Sad Loss of an Avid Outdoorsman

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The trip,

Mike texted me earlier in the week, that he wanted him and I to go diving Saturday, March 1st. I told him I’d already be down in Venice fishing and that we could make that happen. Through the course of the week, he got David Hood, another one of my closest personal friends to join us.

It was going to be great because David, knows my boat in and out. This was also Mike’s first time on my boat. I told David, that him and Mike were to get my boat from my house in Kenner, and bring it on down to Venice, 2 hours away.

February, 28th, that evening, David called me and told me they were having problems, the front disc brake on David’s truck locked up, so the next plan was to use Mike’s truck, but when Mike got to Metairie, his alternator went out. They were both at Wil Demuth’s house to pick up tanks, so with both trucks broke down at Wil’s, Wil offered them his truck. I knew they weren’t going to get down to Venice until very late so I went to bed. I woke up to them at around midnight.

The next day, I got up at around 7am and David woke up with me, I had to go into Mike’s room twice to get him up, I told him no hurry but he needs to start stretching or something. I’d say we left the dock around 8:30am. Mike had brought a friend, Justin to come along as a fisherman.

We headed down river, and out of this little pass called Southeast pass, entering the gulf about 35mi. away from the marina. And we were going to head east for about 20 mi. once in the Gulf, then dive our way to the north in order to keep the waves at our stern and come back into land thru a tiny pass called Octave pass, some 20mi. north of Southeast pass. We were going to make sort of a loop and dive a few select rigs in this loop.

The entire way down the river and out into the Gulf, Mike was an absolute chatterbox. I mean he didn’t stop, and David was on the other side of me, so I was being bombarded. The whole time I’m trying to concentrate on driving, he’s asking me questions about this and that. We were making plans to go bluewater fishing the next day, we were planning to go to Toledo Bend to shoot catfish, we were making plans! I could tell he was so excited and so happy and I was only thinking about how much fun we were going to have, and how much fun we were going to have with all the bullshitting and laughing we were going to do on the ride home.

We pulled up to the first rig and David grabs the rope, and Mike tells Justin, watch how these boys throw the rope, to catch the rig. He told Justin, “these boys know what they are doing.”

We had to tie up twice, because the current was going the opposite way of the waves, but we hung off the South side of the rig just fine. There was very little current and very little murk on the surface. The rig sits in 240’ of water.

Mike had asked me how deep it was and when I told him 240’ he said that’s perfect. I told him this rig had a bunch of scamp groupers on it, and that we shouldn’t have a problem shooting one and coming up. Mike said he wanted to go down and start stringing scamps up and shoot a whole bunch of them. I told him, NO YOU DON’T. I specifically told him this is a one shot game, you go down, shoot and come straight back up. He sort of argued with me, and then he reassured me that he would go down, shoot one time and come back up. We suited up, David on the bow, and Mike in the back next to me. I had told him that last week, I’d seen about a 70lb. cubera on this rig. BTW, cuberas always hang in the shallower column of the water level. So I hadn’t planned on even diving deep.

Mike had attempted to put his GoPro camera on his head but somehow after charging it all night it wouldn’t come on.

Before we entered the water, Mike said something to me about, “y’all just go ahead, I take a little extra time to get ready”, I told Mike, “no way”, I told him, “we all go down together, we all come up together.” I told Mike and David, the best way to get that cubera, was for all 3 of us to swim to the second pipe on the rig, and all of us stay behind that pipe, and descend, staying hidden behind that pipe.

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The Dive;

On the way down, I saw David out of the corner of my eye, but I never really saw Mike other than one glimpse of him over to the side, he was not on the second pipe with me and David. The reason I could barely see David also was because I was swimming in front of David, but I knew he was close. At 110’ there was a deck, and I just peeked my head around that pipe to see if the cubera was on top of that deck, I didn’t see him so then I dropped a little more and looked underneath that deck, nothing. I now left the 2nd pipe, and started swimming into the conductor pipes in the center of the rig, and now I could see David very well on the side of me as we circled the conductors. We dropped to 150’ and there was fish ever where. All of this time I’m trying to find Mike but I can’t locate him. I shot a small scamp at around 150-155’ and threw the shaft back into my gun, looked at David who was right next to me and started looking for Mike. That is when I noticed a stream of bubbles coming from below all the way to the outside of the rig. I went over to those bubbles, trying to look down, but after 155’ the water started getting dark and murky. It also appeared as if the bubbles were getting stronger meaning the diver was ascending. I stayed at this depth for a minute waiting to even see if this was Mike, and then I made the decision to drop down to see what was going on. I was dropping really fast trying to get to the source of the bubbles. I had checked my gauges before I dropped and know I only had about ½ of a tank of air, and I checked my gauges at max depth, 235’. I was only 5’ off the bottom and could see the bubbles but could not see Mike, I was screaming and yelling to the top of my lungs but I could not go any deeper as now I only had 500psi. left in my tank. I started to think that the rig was leaking bubbles because the source of the bubbles was coming from the bottom of the Gulf and I didn’t want to die to find a leaky pipe.

I blew up my BC and hauled arse for the surface, at 200’ I passed David, who saw what was going on and tried to keep an eye on me. When I got to 30-20’ I had barely anything left in my tank, me and David stayed on the corner leg of the rig, motioning hand signals, about Mike. Before I could completely finish my decompression, I was out of air, but my meter was in good shape as this was only the first dive of the day.

Back at the Boat;

When we hit the surface, we started asking Justin if Mike was already on the boat, and he told us “no.” I told David, if that was Mike’s bubbles, he’s dead. We both got on the boat, and after about 2 minutes, Mike popped up slumped over. Both me and David jumped in the water and half way to Mike I thought it would be better for me to get back on the boat and bring the boat to them. Not to mention, I’d have to set up an oxygen bottle. I frantically pulled at first aid gear, and David and Justin had Mike at the ladder, we couldn’t get him in the boat because he was so heavy. In the process, his BC and tank got unbuckled and dropped back into the water. We finally got him in the boat, and I started yelling MAYDAY on channel 16, diver in distress.

I then started yelling at the rig, for them to lower the personnel carrier, but nobody was looking over the side, so I had planned to jump on the rig, but the current going the opposite way of the waves was making that impossible, at this point I had Justin driving the boat, and he couldn’t handle getting the boat into position. I then had to take over the helm and I nosed the boat to the rig and got Justin to jump off the bow, and up the ladder to get help.

I know David was working on Mike, but I could barely stand to look to the back of the boat where they both were. Finally, the rig workers lowered the personnel basket and David and I wrestled Mike into the basket and David took the ride up and onto the rig, but Mike was already gone, and we’re not really sure if he ever was there after surfacing several minutes earlier.

These are the details to the best of recollection, it just so happened that I had this data logger on me. Dr. Stein had wanted me to take it down, for a fish study to determine water depth and temperatures at that depth. This was my first dive ever with the data logger. Some of the depth numbers in these details may be off but the data logger will give the exact depths, once I get that information I will forward it to you.

If there was only one thing that could’ve been changed. On the way back, I was towing the boat, and the bearing burned up, my boat is sitting on the side of the road at Delta Outboards down in Empire, I couldn’t make it back home with my boat, I wish the damn thing would’ve burned up on them the night before and the boat wouldn’t have made it down there, but no doubt, we would have been persistent enough to fix it, and still go diving.

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The pressure that deep probably pushed him up.

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