When EVERYTHING just goes WRONG

I'm Sam O'Regan. It's been a bit of a comedy of errors. My name's Adam. I'm an Australian freediving champion, but because of COVID, I can't compete. So while we're waiting for the world to open up again, me and my wife Erin and our daughter Ellie are going on a freediving road trip around Australia. We're going to be living out of our tent and diving everywhere. So subscribe to follow the journey, and a huge thanks to our patrons for making this all possible. So for the past few days, we've been in Mini Water and we've been spearfishing. And it's been, um, it's been a bit of a comedy of errors. Day number one. I joined the Coffs Harbour Spearfishing Club for a spearfishing competition. I've never been in a spearfishing competition before. I've never even seen one. And so I thought I'd just tag along and see what the whole thing was about. Good morning, good morning. It's about 6am and we're down at Mini Water's beach. One of the beaches here. I'm about to launch the boat and go out for a day of spearfishing. It's my first time ever participating in a spearfishing competition. The local boys have been really kind and they're like letting me come along. So yeah, let's go and see what it's all about. We started the day by going up the coast to this spot that the boys knew about to look for Jewfish. I've never shot a Jewfish before and I've always wanted to. They're a delicious, beautiful fish. So we're going to go and check, um, check out these rocks to see if we can find any Jewfish or Mulloway. So Tom, what's the strategy for hunting Jews in these holes here? Get down deep in the crack until you butt your head on the headland and if they're not there, turn around and try again. So Jewfish like to hang out in little holes tucked in right in the back of the reef. The swell was a little bit too high for us to get into most of the holes the boys knew, but there was one little area that we could get into to see if there were any fish there. So we were cruising along, getting deeper and deeper into the cracks and crevices, getting closer to the rocks, getting smashed against the rocks, looking for the Jewfish. And then finally, Tom spotted them. A school of about 15 or 20 good sized Jewfish. Hug that rock and go into the gunner. I get myself ready. I duck dive. I swim slowly around the corner to make sure they can't see me, sneak up on them and I line up the shot. I line up this shot that was point blank, gun spear pointed at the fish's head and I fire and point blank, I miss. I missed. It's the easiest shot, I don't know how I missed. Tom darts in there. Tom has a shot. Tom misses. And after that, the school is spooked. They're swimming around. I reload my gun. I go back down again and I thought the school would have been just completely gone, but surprisingly there was one still there. So I quickly got my gun ready and had a shot and I miss. Classic Adam. And after I've shot this fish and missed, the rest of the school just swims casually past and I'm just sitting there like an absolute fool. The swell must have picked up or some really good sets must have just come through while we were tucked around the rocks because the waves became so big that we couldn't actually swim out against them. So we spent about 10-15 minutes just sitting there, ducking under waves, waiting for the moment where we could actually go. And eventually we did. We swam hard and we were nice and puffed by the time we got back to the boat. Next, we went straight out to these little shoals that were just about maybe a kilometre offshore. This reef was really beautiful. Lots of great fish everywhere. Really, really great terrain. With this type of terrain, you could probably hunt just about anything. When I've heard about spearfishing competitions in the past, it's been kind of described as like a bloodbath, just shooting everything. But that's not what the boys out here were doing. In fact, you know, half the day had gone by and no one had shot a single fish. Everyone was just waiting for the right fish. It was all about taking home one really great fish. Can you try and mark this spot? Tom found this area on the reef where there was this huge parrotfish and he spent a good half an hour sitting down there, stalking it, waiting for it to come back, trying to lure the fish in. But the fish was a little bit too clever. And while he was doing that, though, he did spot a Maori cod. And instead of shooting it for himself, he's come up to the surface and said, Adam, go down there right now. You'll see a beautiful, good-sized Maori cod. They're one of the best tasting fish in the ocean. I said, all right, I'm going. I've seen photos of Maori cod, but I've never seen one myself underwater. And then all of a sudden I saw it. I said, oh, oh, that looks familiar. Lined up the shot and bang, got it. First time ever shooting a Maori cod and I was pretty stoked. And this is exactly the point in time where my camera ran out of battery. So I was without a camera for the rest of the day. And we went to some amazing places. I'll just tell you about it. We saw some incredible things. You've never seen anything like it. It was amazing. Didn't film any of it, though. So what's this fish, Adam? This is the fish I shot today. It is a Maori cod. Look, I've never really heard much about it. But, you know, when I shot it, everyone was like, oh, wow, that's like one of the best fish you can shoot. Like that's one of the best eating fish in the world. And I was like, oh, yeah, that's right. Wow. Fancy, fancy fish. Fancy, fancy meal and fancy, fancy baby. Hi, Ellie. What are you doing on daddy's phone? Oh, thank you, Ellie. What are your thoughts on camping so far? I love camping very much. It's more tiring wrangling the child. While we're camping than when we're at home. Like right now, she's stepping on the wraps. But it's also more fun. I give this fish a 10 out of 10. It's really yum. In this video, I wanted to say a huge thank you to my main sponsor, Globital. Globital are a digital marketing company that provides support, infrastructure and services to digital marketers. They give me so much help with all my online stuff. And so if you are a digital marketing agency or if you're in the digital marketing sphere, industry, get in touch with Globital and see how they can help you out. They're a bloody nice company. They are run by a really nice guy. And they have given me so much support over the years. So the next day we went out again. And this time I made sure my cameras were all charged. We went straight to North Solitary Island to look for kingfish. Now, because my camera ran out of battery the day before, I didn't get any footage of this place. I wanted to go straight in with the camera while the boys went in with their spearguns. And the second I went in there with my camera, there were kingfish everywhere. Kingies absolutely everywhere. Now, the boys were waiting for the bigger kingfish to come in. I would have been very happy to shoot any of those kingfish personally. And so I've run back to the boat, put my camera on the boat, taken my gun. And the second I had my gun in the water, there were no kingfish. So we went to another spot. It's a little bit further north from North Solitary Island. There are these three underwater pinnacles. And they attract a lot of pelagic fish. And so we drifted along those pinnacles looking for kingfish again, but nothing. It was, I don't know, we must have been there on the wrong tide, wrong current. They just, they just wasn't, it was not alive at all. The pinnacles themselves were beautiful. No complaints at how beautiful the whole place was. But not fishy, not, not fishy enough. So we hopped back in the boat and we went to a different part of North Solitary Island. There was a cave that the boys knew about, probably about 25 metres down underwater, that they said was just guaranteed to hold mangrove jacks. So we zip over there, we hop out of the boat, get in the water and we spot the cave. And they were absolutely right. It was filled with mangrove jacks. Really good size mangrove jack. I swim up to the cave and I give myself time to adjust. Obviously as you're swimming into a cave underwater, it's really dark and you need a bit of time for your eyes to adjust. And so I'm sitting there looking around at all the shapes in the water. I'm like, oh, there's a mangrove jack, there's a mangrove jack, there's a mangrove jack. And then a really big mangrove jack just swims in front of all the other fish. And I was like, now is the time. Now is my moment. And bang, shot it. And I was just so stoked. I was elated. I'd start pulling it out of the cave. I'd start swimming it back up to the surface. And it was only when I got close to the surface that I realised that I have not shot a mangrove jack at all. I have shot a slaty brim. These fish are also called mother-in-law, as in the kind of fish you give to your mother-in-law. They are probably the worst tasting fish in the ocean. Don't worry, it did get eaten by Tom's dogs. This fish got turned into dog food. So Tom and I dove on the cave a few more times, trying to really feel it out, trying to let the fish become comfortable with us so we could get in there a little bit deeper and shoot some of those bigger jacks. So then Tom decides he's going to go down. He's going to try to take one of the bigger jacks in the cave. So he spends a bit of time relaxing on the surface, getting ready. Cruises down. Oh wow, there's a lot of ants on my feet. Wow, I just had my feet in an ant's nest. So Tom goes down for a big dive and he has a shot at the biggest jack in the cave and misses. And he didn't want his shaft to get stuck in the cave. So he starts, you know, wriggling and wrestling it out before he goes back to the surface. And he's like, oh, well, I'm not going to get it because he had a good crack at pulling it out and didn't get it. And he starts swimming back to the surface and about maybe two or three meters below the surface, later on he told me that he started to feel a little bit, you know, a bit lightheaded, a little bit of tingling in the fingers. And he gets up to the surface and he has a mighty samba. I'm samba-wrecking. There's not much beating that cave hood, I can say that. Oh really? Yeah. Oh, I think I missed it. So after this, Tom and I looked at his dive computer to try to break down what happened. Like what happened on the dive? What happened before the dive? So we were diving down to 25 meters with a dive time of about one minute, 30 to two minutes. So between Tom's last dive and the dive that he sambed on, he had seven minutes of surface interval. So seven minutes of breathing on the surface, which is perfect, which is exactly what you want to have for a dive to 25 odd meters. You want to spend at least three times your dive time on the surface breathing. But what happened with Tom here, what I think at least happened, is that when someone knows they're getting ready for a bigger dive, we have a very natural tendency to hyperventilate. And, you know, chatting to Tom later on, we pretty much worked out that that's what he did. See, Tom's a strong diver. He really shouldn't have had a samba on this dive. But hyperventilation will do that to anyone. So it is really important, obviously, to make sure you don't hyperventilate, especially when you're hitting these deeper spots. But anyway, Tom had a samba, which meant that there was no more diving for Tom for the rest of the day. And it had been a big day in the water anyway, so we were keen to get home. So we did that. We went home and day number two had finished completely fishless. The next day, we had another big day of spearing planned and I woke up all ready to go, except that I woke up sick and congested and I could not put my head underwater. So it's morning and we've had no sleep. Ellie was up all night screaming and crying, which is not like her usually. Part of me is worried she just doesn't like camping. I don't know, but it was not a fun night. So I let the boys take my boat for the day and they did some inshore spearfishing on some of the reef around Walleye and they shot a mangrove jack. They found another jack hole and shot a mangrove jack, which was amazing. And then spent the rest of the day looking for crayfish. They said that they actually struggled to find a lobster that was legal. Like all the lobsters were oversized. They were like breeding size. They were too big to take. And I've never seen one of these in the water, but Tom's given me all his footage. And here, look at these dinosaurs. Look at these incredible ancient lobsters. So the boys dropped me back one of these lobsters that they caught today. You know, we didn't get to go out because little miss Ellie kept us awake all night. But we love her. We're going to cook this up now because we all love lobster, especially Ellie. I feel like lobster is Ellie's favorite food. She has very fine taste. And man, I had a great time with those guys. Those three guys are some of the most generous, genuine people I've ever met. And I can't wait to dive with them again. So that fire is, you know, just starting to go. I'm now going to go and cut up that lobster and then we're going to grill it on the fire. All right, so tailed the lobster. I'm going to cut it in half now. I'm going to put it down on this plate and, you know, roast it barbecue style. Shark grilled lobster. Hello, hello. Flame grilled there. Charcoal. How is it Ellie? How's that lobster? Yum, yum, yum, yum, yum. She's eating in both hands. Anyway, so that's us for the day. Next time we will do our cooking part before the sun goes down. So you can actually see what we're doing. Maybe it's better to do it in the dark so no one can see what we're doing. Yeah, yeah. And see how we're doing things wrong. Butchering everything, destroying this beautiful meat. Anyway, it tastes good. Yes, it does. But I think you'd have to work really hard to make lobster taste bad. Anyway, I hope you have a good one and I will see you in the water somewhere. Thanks so much for watching guys. Don't forget to subscribe by pressing this little circular thing down here. Also, check out this video. Or you might want to check out this video because you might like it too.