Manny Puig details his dangerous interactions with sharks, alligators, and boars, recounting injuries like finger amputation from a rattlesnake bite and tendon damage from a goring. He explains that charging predators often deters attacks while running triggers them, and highlights how bull sharks possess three times the jaw pressure of great whites. Puig argues against emotional wildlife management, citing polar bear population explosions due to seal depletion rather than climate change. He advocates for regulated hunting as a sustainable economic tool to fund conservation, contrasting it with uncontrolled poaching, and promotes his custom weapons designed for these high-stakes encounters. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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Free Diving and Trident Making00:05:11
All right, Manny Puig.
How are you doing, sir?
Good.
Talking's easy, so.
Talking's easy.
Yeah, yeah, we'll talk all you want.
So, you came all the way here from Fort Lauderdale, from your home in Fort Lauderdale.
Yes.
Thank you for coming out.
We got some amazing tridents from you, which we'll show later.
I enjoy making them.
They're probably one of the coolest things I've ever seen.
Very primitive weapon.
Definitely a very primitive weapon.
Yeah, I'm a very primitive guy.
Yeah, we could tell.
I'm like old fashioned in many ways.
That's amazing.
So, for the people out there who may not comprehend completely, tell me who is Manny Puig?
There's no title to what I do.
I interact with sharks, alligators, venomous snakes.
Also, I make medieval weapons.
I'm an artist.
I do the kind of stuff I like doing.
And I free dive, a lot of breath hole diving.
I've done scuba diving also.
I mean, I've been bent nine times, I blacked out once.
So, but I spent a lot of time in the water, more aquatic than land based, let's put it this way.
And when you say you've been bent, you mean you got the bends?
That's when you get, is that what you're talking about?
When you get blood bubbles in your bloodstream?
Nitrogen in your blood.
You know, we were commercial spearfishing back in the old days, and you do too many dives.
That's what happens.
So you go too deep, you don't decompress enough, you're in a hurry, you get bent.
And what happens?
People die from outer.
You get tremendous pain.
One time I got paralyzed.
Where, like in your chest, do you get the pain?
Shoulders, joints, wherever it hits you, it can kill you.
Wherever the bubble gets stuck, or you can give you paralysis.
I got a paralyzed arm.
I had to go.
I started getting my feel back, but I went down back underwater to repress the air bubbles, the gas bubbles to get them through your system.
I've never been to a chamber, but I really don't like to deep dive too much because of that reason.
I don't want to get bent anymore.
What kind of depth do you have to go to to get bent like that?
You can get bent as long as you're deeper than 33 feet.
If you're less than 30 feet, you can't get bent, even if you're down there 24 hours.
Now, if you're in 40 feet of water and you stay down there 10 hours, let's say you come up, you'll be bent.
You know, at 50 feet, you got like 10 minutes.
At 60 feet, you got, well, no, I mean, 40 minutes.
Okay.
That's how long you have to come up.
No, one hour.
I think it's been a long time.
One hour at 60 feet, 40 minutes at 80 feet, and 20 minutes at 100 feet.
So if you stay beyond that, you can't get bent.
I mean, you can push the tables and get away with it.
We did it a lot, but there's a possibility you don't know when you push a limit and how fast are you breathing, how many.
We have computers now to try to help you monitor all the.
Right.
But you can't, that can't happen free diving, right?
Yes, it can.
It can happen free diving.
If you deep dive, if you free dive very deep and you continuously do it all day long, like if you're spearfishing at 120, 150 feet, you start adding up your bottom time.
So at the end of the day, have you done enough drops?
You'll come home, you'll be bent.
So it happens.
That's crazy.
I didn't know you could do that free diving.
What's deep for you for free diving?
I've done maybe 180, 200 before.
I couldn't mark past 165, but I blew an eardrum doing it.
And normally, deep for me would be like 140 to shoot a fish, 130, 140, around there.
I'm just talking going down there.
At 110 feet, I stayed 40 seconds on the bottom.
I timed myself.
I laid on the sand and I'd see how comfortable I was.
So I laid down there for 40 seconds and I swam back up at 110.
So I've done stuff like that.
Sometimes you know you're struggling with a fish, or you don't know how long you go beyond, or you're hand catching fish that'll take you down there a long time sometimes, right?
Because sometimes if you're chasing a fish that you've shot, you kind of like you forget about okay, I have a hundred feet of water above me, I have to keep that be mindful of that while I'm chasing this fish.
There's a lot of factors come involved.
I've held my breath five minutes and 35 seconds before.
Is that a record?
No, the people can do more.
Okay, that's good.
That's really good.
Yeah, it's really good.
But the people they actually, you know, do more.
I don't know.
I swam 400 feet underwater too.
That's one of the things while holding my breath.
I've done that, and that's like my tops.
I have a hard time equalizing when I'm real deep, so I'm better at that than I am at deep diving.
Let's say I'm limited by my ears.
We should have had a swimming pool here and done the contest where you go back and forth.
You ever make bets with people where you say, I bet you can go back and forth six times.
You do like 60.
When I blacked out, I was in a swimming pool training.
Really?
Yeah, back and forth doing the same thing, you know, hyperventilate, do a few laps, a few laps until, like, when I passed out, I didn't even know I had passed out.
Hand Fishing Venomous Snakes00:14:34
That's a killer.
You have no idea.
Right.
Oh, you're interfering in my training.
That was my things, you know.
I would say something like that.
And no, they weren't interfering.
They were saving me.
Right.
You completely passed out and somebody came in there and saved your life.
Yeah, well, the people I was assuming with.
Wow.
God.
So the first time I ever heard about you and the first time I learned about you, I'm sure like most people, was during the.
Days when you were on Jackass and on Wild Boys.
How did you get involved with those guys?
And can you explain to me, walk me through how that whole thing happened?
How did you start working with Steve O and all those guys?
From their point of view, I heard they saw some videos of me in Animal Planet levitating an alligator in a swamp wearing a Speedo.
So I think it's a Speedo is what really sold.
So it was the Speedo, yeah, not the alligator.
Never mind the alligator.
It's probably bad.
Yeah, that definitely sold Steve O.
They thought that was really awesome.
They said, who's this sexy guy in the Speedo holding the alligator?
We need him now.
Yeah, so then they told me these jackass guys are looking for you.
They want to do something with you.
And they go, people tell me they're really, really dumb guys.
That's the first thing I heard.
Yeah, these guys are really bad.
They're really dumb, dumb.
I'm telling you, they're dumb.
And eventually I ran into them and we, yeah, first day out, Stevo gets ran over by an airboat and he puts a worm up his nose.
Johnny Knoxville wants to get bit by Rattlesnake on purpose.
And years later, I showed him my hand.
Hey, this is why I didn't want you to get bit by Rattlesnake.
You understand?
I told him that.
That's from a rattlesnake?
Yes, oh my god, yeah.
I noticed on your Instagram, you a lot of your photos you put your hand out to show your finger, it's a signature mark to make sure it's not an imposter, it's the right guy, you know.
Everybody knows that loss of finger to rattlesnakes.
Okay, this is it's me, it's him.
It's kind of like a joke.
There's no fake Manny, there's no fake Manny Puig.
You can't impersonate Steve.
Steve took a picture of it first thing when he saw it and sent it to Jeff Termaine.
He was laughing, look at this guy, took a picture.
But, um, I got bit by rattlesnakes in high school and I was 17 years old, really.
Pygmy Rattler, what were you doing?
Picking it up the same way that I got bit by the Western Diamondback, the same style, repeat of the whole thing with a bigger rattlesnake.
And that one, I said, I, when I looked at myself, I'm thinking, I really messed up this time.
Where was this at?
Texas.
Texas.
So at 15, you're already like catching animals and doing all that stuff.
Yeah, high school levels, hand catching large alligators by hand.
I was picking up venomous snakes.
I was doing it, all that kind of stuff.
Spearfishing.
What made you want to do this at such a young age?
What got you into it?
Was there something that inspired you to do this?
I think I saw too many like Tarzan movies, Sea Hunt.
Yeah.
You know, Lloyd Bridges, all Jungle Gym, Underwater, Fighting with Alligators, all these different, I saw these different aquatic and, you know, wildlife guys and all that stuff.
And that really, you know, got me inspired.
Wow.
So what happened when you got bit when you were young?
What did you have to do after you got bit?
Did you just have to go to the hospital or what?
I ended up in a hospital.
My friends started telling me, you better, I think, oh, well.
What are we supposed to do?
You know, and you know, you're watching too many movies and they go, well, we're supposed to get drunk or something like that.
And they're like, and then the guy, the friends are all looking at me kind of funny like that.
I think we better take you to the hospital.
Let's just take you home.
And when I got to the hospital, I was worried about how much it was going to cost.
Yeah.
And they told me, you want to keep that hand?
You better lay down there and let us get to work on you.
Yeah.
That's what they told me.
What do they have to do to you to get rid of the venom or before they amputate?
They anti venom.
That's what they did.
Right, right.
Anti venom.
And then they were, back then, they would try to suck the poison out of you with a suction cup.
Now, later on, they don't do it anymore.
No.
They just take you to a hospital and they put you on anti-venom.
They hold your arm up high, you know, to keep the swelling down.
Yeah.
Now, the amount of venom, I grabbed that rattlesnake by the neck and he made a half a turn on me, got both fangs and one finger.
And, you know, I held him and I picked him up and I told the producer, it got me.
And he goes, no, no, it didn't.
I go, yeah, it did.
So he was like, oh, no, everybody's like froze.
And I think Buck Medley goes, let's go to the hospital.
That was the guy I was with before Manny dies.
Let's go like right now.
So we got in the car.
We're going about 110 miles an hour all the way to the hospital.
We're about like this was for the recent bite, yeah, for the last one.
That was a diamond bag, you said, Western diamond bag, about six feet long.
It was a monster.
Where were you, Texas?
In Texas, too.
Yeah, it's like I don't really want to pick up any more venomous snakes after that second one.
That was just I'm still recuperating 10 years later.
What was going through your mind when that happened?
Like, what were you thinking?
What did you, what were you trying to do?
Like, were you, were you, did you like tie a no?
I didn't do, didn't tie anything to it.
No tourniquet or anything?
I was really like bummed out.
It's almost like you got on a flat tire in the middle of nowhere.
It's just a really, you know, depressing feeling.
Yeah.
Do you feel like woozy from it?
No, I didn't feel woozy or anything.
I just felt tremendous pain in no time.
It just got, I knew what I was into.
I knew it was going to be horrific.
And then it was so bad.
I could feel the venom.
I was praying the whole way, praying to God the whole way to the hospital.
I'm a Christian, so I was praying, you know.
God, keep me around for a little bit longer.
For more time.
Yeah, this is, I felt like I wasn't going to make it.
Really?
Really?
That's right.
Yeah, I went away to the hospital.
When I got in there, they were taking their time in the hospital, warming up the core fab.
That's what they injected with.
And I said, Well, we're going to, I said, You getting warmed up yet?
How long had it been by the time you got to the hospital?
About 45 minutes.
And I'm like, I need about a 55 gallon drum of that stuff you got there.
Yeah.
I said, This snake was enormous.
I have a ton of venom in me.
And if you guys don't put a lot of that stuff in me, this thing is going to really mess me up.
I told them that.
And they're all taking their time.
Yeah, you're thinking, hurry the hell up.
Well, they got to go like this and warm it up with their hands, the core fat, because it's kept frozen to preserve it.
So it was like, man, they should have had it ready before I got here because we called it in.
It happens in Texas so often that they don't care.
There were three people in the hospital that day, counting me, that were bit by rattlesnakes.
Really?
No way.
Yeah, that's like, it's no big deal over there.
That's crazy.
The other guy had a finger that was all black, like mine was getting.
And he goes, he had told my friend, oh yeah, I'm probably going to lose that finger.
And sure enough, they told me, well, it looks like your finger might make it.
I went back home to Miami a few weeks later.
I couldn't, they let me out after four days.
I couldn't even get inside an airplane to go home.
I stayed in Buck Medley's house, laying in a bed there for two weeks.
Damn.
I could hardly do anything.
I couldn't even pick up a cup of coffee with that hand.
And the pain was tremendous.
Then when I got home, my in law took me to the hospital, and the doctor said, You've got to stay here.
That finger's got to come off.
Oh, man.
Okay, let's get it off right now then.
Just the finger was in tremendous pain.
It wasn't your whole body.
No, well, the hand.
Just the hand.
The swelling went all the way up my arm, all the way to the side of my body.
I had swollen everywhere.
You know, it was like a balloon.
I mean, tremendously, like being puffed up.
Right.
But when you were on the way to the hospital, when they were driving 100 miles an hour trying to get you there, like, were you just sitting, were you holding your arm up?
Did you, were you doing anything specific to try to hopefully, like, stop the venom from spreading into your body?
They had some frozen chicken.
They had picked up a store over there, and I put my hand on the frozen chicken, and I found out later that you're not even supposed to do that.
Oh, so that wasn't, that was the wrong thing to do also.
You're not supposed to get it.
You're not supposed to do anything but go to the hospital.
Yeah, that's what they say, get, just go there as fast as you can and, you know, try to relax.
I was relaxed, I wasn't yeah, I wasn't freaking out, I wasn't agitated, I was more like bummed out.
Yeah right okay, you know i've been through some stuff.
I mean I um the Outdoor Channel, I had that rattlesnake bite.
I also got bit by an alligator uh, in the back the only time i've ever been bitten by an alligator in my entire life, messing with alligators.
He snuck up behind me and bit me when I wasn't looking, so he grabbed the wetsuit and peeled off my back So he was not able to get a good grip on me.
So that's again, the good Lord saved me from that one.
It was a 10 footer snuck up me from behind in a canal.
I was swimming down.
I thought my friend, the Indian guy, had hit me with the airboat.
Wait a minute, I heard an airboat.
Did he just run me over?
What's going on here?
And the boat was like 50 yards behind.
What?
And when the alligator, and I could hear the airboat coming, the alligator didn't care.
He must have come out of cover and got me from behind.
I was too lazy to look behind me.
And then I faced him off.
I chased him and harassed him so he wouldn't attack me again.
And then I didn't know what was wrong with me.
I got in the airboat.
I said, Well, I'm able to get in the airboat.
I peeled the wetsuit back and I told, Let me know.
I told everybody, What's wrong with my back?
Let me know.
Yeah.
And it goes, Wasn't bad at all.
12 scratches.
That's it.
That's it.
I was going to, I got to go to shore and put a bottle of bleach on it.
Like right now.
That's what I said.
Bleach?
Yeah.
It kills all the bacteria.
Holy shit.
That's pretty rough.
Not like alcohol, just straight bleach.
Straight bleach.
A rattlesnake, I mean, an alligator can kill you.
Just like a rattlesnake with a bacteria in its mouth.
Okay.
Oh, really?
Even if you survive his bite, he can rot you.
He eats dead animals sometimes, not just living things.
Right.
So, you know, anything can happen.
Alligator is a very dangerous animal.
No question about it.
So, if you get bit by an alligator, dump bleach on it, not bleach alcohol.
The doctor will tell you no.
Right.
The guys in the woods, the alligator hunters, and the crazy people tell you to put bleach on it.
Okay.
Yeah.
I trust them.
So, let's just clear that right away.
That's not a medical field.
Right.
Yeah.
You know, FDA approved.
No, no, not FDA.
This is woodsmen technology there.
I would definitely trust them before the doctors, I think.
Yeah, yeah.
I would too.
I also got gored by a boar.
Gored by a boar?
Yeah, well, I was hunting boar with a spear.
He cut a tendon in my arm and he got my leg.
I was shooting blood out of my arm like a sword gun.
Well, he bit me.
Yeah, I ended up hand to hand with a boar.
And you were hunting him here in Florida?
Yes.
With a spear?
With a spear.
It's.
Great idea and a bad idea at the same time.
Right.
Boars are very dangerous.
Right.
They make me nervous.
Do they really?
Yeah.
Out of all the crocodiles and the sharks.
The boars.
The boars.
If you're hunting a boar on foot, on the ground with a spear, you're in problem.
If you got bay dogs, you're in danger.
If you got a catch dog, you're pretty safe.
How big do those get?
A boar in Florida, I've known of them to be like 500 pounds.
Normally it's like 150 pounds.
If you get one like 220, you got a really nice one.
I know a guy's been doing it his entire life.
He got one 400 pounder.
Do you eat those or no?
Yes.
You do?
Yeah, they're good.
Really?
Interesting.
You know, you got to take care of it properly and cook it right and everything.
But yeah, it's good meat.
Really good.
Wow.
Interesting.
Yeah, the conquistadors brought him here, Hernando de Soto, 500 years ago and let him loose in Florida.
Really?
Yeah.
So they've been here ever since.
But like your Florida panther, the Florida mountain lion depends on him.
That's his main source of food, not the white tailed deer in Florida.
That's what's increasing their population, by the way.
And also, The bears eat them sometimes too.
Really?
Alligators also eat them.
Wow.
They, in turn, they'll eat, you know, whatever.
They'll eat a baby deer.
They'll eat gator eggs.
Everything eats everything.
There's tons of them here, though, right?
Certain areas is more than others.
They like, they favor certain type of terrain.
And other areas are heavily hunted because they're not protected like white-tailed deer and everything else.
So a lot of people are relentlessly hunting them.
Some people don't want them on their property.
Some people want them on their property.
If you like boar hunting and you take people boar hunting, you want them on your property.
Right.
And if you're a farmer and they're eating up your crops, you don't want them around.
Right.
Some ranchers complain they tear up the grass and they uproot it.
Okay, which is what the cows, you know, they need the sod, you know, the grass.
Right.
At what age were you when you started getting serious in the ocean with like breath holding and doing serious free diving and spear fishing?
I learned how to swim at six and I was already interested, so I would put on a mask and look around and you know, shallow water.
And as soon as I could, I think I was like 14 when I had my first spear gun.
And I started from there, I had a tiny little spear gun with shooting grunts.
Okay.
And then, you know, barracudas, maori eels, anything that swam, you know, that kind of stuff.
Wow.
I went from spear guns to commercial spear fishing to pole spears and to hand fishing.
The hand fishing is the most primitive type of fishing.
Now I like to fish with my tridents.
Yeah.
But I do enjoy the challenge of catching a fish by hand.
By hand.
Yeah, freshwater, saltwater, wherever I've been.
So what happened?
You kind of just got so good at using all those other, you started with a spear gun and worked your way down to A trident or just with your bare hands, you just wanted more of a challenge.
You just got so good at it, yeah.
It's more fun.
Not that I'm not the best spear fisherman in the world, I'm good enough to make my living at it.
But some of these other world champion people, all that, yeah, they're better than me at spear fishing.
At hand fishing, I don't know who beats me at hand fishing in that sense.
I mean, I've hand caught uh many different types of sharks, I've hand caught about probably 40 or 50 different types of fish before by hand.
I've done a lot, a lot of hand fishing.
It's outsmarting the fish and figuring out how you can get your hands on them.
It's challenging.
It's fun.
I like doing that.
So, walk me through what it takes to go.
I mean, what kind of fish do you go hand fishing for?
I mean, I've had caught groupers, snappers, maple sharks, silky sharks, nurse sharks, lemon sharks, all kinds of tilapia, in freshwater tilapia, garfish, catfish.
I caught catfish by hand, even in Florida.
I did in Louisiana.
I got a 72 pound flathead catfish.
Wow.
What's the technique you just, I mean, fish are fast.
So when you just got super stealth.
Every fish has a different technique.
Okay.
Like if you're after a red grouper, he'll go in a hole.
Outsmarting Nurse Sharks00:15:17
Right.
So you reach in a hole and you grab him.
Oh, okay.
That's it.
Well, you got to know how to work him out of the hole and get a grip on him and everything else and don't get bit by Maury in the process.
I have a hard enough time shooting a grouper in a hole.
Well, sometimes you can't shoot him because he's up and wedged inside of a hole in an angle.
So then you put your spurgun down, you reach in with your hand and catch him.
So a lot of guys go, Oh, I can't get him.
They go home.
No, you just reach in there and you grab him.
Put on your make sure you got your glove on, reach in and grab him because he goes in a hole like this and sideways.
You can't put your bend your spurgun up in there like that, right?
Just you can reach your whole arm up there, you can reach your arm and turn it up in there and grab him.
And you grab him by with whatever you can grab, usually the tail first.
Okay, you want to get your hands in through his gills, okay, get a grip on his gills to work them out.
Sometimes you get a grip on him and you can't get the grouper in your hand out of the hole at the same time, so you got to figure it out.
Right.
I've also caught, you know, like mutton snapper, mangrove snapper, also when they go in the ledges by hand.
And I've caught fish in midwater, like guards, hold a light on them at night and swim down and grab them.
I've caught long-nosed guards like that at night and regular guards actually in the daytime.
I've managed to catch them by hand before.
And you'll do that by swimming under the water and getting them.
Yeah, yeah.
You go at night with a light, you shine the light on them or have somebody shine the light when you let go of your light and you ease your hand close to the fish and you're really, really close to them.
Of course, you got gloves on and wetsuit.
You grab his bill as fast as you can.
But you got to be close to get him.
Mako shark, hand-feed it.
When he's eating out of your hand, you reach around and grab it.
He's the fastest shark in the world, so you're not going to chase him down.
Right, of course.
You're going to let him you can bring him to you.
Yeah, let him push up into you.
And what do you do with a Mako shark once you catch it with your hands?
You play, hang out with him, and enjoy the catch and let it go.
So he takes off, and you just go for the ride?
Yeah yeah, it takes off.
If you ride him he'll sound on you.
If you tackle him, he tries to jump out of the water, really.
So you're up catching air the whole time so you're able to to hold on to him and then, if he's small, I can lift him right out of the water.
Okay, I was catching and releasing.
We're doing video.
If I was in the middle of nowhere and there was no video, I would have probably cut the mako and ate it.
Yeah oh, really yeah, and took it home and trophy jaws, everything else.
So you're gonna get video or meat, one of the two.
That's my mentality.
You can't mix the two.
Yeah I um yeah i'm, i'm a hunter sometimes, you know, especially when there's no camera, and then when the camera, you know, then you're catching and releasing and it's a complete different.
You know, when we go out in the water, what are we doing today?
Are we gonna right, you're filming an educated people?
We're gonna catch fish to let go, you know, then you, you figure out what the game plan is and that's what you do.
What do you enjoy more?
Keeping it for me, or it's got to be the hunting right, I?
I like the hunting.
Yeah, I like to keep it, but the videos is good because you can go home and look at your hunt over and over again.
Right, so it's, it's uh, it's awesome, kind of perfect what you're doing and What's the biggest fish you've ever caught by hand.
A 400 pound Goliath, close to that.
A Goliath grouper.
Yeah, there's no good video on it.
Yeah.
I got some pictures of it.
What was that like?
It was eight people watching, 40 feet of water, free diving all day.
Yeah.
At the end, the fish kept dodging me, dodging me.
Finally, he got mad and attacked me.
And he bit, he went inside a cave.
He bit me twice and shook me violently.
Bitt you where?
I knew what to do.
So I was new at doing that kind of stuff.
So I went up for air.
And I went down and then he swallowed my arm all the way to my shoulder.
And then I grabbed the hold of his gill plate and I started backing up with him.
So, once I was able to horse him out of the cave, I could move him up as long as I'd go in circles, spinning all the way back to the surface.
We caught him and let him go.
I caught six of them by hand.
Some of the stuff was seen around on TV and all that.
And I remember the federal government asked me, I had a meeting with them.
They asked me not to do it anymore.
Really?
Were they seeing your videos?
Yeah, well, somebody called in, they complained about it and this and that.
And then they said, the guy said, hey, you're not allowed to do this.
It was an awesome catch, by the way.
No, really?
Yeah.
But he said, Yeah, 50%.
Yeah, temporary possession of the fish.
And they said it's a no take.
Now the state lets you catch them and release them as long as you don't take them out of the water.
So it's a little more lenient.
The feds may still have the same deal.
I don't know.
That's in state waters.
I know people catch and release them.
I guess I could hand catch another one.
I don't know.
They're so overpopulated.
You would think that the federal government would start to change that, right?
Because they're everywhere.
They're waiting for the fishermen to get together, have a meeting, and decide what to do.
The reason hasn't happened because.
Nobody's really sat down with them and, and now they're, the game of fish basically works for the hunters and fishermen.
They're here to preserve the industry.
So what do you want to do?
How many glass can you know?
The idea is to catch, harvest an amount that doesn't destroy the the population.
So I know that's what they want to do, just like everything else.
The numbers are high.
Okay, you can harvest.
You don't want to fish them where you can't find them anymore.
Right, of course you.
You want to fish them like the tarpon.
You know they're regulated, you can catch them.
There's over abundance of tarpon out there.
Right snook, they're protected.
There's tons of snook out there.
And look at the cold weather that year.
How many are killed.
What a waste.
Wow.
Yeah.
But yeah, that's the other.
I mean, I'm interested in all that stuff, the numbers.
I like conservation as far as numbers are concerned.
Management.
I believe in properly managing.
Take a certain amount when you can, then you don't.
Certain types of hunting actually increase the animal population.
Everything's got to be balanced out.
You've got to know what you're doing.
Go out there.
I like all that stuff.
But I like, I've always liked all my adventures.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There's, I mean, there's a huge controversy over that kind of stuff, like with the quotas and stuff like that, and how the federal government controls all that kind of like stocks.
I think the problem is that everybody has a personal agenda.
You know, you got to be fair to everybody.
And somebody thinks this way, somebody thinks that way.
You know, you want to, like, certain areas, some divers have, you know, pet glass grouper and they feed it, and they all, everybody goes there to take pictures.
Okay, maybe that area doesn't need to be opened up, nobody needs to go in there and kill that fish, right.
And then you have another area where there's plenty are out there and dive.
You know people say okay, you guys got your your photography area here and we got a hunting area here.
Right, I think that should be.
That should be fair, right.
Right, you know, there's plenty of water out there and there's plenty of woods.
There's plenty of everything for everybody.
There's plenty of alligators out there uh, this Florida there's plenty of bears, more than ever before.
There's plenty of wild boar.
There's plenty of deer, plenty of fish.
Right, there's a lot of.
There's a lot of stuff, a lot of areas.
We have a lot of glad grouper, You know, certain fish are lower than others.
Sharks are come back tremendously.
Yeah.
Nobody's really fishing.
The ocean is actually extremely dangerous right now to go spearfishing, I would say.
More now than ever?
More now than ever.
Why is that?
Because there's more sharks.
More sharks.
Why are there so many sharks right now?
There's no commercial longlining for them.
Oh.
So the population, many species are protected.
The population's increased, increased.
Yeah.
To the point that, you know.
Where there's more sharks.
Yeah.
I mean, you want high adventure?
Go spearfishing.
You know, you're going to be fighting for your life out there.
Right.
Yeah, it's great.
You want the real jungle out there?
It's there.
It's real.
It'll get eaten out there.
Yeah, we were talking earlier when we were on the phone earlier.
You were telling me about.
I was telling you about like surfing in New Smyrna, how there's literally black tips everywhere, just paddling out.
And like right when you get off the beach, before you even get out to the sandbar, they're just hydroplaning through the waves everywhere.
I would not do that.
You wouldn't do it?
No, there's no biz out there.
I wouldn't even want to swim in New Smyrna.
It doesn't solve anything for me.
The only thing you're going to get out there is you're going to get bit.
I mean, it's like Russian roulette out there.
Yeah, yeah, you know, okay, yeah, I surfed through a pack of sharks today.
You know, the next day you might get uh killed and eaten, you know.
How often do people get bit by sharks?
And you know, Smyrna every week, right?
Yeah, yeah, really, yeah, that's shark attack capital of the world, really.
Never mind Australia and South Africa or any of that.
Oh man, I didn't even know that.
You want to get bit, you want to go on the list of surfers to get bit, go to New Smyrna.
No, I'm cool not being on that list.
I was at a surf shop over there and I asked on who's been bitten by shark here, and you see all the surfers in there all raise their hands.
Ah, damn, that's crazy.
I didn't even know that.
But the thing is, the sharks are a lot smaller and they're not as dangerous as other places.
Okay.
A five foot black tip bites your inner leg, you cut your artery, you're going to die just as fast if a thousand pound tiger bit you.
Yeah.
You know, you're going to die either way.
So they're still very, extremely dangerous.
So if your leg's dangling in the water, there's a good chance if that thing bites you, it's going to hit an artery.
Yeah, it could hit an artery.
You could be okay, but it ain't like it's not like a little squirrel bit your side.
No, no.
It's a bad bite.
It can be any shark bite is bad.
Yeah.
Any shark.
It's got razors in their mouth and they'll cut you up real bad.
Have you been bit by a shark?
Four different kinds.
What kinds?
Mako, lemon, Caribbean reef, and nurse shark.
Which one was the worst?
The nurse shark.
Really?
Really?
Where did they bite you at?
My inner thigh.
Missed that artery I was talking about by a quarter of an inch.
And took a piece of meat this big out of my leg.
God damn.
The doctor had to cut the skin loose and stretch it over.
He told me you're going to have to get a skin graft on that.
And it was a three foot nurse shark.
What?
I jumped off the boat on him.
He bit, latched into my leg, and I pulled him off.
What a stupid move.
Oh.
Oh, you pulled it off so bright.
You pulled the whole thing off.
I pulled him away from me, and he ripped the whole thing off.
A nurse shark, they say a six foot nurse shark, has as much jaw pressure as a thousand pound great white.
God damn.
In his jaw.
I've seen a guy catch one of those right off the shore here on Indian Rocks Beach before.
They're okay, but.
Don't they bite you sometimes?
People have been bitten and they've gone to the hospital with the shark still latched onto them with the shark on them.
Yeah, they go to the hospital with the shark.
Yeah, another guy rode one, I think, I think, bit him in the hand, the arm, held him underwater till he drowned.
The shark held him under the nerve shark.
Yeah, it's a powerful, difficult nurse shark to hold on to because he twists and turns every which way, right?
Everybody thinks it's harmless, he doesn't have any teeth.
I don't know where his ideas come from.
Yeah, there's probably a zillion people been bit by nurse sharks.
But they stay near the bottom, right?
They don't swim up like.
No, they'll come up.
If you're spearfishing, I've had them come up in 40 feet of water and attack me on the surface and trying to take the fish I got.
And they're also like near sighted and like dumb.
They'll come up and bite you.
I've held my hand in front of them and they latch onto my wetsuit, ripped it right there.
The nurse, I got short teeth.
So if your wetsuit is loose, he'll pull away from it and you might escape getting injured.
Okay.
When he bit me in the leg, I didn't have a wetsuit on.
Oh my gosh, damn.
And if the wetsuit is tight, he'll cut through it and get you anyways.
And it's, again, where he bit you, the infection.
There was a group of divers, I think, they were catching lobsters.
One of them pulled a nurse shark by the tail.
The nurse shark takes off and bites another diver 10 feet away.
It wasn't even the guy that pulled him by the tail.
It was just pissed off.
Yeah.
God damn.
So you, yeah, you got a and how did you get bit by a Mako?
Tiny little cut on my hand, hand-feeding it.
A baby, no, it's a big mako, a big huge one, and uh, in the Gulf of Mexico, I was feeding this close.
I had a Wahoo head on my hand, and he was, I mean, my hand was literally in his mouth, and I was holding on to it, and he's just pulling around and dragging me.
I'm like, and finally, the teeth were all hanging out.
One of them, you know, I was so close, finally, sliced you, yeah, cut my finger.
So that was like, I can claim a mako bite, but it was like, I mean, it took like a little knife, right here, that counts as a mako bite, yeah, that counts as a mako bite.
I mean, you're feeding him by hand, is that counts, gosh.
I had a Caribbean Reef Shark bite me in the leg from behind, and it felt like I got hit with a machete in my leg.
It was a surprise.
That day, I had a knife tied to my calf, which I never do that.
I usually wear them on my waist.
Yeah.
So it happened to be I'm wearing one there that day, and the Caribbean Reef Shark bites me.
He bites the knife side of the calf, the knife is on in my shin bone.
So he crunches down.
So the bone in the knife protected him from ripping my leg to pieces.
Wow.
I got cut.
I had blood shooting out and everything, but nothing like if that knife wouldn't have been there.
Yeah, he would have taken your calf.
Took my calf off.
Yeah.
It's about, you know, five and a half, maybe six foot Caribbean reef shark.
It's like a bull shark.
Right.
So I did a tour.
I did a thing.
We were shooting a TV pilot in Nassau.
And we did one of the shark dives where they basically take you out.
And then there's a couple guys on the boat and they literally just chum up a ton of sharks behind the boat.
Caribbean reef sharks.
Those are the same sharks.
Yeah.
And we were in like a tornado of sharks.
They were coming up.
They were bumping my camera lens and.
That's extremely dangerous, extremely unsafe.
People have been bitten out there doing that, especially if you're down current of, when you get in the water in a shark dive, whoever's down current of the blood.
In other words, if your fish is here and the current's going this way, you want to be here.
If you're down current of the blood, if anybody gets bit, it's going to be the guy who's down there.
Down the slick.
Okay.
So that's why people get bit all the time.
I've heard of many people get bit out there by those Caribbean reef sharks and doing those shark dives and everything.
Yeah.
Some people never made it home.
Some people have been killed.
You're just out there not in a cage or nothing?
No, we're surrounded by a tornado of sharks.
Like they're big sharks.
There was like some six footers.
I would never do it all the time.
They do it all the time.
It's crazy.
No, you know, people want adventure, but everything shows up there too.
There's bulls.
I'm not doing that.
Hammerheads show up.
Tigers show up there.
Everything shows up over there.
And they, yeah, they could.
I could imagine, like the one thing I was afraid of was that, okay, one bites you.
You can get lucky.
But if one bites you and there's 30 others right there, wouldn't they all just swarm you and just eat you alive?
Well, there's blood everywhere from the food you already got in there.
They're already frenzied out.
Okay.
He may bite you.
A bull shark tends to bite again and again and again.
Right.
Like that.
Multiple attacks.
He does it.
The Caribbean bit me one huge bite.
It only takes one good bite.
And a Caribbean bites you.
It'll take 10 pounds of meat off your body.
You know, that's like your guts could be hanging out there.
Anything.
It can bite your hand off your leg.
It's all those sharks are extremely dangerous.
I got nothing against shark dives, but I always tell people, yeah, there's nothing safe out there.
No.
You may not come back.
It's dangerous.
People say, oh, you're exaggerating.
There's no misunderstood anything.
Those things are dangerous fish.
The Danger of Shark Frenzies00:15:27
When they're hungry, they'll eat people.
Unlike everybody, alligators eat people.
All these animals, they do that.
They're dangerous animals.
So they will finish you off.
Like they'll not only take a bite, but they will actually consume you.
Well, look at SS Indianapolis.
They ate, what was it, 600 people or something like that?
What was that?
What was that one?
That ship sunk in World War II.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
I did hear about that.
I think it was a bunch of tiger sharks were out there eating everybody in the middle of the Pacific.
Yeah, they'll eat you.
They, yeah, it's those and also the the oceanic blue oceanic the oceanic blue and oceanic white tip.
Okay, the blue tips the blue is cold cooler water and then the oceanic white tip Is a little warmer, but you know, they'll go either way.
You know, they they crisscross territory.
Okay, and the water's warm the blues go deeper.
Okay, like maples.
Yeah, they like cooler water, but they'll come up and feed if the action's coming up there and then they'll go down to their depths Okay.
So those are the ones that basically a ship sinks, people go overboard.
Those are the ones that are circling you ready to eat.
I like open ocean sharks because they come in hungry, more aggressive.
If you're going to film or interact with them, that's a good candidate.
And they're fast.
Yeah, they're more aggressive.
Like coastal sharks have food around them more often than the ocean sharks.
So the ocean sharks are more hungrier and sooner or later they're going to want to make a meal of whatever is there.
Wow.
So, how do you deal with those sharks if they're hungrier and more aggressive?
Like, what do you do to interact with them and not get eaten?
Well, when I go out there, my idea is to get the sharks to try to eat me and get them as aggressive as possible.
When I was doing the shows and all that stuff, is to turn that into the most horrifying feeding frenzy you could ever imagine.
That was the whole idea.
And are you not scared when you're doing that?
Well, I'm not scared until one of them bit me in half, then I probably would be scared at the moment.
I actually am enjoying every second of it.
You love it, right?
Yeah, I'm enjoying it.
And then when I feel like I've had enough, it's enough.
I don't want to push.
You know when to not push.
Yeah, I got 30 hand features on my guy.
Okay, I'm done.
Yeah.
I'm done for the day.
We got enough action.
Let's just get out of here.
Yeah, it's fun, but you got to be alert because any minute something can go wrong.
But yeah, it's not.
Yeah.
Don't, if you want to stay safe, don't do what I'm doing.
But if you want to see the sharks and you want action, you got to, you know, stir it up out there.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's the whole idea.
Or you're not going to get, you know, shark attacks and you're not going to see that side of it.
Yeah.
And if you're spearfishing, when all that's going down certain areas, you got every fish in the oceans around you at the same time.
So if you're there spearfishing, well, there's a shark feeding, man, it's just everything's showing up.
It's the best time to hit a fish.
It's just insane what's going on out there.
I've been scraping fish for hour after hour after hour, calling in, everything is within miles around to come there.
Really?
Yeah.
When sharks think, when you're ripping a fish apart, sharks think you're a shark eating.
And nothing attracts a shark more than somebody else eating.
And I take the knife like that, and he thinks I'm devouring that.
And so he wants to get a piece of that action before it runs out.
And they go into a competitive mode.
And that's what makes it happen.
That's insane.
So another thing you were telling me earlier was that you would much prefer to have a shark encounter while you're spearfishing versus if somebody were surfing.
If you're a diver, you can defend yourself from a shark a lot better than a surfer or a swimmer.
A surfer or a swimmer are sitting ducks.
That's why I don't want to go swimming a new Smyrna.
Because I feel like I've been, you know.
All my defenses are gone.
Right.
Even if you don't have a spear gun though and you're diving, you think you have a better chance?
Yeah, if you're diving, yeah, because you can always hit the shark with your hands.
You can charge him.
If you go out at a shark, swim towards him, you'll frighten him.
Really?
Yeah, because he thinks you're going to hurt him.
So if you swim away from him, he's going to attack you.
He thinks you're prey trying to get away.
So the worst thing you can do for a shark is run like crazy away from him.
Then you're going to instigate an attack.
Can you pull up that video?
Type in Mick Fanning.
This is what I was telling you about.
The guy Mick Fanning was in the surf contest in Jefferies Bay, South Africa.
And he was sitting out there waiting for a wave by himself.
And all of a sudden, you just see him get pulled under.
And yeah, watch this.
He's a sitting duck.
And you can see the fin come up.
I think it was one of the pectoral fins come up.
Watch him.
It grabs his leash, like the leash that connects his foot.
There he is, right there.
Yeah, see, he's totally helpless right there.
If he was a mask and fins and a stick in his hand, he would have been able to fight that shark.
Now, watch, he starts hauling ass, swimming as fast as he can.
Yeah, that normally, if it was like a Caribbean re shark or bull shark or something like that, that would get him attacked.
The great white may not, but a bull shark or a Caribbean would have come back at him and killed him.
Oh, yeah.
What kind of shark was that?
That was a great white.
Great white, yeah.
The bull has, say, three times the jaw pressure in his bite of a great white.
Really?
Yeah.
It's a very bad bite.
What would you have done in that situation if you were him?
I wouldn't have.
You would have never been in that situation.
Swam away.
You wouldn't be in the situation.
I wouldn't have had much visibility there.
I wouldn't have been surfing.
Right.
Now, I was going to tell you something before I forget.
If I'm luring in sharks for feeding and scraping meat and creating a shark feeding frenzy, I'm probably safer doing that than if I am just randomly spearfishing.
Because okay you spear grouper in a hole where your head's under the rock and your feet are hanging out trying to get the grouper out of the hole You're 100% vulnerable if there's a bull shark in the area He's gonna attack that's when he's gonna get you so as a shark diet if I'm shark diving I want the sharks to be there when I'm right you're expecting them come you're aware of them.
Yeah, no you're aware of them and you're into you can defend yourself because you you that's all you you're looking out for them Expecting it when you're spear fishing.
I don't want to see sharks.
Yeah, right.
I don't know, I'm not.
I'm not aware, because when you're focusing to get a fish, at that moment, that's when the sharks come up.
Shark likes to bite when you're not looking at them, like all predators.
Okay, these animals, they're looking for a meal.
Now, what makes animals dangerous is how hungry they are.
Sometimes sharks are not hungry.
They're not going to bother you.
Yeah, you know the hunger of the animal.
What motivate motivates a lion or a tiger or an alligator, crocodile or shark to eat somebody is how hungry is that animal, how desperate?
You know when you, when you're really, really hungry, you're ready to eat anything.
Yeah, I don't like that food, I'd rather have a steak, but I'll eat that rotten hamburger because I'm really hungry.
So there's no exceptions.
When a shark is really hungry, he'll make a meal of what's there.
People have seen him trying to eat a log in the ocean.
They're so hungry.
Wow.
So have you been in a situation where you're having a shark charge at you and you charge back at it?
Yeah, it's all my life.
Yeah.
And so what?
They just get scared of you charging back at them?
Or what do you do?
You just run face to face to them?
We do it all the time.
We run them off or they steal your fish.
Yeah.
You know, you run them off or they'll bite you.
Don't run from them because you can leave the area, but you got to watch your back.
Remember, he wants a bite when you can defend yourself when you see it coming.
Same thing with an alligator.
You can levitate a charging alligator.
But if the one that bit me, it was an ambush.
I never saw him.
I was too lazy to look behind me.
But if I would have seen him coming, I've had alligators go after me.
And at the last minute, I get low in the water and I grab them by the shin and I tilt their head up.
And that disrupts our attack.
It confuses the alligator.
And usually, do that a couple times, it'll warp the attack.
I had one try to take me down 10 times before.
I mean, I could have left the water and then it'll stop.
But as long as I was there, he kept coming around.
He tried going underwater at me on the surface, different styles of attack.
Really?
I was able to block him every single time on the attack by grabbing.
You got to make sure you don't put your hand in his mouth when he's coming at you at the last minute.
You got to grab that skin down there.
I mean, don't go try this on your own.
I won't.
Yeah.
I'm not going unless you're there.
If you do this, if all of a sudden your boat broke down and you're swimming and you got attacked in the last resort, it's good to know something like that.
Yeah, definitely.
I'm not telling you to go look for these.
No, I'm not.
You know.
It's kind of like, you know, I took karate lessons.
I'm going to go to a bar and pick a fight.
Right.
Somebody will beat your butt or you might get shot in the head.
Right.
Right.
Exactly.
Something like that, you know.
Is there a video we can see of you levitating an alligator?
Sure.
That one.
That's probably the largest alligator I ever levitated in my life.
Wow.
How big is this one?
I'd say it's 13 foot plus.
I had an alligator expert look at me in a video and everything.
See, I'm talking about them.
I was on my way home.
We were filming, you know, just whatever we could find fish.
Yeah gators, anything you know, trying to do a good, you know nature show right, where is this?
In Florida?
Yes yeah, there's a lot of hydrilla in this area.
Okay, the hydrilla.
A lot of times the water is clear, but what a hydrilla does is it covers everything.
It's like a spongy jungle right and you know look, see the alligators and all kinds of animals can disappear into the hydrilla right and it grows off the bottom.
Yeah, it comes out the bottom.
That's about 25 feet in the bottom of the canal.
Wow, I can't believe how clear it is.
Yeah, hydrilla thing clears water too.
Oh shit.
See, he arches his back.
So.
Oh, that means he's pissed?
Well, he's not going the other way.
He's coming our direction.
Yeah.
So instead of leaving, he's interested.
Yeah, he's headed right to us.
Oh fuck.
At this time, I was already lost my finger in my left hand.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
Oh, my God.
He's huge.
I do another good lift on them too.
I really show them well though.
Oh my god, dude.
Oh, shit.
See, that's, you saw a slow motion.
Yeah.
What is that thing?
Like a thousand pounds?
I said a thousand pounds.
It's a massive animal.
There's a lot of fish in that area.
So now he doesn't want to be messed with.
Now he's like, fuck that.
I'm going to sleep.
No, no, he's not sleeping.
He's just going to lay down there.
Okay.
I go down and pet him and everything else and try to budge him.
Really?
I do a thing where I grab him by the scoots and I lift him off the bottom gently.
Okay.
And he's so heavy, I can't even budge him.
Yeah, I can't even grip him.
I got a grip on him.
Yeah, I lost my fins like that.
I need to get me a new pair of those.
Bodyboard fins.
Yeah, I know.
Those are the same boogie board and fins.
That's what they're called.
You don't get them in dive shops.
You got to go to a search shop.
I found out the best thing to use out there is not those long free diving fins.
No, there's the short ones.
For maneuvering around alligators and sharks, you want that.
Yep.
You want the short ones.
I'm not into going deep now.
I'm into there messing with the animals, so I don't need the long fin.
You have no traction with it.
Right.
I got to goose him, get out of there, because I can't get in front of him.
He's facing the bank, and I don't have any room.
And you couldn't pull him out because he's in the bank.
You have to stay under.
Under his jaw, under his head, you don't want to be directly here because that's where he's going to jump up and get you.
Oh, okay.
I like to get below him.
Best place to be with an alligator is underneath the head.
Okay, his eyes are above his head.
See, yep.
See how little the eye looks compared to the skull that tells you how big that alligator is.
That thing's a moose because what happens is the head will grow the size of the eye, really.
Yeah, like a little alligator's got an eye that looks like a frog.
Yeah, it pops out, it's big.
Yeah, tiny little head with two big eyes on it, it looks like a frog.
And then when it grows, you know, the eye.
Yeah, because it's still a big eye, but the head, that's how big he is.
That is so much bigger.
Holy shit, he's darker.
Okay, now, yeah.
Yeah, he's already freaking out.
So he's going to dive into the hydrilla forest.
He said, I found the wrong human to pass the message.
I was just trying to see what was going on over here.
Fucking Manny Quiggs over here.
I do one or two lifts on him and then I leave him alone.
I don't want to stress him out.
If you do too much of that, he's going to come back at you.
Okay.
And, you know, I'm not, I'm just interacting.
I'm not really, you know, hunting the alligators, so I had no need to.
That is a price gator.
A gator like that is already bred, though.
I saw him, and he's, and he's, I think he's over here.
He was so big that we saw two different spots.
I found where the tail was, and Kwete found where the head was.
Really?
So I got, it's a big mound of hydrillas.
I'm going to go in, I got to go inside the hydrilla now to look for him.
Oh, my God.
Now, watch him.
When I bring him straight up, I'm going to put him in tonic immobility.
Okay.
So you're just going into the plants and trying to find him.
I'm reaching out for him.
The plants.
Whatever they're called.
Oh my God.
That's my left hand right there.
Look how big that head is.
Holy shit.
Now, see how he looks more calm?
Yeah.
Right now, the head is straight up.
This kicks in tonic immobility.
Now he just hit the surface.
Now he explodes.
The minute I took him up and he started to tilt his head back, he went off like a stick of dynamite.
And I told, I told, let's forget it.
We're done.
We're done.
Yeah.
Look at that thing.
That thing's a dinosaur.
That's what it looks like.
It looks like a dinosaur.
He's running along the bank watching it.
Wow, I bet you were safer underwater than you were on the bank, right?
I was just thinking about what if this gator gets up on land right now?
They want you, they'll get you underwater above alligators.
Hunt underwater, okay.
People don't know that they do.
They'll sit on the bottom with their mouth open, waiting for fish to come nearby, and they lash on top.
Oh, really?
And I also seen him chasing a softshell turtle trying to catch it underwater.
And they've had him attack me underwater.
I've never seen a video of a gator eating underwater before.
I mean, you only see really gators attacking stuff on land.
No, they do it underwater, but it's not too many people down there.
Right, exactly.
There's not people down there, right?
You got to be down there at night catching the feeding time, but they're eating fish left and right down there.
They got to come up to swallow it.
They don't swallow underwater because their throat locks down there.
They don't want to let water in to a system.
That's what they control, or else they can fill up a water and drown.
Catching Whales at Night00:14:58
Oh, shit.
So they just grab it while they're down there, and then they come up to the surface to actually eat it.
You want to see the makos?
Yeah, yeah.
Okay, go up.
This is my best shark day ever.
Your best shark day?
I've had good ones.
How far offshore is this?
50 miles.
Okay.
San Diego.
Oh, San Diego?
Yeah, it's in California.
That's where you find a lot of maples and blues.
Wow.
I mean, it's a magnificent fish.
That thing is huge.
Look at the shape of his body and his tail.
It's almost like he's not real.
Yeah.
It looks like such a design, such a cool looking fish.
Amazing.
And that's just a little one there, right?
Yeah.
I'm going to catch that one and then I'm going to catch a bigger one.
In that segment, I ride one, I hand feed blues.
It was six Makos and three blues showed up that day.
At first, they were chasing each other off.
The big ones were running off the small ones.
And then later on, they got comfortable with each other and then they started hanging out.
Oh, this is the bigger one, right?
Oh my God.
No, that's a little one.
That's a little one.
That's the little one still?
Look at its eyes, how big they are.
Yeah.
Yeah.
At Oceanic Vision.
Now, The bigger makos will eat the blues and the baby makos also.
Really?
They'll cannibalize their own kind.
Yeah, that's one of the few animals that actually eat each other, right?
There's not many predators.
Do gators eat other gators?
That scene when they showed over again, that's when I was ready to catch them.
I was going to catch up makos.
What about the gators?
I was going to say sharks are one of the few predators that cannibalize each other.
Is that right?
Or do a lot of them?
Gators do it.
Gators do it too.
Lions do it.
Bears do it.
Oh, shit.
That thing's like a little torpedo.
Yeah, well, it can jump 20 feet in the air is world's fastest shark.
Damn.
And it's warm-blooded, too.
It's got the ability to warm its blood up.
It's warm.
It's not cold-blooded like the other sharks.
That's the only shark that's like that?
No, I think the other members of his family might be like that, too.
The great white may have that ability also, yeah.
There's five mackerel shark members.
Mackerel shark members?
Yeah, which is pelagic, like well, in that family, it's great white, short fin mako, long fin mako, and poor beagle.
Oh my God.
So you just caught that.
And salmon shark, the other member.
Yeah, I just caught it, yeah.
Look at this thing.
That's sand fishing.
You noodled a mako.
Well, you can't noodle him through his mouth, he'll cut your hand off.
You got to grab his body.
Now, he's not as slippery.
If you got gloves on, his skin feels almost like sandpaper, so you can get a grip on it.
Which is nice.
But yeah, you got to grab him.
That's nice.
Yeah, you got to grab him like that because that guy right there will knock your fingers right off.
Jeez.
You know, if you, yeah, you don't want him to bite you, he can kill you.
I released him.
He stayed with us the rest of the day, even after I caught him.
Yeah, he didn't care.
There's a blue.
That's a blue.
That's a scary fucking shark right there.
Well, they're all scary, but.
Dill, if you offer him your hand, he'll bite it off you.
He'll bite it, he'll take it.
If you let him bite you, he will bite you.
You can't let him bite you.
Are these suits you're wearing?
Are they kind of like bite proof a little bit and stuff, or no?
No, they're just regular wetsuits.
It's the same thing that's usually useful when you're surfing, really.
Yeah, you know, yeah, it's a wetsuit, yeah, yeah, it's like butter.
See, that's I'm riding that one.
Oh my god, I can't lie, that would probably be a super cool feeling right there to ride a shark, but I'm still not sure.
You can, I mean, you were there.
I would tell you, go ahead and catch a ride.
Yeah, that would be cool.
Yeah, you were saying they sound.
If you grab onto them, they'll sound.
Yeah, but you'll still get a ride.
You hold your breath, you let go when it's time to go.
He'll keep going with you.
If you overdo it, he may come back at you.
Really?
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, if you put on a tank and stayed on him the whole time, he may eventually get mad and say, Enough of the off, and he'll turn around.
Now, when you catch one, yeah, that could have been a disaster there.
Getting entangled in that rope and stuff.
It could have been a disaster there.
I almost got bit by blue that day too.
Robin almost got bit by blue that day too.
The producer.
Is this a Mako?
Yeah.
God, that's freaking terrifying.
See, he didn't take the bait.
I think this is the one I'm going to catch him now.
I think this is the one.
Yeah.
Yeah, I'm going to hand catch this one.
How big is this one?
He's pretty big.
Watch.
See, I got him already.
Oh my God.
Oh my God.
That's crazy.
What the heck?
He's beating the heck out of me.
Yeah.
I told the guys if I handcatch a Mako, he's going to drag me over the ocean and he's going to, because I'm tilt to one side, he's going to end up right back by the boat again.
Right.
So he's going to take me a huge circle, quit it when chasing me.
But I said, if you wait by the boat, you're going to catch him.
You're going to catch him coming right to you.
Robin was there waiting for me.
I don't know what he got on footage, but see, there's Robin with the camera.
He's back at the boat.
You still got this thing?
I'm going to let him go now.
See?
Now, again, we got if I've wanted to keep him, I would have told the guys, get a rope and just put a rope around his tail and just boat him.
But you know, we're not getting meat, we're getting video.
Right, right.
Some people want you to release the shark, some people don't.
At this time, I'm there, you know, we're entertaining the public.
I'm feeling my personal challenge, but I'm doing a feeling.
Look at the size of this one here.
Holy shit.
This one here, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I try to put him and roll him on his back.
Yeah.
And I'm gonna ride him backwards.
I lift his head out of water, I'm gonna flip him.
He didn't go in a tonic immobility, but I did flip him.
A lot of the stuff the producer wrote for me to say, you know.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
When I'm out there talking, it's me talking, and then he'll feed you some stuff.
And then he feeds himself.
He writes stuff in there.
Which is okay, you know.
I don't care.
You want me to say else?
Gets the people going.
But right now, I'm going to tell you what's going on.
What do you think might be a right as a catch for, you know, different things.
Right.
Now, is there any shark that you can't, cannot eat?
Cannot eat?
Like, cannot, like, that's not good to eat.
The Greenland shark, you have to boil it, they say.
In order to eat it, because it's poisonous, but you boil the heck out of it, you can eat it.
People up there eat it.
Okay.
It's a weird Greenland shark.
Greenland shark, yes.
Cold, cold, cold water shark.
There's a blue at it.
But overall, I mean, you can eat a hammerhead.
It tastes like lousy.
You can eat a bull shark.
I've eaten it.
It tastes terrible.
See?
He almost got me there, the blue.
No, here's where it happens, I think.
No, no, this is the other one.
See, I'm going to flip him now.
Okay.
That's a big mako there.
See?
And this is where he's like paralyzed when you flip him upstairs.
No, no, no.
He didn't go paralyzed.
See, he's still swimming, but I rolled him on.
I got him upstairs.
Upside down, that's crazy.
Oh no, it's like having you know, let's just you're dancing, yeah.
I'm playing with sharks.
Wow, it's a lot of fun!
Oh my god, man, you're a psycho.
Can you do that stuff with dolphins?
They seem like a lot.
No, you don't, you don't, dolphins in captivity are mean, smart, and mean as that.
It's just like killer whales, they end up killing somebody.
You swam with killer whales, right?
Yes.
Probably the most dangerous thing out there.
Killer whales kill most dangerous animals in the ocean.
Yeah, yeah.
They kill great white sharks, probably on the planet.
They kill blue whales.
They gang up on them and kill them.
They kill other whales.
They kill everything that lives out there.
Oh, we don't know if they killed anybody.
Yeah, because the people got killed, weren't around to tell you what happened.
Right, right.
They killed three trainers over at SeaWorld.
SeaWorld, yeah.
So it is a dangerous animal.
None of the other pets out there have done that.
Okay, so it was a wild caught killer whale and it killed three trainers eventually.
And they were playing with them too, or at least one of them.
One of them was like toying with.
The guy before he killed him, uh, yeah, they'll toy with the food supply out there.
They call them killer whales for a reason, right?
No, right?
It's not a misunderstood animal.
Free Willy got the uh, got them all looking happy and nice and friendly and stuff.
Yeah, that was fake advertising.
It kills bottomless dolphins, they kill, they torture animals.
They're just horrific animals.
I mean, they're cool, they live out there, they're part of nature and all that.
So, you thought, why not jump in the water with them?
Well, we're doing uh, I'm with those with uh, the jackass wild boys, yeah, and you know, we're.
You got to do the adventure.
You got to step it up.
So, okay, we're coming up with ideas.
And sometimes things just got better and better.
And that's the first time you probably did that, right?
Yes, that's the first time in my life I've ever seen a wild killer whale.
Are you nervous going into that because you never did it before?
You've never seen it before?
A little bit.
I was anxious to get in.
I felt like you wanted to do it, right?
Well, I want to do it.
I want to, you know, okay, let's get some action.
I'm to a point when I'm like getting to a point, okay, I'm tired of waiting around.
Let's get into it.
When I'm going to do something, okay, you get that feeling.
You get fired up.
Yeah.
It's just like adrenaline.
Yeah, it's just like a guy who's going to do something else.
You know, people do the same thing.
He's going to jump something on motorcycle jumps.
I'm going to do that drill.
Yeah, they got adrenaline junkies or jumping off an airplane without a parachute, things like that.
You know, okay, I don't want to wait around.
Let's get with it.
So I saw the killer whales.
Let me get in.
Okay, this is good.
Let's get everybody in there, you know, and start filming.
And so you get out there with them, and what is that like?
You guys ride out, you find them finally, and you just jump in with them?
Yeah, you ride around with a boat that is specialized in whale watching.
In Alaska?
They take tourists to watch whales.
You're not supposed to go up to them.
So I told the guy, okay, they're headed that way.
Drop me off in their path.
Okay, so they dropped you off in front of them.
Yeah, so we don't harass the whales and the whales come to you and then it was okay So what the hell happened when you had a school of killer whales coming at you two of them came by had a really good close look at me and That was it the water I could only see like six feet max really green.
That's probably the worst part about it is green and dark dark dark green and this is just you or you're with Steve-o and Chris then or camera guy Steve-o Steve-o didn't get in Chris Chris got him, yeah.
I got him in with the grizzlies and I got him in with the killer whales.
Steve O wouldn't do it.
No, Steve O's in a bear outfit.
The other one, Steve O is he likes he'd rather set himself on fire than mess like with a tiger or lion, right?
Yeah, you know, I mean, he doesn't, he's not dangerous animals is not his thing, but if he's gonna jump off a cliff, blow himself up with dynamite or hurt himself severely, shoot a rocket out of his ass, yeah, or or or eat an omelette made out of vomit or something like that, yeah, he's down with that, yeah, but.
Is he'll do the animals you gotta.
I've done a lot of animal stuff with him.
I put him on a surfboard and had sharks swarming around him.
And the sharks are attacking the surfboard, biting on him, pulling on it.
So we're gonna see if surfers get attacked in mid-ocean.
I mean a stupid thing to do so.
The way to make it happen, we tied a bunch of fish to the surfboard and put them out there and let them float out there, so of course the water's boiling around him with sharks feeding.
It's like 25 sharks are in the water, all feeding on a surfboard and these duskies come in, about eight of them giants.
One of them grabbed the whole wall of fish and surfboard and Steve was a monster coming see what jumps off the surfboard and shark dragged the surfboard under.
Oh man god, I mean the whole surfboard sunk.
I'm talking about, you know, probably 800 pound Dusky.
Did those guys ever take any bad injuries from any of that stuff?
They do, they're.
The idea for me was them to get injured, but not too too bad right, but you kind of want them to get bit once in a while by certain things.
I don't want to miss certain things.
I don't want missing body parts, you know I got.
I wouldn't let uh.
Johnny Nice Will get bit by rattlesnakes, even though he really wanted to.
Yeah uh, things I got.
I don't.
You know.
The idea is to get some uh Like when he got bit by the anaconda, okay, he can handle that.
Yeah.
He wanted to get bit by a rattlesnake?
Yeah.
An Eastern diamond back.
What the?
And you were like, no way.
No, it might have killed him or amputated his arm.
Right.
He needs his arm.
Yeah.
And then, but with the anaconda, I knew he wasn't going to complain about it.
He don't mind the pain.
Okay, a 14-foot anaconda just and so he got bit by an anaconda?
Yeah.
Johnny's not still there?
Six times.
They used three in the video.
Where?
Where'd he get bit?
In the arm.
In the arm?
I think I saw that video.
Yeah, it's on the Jackass 2.
Yeah, jackass.
The ball pin, whatever.
Yeah, yep.
The two anacondas were hiding under the balloons, you know, and they went in there to play with them.
God damn.
It was a huge anaconda, yeah.
Out of all the deadly man-eating predators in this world, which one is your absolute favorite, would you say?
Or could you pick one?
I don't know.
It all depends.
It's hard to say that.
There's a lot of cool, like people say, what's the most dangerous thing?
I don't know.
It's all good.
Yeah.
You know, there's a lot of cool.
Yeah, I like the big fish.
I like, like I told you, I want to go a dive trip for me right now.
I like to go spear some mullet.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Shield relaxing like that.
Yeah.
Is there any animal you don't mess with?
Is there one that you're like, I'm like, I may even touch that?
Uh, funnel spider, Brazilian walking spider.
I don't like the spider, I don't want nothing to do with the spiders.
No, yeah, screw that, right?
It's probably hard to defend yourself from a spider, yeah.
No, I don't like it because you're sleeping and they bite you when you're in bed, like brown recluse, yeah.
Okay, there's a brown recluse in the room, I don't want to go to sleep there because you're sleeping and it bites you.
I mean, I like things that I can see or interact with.
Maybe if spiders were like 10 feet tall and like out, then you'd wrestle one, they're creepy, yeah, they are.
I don't like most of the people.
Like me, don't like spiders.
I'm not the only one.
Yeah, I don't like spiders.
Top notch animal wranglers and all that.
None of them like spiders.
And you were telling me also about your experience with out swimming bears in the water.
You said that you had to get away from a bear?
No, not get away.
Go at them.
If I have to get away from them, I can.
If I have fins on, I can out swim a bear.
Without fins, a bear will swim faster than me.
Swimming Faster Than a Bear00:06:33
That's insane.
That's unbelievable to think a bear could swim faster than.
Than a human, especially, yeah, they're fast.
Well, I mean, I didn't go to the Olympics and I tried Weismuller or whatever swimming, but with fins, yeah, with fins, I can definitely power away no problem.
And how did you end up in the water next to a bear?
How did that happen?
I volunteered, I got in.
It was looking for the I swam with grizzlies and I swam with black bears.
Wow, I never did get to swim with a polar bear.
I don't know if I want to go out there and freeze out there either, you know.
I mean, I. Like a friend of mine told me, you go up there, you catch a pneumonia, you're in the middle of that country out there, yeah, you're done.
I mean, I had a, when I was in Alaska, I had a good wetsuit.
I was comfortable in it.
With a good wetsuit, you can take it.
Right.
But yes, I don't know how far.
But it's, yeah, I've done some, I mean, a lifetime of that stuff.
I've focused a lot of my artwork right now.
Okay.
Yeah.
I need my hands to do artwork.
Right.
Yeah.
So you're not trying to lose them anymore.
You got nine fingers left.
Yeah.
I don't want to lose anything more.
I got a lot of work.
Yeah.
To do a lot of artwork.
Yeah.
And your tridents that you've been doing, that's very similar to art.
I mean, they are pieces of art.
Yeah, definitely.
Yeah, I like tridents.
I like spears.
Yeah.
I also make bronze statues of like alligators, sharks.
I made a Goliath Cooper out of bronze.
I've done stuff like that.
Yeah.
And I do authentic looking pieces in bronze.
I like doing that.
I do a little bit of wood carving also, but I do like making my knives.
You know, my jewelry, my own special line of jewelry.
Yeah.
My weapons, I make my necklaces.
I wear them all the time.
It's like the one you have on your neck, on your, uh, yeah, this is a fish scout and hand carved.
That thing's so cool.
Super cool.
Yeah, I wear stuff like this.
So, what do you get?
A big block of steel?
This is done from a half inch thick plate of steel.
And then I cut it open like this and I just, I cut it with a grinder like if it was wood, basically.
Right.
With a metal cutting grinder.
Yeah, let's bring the trident over here.
Let's look at the trident.
Yeah.
Yeah.
This is what you fish with now.
Yeah, I fish with this.
This is an aquatic weapon.
So I put a fish in here because this is for a fish hunter.
So, this is like pirates have the skulls of people.
I don't want human skulls.
I put a fish skeleton.
Right.
And this is a nautical piece of equipment that represents underwater hunting.
Is that why the.
It's a classic.
I love classics.
Yeah.
I love classics.
Is there a reason for the three pronged design like that?
Or is that sort of just like for novelty, kind of just like Poseidon or Zeus would have something like that?
It's.
It's designed for catching fish, but it has a novelty.
It's a classic right now.
If you have one point, you throw out a fish you might miss.
If you got three points, it's more likely you're gonna get it.
Okay, you have a better chance of hitting it.
And then I have a story about that also.
And then what happens?
You got three of them gripping on this.
It holds the fish better, so it's designed to get a better grip on the fish.
It's a fishing weapon.
Okay, it's not used, not really for people.
Gladiators use them on each other.
Yeah, that's insane.
Yeah, they were in the arena.
They were sticking each other with tridents, Which is not cool.
Now I've probably the first one to use them for boar hunting, Because I kept missing a lot of my shots throwing a single point spear at a boar.
Okay, but the trident is more accurate and it's got a more of a spread So it's basically a shotgun versus a rifle So you're throwing close.
Okay, and you can't aim it like a rifle right throw it So when I have a big trident spread out like this Throwing at a boar you have more of a spread going at him.
Right.
So if you're a little off you're still gonna get him.
Okay, and then when you get him he can't run as well with him because it traps his heavy It traps that arm against the rib cage.
When you spear a boar with a single point, he runs so fast, he could be on you real quick and put you in the hospital in about two seconds.
So what I would do, I throw a trident at him, and then I use another spear to kill him.
To finish him.
To finish him.
Yeah, the whole thing's over real quick.
Okay.
But he's not going to get away.
When you hit him with a trident, he turns around and he's coming at you.
I thought you had to be close to an animal to kill it with a bow and arrow.
But for this, you have to be like, you got to be like, how close?
10 to 12 feet away.
So that's another reason it's so dangerous.
You don't have that much time.
No, I hit one charging at me and he hit me here and both my feet went flying in the air.
He would hit me here, would have killed me with the butt of my spear.
He hit me and uh yeah, I caught my shoulder.
I tried to catch him.
I remember last thing.
I saw he was running at me full blast.
Better throw now.
So I throw.
He's coming at me about 30 miles an hour I imagine.
I hit him, it hits him and he's the spear stuck in him.
So he's running like a all of a sudden he's like a unicorn with this yeah, coming at you.
So I I try to catch the butt to keep off me.
I missed it and boom, and both my feet went flying and everybody was throwing spears and panic.
Really Yeah, nobody had a gun or anything.
No, I don't want them with a gun there because in the commotion, I got nothing against guns, guns are great.
But in the situation like that, somebody gets excited, bulls just start flying everywhere.
Somebody, yeah, you don't know where they're coming from.
Yeah, because it's chaos, right?
You know, now we're all shooting this way, like that.
You know, a lot of times, if it's in a certain situation, yeah, it's good to have a gun always.
But uh, one time, a boar attacked a quitty and Robin pulled up, pulled a handgun out, and fired, you know, tried to keep the hog off him, right?
I'm thinking somebody's gonna get it.
Yes, everybody was packing a handgun out there, you know, and somebody's gonna get hit.
Yeah, another guy got attacked by a boar.
He pulled out his 45.
The boar and uh, he shot at the board.
He scraped the bullet, scraped off the boar's head.
The board knocked him down, gun and all.
It was a disaster.
And later on, I found out the bullet had glanced off the boar's head.
So the boar got up and I told everybody, Get him.
They got him with spears.
No way.
Yeah, we took some people out hunting and and yeah, it was chaotic.
I've seen that uh, that happened before.
Jeez.
So, I'd rather you know, if you're up in a tree stand waiting for the board with a gun, fine.
But when you're in there in that kind of commotion, people like that you have a handgun, yeah, you're maybe by yourself.
Yeah, when there's somebody running on the other side, it you know nerves everybody's you know, it's a war zone everybody's nerves are the boars are dangerous.
It's all get out.
Yeah, people want that danger So everybody's nerves are shot, you know, oh my gosh I Can't I couldn't believe that.
Heavy Custom Hunting Weapons00:03:38
Yeah, I've never been and these things are like that thing's heavy.
This thing's like 12 pounds No, the big one.
The other one is 12 pounds.
This one's like five six.
I'm not sure I haven't weighed these.
It's still heavy.
Yeah, well, yeah, it's you want a good weight and strength.
I like everything everything I make is exaggerated My knives are 38 of an inch thick.
I was looking at some of your knives.
I was like, those are cool knives, but I'm like, that's a big ass knife.
I can't really carry that.
I can't really carry that.
Three straight days, yeah.
Wow.
Especially the bigger ones, I got to grind that much more steel.
You know, like this has to be, you know, I got to sand the wood down.
Right.
I got to do the carving, coating.
It's not necessary.
I got to have a functional trident quicker.
Right, right, right.
You can use it right away, but if you want to do that.
Yeah, but you want to make some cool little stuff.
I like to decorate this stuff.
Sure.
Yeah.
Is this something you've been doing your whole life too, or is this something new you just got into?
I've always been an artist, but I haven't actually made art.
I haven't done it this much.
I started getting to weapons in the last, I don't know, 15 years or so.
I started making knives probably before that.
Yeah.
And little by little, I started making.
By the time I was doing the Outdoor Channel, I had a spear in my hand in every show.
Right.
So I was already headed that way.
That's how you, now you're known as the real life Tarzan.
Aquaman, maybe.
Aquaman.
You are the real life Aquaman.
He has a new movie, doesn't he?
I'm not an actor.
Yeah.
You're not an actor.
You're the right.
That's what I'm saying.
You're the real Aquaman.
In the movie, you can do things that you couldn't do in the ocean.
You can elaborate more.
So, you know, you get to do the.
Taco man, you get a real actor.
Yeah, now for lately, you said you've been.
You've been uh, spearing fish in the Okeechobee Lake Okeechobee or in tilapia in the rivers tilapia okay, I love the fact that tilapia's are everywhere.
It's just great I.
I like invasive species.
Yeah, because you can hunt them.
Yeah right right, nobody gets upset about it.
Yeah, tilapia's are great.
The alligators are eating them.
They're getting healthy on them.
Okay, good for people to eat.
It's one of the best things that ever happened in Florida, I think, really.
Oh yeah, my opinion.
I'm not.
People may not agree with me, but that's just Right.
Right.
Of course.
You like it.
I like the boar hogs out there.
And some people, oh, they're terrible.
The end of the world is coming.
You know, you see those shows, the boars are killing everything.
No, the boars, yeah, we got more Florida panther, which is great.
They're endangered.
They're not endangered anymore, thanks to the boars.
That's their food supply.
And a lot of the people, hunters, a lot of kids in Central Florida are out hunting boar instead of doing drugs.
Yeah.
That keeps them busy.
Don't take the boars away from them.
Are you going to get a drug epidemic or something?
Right.
You can't go anywhere throughout all the country.
Every guy, they know they hunt hogs.
That's what they do, it's the most popular thing, that's what they do.
Like in Oklahoma, everybody goes noodling.
In Florida dude, going hog hunting, I would tell you I got the best dogs around.
That's what they, that's what everybody uh, everybody's like that.
Wow, it's.
Yeah, it keeps everybody busy at night.
Yeah, instead of being in a bar drinking whatever, they're out chasing hogs which is great and for my first time, hunting hogs, do you recommend I do it with with a trident?
It depends what kind of hunt you want to do.
I mean, if you want to go, you want to hunt with a gun, with a bow and arrow, a crossbow, or you want to go with a spear.
You can throw a trident from a tree stand if you don't want to put yourself in severe danger.
Let the guide go find him later.
Hunting Methods and Safety00:13:12
Right?
Oh, you got to go find him.
He'll run off.
Have the guide go.
Have the guide go.
The guy to follow him up.
Yeah, he knows he's more experienced.
Yeah, you can throw a trident, but most of the people they shoot a crossbow, bow and arrow, rifle.
If you have dogs, you can use a spear.
When the dogs grab, you can spear.
That's another way you can do it.
That's a single point.
If not, if you want to throw, I tell you get in a tree.
You miss, nothing happens.
Boris runs off.
I think I want to take my new trident.
That'll work.
I'm ready.
You can get real low trees tank.
You don't have to be high.
Okay.
Food right under you and don't move till he's not looking directly under you and then slam him.
Wow, and like I said, just one hand, just yeah, okay, that's the way to do it.
Yeah, wow.
I've heard, do we talk about red tide on this or was that before we started recording?
Red, we didn't talk about it.
So, in Okeechobee, there's been a lot so much hype this year about the red tide, it's algae, it happens every year, it's been going on since the 40s.
Yeah, well, the red tide that was recorded in 1840 in the ocean, right?
But when you have a hot summer, you get algae blooms, when it gets cold, the algae dies.
Right.
So some winters are colder, some are warmer.
I mean, the world's been warming since the last ice age we had.
First, a thousand years ago it was very hot on the planet.
We had a global warming and then we had a mini ice age 17 1800s, and that's why everybody was out hunting beaver furs.
Animal furs are worth more than gold, seven times more than gold was.
Nobody's looking for gold, everybody's looking for fur back then.
That's why uh yeah, New Orleans yeah, they were buying furs from the Indians.
They were trapping furs and shipping furs all the way down the Mississippi and into Europe where the market was for fur.
It was very cold.
I think i've heard before what happens with a very warm planet, you get more vegetation yeah, you get more crops, right.
When you get a cold cold uh, ice age, the world is less productive.
You get I like cold weather myself, but there's more food and warmer yeah, and warmer weather.
When you have a cooling planet, the planet starts to get a mini ice age there.
Then places or crops are growing, are not going to be grown anymore, but yet when it warms, let's say, if you can grow corn here, then you can go further north and grow corn there because the The widening of the belt.
Right.
I think the world's always changed temperatures back and forth.
Yeah.
And I could get in huge arguments, I guess.
A lot of people.
Yeah, a lot of people.
I don't, you know, but it's, look, they can scientists, they can say what they want.
You know, all I know is this is from their, not my database, their own database.
A thousand years ago, the world was warmer than it is right now.
Right.
And it got cold and it's been warming back and forth a little bit since then.
Right.
So what happens is, yeah, you got more grasslands and more rainforests are spreading.
The plants drink the.
The carbon dioxide.
Right.
And it produces oxygen.
So it goes.
There's more like Europe, they cut down all the trees.
Now Europe is completely covered in forests again.
Things like that happen.
Yes.
Wildlife, we got more bears in the United States than we've ever had.
We got more mountain lions than we've ever had.
We got more coyotes than we've ever had.
We got more deer than we've ever had.
We got less bison because we have cattle replacement.
We got fencing everywhere.
But overall, we manage our wildlife.
We don't.
Other parts of the world, some of these animals are getting wiped out.
Not here.
Like in other parts of the world, long landing has decimated the shark population.
But in the U.s waters we got a high shark population.
Yeah, now the blue shark which travels across the Pacific.
Then if you go to California you see you used to see a lot of blues and less Makos.
Now you see a lot of Makos and less blue.
Right, I think the on the other side of the Pacific they may have decimated the blue shark population because they travel across, so that could have been the problem.
But in the U.s we basically I mean in Canada and all that we got tremendous game population very well on land, especially very well managed large mouth bass.
Every puddle has them.
You know, it's just That's a popular Fish.
Whatever is important economically, you see a lot of.
Yeah.
Deer.
Deer everywhere because they're economically important.
Yeah, everything that is worse something is protected.
You were telling me before, I think it was in the Keys, you were saying when there was a big red tide bloom that you guys got a ton of cobia or something?
Yeah, the cobia and the sharks, everything was swarming inshore.
Just swarms of fish ahead of the red tide.
It doesn't look like it.
Coming out of the Gulf and the Atlantic.
The red tide is usually hidden in the Gulf.
It might be nature's way.
The Gulf is so productive.
Right, the waters in the Gulf Of Mexico are so rich, right?
Well, the red tide isn't.
Is a biological uh, you know, like a cleanser or something?
Yeah no, it may be that red tide kills a lot of the fish population because there's such a high density of fish in the Gulf.
Right, the Gulf is richer than the Atlantic because all these rivers enter into the Gulf.
Yeah, the estuaries are the richest place on earth.
All the nutrients are washed in there and that, in turn, allows for tremendous marine life right to develop.
Right, and that that's why, like in Louisiana, for example, Mouth Of Mississippi, all that area, there's so much fish over there that you don't know what to do with, Right.
Because that area is very rich.
Now, if you're in a coral atoll in the middle of the ocean, it cannot sustain a heavy-duty fishing pressure because it's limited, because it doesn't have all the runoffs in the rivers to feed the source.
You can fish the Gulf of Mexico commercially until you die, and it's still full of fish.
You do it on some little island somewhere, you wipe it out in no time.
Right.
How do you feel about, I forget where it is, is it the Maldives?
Or is it, I can't remember where it is, but they're doing like a lot of big shark cull, like culling a lot of sharks.
You know what I mean?
Where they kill off, where there's so many, like they think there's like overpopulation of sharks where there are people getting bit a lot, where they're just culling them, like killing them, like in the masses.
I don't know about it, but I know that's happened before.
And when you have too much of something and human lives are being killed, then you know, you do something about it.
Right.
You don't have to exterminate anything to the last one, but you can reduce populations.
I think in Hawaii, they would have a bunch of shark attacks.
They would go out and kill 50, 40 sharks.
Right, right.
And then there would be no shark attacks for the next 10 years.
And when a population comes back, It would happen all over again.
It was in cycles.
So they kill some enough to make it less likely to get attacked, but enough to reproduce their numbers back again.
That's how things are.
Predators will also wipe out their food supply.
Predators will wipe out their food supply.
And eventually, when there's no food, they die out.
Starvation.
Then, when they're not around, their food supply multiplies.
And then, the few of them that survived, they will multiply because they got a huge food supply.
I think it was in Russia, they cut down the trees.
And the grass grew and the stag population exploded, a deer stag.
Yeah.
So then what happened?
Then the wolf population went up to 200,000 overnight because there was that much food out there.
So they'll reproduce.
So animals reproduce according to how much food.
Like you could protect the panthers all you want.
If there's no hogs out there for them to eat, you're not going to get any.
Right.
But when the hog population explodes, they'll explode afterwards.
And if you don't manage them, everything will be up in cycles.
Right.
It's all about the balance.
Well, we do.
We keep it in balance.
If you let nature take its course, it's an up and down cycle.
It takes so many years for it to bounce back and forth.
The polar bear population is at 25,000.
When I was a kid, it was 8,000.
So they're killing about a million and a half rednecked seals a year.
The Arctic cannot sustain that kind of predation by polar bears.
So sooner or later, polar bears are going to kill each other.
Either going to open season on them or they're going to wipe each other out.
There's too many polar bears?
Yeah, there's not enough food to supply them all.
So people all look there.
Yeah, they're attacking walruses.
They go, it's a global warming.
How about there's not enough seals around for them to eat?
They've killed them all.
So that's my take on it.
Yeah.
Nobody else is saying that.
Nobody is nobody.
Cousteau did a study when I was a kid.
It was 8,000 polar bears.
Now it's 25,000.
It's going to drop probably dramatically in the future if they don't call the population out.
I'm not going to hunt polar bears.
I have no self interest in it.
I have nothing to gain from it.
I'm using my common sense over the years watching what happens with polar bears.
I'm not in the polar bear hunting business.
I don't know if I want to go out there that cold.
I'm 65 years old now.
I don't know if I want to jump in that ice out there right now, to the truth.
But that's what's going to happen.
That's what I calculate.
And people say whatever, but you have to manage everything we have.
I mean, we have good biologists here.
We got there's good people that study this and know how to keep track of everything, ideas I have enough out there for recreational use and everything else right yeah, I mean there's a lot of people that just get upset.
Like a lot of people will see something they'll.
They'll read an article about like a call on sharks and the people will like throw, throw their hands up and be like yeah, they get mad.
I don't know what the situation there is about the calling sharks.
I know what happened in an island, Indonesia, the tiger sharks wiping out everybody.
Yeah, I think that's where it was, in Indonesia.
And it happened in the 60s.
They wiped them out.
Reunion.
Reunion Island?
Does that sound right?
Well, everybody was missing arms and legs as tiger sharks.
And next thing you know, the beach was covered in tiger sharks.
I saw the video.
Yeah.
The villagers, it was the Hindus, I think, went out and caught all these sharks.
They would take the bodies also and throw them in the ocean.
Amir, Mike, a little bit.
They were burning all the bodies and throwing them in the ocean.
And the sharks were eating the dead ones and the live ones.
It was tiger sharks.
They'll feed on dead meat.
So there was a lot of tiger shark in the area, and people kept throwing bodies into the sea over there.
So the tiger sharks started eating people.
They all just came there.
Well, yeah, there were tons of tiger sharks eating people, and they called the shark population.
That's what it did.
To me, wildlife is great, but human life is more important.
Right.
I'm not going to sacrifice humans for one species out there.
I mean, I think people.
I love wild animals.
I love animals and everything, but people are more important.
They're God's image.
Right.
Yeah.
I was wondering, do you ever.
Is there any times like you feel bad for killing any animals or certain animals, or is there certain animals you wouldn't kill or hunt like?
Sometimes you see people that go out and like hunt elephants and giraffes and stuff.
You know what I mean.
I'm not gonna judge anybody on what they hunt.
I know the.
I'm not gonna kill an elephant, it's too big.
What am I gonna do with it?
Right, but in Africa the people eat the elephant meat.
The hunter pays 100 50 100, 000 to shoot the elephant.
That money goes to protect, goes to the rangers yeah, to keep the poachers out and to protect the wildlife.
So they lose one elephant and they save uh, a few thousand.
Okay.
So yeah, and they right so that's a different way of looking at it because most people will just see the picture and cause a big problem Well, because people emotional Yeah, I was like when I was growing up.
I said, oh my god They're destroying the plant destroying the forest.
I was always freaking out about stuff the more I learned about it The more I started saying, you know, well, all the guys at farm over there is ruining the forest No, the deer coming out of the forest to eat the farm to eat the crops So it's helping the deer population So I found out instead of the far far wilderness all the animals are living near the farm because people produce food for the wildlife.
Right.
They like to raid our food stops or food supply.
So it's not always what you think it is right, of course not.
That's what I found out.
I mean it took me a long time to learn all this stuff, but yeah, that's a good insight I got.
You got to listen to logic, have an open mind and open ears and hear everybody, listen to everybody and look at all the paperwork, look at all the research, look at all the data.
Right, and look at everything.
That's what you need to do and uh and check to see what's going out there.
Yeah, I got nothing against the elephant hunters.
I got something against like say, massive Slaughter of elephants for ivory because there's no control.
There's no control.
Nobody is saying, well, we're going to kill 15 elephants.
No, they're going to kill everything they see.
Everything they find, yeah.
And that's not, you know, if you kill one, something's got to reproduce to replace that one.
You have to replace what you remove and you got to give that time.
So you got to have the time.
But if you're getting a lot of money from these big game hunters putting into this, that's probably a ton of money.
Listen, no game board is going to work for free out there.
You got to pay him well.
He's risking his life to protect all the animals in that forest.
So yeah, that's what the whole idea, the hunting sustains.
And they're very selective.
They're not going to kill that baby elephant.
They're going to kill that old bull over there.
And they're going to kill that old lion before it dies.
The lion dies.
The buzzers will eat it.
It's $50,000.
The buzzers ate.
If they shoot them a year before another lion kills them, which they will, they kill each other.
If they shoot them, then the management area makes $50,000 for their economy.
It goes into their economy.
It sustains the economy.
It sustains their economy.
So these places like Zimbabwe and places like that, that's the only economy they have.
So they run out of wild animals because they don't manage them right.
They're out of business.
So they're going to make sure.
So they're not looking to do that, to wipe them out.
Yeah, if you're in the industry of hunting, you're not going to wipe out.
Right.
What you're hunting.
You're what you're hunting.
You got to manage it.
You know, you got to be responsible.
You ever seen a rancher go out there and machine gun down all his cows?
Right.
What?
A rancher shoot down all his cows in one day?
No.
Oh, he harvests a certain amount every year.
Right.
Conservation and Local Economies00:02:45
His cows.
That's what I'm trying to say.
Okay.
Yeah.
It's that concept.
Yep.
Do you ever have people come after you who are like animal rights activists who don't understand it and be like, Manny just mistreats these sharks or these animals?
He's not very much.
I've had a few people.
Well, just people who are like very.
And everybody's got an opinion about something.
Oh, you wrote a shark.
It might have bothered the shark.
When I was catching the Goliath groupers, some people were bothered about that.
It was hurting the fish.
You know, there's always, I never really, I get along with everybody.
Yeah.
You know, I've even, one time I had people contact me when the shark finning was out of control and the people were killing the sharks.
It was after the movie Jaws and the new Smyrna attacks.
Everybody's, and they were freaking out.
I said, well, you know, you got to have some kind of regulation on this and all that stuff.
I told people you should work with conservation.
It's not just emotional stuff.
That's what I told them a long time.
But yeah, I've been in contact.
With people, I never really had much of a problem like that.
I tend to get along, and also I know people emotionally.
I explain things, right?
And you know, I've been to a meeting where a spearfish member fighting shark feeders back and forth.
I told guys, really don't bring the feds, the fit, yeah.
That's how they ban uh shark diving in the state waters.
The guys are trying to ban spearfishing, and the spearfish and say we're getting attacked by sharks, you guys are feeding them, so it turned into a fiasco.
I said, guys, the ocean's big enough for everybody, don't get the feds involved, or you're all going to be out of business real soon.
That's what I told them.
Right, try to get along.
You know, guys get along.
The oceans are big enough for everybody get along out there, but they did whatever they wanted.
You know right, I said I do both I spearfish and I and I do shark dives right, so you can see both sides.
Now i'm just doing artwork yeah, but back then that's what mainly I was doing.
That that's awesome.
Like, what kind of people are using these?
Are you doing a lot of charters with these, or I?
These are sold to collectors, they're sold to hunters, they're sold to, you know divers, just people that want them, people that go fish for them.
I sell knives, I sell axes Most of the stuff people like, just cool stuff to have.
But like this right here is used for tilapia.
Okay.
And that, yeah, that is used a lot.
Okay.
Where can they get these at?
They contact you directly on the website or Instagram.
Instagram?
Yeah, contact me on Instagram.
Manny Puig.
I'll put a graphic up of Manny's Instagram.
That's awesome.
Yeah, check out all the stuff I got in there.
I got hook necklaces, I got jewelry, knives, axes, spears, and I do custom work too.
Awesome.
Depending on what you want done.
And I got two brand new tridents, I got one for fishing.
And I got one that we're going to use as the backdrop for our new set for the podcast.
So from now on, we're going to have a giant Manny Puig trident in the background of our podcast.