jan1974

I have been freediving-spearfishing deep water oil rigs a few times last year.The deepest we were on was in about 1000 fw.

Yes,sharks are there I've seen plenty in 3-13ft range. The first thing I've seen when I jumped into the water on every trip we made was a shark.There were mostly circling around the rig and not aggressive except a few smaller once, but a little punch helped keep them away. I remember I was trying to count them and ended up with over 20-30 sharks in sight. Dusky,Black tip and I dont know what else was out there. My buddies were on scuba diving inside of the rigs(well over 200ft on air),while I was outside freediving looking for pelagic(which I unfortunately haven't seen) The top layer of murky water around 20ft deep a then it opened to over 100ft of viz.in the nice blue water. We got some cobia,huge AJ's, lobsters but we weren't lucky with pelagic I guess because of we weren't in deep-deep waters(1000ft not enough for tunas?) and that dirty layer on top.

Be careful out there it is not just sharks,we had a pretty strong current on one trip and I had to tied a rope to the structure and hold on it while resting between freedives. I also hit a round pipe on my ascent really hard, it cut my hair off and split open my scalp even I had a 3.5mil hood on so you better keep your hand over head or look up.For a freediving in my view a nice clear blue water can make you easy forget how deep you are, and force you to go a few feet deeper...the pipe below looks so close I can go there and there is another one is not much deeper and so on, and then I ended up at 120ft even I was planning don't go below 80ft since you have to swim up very carefully and slow if you don't want to smash your skull and your ascent takes a little bit longer then usually.

Don't forget a buddy when you freediving..

I'll try to post a video from this oil rig.Its very bad because the new wide angle lens I put on my camera was leaking and getting foggy - those dark shadows are sharks the viz was well over 100ft



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Desperado

I have hit a rig 60+ miles out of Dauphin Island. Not all that deep (350 I think), but very clear blue water. Monster AJs all over the place. I enjoy the rig diving, but it adds several more danger factors. I had an AJ try to wrap me to a rig leg....he almost succeeded.

Pierce07

Sounds like a bad combo. Considering they'd be narc'd out of their minds and air is toxic around 218 ft. Just my opinion though.



I'd read up on clays post because that's got a lot of good info on the dangers of rig diving. I'd avoid the floating rigs because that have big suction jets (or something like that) to keep them in place and I've been told they can suck you in them. You'll see more fish on a regular rig because there is more structure. If you are serious about doing it make sure you plan it out pretty good. I'd have at least one safety diver and one other guy free diving with you. Good luck and have fun

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jan1974

They usually do 4 dives and each is close to or over 200ft. One of my friends hit the bottom at the Oriskany on air and he said didn't observe any problem with narc. while the other guy I know is getting narc'd at 150ft. Toxicity of O2 just affects everybody differently I guess. The deepest dive on air is 509ft that's really crazy....

Clay-Doh

Sweetvid Jan...whole school of sharks!

Heres a vid of a rig Brandy, Flyinfishr, Sniper and I dove in AL during a tourney. Was not a deep one. But give you an ides of what its like here with other boatts, and surfacecurrents trying to push you up againts it. That something you don't have to deal with ob a submerged reef, just rigs.

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SO EASY A CAVEMAN CAN DO IT.
MY UNDERWATER SPEARFISHING VIDEOS

Clay-Doh

dang, couldnt get the vid to embed on Brandys laptop

__________________
SO EASY A CAVEMAN CAN DO IT.
MY UNDERWATER SPEARFISHING VIDEOS

Top Dawg

I freedive. should I still go.