Near Disaster- Spearfishing Tuna in the Mariana Trench (Deepest Ocean in the World!)

We are in the deepest ocean on planet earth. It's probably eight to ten thousand meters deep underneath our boat right now. That is completely insane. We are going to sail up the ledge of the Mariana Trench and find a little sea mount and we're going to go spearfish that today and find out who truly is the lord of Dogtown. I can hardly believe it's already our tenth year sailing out here. I truly hope this childlike excitement my family and I seem to have for discovering new places and experiences never fades. Right now we're calling Moire Cone and it's an ancient volcano that seems to carry this unique energy we've all picked up on since the moment we arrived. Riley has been dying to spearfish a big tuna and convincing myself and the crew to sail out to an underwater sea mount in search of something big was pretty easy. Our team, Alexandra, Josephine, Jai and Axel, they've been incredible to have on board recently especially in such a remote corner of the world. Our crew has grown a lot over the years. We used to have only a couple of us on board but we've learned that sharing both the highs and the lows with great people makes every experience feel even more special and oh dear diary do I have a story for you. During one of our spearfishing missions we accidentally left Alexandra all alone in the middle of the ocean. Not good. Where is she? What the f**k man? It's a good day you guys. I am packing away all of our winter gear and sticking it in the to make more space in this cabin because we're not gonna need it. No more puffer jacket. I do love this jumper but i'm excited to not wear it just for a little while. No gloves and we're also heading off this morning. So we're just discussing the fact there's 2.3 meter swell out there the wind tonight swings forward and we're just trying to create the the best scenario for everyone on board. Should we leave really early tomorrow morning and we're just like playing all of these things through plugging them into our weather algorithm that we're running internally on the CPUs. There's a reef over here that is just supposed to be stacked up with all sorts of pelagic fish it's like insane. I've got a spearfishing we're just friends online but he lives in Guam and he's told me a couple of places so Jaya's like extremely excited. It's too windy at the moment supposed to die down by midday so we're sort of it's it's a two hour downhill run there we're hoping that the conditions improve the sea state dies down a little and then that will be very pleasant diving if not we'll probably dive it anyway and then we've got an upwind sail to another island. What's happening to all the veggies? They're all getting a little bit like this is the best place for storage but they're all just getting a little bit humid in here now so we're going to move them inside and in the shade i think yeah i'm just using Jaya's glasses because i can see everything there's like 15 sharks following us am i exaggerating i swear there's like 10 at least at least and yeah we're out in the middle of the ocean this is a volcano it was last active in the 90s so it's pretty chill right now let's hope it stays that way and yeah we're just going to jump in please be careful if i said i wasn't nervous about this dive like even just getting on the dinghy was a thrill and we are i'm not kidding you guys like it's a day sailing until we get to any other people so we are all by ourselves out here we've been here for about 15 minutes untangling this you simply can't beat water clarity like this thankfully it was crystal clear water because the sharks sensed our presence the moment we hopped in spotting these little reef sharks was actually a great sign it meant the reef was healthy and it was nice to see them thriving then we saw tuna they started showing up by the dozens i'm not sure what happened here with Riley's first attempt but it looks like the spear just came back out of the fish okay here was Riley's fish of the day and if this fish gets you excited wait to see just how much luck Riley would have tomorrow although poor Alexandra didn't quite share in that fortune wow how was this? oh amazing i'm so happy Riley got his fish oh yeah it's beautiful oh my god it looks like a dead body oh everything like big schools of dog tooth tuna so many sharks come see the fish it's a big one look it's over here it's under the towel you ready? yeah no it's a dog tooth dog tooth tuna can i touch his eye? yeah touch his eye okay can we eat this right now? yeah we're gonna eat it we'd only completed one dive so far and the day was still very young Jaya was really eager to catch something for himself which would be his very first dog tooth tuna actually i'm going to put spotlight on gymnocerada unicolor or dog tooth tuna they are well absolute units they grow over two meters long over 100 kilos and they live for more than 20 years there surely isn't a fish more highly sought after or more challenging for spear fishermen and this is for many reasons they're deep they usually are in strong currents they're massive and delicious but it's not just their size it's the way they move like torpedoes with teeth they cruise on the edges of drop-offs and seamounts waiting in ambush when the moment's right they explode forward at over 60 kilometers an hour slamming into prey like skipjack with such a force that it's often killed on impact then they circle back and they use those serrated canine like teeth which is super rare among tunas to just shred their catch apart they are a very very impressive fish i reckon we i reckon we reset we need to go that way we need to be 200 meters that way right where the vagabond is i wouldn't have had time to get dressed i've lost the wreath so i have to go drive over it i was in the shower i needed to shave my legs and i was like i'm not gonna have time to do this joy got his dog to he was stoked it was i looked at it i was like yeah we need to years often better parts of decades of patient and consistent improvement in the water learning to be calm and blending into your environment sailing to some of the most remote islands on earth in order to put yourself in the right location and finally pushing and pushing with little sleep in one of the worst anchorages ever and finally landing one from a sailboat no less he should be stoked well done mate you're an absolute legend i feel so helpful what a mission what are you doing riley exhausted what are we gonna do with all these fish did you get attacked well yeah it it charged me and then charged me again and i was like poking it and it bit the end of my spear i saw these two looking down in the water yeah you did the flasher on top of them i saw them like looking oh here you go boys and they were like get us out now oh my gosh it was a successful day and it turns out that two dives were more than enough especially with the sharks becoming increasingly aggressive we needed to head back to the island and drop the anchor before nightfall good evening everyone as you are all no doubt highly aware the ai is coming for us if this technology goes wrong it can go quite wrong what's my next choice bomb your data center i mean with artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon yes our machine progeny are poised to treat us not as threats nor equals but as mildly inconvenient scaffolding temporary carbon-based substrates soon to be disassembled atomized and repurposed into the scaffolding for a dyson sphere and so it shall be written that in the dawn of the time of the machines ag1 released a new formula called next gen and that the humans who imbibed the green liquid gained cyborg-like powers like i think uh increased energy and and better digestion extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence do they not though professor whitlam wonderful point dear student and that is why there are now four clinical trials done with ag1 next gen ag1 next gen is clinically proven to fill common nutrient gaps even in healthy agents it is also clinically proven to support gut health and in one clinical trial it increased healthy bacteria in the gut by 10x one order of magnitude that is astounding we love ag1 always have i love doing this truth be told getting out here and rolling my tongue occasionally we highly recommend it if you use our link first time subscribers will get the welcome kit five free travel packs a bottle of d3k2 plus a free morning person hat which if you're a professor from the future like i am you can pop your ponytail at the back there definitely more blue which is nice or just here like bad shall i i'm gonna go back over there where it was 18 and we can anchor there can you just do me a favor and just drive over this part we're too close but okay we're already like that's 100 meters from shore so like even if we could anchor here and we can't because it's 60 or does it look like we can i'm interested to see what this depth goes to it looks like it goes to 10 in there no this is 59 meters deep here it looks like you're if you go a bit more to starboard you would anchor in sand a bit more more to starboard yeah you start dropping it now we're in a hole that's great if you drop it now elaine is saying that's the good stuff yeah so what are we doing here dry we've made all the tuna nice and dry once we filleted it by leaving it in the sun leaving the sun preferably not the one dry and i feel like there's less bacteria if you've got all the salt water off it and now we're just going to get the air out of the bags don't get in here like so don't get the water in there it's probably not the best one but kind of just vacuum bagged them a little bit and now it's ready for the freezer buttery slightly fishy oceany and it's already gone it's so good it's like the butter of god's ocean that really i'm not doing it you'd do it so much better no you did a great job the butter of god's ocean doesn't even make sense this is actually so exciting is this how you're all sleeping what's happening what is on your head this is my mom's lavender eye patch we're doing some drawings for shade sails to go in the choppers it's going to be really hot so we want some some shade over the cabin joy wants to make it out of sunbrella but i have done my research and it's better to make it out of i don't know what it's called but there's it's got like little holes in it and we're just debating whether or not the gain that you get from being able to leave it up in 15 knots of breeze outweighs the fact that it's not waterproof see we're getting into the shade sail minutiae despite a sleepless night anchored with basically no protection we got up and did the hard work we set sail for two hours to return to our underwater seamount for round two of the spearfishing we're hoping to catch one last fish before we head off with favorable winds on the morrow it was just us boys and alexandra elena was on board driving the after probably only five minutes i think of being in the water i spotted something significantly larger than anything else around yeah it's still on rope we left jai with alexandra and chased the doggy a couple of hundred meters away but this was a mistake i think because jai and alexandra ended up losing each other oh whoa jai managed to swim over to our dinghy but alexandra was just nowhere in sight eyes out for alexandra where is she what the f**k man alex is on the boat she's on the boat i see her bro you know i feel so bad alexandra i just picked up alexandra i saw this tiny speck in the ocean and the whole thing unfolding i couldn't believe what i was seeing really as alexandra just got further and further away from the rest of the crew and i was like i'm gonna have to go pick her up so i like bolted over there with the mothership she was as white as a ghost so scared and she just came on board and didn't say much and just went straight to her cabin so she's down in her cabin like really sad and probably pretty traumatized like after you spearfish there are sharks and she was alone um so i feel so sad and i feel guilty because i should have briefed her more on what it might look like um spearfishing because usually her and i buddy up when we're spearfishing but i didn't go on this dive and i was like you can still go if you want but i should have told her what that might look like and what to do because she didn't have me this time um but yeah i think the boys are gonna have to say sorry to her and i just i feel so bad it breaks my heart oh my god are you bigger? i think just a little bit what'd you get riley? pretty big dog tooth i don't know how much it weighs but um so the incident with alexandra i think looking back i just shouldn't have had um alexandra in the water once that decision's made so she's going to come with us a lot better communication needs to be happening with her and i didn't i don't think that i realized how inexperienced she was so later on when i spoke to her she's like i didn't know this i don't know this you guys are all moving in unison and it's like you're reading each other's minds and getting and like doing the exact same thing together and she's like she just had no idea and it's been a long time since i've been around someone i think i just assumed that she had more experience and then there's also like some people have a little bit of experience she's a good freediver but we're jumping off of a boat onto a seamount in the middle of the ocean going after doggies and there's sharks around so dog tooth tuna are deep and extremely powerful so if you shoot one all of a sudden there's sharks like for sure there's sharks they're like shredding the fish and there's lines going down we've got blown up fenders people getting it dragged along on the water and it gets really hectic really really quickly and so yeah i just absolutely should not have had her in the water but she was so desperate to come i didn't really think about that and then as always happens with a near disaster it's one mistake on top of another on top of another not clear communication on top of any experience followed by you know one or two of us making bad decisions in the water probably she didn't make a good decision and the three of us didn't make good decisions either like she was absolutely terrified i think that it would be fair to say that we didn't really nearly lose her but we really frightened her and that's terrible by us so yeah a lot to learn there a lot of takeaways hopefully you guys are learning as well so don't drop an inexperienced person in the water going after 100 kilo doggies on a seamount in the middle of nowhere surrounded by sharks is the key takeaway it's so scary i'm doing my guilty pleasure which is feeding tuna heads to big sharks probably one of my greatest joys in life don't tell anyone nice clear blue water i'm praying for a great hammer or a tiger shark like we're probably just going to get like 50 reef sharks if they eat all my jerky it's so hard on seasoning this baby sharks are attacking it those little baby ones look at them oh my god they're cute hey don't eat all of my fish i want to feed it to a big shark oh there you go a little bit more just finish it now just like this and move back what happened down here darling um i think do you reckon do you reckon this is a five second rule you still eat it you'll get mixed up of course and you you'll get mixed up a couple of things we need to have a think about jerky me and darwin chopped up so much jerky and then we hung it and and then it rained and it all went yuck and we had to get rid of it and darwin's heartbroken now it looked delicious don't and i put a lot of love into that jerky we were heading towards our next island which would take us a couple of days to reach stay tuned for today's dive at a fad a fish aggregating device that we discovered it definitely doesn't disappoint plus we have a surprise visit from this giant creature oh my god i can't even believe it the kids have pancakes and the most incredible view of this volcano over here it's like textbook volcano look at it have you ever seen a more volcano-y looking volcano? we discovered that it's definitely active so i don't know if it's like a little bit of cloud but it's gotten more and more as time's gone on and it is very clearly an active volcano we just wish we could see the top we want to see some love bit of sweet leaving that place it's a place you could stay for a long time i genuinely fell in love with that jagged piece of rock and its shitty anchorages we felt pretty guilty recently as parents there's no beach the kids have not been able to run on land for over a week and then we've gone from there just out into the middle of the ocean for two days it's been a very sailboat orientated no land and so i asked josephine and alexandra i think it was yesterday i asked those guys i was like what do you think do you think we're being a bit selfish and i was genuinely concerned about what their response might be josephine was like no like i promise you riley like your kids are really able to use their imagination and they have been i got out a bottle of vinegar and baking soda and they were busy for a long time darwin has been like sleeping in different people's beds and running around and there's enough adults on board that they're getting stimulated from various different yeah we all try and do something different with them every day but saying that we are leaving a big reason why we are leaving that incredible spot which we'll probably never get to go to again is to find an island with land so that was really challenging and this is another thing that made me feel a little bit guilty was because the boat was rocking around we had a swell from the east like two and a half meter of waves wind from the south and just no place was the boat comfortable and one anchorage in particular was just completely anxiety inducing and people haven't been sleeping wes didn't sleep for like three days i struggled really on one night the boat's never quite at ease and and nothing's peaceful so it was nice to get a message it was nice to get some fish and to go through that experience together but then once i got the fish i started sending out pictures of me with the fish to my parents and mutual friends and i got a message back from jesse cripps who's a mutual friend of all of ours and she said seriously that sort of sailing that you're doing right now is literally my dream like exactly why we bought a boat wish we were there dream location really cruised hard to get to can't wait to watch these episodes i read that out to everyone and everyone was like it's a nice reminder of how unique of how lucky we are yeah yeah and we'll look back on this even though it was so tough we'll look back on this and we'll be like this was an adventure yeah and the sail is just like slapping it's very distracting thank you guys shot a fish and there's one how big is a wahoo it's nuts there's so many fish oh my gosh you're in the water for like one minute all right jai show us what you got yay i'm actually so excited for this beautiful what did you just say before wes? i was just saying how this is like it's it's paradise this is like everything i've ever wanted it's my favorite thing in the world being in the open ocean like that i was out on my own off the back of the fat and there was like all of these mahis and then there was sharks and then those rainbow runners and then those trigger fish and then there was wahoo and everywhere i looked and then i looked down and there was just tuna and i was just like this it doesn't get better than this so happy about the mahi situation can't believe how quickly jai got it now riley and wes are in the water because there's wahoo and riley said he'll only spear a fish if he can get a wahoo because we don't have much room in our freezer anymore okay we don't want to run over the boys darwin can you spear a bit to port again no that's starboard other way yep nice that's good well done wow what a sight to see honestly it's gonna be called darwin's jerky jerky uh-oh you're gonna need a gynod it's like hanging up clothes on the line yeah oh look at that one's hanging on by a bloody thread the boys have demanded that we eat tuna for lunch and dinner i don't know if i can do it though you have to no it has to be done if you want to shoot more fish we're gonna start eating some tuna whilst jai gets our lunch together i wanted to take a second to remind you of sea people which really goes from strength to strength so proud to see it gaining traction and becoming the app that people are using to connect together on the water friends are finding crewing opportunities random newbies are finding crewing opportunities it's so awesome there's been a boat rescue there's romances it's really doing like the good stuff with sea people you can see who's looking for crew connect with nearby sailors and discover events happening around you the community has just grown massively another thing is that probably some of you already know we've partnered with the american sailing association that means that the sea people digital logbook is now officially recognized and makes it even more useful and legit and just makes me so proud the app is free and always linked in the description box below please come and check it out and join the community it's a sperm whale and i'm so excited i've never seen one in the water you're going to see one in real life west has never moved so quickly oh my god i can't even believe it as we get closer he's just turning i don't think he wants to be friends with us west is just saying this one is huge it's a full-grown male but yeah we've gotten all of our gear and we're just trying to get closer but it doesn't really look like he wants to slow down enough for us slowpokes you can just hear one sperm whale clicking and it might be down deep but it's like it's pretty faint it might not be this whale because this whale's on the surface many of you will remember west's hydrophone that he brought with him that we put up on a recent episode the underwater microphone allows us to drop down into the ocean and listen for sounds like a whale song or in this particular case a sperm whale's click before you said it's the biggest one you've seen i would say probably the biggest sperm whale i've seen yeah it was huge man it's like usually you'll get a pod of like i would say 10 to a couple hundred and a lot of times they'll be mostly females and like calves and so what happens is the females will stick together and then they'll take turns babysitting the babies while the other ones go dive deep and hunt but for the males they can go so much farther north and south like latitude wise they go to higher latitudes because there's more food there but then a lot of times they'll be hunting on their own because they can just dive for so much longer and so much deeper for what giant squid yeah giant squid sometimes they'll be eating bottom fish but mostly giant squid i'm actually jealous of that dive yeah clothes are going back on and we're getting ready for night shift now it's going to be a long sail and we're still deciding whether we're going to keep going to pagan which we won't get there till like in the am or if we try and anchor near this volcano island but i'm about to go ask the captain again but wow that was amazing josephine saw the splash and we were not expecting it to be so big i'm just grateful to have even seen such a giant creature out here i was not expecting it yeah it was going a bit too fast for us to keep up unfortunately but we will have we will have our moment where's the captain the latest captain about tonight are we going to anchor behind this volcano or 20 bucks and you can't slow mo film the flight oh splashes everywhere big splashes what were they okay well it looks like you'll find out alongside me in the next episode what unfolds on the rest of our sail tonight make sure to hit that subscribe button it's free so you don't miss what's coming in the next episode a bit of drama goes down and we're starting to run low on food we're having to get super creative in the galley plus the kids finally get to stretch their legs and it turns out to be absolutely beautiful see you guys soon