So we promised the story...yes, Dan has great skills in catching lobster and between him and his friend Flynn from our ward (who is a navy seal and dives in the navy) they caught 19 lobster in one night of diving. They both freedived, meaning just used a snorkel to dive down in the water, and caught the lobster by hand. Some of the big ones were caught in only 3 feet of water.
Dan has been looking forward to the first day of lobster season and talking about it for the last month. His buddy Flynn was able to get us into the military base so we could launch the kayak closer to our lobster catching destination which was the Zuniga Jetty off Coronado Island. This is a jetty of about 2 miles of rocks that stick out from the island. It is a prime location for lobster.
We left for our expedition at about 11pm Friday night and drove out to the island. Then we had to drag the kayak with all our gear in it about half a mile across the beach, and then launched through the breaking waves. Their wasn't room for me in the 2 man kayak so I was towed behind on my surfboard, which turned out to work pretty well. It was magical as we paddled out because each time the paddle went through the water the spot it touched would light up because of the phytoplankton (which are like powerful lightning bugs of the ocean).
Once getting to our spot, we found out that Flynn's flashlight batteries were dead, so him and
Dan had to share a light for the three hours they spent diving. I paddled around in the kayak picking up all the lobster as they caught them. I was tempted to go in but I only had a thin wetsuit on and no fishing license, I think I may try to catch one before the seasons over though.
The limit on lobster you can take home in one night is 7 per diver and since there was 2 divers our limit was 14, when we got to shore we had to throw 5 back in the ocean since we caught 19 total. We paddled back about 3 in the morning, once getting close to shore I tried to surf in, but timed it wrong and hit it during the "set" or in other words since I couldn't see anything I got pummeled by the big waves when I was coming in (2 days later, after showering twice I am still getting the sand out of my hair from it).
Its pretty cool to have a husband that is rugged enough to go out and catch us a lobster dinner. In fact he didn' t just catch it for us, but we made it an event and invited 13 people from our ward, including the missionaries, and told them to invite a non-member friend to lobster dinner. We tried to invite one of our non member neighbors, but she had to work. We plan to make this missionary lobster dinner a regular monthly thing and hopefully our faith will continue to bless Dan's lobster dives and yield people for the missionaries to teach. Hey, who would say no to a free fresh lobster dinner and to eternal life right!
