Danger That Will Leave You . . . : Breathless! : Ventura Oral Surgeon Terry Maas Is a World-Class Spearfisherman

The undersea world of sharks and rays, of tuna, dolphins and all the creatures of the deep, is also the world of Terry Maas.

“It’s an incredible contrast from the environment I live in on a daily basis, and it’s an environment I can escape to,” said Maas, an oral surgeon from Ventura. “And literally an hour from my home, I can be in that world.”

In that world, Maas is a diver and a fisherman, but he is not typical of either. Maas can hold his breath for three minutes and reach depths of 100 feet. And, like others in the small, close-knit community of free-diving spearfishermen, Maas is a silent hunter who stalks his prey with a high-powered spear gun.

“When you’re weighted correctly, 20-30 feet below, there’s no movement required at all to stay in position,” Maas said. “So you’ve got that feeling of weightlessness. Couple that with the anticipation, and it’s a narcotic. It keeps me coming back.”

And back and back and back.

Maas, 47, featured in a KCET special titled “Blue Water Hunters,” which will be shown Jan. 22 on Channel 28, has been diving since he was a teen-ager, one whose playground was--and to an extent, still is--the waters of the Channel Islands.

At 17, he entered his first free-diving competition off the Ventura coastline and took the field of 112 by storm. “We used to listen to shrimp that click on the bottom--they hide in the rocks and then click, and by putting our ears on the paddleboards--that’s how we found this small reef,” Maas said.

It was at this reef that Maas “saw this little nose sticking out of a crack,” pulled the trigger and came up with an unusually large lingcod that weighed 30 pounds, propelling him to an easy victory in the competition.

Since then, Maas has traveled the oceans of the world in search of bigger, faster prey. And more often than not, he has found it.

His exploits in the open waters off Mexico’s West Coast have become legendary, in large part because of his ability to get within range of the fast and powerful tuna, which represents the ultimate challenge for spearfisherman.

“Terry is unsurpassed with his ability with tuna,” said Wes Morrissey, president of the Long Beach Neptunes, a dive club established in the 1930s.

Jack Prodonovich, 75, who with two others founded the San Diego Bottom Scratchers in the early 1930s, agreed.

“I’ve got this big tuna gun and I’ve pushed it around for I bet you over 200 hours and I still haven’t found a tuna,” Prodonovich said. “We caught them at night (on hook and line) but couldn’t find them in the daytime. This next trip, I’m sure I’m going to get him.”

Maas has gotten his, and then some.

In 1982, off Guadalupe Island, he took what still stands as a world-record bluefin tuna, a 398-pound monster that ventured from the depths into range of Maas.

It was a day Maas knew would prove eventful.

“I mentioned to (companion) Dennis (Okita) before the dive, ‘The currents are right, the water’s real clear and there’s lots of bait here--so don’t waste your time shooting a yellowtail,’ ” Maas said.

“Well, 10 minutes later, he shot a yellowtail and he went back to the boat, and so I was out there hanging out by myself and I just got on the right place at the right time and . . . God.

“I went down and hovered at about 30 feet, and was viewing these 50-pound tuna, hoping one would swim into range, and down at about 100 feet I saw these two fish. They were so far away, they looked little,”

Maas knew they weren’t little.

“They started coming up and got bigger and bigger and bigger . . . and came right in front of me.”

Maas fired a direct hit. The floats attached to a line on the spear raced across the water over his head, and the injured fish raced for cover. It sounded, dragging the floats underwater, then it resurfaced and began to circle its attacker.

“The line was around my head,” Maas said, “and I was pushing it away and then I looked over to the right, and this tuna--he had made a huge circle--was heading right for me.

“Here I was at one minute, trying to get this damn line out of my way, and then this fish is coming right to me. And then the next second, he rolled onto his side and started sinking.

“I couldn’t hold him up, he weighed so much.”

The fish had died, and Maas feared it would break loose from the spear and sink to the bottom. He called another boat over and instructed the crew to hold the line while he dived down to put another spear into the fish.

It was eventually hauled aboard, and Maas knew he had accomplished something that might never be equaled.

“So far, nobody has come close,” Morrissey said.

Nobody has come close to the world-record 256-pound yellowfin Maas speared, either. In fact, not many divers have been able to get a tuna, period.

“I really believe they can sense your excitement, even to the extent that they can feel an acceleration of your heartbeat,” Maas said. “You can position yourself in a way that causes the fish to be not only less wary, but actually curious. Tuna have a sense of curiosity. You rely on their curiosity.”

Other fish seem to become curious as well.

In “Blue Water Hunters,” Maas and friends can be seen swimming the open ocean with a whale shark, the largest fish in the world. The shark, considered harmless, spent the entire day lumbering around the divers while they took turns riding and rubbing its massive body.

“And it was back the next day,” Maas said.

At Mexico’s San Benedicto Island, a giant manta ray winged in for a closer look at the divers and, though apprehensive at first, it seemed to take to the human touch. Others then glided in and out of range of the divers.

“They would approach, then fly away,” Maas said. “You go down and touch one and they come closer and more frequently. It was like a roller coaster. You go down and grab the shoulders . . . it’s like riding this huge horse. You can just feel the water rushing by you.”

Of course, in waters so full of life, there is always the chance of a fish becoming more than just curious about human invaders.

Fifteen years ago, off Guadalupe Island, not far from where Maas bagged his record bluefin tuna, his friend Al Schneppershoff was the victim of an attack by a great white shark, witnessed not only by horrified friends but by his 5-year-old son.

Schneppershoff was killed.

Harry Ingram, who along with Maas is a member of the Long Beach Neptunes, survived a 1984 attack in the same area while hunting for bluefin tuna.

“It was a blur when he hit me--at well over 30 m.p.h.,” Ingram recalled. “He jammed my gun into my shoulder and knocked me eight feet out of the water, rolled me over his dorsal fin and back into the water.”

The shark, estimated at 1,700 pounds, swam away.

Had Maas not thought to look behind him during a dive last month off San Benedicto Island, he might not be around.

“I saw about a 15-foot tiger shark, one of the most dangerous sharks in the world,” Maas said. “His belly was so big around, he could easily fit three or four people in it.

“I saw him three times, right over my favorite tuna hole. The last time I saw him--you’re always looking behind you--I looked behind me and he was at my fin tips. I convulsed, kind of how you do when you’re startled, and I jumped, and he did the same thing and swam off. But you know, I really wonder--if I hadn’t looked around. . . . “