THE OUTDOORS : GOING UNDER : Spearfishing Enthusiasts Take a Voyage to Bottom of the Sea to Find Their Prey

It was barely dawn when Tom Blandford and Bill Anderson quietly slipped off their boat and into the water off Bird Rock, a small island a half mile from Santa Catalina Island’s Isthmus Cove.

Other divers were already bobbing and disappearing in and around the kelp-laden waters, surfacing only for air, armed with powerful spear guns that were cocked and ready.

“I wanted to be in the water by now,” Blandford said, irked somewhat by the early morning chop that had slowed his 20-mile crossing from Long Beach Harbor. “I wanted to be in at first light.”

But on this particular morning, during the Long Beach Neptunes’ 20th annual Blue Water Spearfishing meet, it didn’t matter much.

The 8- to 10-foot visibility was something less than desireable, as was the 59-degree water temperature--well below normal for mid-June--and there had been no legitimate sightings.

“I heard a couple, but I didn’t see any,” Blandford said.

He was looking primarily for white sea bass, members of the croaker family that occasionally make noises somewhat resembling those of a bullfrog.

But the 40 or so “free divers”--scuba tanks were strictly forbidden--managed as best as they could in the unusually murky water, searching for any game fish weighing more than 20 pounds.

It wasn’t until about 9:30 a.m. that the sun began breaking through the clouds, penetrating the ocean’s surface and slightly improving visibility. Blandford and Anderson had since moved east, however, as had most of the divers in the area, in hopes of finding better conditions.

Ted Heesen of Long Beach, meanwhile, had moved to the vacated Isthmus area and, after diving to the bottom, instantly found himself in the shadow of what appeared to be a large fish.

“I was down at the bottom when I saw a silhouette above me,” Heesen recalled.

He said he aimed, fired and scored a direct hit. After a short fight, Heesen dragged aboard his boat a 36-pound white sea bass that would earn him first place.

At the end of the dawn-to-noon event, seven white sea bass--the primary target of most Catalina spearfishermen, and highly prized by the local sportfishing boats as well--and one 20-pound yellowtail lay on one of the island’s sandy-beach coves, ready for the weigh-in.

Considering the lack of clarity in the cold water--several divers abandoned their efforts before the noon deadline--the event had been deemed a success.

“For the visibility, this was a good catch,” said Bob Ballew, a 20-year diving veteran. “I dove for 20 minutes and quit because I couldn’t see anything. They did well, though.”

The 35-year-old Long Beach Neptunes, with 50 charter members and 20 tentative members--a member has to be voted into the club--have some of the world’s best free divers.

Although some divers occasionally use scuba gear--primarily for photography--the club is basically a free-diving organization.

Still, most Neptune members can reach depths beyond 60 feet in search of game fish. Exceptional members, such as Ventura’s Terry Maas, have gone more than 100 feet down and have stayed underwater for as long as 2 minutes.

The spear guns, measuring 40 to 50 inches, are powered by rubber bands capable of providing 400 pounds of pressure. Many of them have reels spooled with 400-pound test monofilament. Some divers use floats attached to their lines, which can be released--and later tracked--if the diver is in danger of being pulled to a dangerous depth or speed, which often happens.

Most of the members have logged hundreds of hours in the ocean and each seems to have an unforgettable experience:

--During the summer of 1984, Harry Ingram was hunting bluefin tuna with Blandford and a couple of others off a high spot near Mexico’s Guadalupe Island. Suddenly, there was a tremendous upwelling of white water.

“I thought it was tuna,” Ingram recalled. “I swam over to Tom, who had speared (a bluefin tuna) and had his line tangled below.

“I held the line while he went down and out of sight. Then I saw a stream of blood. I drifted, ready to dive and I looked to my right and saw (a shark) coming up. I was 15 to 20 feet away. I was swimming slowly, then I looked back, swung my gun around, and there he was. He charged and I pulled the trigger.

“It was a blur when he hit me--at well over 30 m.p.h. He (jammed) my gun into my shoulder and knocked me 8 feet out of the water, rolled me over his dorsal fin and back into the water. All Blandford could do was watch.

The shark, roughly estimated at 17 feet and 3,000 pounds, swam away. The spear--which had been attached to a float--and the gun were never found.

Ingram, shaken and suffering a severely bruised shoulder, was helped into the boat by Blandford.

Both divers were back in the water the next day.

--Al Schneppershoff bled to death on the deck of the boat after being attacked by a white shark off Guadalupe several years ago. His son, Al Schneppershoff Jr., who was a 5-year-old witness to the mauling, is now a member of the Neptunes.

--Ballew escaped a large white shark in 1974 by hiding in a nearby kelp bed.

“I saw him coming at me so I kicked my way into the kelp,” Ballew said. “He kept coming in until he was about 8 feet away. I saw his head pop out of the water and I could see his big black eye staring at me. Then he turned and swam away.”

A commercial fishing boat later caught what was believed to be the same shark, which was 15 1/2 feet long and weighed 2,800 pounds.

Ballew had another encounter in deep water off Santa Cruz, where he speared a 9-foot 2-inch, 234-pound blue shark between the eyes as it charged him from below.

When it comes to spearing game fish, no one seems to match the expertise of Maas, who is considered one of the world’s best. The 30-year diving veteran’s list of spearfishing exploits are seemingly endless.

But the slender oral surgeon got perhaps his greatest thrill in 1982 off Guadalupe, the day after spearing a 185-pound bluefin tuna.

“We were in 300 feet of water, with 150-foot visibility, and there had been 50-pounders on the surface,” Maas said. “I went down about 40 feet and was looking up. Then I glanced down and saw two 400-pounders coming up from the deep.

“I shot the closest one from about 15 feet and hit him in the spine (a perfect shot). Still, he towed me for about five minutes.”

It was one ride Maas didn’t mind.