there to ask or or to blame or to do anything any decision I made with my own, and I just had to look at that environment in front of me, and I just looked for for the shadows in the level. I looked for like where to couch down. All that kind of stuff and that it really it was very similar. Uh. Oh, I gotta ask something real quick to you boys chester Chester. Uh talk about your impressions. Had you dove in salt water before? No? I tried, No, really, I mean I was on a snorkeling excursion kind of as we're fishing one time in Mexico, and uh, I remember our guide getting out and like diving down to the bottom and like looking for stuff and trying that and failing miserably. That was with my family back in the day. But yeah, I was really really excited to try it. Watching you guys um the first day, I didn't have a spear gun. I was just swimming around with a snorkel looking at stuff. And it is a different world. Like from the top, you just can't, I mean from out of the water. From out of the water, what's going on? You get down there and it it's like cracks and cliffs and crevices and um fish everywhere. And I the next day I ended up carrying around a three prong with some from some fins that I found here at the rental house, and uh, I borrowed dirts snorkel and was like messing around so you probably borrowed a little bit of chew two. Definitely borrowed a little bit. I need some of that, no, um, but yeah, I was swimming around by myself, and um, I was able to like get to the bottom and was like trying to like imagine, Okay, there's like a cliff here, so I'm gonna try and dive get to the edge of that and like peek over it, you know. And then you peek over and you're like, now I have no idea what I should go after, you know. Um. But I ended up I think, like sticking a fish and I didn't get him. It was like one of the ones that you guys had in the cooler with that three prong But then Steve came up and helped me out got I got the big spear gun um. And then you know, I was following Steve and he'd point out a fish and I look at him and sucking water and then spit it out again and point out the fish again, you know, and uh, I ended up. I think it was like the first got lucky, probably the first one or the second one that he pointed out, dove down and and shot and was surprised. It's just got him right behind the head, and um, you were more surprised in the fish maybe. Yeah. I was like, holy God, look at Steve and he's like a good job. And I got my first fish, So it was awesome. Proceeded to miss uh quite a few after and then pick my head on the surface and go see where Steve was and swim over there so you could load the gun again. But it was awesome and I could get into this for sure. Yeah, you feel the same way, Seth. You're not a water man. You're a water man, but you like to you like to probe the world with your walleye jig. Yeah. Yeah, I was telling you earlier. I like to feel the bottom with my my walleye jig rout and look at it. But no, it was my first time. I snorkeled a couple of times, like up in Maine on the lake when I was younger, but first time in the ocean, and when I first jumped in just getting used to everything, it was just like very stressful at first, like panic mode. I want to point out that it was u um, you know, like on a scale of one to ten of sort of like stressful places too to jump in I feel like it was over five because we were up in the rocks and there was yeah, some crashing waves. Is that like you're in some like lagoon. Yeah, it wasn't still water. You feel the forest of the swells coming in and in the noise element. I think, like you probably can't relate to say more, Kenny, but like there's a there's a stress inducing element to like the water moving bubbles in the water mouth will kind of make everything more intense. And the alarming thing to me was like my mask wasn't quite right, and I was like getting water up my nose and water down my tube and just trying to breathe that stash. Yeah, just trying to like you know, breathe normally while looking down in the water. Was was this like struggle at first? Once kept trying to encourage Seth to find something different to do with his hands. Yeah, I was just trying to like swim. But yeah, once I kind of got the hang of it and settled down, it was awesome after hovering over, you know, being in the air, right, you're over the ocean for a couple of days. When you got your when you got your face down there and looked around what was your feeling of finally, Oh, it was just like yeah, you like after beating in the boat for so many days, just like trying to picture what's going on down there. It's so different from when you actually stick your face down the wall and you're like, oh, that's what's down here, Like this is cool? Yeah, um, but no, it's cool. I definitely want to do it again and eventually at that point where I go down, start hunting, dive down. On another note, real quick, the clearing part, Like I basically got my eyeballs sucked out of my head yesterday, broke some blood vessels. Yeah, some blood was drawn on this track. Yeah. Yeah, when you when you go down, everyone is so focused on equalizing your ears and clearing your ears. But um, that air in your mask definitely starts to compress and compressing it. It It will suck your eyeballs right out if you don't equalize your mask too. Yeah, Kimmy, do you have any uh final things you'd like to talk about that you wish I had asked about and didn't ask And then also how can people go and see um the work that you and Justin put together and like like how should people go find you. I think I just um more so like curious to you guys, to you and caw, like I just want to hear from you about like you know, how how how it was, like how this whole trip was if you what you feel like you learn? Because I know on day one I told you like Hawaii is not necessarily the best place to come as a beginner, um because it's hard. You know, the fish are smart, like they might be everywhere and you can see them, but they're definitely don't make it easy on you and um, and so more than just me getting you on a fish, like, I think the bigger goal would be like really to learn how to hunt underwater. And for me personally, even though I said that to you, I was blown a way as we just did it day after day after day, and I really wish we were still doing it right now. Um, just watching you guys go through these steps and to me it felt like you were just learning so much constantly, and I just kind of want to know, like, yeah, what was that like, Like what did you learn? What did it feel like? Oh my gosh, I learned so much. I yes, for me, you know, it's like uh, you know, big win and and kind of a little disappointing at the same time, because like I knew coming into this trip that one of the things that I really had to fight was just like my eagerness and excitement. And I was so excited to be in the water and so excited, and and I was every single day, every like every minute of every day. You know, it's like, uh, Chester in a candy shop, right, He's gonna grab everything you can, like really really really going after it. UM And you know, I kind of failed at that really, Like I was just so excited, like elevated heart rate the whole time, just trying to just just really trying to uh you know, it's like the old you know, I got a dad as a football coach ort or football coach as a dad who was like, you know, go go, go, go go, and for me, instead of like calming down and slowing down, it's like just work really hard and pushed through. It is kind of steal what what comes out, and I just need to get a better better handle on that. UM. But the consistency of finding like very legitimate opportunities, like I absolutely no the first time I did this, UM part of me was like definitely gott Key had some success but definitely got lucky doing it. Um, I wonder if I could pull that off again. And you know, after this trip, like like I know I can get food, which is awesome and a huge accomplishment, right, So like, um, the consistency of finding those really good opportunities, even though I didn't capitalize on all of them or even a third of them, probably, um, is a huge accomplishment. Oh my god. But just the fact that you capitalize on even like even if it's just one, Like I just think that's not that's a huge win. Like you shot a legitimateho, like you shot a parrot fish Like that was like when I told people you guys were coming, Like one of the first thing they said was, well, there's no way they'd be able to shoot a new who And like like I just think, um, now, the fact that you accomplished that, Like I don't I don't even know if you realized what you pomplished, because that's a big deal. Yeah, I mean, it's just it's it's like bitter sweet, I guess what I'm getting at. Like watching uh, you know you ingin in the water, like part of me is like almost in panic. Mode of like, oh my god, did you like squander this opportunity? Did you not leach enough knowledge out of those two? Like, while you know it's it's right here, did did you not get enough out of him? You know that's and maybe that's just being in the learning curve, you know. I think if my head to look where I got this trip, um you have, Like I don't want to explain a little bit about my history with being curious about it is um. I mentioned earlier we got that pols beer when I was ten, and we would go out in our lake with an onion sack and shoot blue gulls off the bed and stuffed into an onion sack illegally, but like when you're a little kid, you can do things like if you were growing up in that lake, it would last five minutes. But his kids like kids, right, So I've always had a little bit of that curiosity about it, um. And I always had a lot of problems in my ears when I was a kid, getting water in my ears, going to like ear drum problems, my mom bringing me to the medstop like and I uh, I felt like I can't, like I'll never be able to spearfish because but my my I suffer from my ears all the time, ear infections, all kinds of jump um. And then when I started to get I kind of presented my friend Greg Fons, like this problem. He said that many people feel they have that problem. He's always hearing about people that can't dive because the ears. But it's just a lot of things you need to learn. It's a learned thing. And had some of my first like real legitimate spear fishing experiences, and he started to supply me with some equipment and kind of walked me through the gear. And then I was in this world of of uh with the actual gear, which is hard to get used to, and then being in the water and like trying to learn through a thing that you told yourself you can't do, Like like I just didn't think I could go under water to any real depth six ten ft whatever because I thought my ears would get hurt. So I was struggling to understand the gear, struggling to get over my fear of what would happen to my ears and how to stop that from happening to my ears, and then just being uncomfortable in an ocean environment and the unknowns right because I spent so much time and very comfortable around fresh water, but um, there's just a lot less going on as much less it's it's much less dynamic environment anywhere in fresh water, so it's not moving as much, there's not as much depth, there's not as much abundance of life, there's not all the unknowns. You know, I could tell you most lakes category I said, there is not a fish longer than this in this lake, and say it with like a lot of certainty that that's the case. But in the oceans, like ship, I don't know. It's stressful. Um, So I think it for a long time now, the last few years, for sure, I've talked about how like I want to be a spear fisherman, I would like to be a spear fisherman. Um on this trip, or like the couple of days of pretty intense training and exercise we had, I finally got to a point a little bit where I was like, I got comfortable with the equipment and I wasn't at any I caught moments where I wasn't having like a nagging problem of not understanding some aspect of the equipment, like knowing what the lead is supposed to feel like my mask isn't inexplicably leaking all the time, right, and and I like know how to load my own gun, and when it's messed up, I'm able to quickly ascertain what's messed up. I don't need to go ask somebody. So to hit that point where I'm I I I'm comfortable with the gear finally, and I can finally look around and I can finally understand at least what I need to know about my ears, Like there's a there's a pathway to like get like here's where my problem occurs. And sometimes I'm able to do it. Sometimes I don't, but I'm able to be like here's why that didn't Here's why that dive didn't work. I guess I for the first Like there's a day or two days here where I felt like, um, I was actually spear fishing and that wasn't just overwhelmed with anxiety and like what the hell is this thing for? And why is that that way? And is it normal that I can't see ship because it's all foggy? You know? I didn't drink a gallon of salt water today because I can't remember where the snorkel isn't isn't or Greg Fons remember this. I didn't lose my snorkel. You know. I just like God, like I'm here, I'm actually here. I'm fishing, you know, And I felt good, man, it felt good to be like to have some moments where I was there. Yeah. I think it was really good that you guys both It seems that you both came with a lot of that just figured out which was cool. Like you guys both seem to have your gear dialed and every because like even um, you know when when Seth was talking about just like getting in as you get a whole different world, and like I all, like I think, was like that must just be so crazy to just have your face in the water for the first time and just to tell yourself to breathe, you know, like we're not used to breathing through snarkles, and when you are used to your face being wet and in water, like I would think that just your reflex would be And I see all the time people just put their head out of the water to breathe. They don't want to breathe thro their snarkle. They don't trust it, and it takes a long time. I think to get kind of dialed and comfortable with your gear then with yeah, this crazy different world, and I guess I'm yeah, I'm just glad that you guys put in the time that you did prior because you came. I don't know, I feel I feel like you're both spear fisher men, like I definitely do. I think, UM, when I hear you say, oh, I want to be a spear fisherman, like you know, you know, I know that you could go and, like you said, get dinner and go feed yourself like like exactly, even just like found an octopus. And I know that kind of stuff happens by chance. It happens like when you're just in the right place at the right time. But that is spear fishing. And UM, I just think it's it's super cool to see that you guys can now enter this underwater world and just leave with dinner, you know, very cool, very cool. Can I ask what you two are doing next? Yeah? And roll in the how do people find you? Part of that? Um? We have no idea what we're really doing. UM, but we I mean, we created a YouTube channel. We created a YouTube stop real quick because like the WI the first time that we actually met. So we met through some friends. Kimmy was doing a talk in in Catching, where I used to live, and and we ended up having many many talks when we overlapped on that trip, and and uh, there was It's it's funny that one of the conversations was like, uh, Kimmy's an international traveler, international woman of mystery, like going all around the world spear fishing everywhere, and and just got this incredibly supportive boyfriend, a long time boyfriend. Um, justin at home, and you had set this like, um kind of date for yourself for benchmark to like, well, I thought I would start a family at this point, but that's kind of I've already passed that now. And there's all these other events and and things going on right. Uh, but you know, like as the world turns, it's like married, baby, and and so what's next. Yeah, that that is that's all very true. Um. And it's crazy like with that transition from going from just like traveling all the time constantly, see then all of that is coming to a screeching halt um with with having a baby and then COVID happening at the exact same time. Um, we I ended up staying home and it's ended up being the smoothest transition. Um somehow, Like I thought i'd get itchy, I thought I'd missed traveling, and Justin and I just ended up creating this YouTube channel together and just really filming the adventures of everyone backyard. It's a lot of spear fishing pretty much every episode. We're going out, going, diving, getting food, cooking it up, trying to do it all with our baby buddy in toe and um and that is a whole another fun adventure and challenge of its own, and it's just kept me so entertained and kept us so busy. Um. And we've done that for a year now. We put out an episode a week for a year, one year and we just finished that year and now we're just trying to feel where the inspiration is going. Yeah, take a great break and kind of recollect. That's a lot of work. One episode a week with the baby that was a what's the YouTube channel? It's just called Kimmy Werner. Yeah. I think it's like at kay, I am I Space Warner and on Instagram you're Kimmy Swimmy. I am Kimmy Swimmy. Yeah. It is k I am I underscore s W I M M y and uh we're here filming so with with with Kimmy as a guest on our show, which will come out on Netflix next fall. And Justin all the underwater photography you'll be all see his handy word which the clips we're seeing good watching you guys the Holy Holy our favorite fish and just the surge and getting whacked against rocks and just like you guys coming up with one because it's not easy, and seeing how much you learned in those couple of days and applying it to like going back to the three prong and going back to small fish. You guys succeeded and that was really cool. Yeah, Justin had to wear a lot of hats, So I feel like we really need to make sure he gets his do here when you watch when you watch um, when you watch me Eating on Netflix and you get to the spearfishing episode with Kimmy all the underwater workers, Justin he was a mentor. Might I might put on the credits that I did it? Know you guys, do you all have shots because you were wearing GoPros and stuff, so you guys get credit, right? No, No, cinema. Yeah yeah, spell your deal out, uh cinema c I N E M A t OW s k I. My name is Justin Turkowsky a combination of it. But yeah and then um yeah, So check these guys out on Instagram, check out the YouTube channel, and thanks and stay tuned because we'll you will get up close and personal with Kimmy Werner on an upcoming episode of Meat Eater, which will, like I said, will come out next fall. So till then hangs off. All right, thanks guys, appreciate it, Thank you, Thanks guys,