If he were alive today, Lloyd Bridges would just die.
As it is, in that great water world in the sky, he's probably reverse-inducted his air supply, causing his regulator to reverberate and self-destruct, or whatever it is regulators do when they implode in dismay.
Humberto Fontova has created a first book that is a paen to Louisiana and its Gulf fisheries.
In doing so, he has spear-gunned every sacred sea cow the Sea Hunt crowd--and the wine-tasting, escargot-slurping,environmentally-connected Sierra Clubbers--have ever embraced in the pursuit of politically correct, fish-hugging, non-consumptive usage of the Gulf of Mexico, and her abundant piscatorial plenty.
Thumbing his nose at all in a juicy redneck/sea-scum dialect, Fontova writes the following: "...In the Fund for Animal's annual 'Body Count,' which scores states in its 'Cavalcade of Cruelty' by the number of animals 'murdered' by hunters as reported by fish and game agencies, Louisiana was: NUMBER ONE! the last two years running..."
Hilariously irreverent, Fontova is a fast, furious, funny read about the ultimate extreme-edge sport, deep-water scuba diving and fish hunting around the lush fisheries environment of oil rigs off the Louisiana coast in the Gulf of Mexico. What makes it interesting is that not only are these characters going entirely too deep to be doing this stuff, but sometimes, the fish hunt them...
Rip Linton, head of the East Baton Rouge Parish (Louisiana) Sheriff's Office Flotilla Dive and Rescue Team, is a certified dive instructor, certified cave diver, and certified rescue diver. He has dived with most of the South Louisiana characters and clubs described in Fontova's book.
"When everyone started getting into diving back in the fifties, the tables for safe depths were written by the U.S. Navy," Linton said. "When I started diving with the Helldivers, and some of these other clubs, I was amazed at the depths they were reaching. Some of these characters were bending themselves, they were going so deep, and staying so long...and you can't 'bend' yourself over about three times before there's permanent damage. These guys were going down as much as a hundred feet below the Navy's recommended safe depths. They literally rewrote the books on maximum depths for scuba!"
THE HELLDIVERS RODEO is at once a description of middle-aged crazies who dive the rigs and platforms of the Gulf in polyester disco outfits from the Seventies, hunting big fish to spear and ride, and it is also a love affair with Louisiana and its waters as only an adoptee can describe and appreciate.
Born in Cuba in the fifties, Fontova starts his book describing how he and his cousin, watched over by their long-suffering nanny, Tata, would swim the shallow waters of the beaches east of Havana, using home-made spear guns and straightened coat hangers for spears. Stern milicianos, teen-aged boys with machine guns imbued with the spirit of la revolucion, stood watching them from the beach. Fontova describes how his family eventually escaped Cuba and Communist oppression, and landed in Louisiana.
"That was thirty years ago. Now Pelayo and I find ourselves a few hundred miles north of Cuba, and speaking a different language. We're brushing that 'continental slope' again, spearing fish again. We arrived a gaggle of penniless and terrified Cuban refugees--didn't even speak the language. But terror was short-lived. Louisiana has always embraced immigrants and even visitors. She greets them joyfully at the gangplank or tarmac like a lost grandmother, beaming and waving frantically. She rushes out, lifts and twirls them. She mashes them into her ample bosom...her stubbled chin poking them and her garlicky breath suffocating them. But no matter, she makes her point: 'Welcome! You're family now!'"
According to Fontova, when scuba diving started becoming popular in the mid-fifties, the rigs had been placed off the Louisiana coast less than ten years. Jacques Cousteau had just written the first book on scuba diving, THE SILENT WORLD, and the first underwater film, RED SEA ADVENTURE by Hans Hass, had just come out. All this led south Louisiana good ol' boys, raised on a culture of hunting and fishing, to see the benefits of combining the two by diving and spearfishing.
Many states have more certified divers than Louisiana, according to Fontova. But JBL, the world's largest manufacturer of spearguns, sells more spearguns in Louisiana than any other state in the union. In fact, most are sold out of a couple of area dive shops in New Orleans--the jumping off point for extreme diving and dangerous spearfishing...
A love affair with the outdoors and Louisiana's bounty, a history of skin-of-your-teeth diving by crazy south Louisiana Cajun cowboys and Cuban expatriates, and a hunt for the biggest, baddest fish, some of whom turn and come back at you when you stick them with a spear, THE HELLDIVERS RODEO is JAWS on steroids, and SEA HUNT in a straight jacket.
Ninety-eight percent of the deaths in skindiving occur while spear fishing. Read this book, and discover why. Discover a world so alien to your sensibilities, you will truly begin to understand why deep water diving has been compared to the aloneness, the vast blackness of outer space.
And when the Helldivers "bounce" dive the rigs, hunting the biggest, and frequently foulest-tempered of the fishes, spearing them and then ducking back into the web of rig legs so the teeth chew on steel and barnacles, rather than polyester and Cuban/Cajun machismo, you'll grit your teeth as the "pucker factor" causes you to grip your seat without use of your hands...
If SEA HUNT was an undersea rendering of outer space, THE HELLDIVERS RODEO is ALIENS on ..., and an unabashed thrill-seeking ride down deep for the high of the ultimate hunt. Get on board,pop a brew, hyperventilate, and take the ride. You'll never look at the Gulf of Mexico (or Cuban expatriates) the same again.
