Deadly Fathoms

[ChrisM]

Loved it Skip!

I've only played it once, and need to do it again soon to really take it in. The first time we spent our time looking for Skip: "Oh look, Skip dragging through the water on a rope!"

This next time we'll look at the fish.

Chris

PS: I just went snorkeling in West Texas. Google "Balmorhea State Park" to learn more about this unlikely activity!

[Since1982]

Chris said: "Oh look, Skip dragging through the water on a rope!"

There was also Oh look, Skip fixing a cast net and Oh Look, skips arms moving air tanks, and Oh look, Skip in the water helping with stuff and Oh look, skips watching the islands move by...etc etc Too bad I couldn't get pictures of Oh look, there are rats running around on Skip while he's sleeping...I had Velveeta cheese in my suitcase. Bad idea...and Oh look, Skip has a slingshot and ball bearings killing rats in the forecastle..piece of cheese on the floor got me lots of victims...and those rats disappeared by morning and when I went to the galley for b-fast were all cut up in a bucket with native crew members sticking them on hooks and catching 20 pound snappers and groupers with. We had hawaiian style fish dinners that night...fun trip! I was the only member of "our" crew that knew what the fish bait had been.

[Milfmog]

Like ChrisM, I thoroughly enjoyed the film but spent far too much time looking for Skip; at least he's easy to recognise, it would have been very irritating to wonder which one was Skip.

I sat with a few diving friends and a "small" supply of assorted beers and we all enjoyed it as a period piece of diving footage. The kit and techniques have moved on so far in the last 30+ years but the general feel of the film is almost exactly duplicated by modern TV diving series such as "wreck detectives".

Great stuff Skip, thanks again.


Ian.

[Since1982]

Thanks ian. As you've probably figgered, a lot of it was staged, like the shark attacks...all the underwater shark footage was filmed in the Bahamas Islands in the Atlantic. We have Caribbean Reef Sharks in the Bahamas, a fish eating type that can engulf several divers without ever touching anyone. They simply do not eat humans. But they LOOK fierce.
Was nice to have Rod Serling to do all the voice overs in the beginning. The short hefty looking Islander that told about the Japanese was the Captain of the Ship we chartered, the Meico Queen. He wanted to kill Bruce Mounier for not putting the dive platform down for me for 3 hours. Bruce was a 6 time United States spearfishing champion and the main underwater photographer for the trip, but he had an attitude that would pissoff the Pope. A true "better than thou" type. After leaving me on the platform that day, the Captain came to me and said, "That was a stinky thing Bruce did, want me to kill him?" I was speechless..umm no, not until at least the filming is done. OK, he said, "tell me when it's done and I'll take him out!"
Bruce never knew how close he'd come and that I'd actually saved his life even tho he wanted to take mine. He would have simply disappeared when the ship was going from one area to another area 300 miles away...Bruce was one of those "perfect body people" that thought his feces didn't stink. Marshallese Islanders are very much like Pacific rim islanders all over the Pacific, they LOVE overweight men. All their pre-christianity GODs are overweight. According to that Captain, skinny people don't eat right.

P.S. When I watch it over again, I always go and look longingly at the 28 year old man fixing the castnet and wish I could just go back there for the rest of time.