Something Weird is Going on With Sharks | Manny Puig

foreign it's an honor to have you back your tridents have been just on display on this podcast for almost 200 episodes since you were here the first time and uh I'm a huge fan of you and your work and your artwork so thanks for being back okay well thank you on the first podcast that we did we talked a lot about like the wildlife stuff you did the jackass the wild boys all that stuff kind of like you're like your rise to fame so to speak but we didn't really cover your childhood and like your early life in Cuba and your family and all that stuff so I want to talk about that a little bit today well my memory goes back to the age of four I remember telling me people telling me you're four years old uh as far as wildlife and Cuba I would go in the backyard look on a crab hole I will put my arm in there and grab a huge land crab by the elbow and I would try to pull them out and the crab would actually drag me and then my dad would come find me grab my back feet and pull me out of out of the pull me back and we pull the crab right out of the hall so I use the hand catch crabs at the age of four like that so I was already getting into picking up lizards until Wildlife I used to watch movies like Sea Hunt in Cuba when I was a kid as if I my dad was cool we were living in Cuba the whole communism thing came in there Castle took over how long so when you were a kid growing up with your parents how long did you guys live under Batista before that whole Cuban Revolution what what year were you born I was born in 1954 54 okay so the Cuban Revolution came in 1959 so I was just a kid uh I mean when I was a kid I didn't think about Batista or any of that you know that's just children don't think about any of that they just life was normal for for us you know uh I noticed changes once a castle took over like the the properties the ranch musical play in likewida National Forest all of a sudden it became we couldn't go there no more the government confiscated it and all the properties were taken and a lot of bad things were happening I had no clue what was going on but the meantime my dad joined up at the CIA to fight against Castro and later on he got infiltrated into Cuba yeah what was it how so what was that Pro what what happened to him when he got recruited by the CIA like what was specifically going on with your dad what was he doing well our whole life was being uprooted I mean I was a kid so I'm not you know I'm paying attention but the adults saw that uh we were losing our freedom in Cuba uh you know money was being confiscated property uh just huge changes and very uh you know like no respect for law he was just doing whatever they wanted to do and you know a hard line Communist dictatorship was taking effect what did your parents do for work my dad was a Salesman my mother came he was a silver Bacardi oh no way yeah my mother came from a very wealthy family in Cuba their her great grandfather was like foreign minister Minister exterior for Cuba he was in all these minister of Education he was all those in Cuba one time or another he's a big time politician he owned 54 000 Acres in in Pinal de Rio it was my favorite place when I was a little kid to go play in Cuba they had horses here they had mountains forests deer everywhere a beautiful property also had a beach house he had a big house in in Havana so he's very well known politician to this day if you go to the the ranch the entrance says Hacienda Cortina so since he was such a unknown figure in Cuba even though the Castro regime still kept his name on The Ranch really and that was so that was your grandfather great grandfather my mother's grandfather oh wow so what part of Cuba were you guys living in living in again in Havana you were in Havana okay but the Ranchos and Pinal Del Rio which is the Western end of Cuba the Oregon mountains the whole entire range was there and to this day tourists go to Cuba that's where they go tourists go visit a place that's one of the natural wonders of Cuba there's a beautiful property they got mountains and a river that goes through caves they got lights in there so it's it's like a spectacular place to go see so when you were growing up with your dad like what kind of what kind of you were always just like roaming around looking for wildlife swimming in the ocean fishing doing that kind of stuff and Cuba I won a couple fishing trips with my dad my dad liked nature but you know he had a family to worry about uh things my dad was also an Olympic Athlete he had represented Cube on rowing rowing is very popular in Cuba so his team won like a bronze medal in in London I believe the 1948 Olympics oh wow they uh him and his brother his uh brother-in-law and uh several of those guys they all came and they and they won you know and they didn't win a gold medal but they got a bronze medal but they were like champions in Cuba very famous that's a lot of newspaper articles about them so he's very much into being an athlete he also played football for University of Anna American football okay they used to play the American universities they always got slaughtered by the American teams that's what my mother told me the the Cuban team didn't stand a chance in football against like Georgia Tech and universities like that they played against right they will get annihilated supposedly everybody would get drunk before the game to take all the all the pain those are the stories I heard anyways oh it's hilarious so he was working for he was a big salesman for Bacardi so when Castro took over what happened with Bacardi well they left they left Cuba yeah they they moved over here they opened up uh Bacardi room in Puerto Rico I think it was their base but they had people in Miami and everything so but they were friends of the family one time they sent me to a boarding school unable to Bacardi family that paid for it no where was that at uh Tampa Florida it was a type of school that you live in and everything they thought it was good for me to stay in a school like that you know after my mother had a really hard time because when my father was captured uh he was executed well we're jumping we're jumping a little far ahead yeah I'm jumping a little ahead so so your your father went from working from for Bacardi obviously the revolution the Castro's Rebels like scoured the land in Cuba and basically took over all the businesses well communism under communism you're not allowed to own private property you're not allowed to have wealth you're not allowed to have money you're not allowed to do you know you all have to be equally poor that is their their method that's what uh people in this country not being educated what communism really is most of these young kids have no idea what communism is they read a few books and they think they have an attitude that ship on the shoulder whatever it is anything could come they've been taught that communism is good no communism is not good for anybody it's evil and and uh usually they'll take people who are unqualified to do a job and take the qualified one and have them do something that he's not meant to do to rearrange everything and new Cubans I mean the people former Cubans like you or Cuban born people like yourself who were part of that Revolution are the people that are the most outspoken about that they're the well if you're a Cuban and you believe in communism you know you can stay in Cuba right I mean that's that's perfectly normal that's what I would say that's an interesting thing too when Castro took over Cuba he never mentioned communism once no but it was Che Guevara who was with him who was a Marxist is that what it was yeah sharing was a Marxist and his brother Raul was a Marxist Castro supposedly an opportunist I mean he's a crooked guy opportunist yeah opportunistic guy and so he he tied up with the Soviet Union and to get protection from the United States right that was much later that came much later so so I'm curious about your father though so like so like in just let's say in this beginning part of the Revolution like right right after it happened in 59 what was like your F you guys all stayed in Cuba obviously you survived the revolution I was in Cuba I have well we thought the revolution I was a kid and not all the propaganda was out there I thought Fido was a really cool guy right people asked a lot of Americans oh yeah no the people going down the street hey fiddle's coming down from the mountains he's great what do you mean who are they and all the ladies and the nannies everybody's excited about me oh I had no idea I thought it was a great guy to my mother when I kept saying when his dad coming home my mother turned around and told me he's not coming home that was me and my three sisters she told us that and she goes Fidel is not a good guy you know he said he just he killed your father that was like so I went from thinking it was a good guy to all of a sudden shock and your mom just you asked your mom randomly one day when's dad coming home and she that's how she dropped it on you yeah well time was coming by she had to tell us sooner or later um because we have no notion of time my mother was arrested also she was locked up they caught her when they arrested my dad they arrested her there were several women arrested but the Cuban government did not kill the women and later on I think the the US negotiated their their release kind of like by the Bay of Pigs people right they did a deal like that but the CIA guys like my dad and the other men that were captured that day including the head CI guy in Cuba sorry Marine they were all tried in a kangaroo court you know the people cracking jokes and throwing little paper balls around and laughing and everything it's like a big party and then they're all executed the next day so your dad was recruited by CIA right after the Revolution and how was he he was obviously recruited in Cuba and what what specifically do you know what he was doing for them or like was he infiltration team uh he was the teams that guys are like Felix Rodriguez they were going to be an esconbri Felix told me the story years later but he went actually he went to they were training in Nicaragua at the time that's the ca took him to okay that's what I that's I mean of course I'm a kid I'm not aware of any of that this is I found out this later on his years went by my mother told me some more stories before she died so your dad went with Felix to Nicaragua to train they were down there all the ca guys they were all they were all part of the same team okay then later on he meets Surin Marina invited him to go into Havana and Havana was a hotbed you know that's what the Castro soldiers were thick everywhere and they were they were searching houses one after another and somebody ran out of one house and ran into a house where they were where they were all hiding and then all of a sudden they walked in they recognize sorry marine and they go we got the big fish and all sudden everybody got surrounded the place everybody got arrested so they caught him accidentally but either way I mean it was a hotbed this is Daisy for the Bay of Pigs a couple days oh really so it's all going down at the same time so a couple days later after that I believe after Bayer Pig's Invasion they're all executed the six guys in firing squad yeah a lot of people were killed in Cuba in a firing squad in those days it was Non-Stop a year later Castro even put his own top guys on firing squad he executed his number one General he executed his two top guys uh the LaGuardia Brothers both of them so he killed abrantis they either they killed him or they put him in a prison where they were going to come out alive you know so he got he cleaned house all the people were top dogs in there most communist dictators do that they kill the top brass so how old were you when you guys found out that Castro executed your father well he was five years old you were five years old God but after that we were able to go to Miami so right after that you went to Miami got released we were able to get out because that was a military age military age guys were not allowed to leave they had to join the Cuban military um so we we got out my mother came back to bury my father and she almost never got out she had to go to her grandfather's political rival who was a communist and asked him to help her get out Cuba and then he helped her get out of Cuba you know him and the grandfather went way back you know political Rivals but they knew each other right so they still went to dinners and stuff and had cocktail parties yeah yeah they their arrivals but they had they had uh cocktail parties together whatever yeah so when you got out where did your sisters come with you come here all of us came here we were kids my mother was like you know they no money or anything they took everything so we were political refugees sorry to interrupt um did your dad know Rick Prado no because Rick's oh Rex were younger yeah Rick would have been my age yeah it would have been five or six years old at a time but yeah yeah a new Felix your dad was friends with Felix because they trained in Nicaragua right right Felix liked my dad a lot he came by to visit my mom sometime before she died yeah yeah he came by the house and all that did you ever talk to Felix yes when did you first meet Felix I met him a few times that I was at a Miami eating a restaurant and he approached me he goes I'm Felix and he introduced himself to me and we talked uh I was doing a TV show not too long ago when I ran into him on a TV show I was talking about sharks and he was talking about Cuba and politics you know both on a topic on we were in Spanish TV we're both guests that day and then I saw him in like old man it's Felix and I started talking to him he was he's getting older as I could tell you know it's got a lot of years on him now did he have any cool I mean what did they tell you a lot of things about your father that you didn't know not as much to me he said to a friend of mine there was uh they used to go to my friend's house and he told them that he really admired my father that's what he told a lot of people he admired the most so I mean I never met anybody say anything bad about my father you know good or bad I've never heard anybody everybody uh he was very likable very popular guy right plus him being an athlete you know famous athlete in Cuba at the time but New Generation doesn't know anything about that this is all in the past there's a new people coming up you know the history has been erased in many cases I got into I was always interested in the wildlife but once I got into Florida the first thing I told me they're venomous snakes in Florida so be careful when you're how old I was six years old six years old or in Miami and my friends had a wrench and later on when I was a young teenager they would take me to the ranch for them their their families are friends from Family from Cuba and in that ranch I came in contact with alligators venomous snakes things like that but by time I was in high school I was already bit by rattlesnake I was already hand catching large alligators and and I was picking up of course venomous snakes left and right I was diving spear fishing and all that did you start when did did you go to school when you're in Miami I went to school of Miami Elementary School okay and then for high school I went to a private school for junior high and then in for high school I went to Gainesville High Gainesville Florida and that exposed me to a lot of the woods a lot of venomous snakes that's where I got bit by a venomous snake over there and alligators I would go after school walk around the edge of lakes see alligators sneak up and dive on them and hand catch them so I was already hand catching large alligators was weight lifting I was their state champion weightlifter in high school wow yeah you were jacked back in the day man yeah we can find some pictures of him like old school Manny Puig photos you were you were ripped walking around wearing a speedo yeah yeah I did all that the alligator stuff once I learned techniques is more about knowing understanding the alligator than strength how to interact with an alligator right and a lot of how to hold your breath a long time you know different techniques you pick up uh over the years for diving spear fishing I spend a lot of time look at that one on the left dude you're like you're like Zeus how old were you there my 40s right about 44 45 I got a yeah that was probably some of my best years really in my 40s that's when I started doing more of the TV stuff yeah more I learned more about the sharks and alligators I started interacting uh before that I did a lot of notice I got a spirit in my hand that did a lot of commercial spear fishing so let's go back real quick to when you were in Heist you went to high school in Gainesville you said yes and you were just like there was a lot of wildlife around there a lot of woods and a lot of lakes and a lot of obviously the gulf is there yes um what were you doing when you were in high school like you obviously going to school but so just you spent all your spare time just hunting and fishing and catching alligators that kind of stuff I would do things like okay tell my friends I'm gonna skip school drop me off in the woods over here and pick me up in three days and I would be out in the woods by myself you know eating whatever I caught surviving out there drinking water right out of the swamp I was doing this is 17 years old I was doing stupid stuff like that did you know you didn't know anybody else doing the same you were doing you just want to go do it by yourself I did it by myself then later on I talked to friends of mine to come out with me so I would go with some friends sometimes and do it but that time I wasn't by myself and we'd go out and camp out and all that later on my friends bring you know a tent sleeping bags things I didn't bring the first time what was it that made you want to go do that spend three days in the wilderness just like hunting and catching and eating whatever you caught and being alone and like was there there was no fear of anything what what were you like I was attracted to that look I didn't like fast cars I don't like baseball I don't care for football I don't care for any of that I care for I wanted to live off the land I want to live like Tarzan like the Native Americans you know off the land hunting and fishing and I used to watch Sea Hunt going on the water so I got into spearfishing a lot where I made a living spearfishing for many years that put me in contact with sharks and one of my first shark encounters was in the Bahamas I had a shark bite a fin off my foot when I was uh 18 years old before I even saw the shark the only thing I've ever seen in my life at that time was a nurse shark how did you get to the Bahamas when you're 18. uh there was a Spoke Captain out of Miami he's a lobster fish in the Bahamas back then it was legal as long as you're 12 miles offshore so my uncle said hey you want to go to the Bahamas and get your job on this boat and I was like sure I want to go out there so I wanted to dive so I'd be picking up traps all day long but I was looking at the water I just couldn't wait to get in there but you know we were working like crazy the work was brutal rocks are trapping is brutal and these are Cuban guys are like move it you're slow work harder you know they were yelling at you all day long like were you allowed to spear them or gig them no you were in a Bahamas I mean you know they used to hook them and put them in but we weren't divers the guys I went with were Trappers they were not diverse okay so whatever they'd put crab traps down there and they put uh lobster traps and they pull them in with a winch all day long and you stack them and clean them and bait them and put them back again you know I was exhausted every day but the guy goes okay I want a grouper tonight and they go many go in the water and spirit grouper so we're gonna eat it tonight so I jumped in shot a grouper and a shark came from behind me and bit next thing no I thought it was one of the guys that's playing a joke on me wait a minute because the thing came flying right off my foot I turned around I saw a blur of a shark leaving at a million miles an hour the fin floated I let go of the the group I just speared let go of that the grouper took off the speaker and all went into the bottom went into a cave they threw a rope over the front of the boat one of the guys saw him hit me so I climbed up the Rope right up the high side of the boat and got in there and uh they put a small boat in the water they picked up the fin it was a floating Fin and they could see the jacket or all the he had missed my toes by that much you could see the entire cut oh my God with a shark that bit on my fin what kind of shark was it you know I'm not sure it was a day I think it might have been a lemon I remember seeing a yellowish color so it could have been a lemon shark it was so fast I didn't know my Shark very well at that time I didn't have any experience with them wow 18 years old was your first shortcut and then the guy the cat then asked me can you go back and get the the spear gun and back then I was like you know I was kind of scared and uh but as you know with those guys you can't show you know you got to be much all the way so I jumped in went down swung down looking Every Which Way pull the group Rod went to the surface and he goes can you get another one I couldn't shoot another fish every time I was gonna aim at a fish I looked this way it looked that way I couldn't now years later little that I know are behind feeding the Sharks and riding them right I got bit gosh that was my fin later on in my life I got bit by four different types of shark I got bit by Mako my finger while hand feeding I got bit by Caribbean resharking my leg and I got bit by a nurse shark in this leg and I got bit by Lemon in my fingers right so I took some shark bites so when you're 18 you're working for the commercial fishing company you're catching lobsters what how long did you work for this company commercial fishing in the Bahamas that was just in a summer just during the Summers well summer month I was out 36 Days one time and I went one more time out and I was out like 20 something days and I never went out again um wasn't for you no then later on I did I got my own Lobster license and I would swim under the bridges and the keys cash lobsters and go sell them out of all you needed was a 50 license I could catch as many Lobster as I wanted absolutely but the lobsters were you know hard to get and hard to find I didn't have a boat I was swimming around with a die flag and you know and uh there was a lot of current down there so I would get a slight thigh you'd make the best of it but half the time be kicking against the current and Swinging down and driving lobsters and put them in a bag so it was brutal brutal work at the end of the day we just pulled into the fish house he used to pay you in cash right there he just really but your left is a great life but he loves us on a scale and they pay you in cash and you were and you were how old doing this that was an early 20s early 20s by that time doing that that's just how you made all your money was just doing that I did that for a while and later on I got into some more people you know when I got into a heavy duty into commercial spear fishing the I had one guy who used to go down there catching a fishery they pay for dinner the hotel room and go do it the next day all over again but later on I met some people in the keys that were doing a more professional we'd go out on trips make more money catch large amount of lots of boats people knew who where we were going and how to be able to harvest more fish like long lines no no spear fishing spear fishing we would do the Goliath like I remember one trip we came back uh I think we made like fourteen hundred dollars worth of Goliath grouper each you know after we pay for the gas we pay for the food paid for everything and a third part for the boat we divided up you know that's a good paycheck other days I make 400 or 500 this is a long time ago so it's more money back then we would spear grouper Snapper hogfish also the Tropicals for a while and in lobster season I would do lobsters but whatever we found that happened it was worth money we shoot including the sharks really I used to shoot the Sharks before I started the making the movies once I what kind of sharks did you shoot most the most well we shot down there was a lemon Bull and great Hammerhead God occasionally we would shoot a you know recruitment reef shark and black tip and we were you you were hunting the sharks they would just show up looking for your fish and then you would they were they were but we would all they got it from me first thing we do we shoot a barracuda and tied to a Stringer like our guy would drop you off in the middle of the ocean and pick you up later or you'd have to swim a couple miles to where the boat was anchored and work your way that way so we'd be dragging fish with us and when the shark would show up we'd pop it and we saw the shark we used to sell the fins sell the meat cut the Jaws out but take pictures of the shark hang up the Jaws on on the wall we did all that then later on um always once I started making money from like being in the water interacting with sharks that was more there's more profit in that than killing a shark so a shark was more valuable to us alive so at that time I was like hey you know they're killing too many sharks at that time we would have a hard time finding them you know so it wasn't you could Spearfish all day long without ever seeing a shark uh sharks are being commercial then everybody got into commercial log lining for sharks and they got depleted it was really hard to find sharks what you're getting wiped out what year roughly did uh commercial long lining for sharks start to kick up I would be probably 30 some 30 years ago I was saying I'm trying to I'm trying to keep okay I was in it's like the night early 90s my 40s I would be in my 40s yeah I would say early 90s and all that it started picking up once they they started protecting certain types of shark like uh they put a ban on catching sambar shark once December shark was protected the commercial guys there was no reason for to go long Lane for shark anymore you couldn't make any money what is that shark yeah it's not my shark that's Mark Mark the Sharks uh uh Mako okay uh he just I came up with this with a scientist Dr Castro to look at the the shark and uh so he got a picture with me you know where'd you ask it where did he catch that Miami oh Miami okay you're not a lot you're not allowed to get him anymore but he's got permits he's still out there catching sharks is he really oh yeah yeah he's he should bring him on the show he won yeah yeah he's bombastic and he'll talk about oh is he that's a big ass Mako yeah yeah it's a I think it was 10 feet I remember I've I've encountered Michael's that big in Louisiana as a matter of fact for Shark Week I was writing a big makeup of anything bigger than that one yeah riding it yeah a little hand feeding and writing and everything I did a um a lot of stuff with makos I really like I like that make us a good shark to work with very dangerous but the open ocean sharks will come at you quicker because there's less food out there all right it's like a desert yeah so it's more they're more aggressive yeah which is it's perfect that's a mako shark baby Mako I was a that was an awesome make what carved out of bronze oh you carved it yeah that's yeah that's bronze whoa you can't click on it that's okay look at that Manny that's a bronze I'm an artist so I sculpted that that's that's something that's right there incredible that weighs about 85 pounds it's Hollow but it's still 85 pounds but it looks like a real makeover it looks exactly like a real Mako it looks like it looks like one of those Taxidermy ones yeah yeah no but I did a by hand I did a hammerhead and I did alligator and I did a goliath grouper rods so when you started doing this commercial spear fishing in like your early 20s what what was it that made you did you just like have this inner sort of desire to push the limits farther than anybody else like did you feel like that was kind of what you were destined to do like you wanted to kind of outdo everybody else dive deeper than everybody else find like catch these fish like more primitively than anybody else was like what was it in you that made you at first I wanted to make a living instead of jobs that I didn't like I wanted a Spearfish for a living is I don't want to have a job I like the idea of going out there the challenge of catching fish then later on I was always attracted to catching fish instead of with a spear with my hands and I had fantasies of catching sharks with my hands so later on that'll happen just like catching alligators by hand in high school I was catching alligators but I'm saying like what was it what was it in you that made you have this this desire to do this like what made you want to push all these limits and do all these things that nobody else has ever done I wanted to do what my fantasies were when I was a child I want to do what Tarzan did in movies it wasn't real I want to do it for real um and and I said I may not be the deepest diver in the world or the best spearfish in the world but when it came to hand fishing and all the stuff yeah I took I took off of that um well people wouldn't think of that they wouldn't it didn't cross their mind to try to do right to catch a djang Goliath or to catch a shark with their hands and things like that that all started kicking into me as the more I learned I started studying them and looking at them and I have a pickup I can get close to them I can do this I start seeing ideas like that like catching a barracuda with a knife I saw how close the barracudas came to me and the son told me pull out your knife and get one and I did but I literally hit him with my hands first so I said if I can touch him as you're attacking the fish I had on my hand if I can touch him I can get one with a knife and I stuck and I grabbed him by the neck real quick that's the only Cooter ever caught with a knife evolved a slip the Kudo probably bit me right here I had him right here like this yeah barracudas are terrifying fish even when like I'm diving into spear fishing I'm almost more afraid of barracudas the name of seeing a shark do you feel the same way no I'm not I mean you're not afraid of anything I shot a lot of barracudas to feed the sharks and for me to eat but I've shot so many coolers I could never count them big ones small ones and uh type in Manny Puig after Barracuda and see it find some of the photos but like I know a lot of people have been hurt by barracudas real bad yeah they're they're and they get humongous they get bigger than some sharks too no the biggest crude I've ever read about was long six feet nine inches and so it walk me through how you caught that Barracuda like what was going on then there was a spearfishing competition on Omer they're holding it they invited me there I was they used to sponsored me so that went up there and it was in North Carolina they were in the Outer Banks so the bunch of groups are there so I wasn't I wasn't participating I was just hanging out so I could go with any crew I wanted that day and I went with a these are a doctor and an engineer both of them are fanatical spear fishermen from Cuba and they're very classy guys but but you look at them you couldn't believe how good these guys can dive but they go to all these competitions so those guys were in the water diving they're you know they're getting the fish in Need for the competition free diving or scuba diving free diving it's all free diving so it's in deep water they're going probably halfway down whatever it's 150 to the bottom and the guy on the boat says Manny can you give me a spade fish or a sheep bit is that you know I want to take a home to eat the the meat and the boat asking I said no problem so I took the pulse here she the spadefish swim like mid-water so I went down shot a spade fish and no time they're like 20 barracudas on top attacking me and they were biting at the at the spadefish they're really ready to bite my hands and I was literally pushing them away I couldn't keep them off of me so it occurred to me to pull the knife out stick it so I stuck on the knife and grabbed it by the gills immediately when I stab them he bit harder on the piece of fish and that gave me the Break to grab him real quick if not he go to turn on me then I brought him back a bull shark came up he wanted to eat it but I wanted a picture with that Cuda that I never caught him with a knife I'm not going to catch another one so I want to vote it and get a picture with it so I wouldn't let the bull shark have it oh so what did you do to get the bull shark done not to eat it I pulled I pulled it away from him charged him I got aggressively charged the bull shark when you're being attacked by shark if you show aggression that's usually a good way to save you most of the time not always it'll work uh you want to stay safe from sharks there's nothing better than trusting the Lord thy God because they're his creatures uh he sent me from them many times let's put it this way how did you know that how did you know to charge him had you been in that situation before this episode of the podcast is brought to you by expressvpn when you use the bathroom you always close the door behind you right you don't want some random passerby looking in at you so why would you let people 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countless others so if you're like me and you think your online activity is your business secure Yourself by visiting expressvpn.com forward slash Danny today use my link and get an extra three months for free it's expressvpn.com forward slash Danny it's linked below now back to the show yeah you gotta fight back or else if you run from them I did that experiment I saw shark okay I'm gonna swim as fast as I can to build the getaway right I turn around the shark was a zombie immediately I did it again he attacked me again so I figured out okay if I go after him he runs the other way but if you start panicking trying to get away he attacks if he's hungry like when you're free diving you'll go down and as you're coming up for air sometimes you look down and you see a shark following you because see things you're running away from him and you really you need to get up for air but it looks like you're on the run so you're acting like pray right he is a predator Predator attacks free if you act like a predator you scare him away because he thinks you're gonna sharks attack each other he thinks you're gonna take a chunk out of him [Music] like a bull shark will get attacked by a large great Hammerhead for example right so he's gonna be sure aggression his natural instinct is to run from you so you can Bluff him wow it doesn't always work you were able to scare the bull shark away and you got that Barracuda in the boat I've had to fight off bull sharks a million times in my life as a spear fisherman and also I used to create Shark Feeding frenzies for you know to interact for for the shows and stuff so you can probably there's videos on YouTube of spear fisherman literally chumming up bull sharks and then chasing the bull sharks to shoot Cobia off of their backs and it is like a I think that's a thing people do still on the East Coast where because these giant bull sharks he's like 12 15 foot long bull sharks will just be cruising and there'll be these huge Cobia that just swim like alongside them they attract the shark by pulling the rubber bands on their sphere and popping them then the bull shark thinks you're shooting fish he runs up or they take a plastic bottle and make a sound with it a crackling sound so when he comes up the guys will go that one on the very right top right yeah yeah what yeah they uh that those are following a tiger see they also follow the Rays see but what happens is every once in a while the shark is actually very hungry and and that that one so there's videos of this Kobe actually swimming on top of the bull sharks and they should well they swim they followed from behind when they shoot him sometimes the struggle turn around and attack I know divers have been demolished by doing that by bull shark after they shoot the Cobia the shark turns around instead of going after Kobe it goes after diver and tears them apart that seems like a bad idea it it's a great these guys are gutsy it's a great adventure it's an awesome way to catch a fish but it's a bad idea because you're gonna get killed sooner or later right so have you ever done this I know but I've done other things I've shot fish when I'm running out of bait I'll shoot fish right there to track the Sharks and everything I I've done everything you can imagine you know to to attract uh look at this look at this yeah there you go see yeah full screen this if you can Stephen yeah there's bull sharks you see everywhere there so look they're surrounded by bull sharks yeah well a lot of guys got hurt doing that you may get away with one whoa Not Another Day there's like a hundred bull sharks all around them uh yeah they're looking for Cobia following one of them there's your clothes so there's Kobe is right there yeah there see shoots the Cobia no sharks are chasing him well sometimes the shark is not hungry he's he's got to be hungry for for that to happen if that shark wanted to couldn't he just turn around and eat that Cobia hey they do sometimes sometimes they'll eat the Kobe a lot of times they'll eat the I'm saying like before they shoot it before like even if the no look see there's a bull shark on the attack right there see how that guy fend them off no no rewind that by like 30 seconds yeah yeah he knew what he was doing okay all right let's see what's going on shot the Cobia he's swimming back to the surface here comes the bull shark attack okay see oh he just pointed the thing at him if he turned around try to get the boat that bull shark would have killed him they're getting fired up oh god let's see yeah look at that see how they they're under attack and there's blood everywhere and everything okay get out of the water get out now what where does like a bull shark rank on like as far as like dangerous sharks probably the world's most dangerous shark why is that okay this see how clear that water is imagine being attacked like that and you're in the Intracoastal with zero visibility you won't see them coming right they go up River they go in the beaches and they attack people it's a coastal shark and he's got a holocious temper on top of that he is a man killer man-eater and he's got her lucious temper and uh it's by just lethal his teeth are razor sharp you can shave your arms with them and they can they can bite three times harder than a great white shark three times harder yeah they're smaller but they're deadlier so so how would you compare how is that their their bite is harder than a great white but why isn't a great white so if you were if you were hypothetically we put you in a a swimming pool with a great white and a bull shark how would the great white be or how would the Bull shark be deadlier because it would just be more aggressive to eat you there's more of them in the water they're they're very shy but they're very explosive in their attacks and uh great whites are picky eaters the bull is not as picky oh okay like a tiger usually eats a person because he's not as picky or he's data very varied but a tiger shark doesn't have a bad temper Neo does a great white like a bull shark does okay bull shark and lemons have bad tempers they have high levels of testosterone if if you spear them and he's on the other line he'll come after you if you're catching rod and really get in the water with them usually he'll come after you yeah these guys are still shooting these Cobia surrounded by these bull sharks there might be different days put together but yeah a lot of guys have been bit doing that so this is just normal for when you were spearfishing doing these competitions it was just normal to see these bull sharks you just kind of be gotta be cognitive for a while there's a lot of bull shark out there right now for many years there was no sharks the the commercial long lining of decimated them and it was hardly any sharks around so you know so they pass all the conservation laws now they're back what year did they pass those Converse conservation lines I'm not sure they came little by little you know understand I was out of commercial spear Fisher for quite a while oh yeah yeah but they they started uh no they they one species out to another started being stopped you know you weren't allowed to kill the the Dusky longfin Mako a whale shark great white shark is protected that's why there's more and more of them now right now so of course when you protect something they come back the Goliath grouper was hunted to Oblivion now it's coming back you start seeing more and more the sharks are they're everywhere there's a this balance out there you know uh every once in a while a good Shark Tournament to balance things out might be a good idea yeah I like the spearing because you could Target the type of shark they need to be targeted yeah instead of there's a real rare species you don't want to catch it on bycatch so my idea was you know spring tournament that's my idea nobody nobody's ever going to agree with me but right to go out and uh and have a tournament let the guy shoot several sharks every so often to kind of like level out the fish and shark population to a balance because it's it's if you talk to divers and fishermen they can't get efficient about half our time so is it a do you think there's a problem with there being you said there's way too many sharks out there right now and then people see them everywhere do you think there's a problem with there being too many sharks if you're like a biologist he says wow it's a healthy ocean it's full of dangerous sharks but if you're just a human being want to go in the water it's a bad idea you know it's it's a balance because depends how you look at it yeah the healthy oceans the dangerous ocean but uh I believe that you know God gave us a right to fish hunt and you know grow crops Harvest Food Harvest Lumber whatever we need from the earth the earth provides so we're not we don't worship the Sharks the shark yeah they're in the ocean but we're caretakers but I didn't like oh it belongs to them they're the gods of the sea no they're not there's the there's a God that made them but they're not the gods of the sea many pigs the god of the sea if there's any human that's closest to Poseidon it's you no no no I I no keep it humble I'm uh I believe in Jesus Christ he's my Lord and Savior and I keep it I keep it at that that's his creation that's his ocean so his creation has been my adventure he kept me alive because he can let those animals tear you apart keep me humble once in a while you get things like this oh yeah hold it up on this side Manny's got the the Perma shocker this is uh a rattlesnc bite that's the second rattlesnc bite I got I got bit in high school on this thumb I came out okay from that one this is a western diamond back in Texas and that was a bad bite yeah we're gonna I want to get to that I want to stay on the Sharks for a little bit though and I got bit by sharks I got bit by now I get in the back am I good from that one it came out good from everything except maybe this one I got gored by a boar in this Farm too you there's more and more stories popping up every day about people being attacked by sharks it seems like it's I don't know like it's hard to understand to really know if it's just the media blowing it out of proportion or if this stuff happens all the time they just don't always work it's increasing it's increasing because there's more sharks out there and there's more people in the water so when you put a lot of people a lot of sharks in the water you're going to get more incidents Wildlife is making a comeback around the world in many places and there is a lot of wildlife attacking people as far as bears tigers lions things like that do you know any like the numbers as far as like shark populations now compared to like 30 years ago a whole lot more a whole lot more worldwide not worldwide U.S Waters U.S Waters now worldwide yeah we talk about tiger population is growing in India for example uh leopards in Africa yeah it's it's growing tremendously uh mountain lions in North America yeah including Florida yeah they're increasing bears are increasing a few places Wildlife certain Wildlife is very endangered you know uh Sumatran tiger is in trouble you know a few species like that uh gorillas are thriving lowland gorilla Mount gorilla maybe not so but the lowland there's Parts in the Congo where there's hundreds the couple hundred thousand of them and why are these animals in like why is their population growing so fast uh protection loss and I also believe there's end time God might be multiplying the animals for the end time because they're going to attack people can you explain your belief in that uh the pill the pill writer and the Bible kills one-fourth the world's population through War hunger disease pestilence and by the beasts of the earth wild animals Pale Rider it's a symbol of death destruction that's a Biblical thing so apart from all in all the wildlife I believe the Bible word for word and so it's fitting in the pattern you got more Wildlife more attacks the wolf populations are growing around the world and there's more now do I like Wildlife yeah I'm a fanatic about all I'm fascinated with bears sharks alligators all kinds of fish all kinds of wildlife but I'm a fanatic of all that but I'm aware that that these attacks have been increasing more and more like the snakes kill a hundred thousand hundred thousand people a year venomous snakes these will kill a lot less than that is just it's growing how many people do sharks kill here do you know not as many as like maybe crocodiles and all that they don't really know oh look at this great white shark population is booming researchers say this is posted literally last month okay the result a little bit the result of that is it's real simple you can't kill seals which is what they eat and you can't kill them so we've made this world this design swell up it's a great white shark Haven right there a summer begin the as summer begins uh and people spend more time in the ocean researchers are on the verge of learning more about the mysterious Apex predatorism that swims beneath the surface on the research ship the Atlantic and the Atlantic Ocean 12 miles off the coast North Carolina a group of scientists has been studying and tracking great white sharks we're seeing um an ocean that's teeming with life like we haven't haven't seen since the 40s or 50s Chris Fisher founder of the research organization oh search told CBS News oh search has been studying and tagging great whites for the last decade and that time Fisher has observed an increase in the number of white sharks um uh okay wow so you believe me now oh yeah I never doubted you okay when I was uh doing my spear fishing I never once encountered a tiger shark on the Atlantic not one time now the guys see him all the time they were they have been wiped out there were no tiger sharks left in the 50s there were but after that gone right now when I found my first Tigers we were 100 miles in the Gulf of Mexico with a 500 pound sakuda ripping them apart hour after hour after hour we had a couple hundred sharks around us before the Tigers finally showed up those are my first tigers and I was hands on right away how are you chumming them up with what barracuda barracuda we went out there we speared Cuda after Kuda after Kuda after Kuda Eric Spirit potentially can bite you but that was like normal every day especially filming the Sharks you got to feed them or they're not coming so you know you don't buy bait they're like fresh so they get fresh food you gotta get it right there we go Spirit barracudas to feed them uh when I went to Hawaii they brought me fresh skipjack tuna and that sort of fed the Tigers over there so you were saying a minute ago we kind of got off track but you were saying that the sound of popping the bands on a spear gun attracts the Sharks now because how recent is that sharks are very smart they learn yeah they they uh certain places where they know when the fish are pulling up on the boat and they drop anchor and he's gonna start fishing they pull up because they know he's going to catch fish you're going to steal them sharks are not stupid they're smart alligators are not stupid they're smart right but Florida we have alligator attacks and shark attacks there I know in U.S waters are big because they're protected now if you go to maybe South China Sea they might be getting exterminated over there right I'm not sure like the shine has just about wiped out the Chinese tiger really yeah they have Manchurian tiger which is borders Russia because that's really a Russian Uh Russian protected there there have been two 10 12-foot tiger sharks that have been caught right off the beach right here in the last week yeah uh 20 years ago you weren't here that was unheard of right the tigers are back have you you've let's pull up that video um of that guy in Egypt who got eaten by the tiger shark now I told you this on the phone I was like freaked out when I saw this because I have no I already pulled a tab up for you I have never heard other than like open ocean shipwrecks with like you know way out in the middle of the ocean where like the oceanic white tips will devour and eat the people because there's nothing else to eat it's like a desert out there but I've never heard of a story of somebody near the beach getting fully devoured by a shark like I've heard like obviously you hear the bites well there was a girl killed in shallow water in the Bahamas in front of her parents by three tiger sharks ate her in front of her family recently there's no video of it but they killed her the parents saw it three of them three tiger shark gang up on the daughter uh Hog Island right there where the Hogs that go swimming yeah oh yeah the shallow water she was in her swimming what and they got her there there's a lot of there's a tiger beach in the Bahamas there's a lot of tigers here and they you know when these Saints are hungry they're not daso they can pick up speed and they're devastating predators do you think there's a let's watch this uh yeah full screen that video and the Red Sea the the Red Sea yeah has a when you're off the shore just a little distance it drops to incredible depth oh really so you could be on the beach and you could see an oceanic white tip because you swim 100 feet from Shore in some places and it drops thousands of feet so you have these ocean sharks that come in here there were three attacks in the Red Sea not too long ago by mako shark and oceanic way to the Mako they caught them later on with human remains on his belly and because you go off they were divers you go off the off the reef you know 100 feet or so when you're ready in the middle of the ocean because so the pelagic sharks can visit you right there but the Red Sea has tigers makos and oceanic white tips yeah I think this was like the third tiger shark Fatale in like the last two years off of this same beach in uh Egypt yeah it's uh so what's going on it's not full screening what the frick there you go there it goes right there not full screening that's okay it doesn't matter because we're not gonna see it anyways so what is the shark doing to him right there a remote cutting up the pieces they recovered his body the next day screaming the screen for hell but probably it might have been a leg off already this is horrible there he goes okay understand that uh he's attacking like there's a turtle but he's barely moving okay a tiger shark's teeth look okay you can pause it a tiger shark's teeth look like this they aim this way and then they also aim the other way so what it does is designed for cutting turtle shells in half so he saws back and forth they can slide through bones and everything like this that's what a teeth saw is not just like a giant salt one after another goes like this so he does this and then he'll they'll keep sawing until they cut a piece of turtle shell they eat the sea turtles so it's a tiger shark is his design it's a devastating predator yeah and I guess this was a uh this was actually a pregnant from what I read this was a pregnant female that was like roaming around they had footage of the shark actually on Twitter swimming like around the docks very slowly and they saw it like up to an hour before this happened looking for food sometimes you know they don't find fish to lead the person so what do you do what what would you do in this situation well if you were this kid out there uh don't go in the water if it's clear water which it is out there don't go underwater without a mask snorkeling fins and bring a shark Billy with you to push your shark off to discourage this attack you know make them go somewhere else fight them something to fight them with but if you don't have any of that like if you're just swimming with no got no fins no no don't do it but I'm saying if you already are what the hell do you do nothing like you can't do anything about it that guy no he's a Sitting Duck you can't do anything about it that's in you know pretty pretty the God that he changes the sense of sharks a miracle only a miracle can save them at that time what about like if hypothetically you're you're in that situation do you try to charge it do you try to swim towards it what do you try to do grab its gills Heavies in shallow water and you can run up to it and see him you can kick him when he comes near your son I got it the water's like this deep but if you're over your head and everything you you you he's Come From Below you don't know where he's coming from you you don't have a mask on you have no idea you're you're sitting in the blind you're sitting duck you're totally helpless but a skilled diver like those guys are hunting the the cobias or myself whatever you can fight them off I've had to fight off sharks many many times on the attacks I mean Super intense attacks if you're on the beach watching this well I'm not sure I was too comfortable out there doing this kind of stuff way way way too close all my life it was like a second nature to me to be in the middle of a Shark Feeding Frenzy it's like being in in a party it was just I enjoyed every minute of it but that's the part that's part of it too though because you're so calm the Sharks don't sense any sort of fear no they if you get excited sometimes they back away it can affect them in different ways but the whole idea was for me to get the Sharks fired up so they will come in aggressively to get Photoshop they're off in a distance you're not getting anything so you want the Sharks on you now what that does it puts everybody who's ever working with you in severe danger right and people's people start to get scared too if you have people with you they're not scared they'll be right there with you there are people that are that are that are like that kind of stuff and they'll stay right there not everybody was willing to do that but I give people a false sense of security when I was yeah Stevo was talking about that yeah Steve was saying whenever they were his in the water with you he like wasn't as scared because you were there he felt protected yeah he would he wouldn't pay attention I call it it's a false insecurity but it works you get that you know you you he'll he's he's more comfortable there I put him in bad stuff a lot of surfboard with a bunch of sharks uh biting fish around the surfboard didn't you tell me that he want him or Chris Pontius they wanted to be trolled through Boca Grande in a tarpon suit they we they told they did I'm trying to remember everything they did they come up with a bunch of ideas that I didn't do all of the ideas they had right I noticed one thing we did troll Chris through a pack of uh killer whales in Alaska it was just probably the worst thing ever because everybody thinks killer whales are just no no killer whales are dangerous they're dangerous to think about I can Bluff a shark I can defend myself you believe most those guys can't but killer whales are after you then you ain't gonna be able to do anything I've never heard of a killer whale attacking a human being have you well and and Sea World one killed three people right yeah that one murdered three people because of what they did to it they put it in prison what about if if a killer whale in the ocean decides it doesn't like you or it feels like it doesn't have any laws he doesn't have a rule book okay I'm not supposed to bother people where does that he can just like any animal listen a horse can come up and kick him bite you right okay A dog will bite you sometimes sometimes they won't killer whales have different personalities don't they like great whites they kill great whites they know how they're smart they know how to kill everything out there just you know like if I'm gonna catch a fish strategically you've figured out how to do it they strategically figure out okay that will is bigger than than us but we're gonna gang up on it we're gonna attack it this way they figure out how to to do their their hunt and how to get it yeah so when you were oh yeah and they Beach themselves too they literally freaking swim up on the beach and eat eat seals and stuff look at that God yeah those things are crazy the wild world is a dangerous place you swam with orcas right yeah in Alaska walk me through that day and what you were doing and what made you decide to jump off the boat with a bunch of orcas we're making a show we need action I had uh the we're doing uh Wild Boys and we went on Wheel watching so I put on my suit uh they go okay there's a part of killer whales coming this way and I told the captain okay they're heading that way take your boat pull up in front drop me off and their path so so they'll intercept me and that's how we did that and they came real close to me the water was very dirty so I could only see them when they were very very close to me what the visibility was like what four or five feet I I don't think I could see you wow that's how dirty it was God but I could see the fins and all that coming up and then finally a two of them approaching where I could see their the black and white on them real close up to me like that they they stared at me up close investigating me but all I gotta do is just bite you that's it and he turned down they just grab on you and just drag you yeah but when your adrenaline's running or doing a show it's like the pressure is on let's make make things happen you know you won't do the best of what you where you you want your job to be the best what what was going through your head when those orcas were swimming right towards you were you scared were you comfortable were you just full of adrenaline I wasn't I was full of adrenaline but I shouldn't be comfortable I shouldn't I shouldn't do that again and but at that time the water was very dirty people did it later on in Clearwater but I did in dirty water and some people think everything nothing is fine you feel like for a while okay we're okay we're fine they didn't hurt anybody we're fine keep going okay we got what we want let's just get out of here it's enough is enough oh what is oh is that an orca attacking a human at Sea World yeah jeez yeah that's brutal man see everything's okay one minute then you don't know what a killer whale's thinking sometimes they're trying to tell the animal every animal every alligator when we haven't talked much about alligators I'd spend many years among the alligators Daytime Nighttime diving with them at all hours everything big ones small ones hand catching writing levitating tonic immobility you name it well let's let's go into that I want to watch that video of you uh with the makos real quick okay let's uh that's on one of the tabs where he's uh that's that's the one right there so what were you guys doing this day who this was filming for we're looking we're on the middle of the Pacific you could full screen this one I think yeah in the full in the Pacific Ocean and all the time you're asking me to talk about I don't want to talk about it till it happens so I don't know what's going to happen this is off the coast of California yeah see that's that's uh yeah that's a Mako right there but you see I hand feed and I put my hand underneath them and I lift up on them okay that's a smaller maker we have six makos and three blue sharks that day so you guys are chumming up Barracuda and yeah but what really does it see that fish right there yeah I'm gonna take my knife and work it right see what I'm doing right there that's what makes it happen that's what draws the sharks in okay the the knife is a secret for all that that's a small Mako so yeah that was the first one that showed up and you guys are just you guys are literally surrounded by a Chum tornado I I grabbed this one on another one and then I I flip a big one on his back this one I I let them out of the water and I show them to everybody it is the fastest shark in the world the Mako yes so you don't want to move fast so you want to let them get comfortable like right there you want him to go slow yeah yeah see he just you just got to take it easy and don't move fast let them come around you you don't want to scare them uh this one bites the the float they get they get feisty Mako is very dangerous but see those mako's never going to see another human being again he lives in the middle of the ocean right right so I like working with them because people say well Manny you're you're working these these sharks are on the beach you know these the blues and Maples are not coming to shore I've worked Coastal sharks before but it's been a long time and I won't I won't work them again if I do sharks again it'll be open ocean that way they don't whatever I do with them they don't learn they don't pick up custom they won't attack people on the beach they stay on the ocean so people are safe you don't want them getting comfortable with humans oh yeah you flipped it on its back wow feeding this little Mako and he's just shredding this fish right out of your hands that is wild so yeah that's the fear right that's the fear when you interact with all these sharks all the time and you're swimming with them and spear fishing with them all the time they get used to human beings they're not afraid anymore if you're spear fishing you're worse off because you're busy struggling with a fish when the shark comes from behind and gets you the shark's gonna attack from behind when you don't see them look at that thing what's that like a 10-folder probably about eight that's a nice size makeup always exaggerating on the show you're not sure enough size but yeah it's a it's a probably about 300 pounds they're very heavy a lot heavier than they look they're dense they're very muscular were you ever close to being bit that day or did they like try to bite you one of them uh blue shark almost bit the producer a blue shark almost bit me in a stomach there's a scene in there where I'm pushing off a blue shark off my stomach as I'm feeding a Mako and the blue comes in the bite both at the same time blue shark yeah we got three blue sharks what is the store with blue sharks uh they're deadly as deadly as makos they're different uh they're both very dangerous but a blue shark of you all from your hand he'll take it you go here are you gonna bite this just come up and he'll grab it yeah they're weird looking yeah I'm hand feeding them right there so you did this with Stevo and those guys too uh we did not this part what I did with them is I did I put them on a surfboard one time in the Gulf of Mexico we put a bunch of fish on them we had about 25 silky sharks and eight huge duskies showed up I had them there I also had them with a Mako and a hammerhead and Mako I put them with a hammer and Maple in Louisiana also the two in Louisiana and also put them before with the lemon shark and Shallow Water swimming around them so I've had them about three different times with good good shark stuff the make almost bit his leg off that was a classic is that when you got bit by the lemon shark no I got bit by lemon sharks when we used to dive on them from the boat oh okay at what point were you riding those great hammerheads that was I sat one day and I looked at her footage and said I can write these things and people said you're not no you're not going to build they're not going to let you do that and I went out planning on doing it and I did it uh where were you and the keys and the keys so after that I just rode plenty of hammerheads he doesn't have a bad temper I discovered that I rode a bull shark and I rode a short distance and when I let go that bull shark went after me everything he had really I had to fight him off uh what did you start to fight him off uh my kicking them punching them everything you can imagine you have a spear gun or anything a knife or anything uh no that time because I was uh we had a we had pole Spears for getting bait but we were you know a lot of times would drop everything and we were in there with our hands you know but we were getting bait we had some stingrays that we had a kill down there and they devoured Stingers in Old Time a bunch of bull sharks showed up that devoured out of water was very dirty too and I went down and I caught a ride on one of them it was a huge one and I knew that not not to stay on it very long to a very short Rider he's going to come and get the same thing with the lemon right he'll come back and get you can you find a footage of him riding the hammerheads because that that footage is wild because the the hammer heads are interesting too would you like the hammer heads they'd never bite humans do they they'll never attack a human on the beach I've never heard of a hammerhead uh yeah Hammerhead will attack they will yeah yeah all right so we wanted to we were just looking at we were trying to find the footage you ride the Hammerhead but um you rode a Mako so this is footage of you hand catching it's hand catching a makeover you're hand catching a mako shark holy yeah take it from the first it shows you how I grab them at first so if you want rewind like a little bit maybe a minute okay look at that thing how big is that mako shark right there that Mako is about I'd say five and a half feet about a hundred and something pounds uh this is a very strong shark it looks much bigger than five and a half feet it might be it might be it's very uh I understand they're very dense it could be 180 pounds see how I I just hugs my hands on them yeah because there he goes he's like what the is happening to me yeah so this is how you hand catch a mako shark he's not trying to bite you at all uh if you give him the chance you will many that is the most insane thing I've ever seen people that are just listening Manny is hugging this six foot mako shark and the thing is swimming full speed and Manny is not letting go of it I'm gonna let go when I uh when I get back I told the guy I'm gonna end up back at the boat if I didn't have camera with me or something I needed to eat we would have kept them instead of learning I'm gonna let him there's a producer okay now his Mouse open yeah I'm gonna let him go but I would uh I'm gonna try to keep them but you know we got the footage you know that Michael stayed with us the rest of the day did he really after you did that to him he hung out the rest of the day all the Maaco stayed with us he's like hey Manny come back I want seconds no they don't they don't really care this is another one that showed up they kept getting bigger ones and bigger ones that's a blue the blues are kind of goofy looking they're like little Torpedoes yeah yeah they are you know what else is a weird looking shark is the thresher shark they're kind of goofy looking I've never seen one they can hit you with a tail that's what they do yeah they have a massive tail this is a classic shark though this is like for fishermen when it's hooked it'll jump 20 feet in the air land in the boat bite the fisherman oh yeah they'll jump right into the boat yeah there's uh there's that girl what's her name ocean Ramsay I think she rides great whites like she she'll be like holding on to this great white riding it in Mexico and uh I think it's in Hawaii and oh that's in Hawaii there's a great waste in Hawaii really yeah they I think that some of those sharks if they're well fed and all that they're not hungry you can put your whole family on there you know they're not gonna do anything her videos on Instagram are absurd she is swimming and like like kissing these 20-foot tiger sharks on the mouth like on the nose and they're like they're all there's a lot of people doing that right now I was in Hawaii messing with them 20 something years ago before they were and she picked up where Jimmy Hall left off and everything those guys but I was out I opened the door for yeah click that top one so you can't do this unless you know for a fact that shark is well fed right like you don't you can I they they show the docile side I would fire the Sharks up so I did a different right right but still to ride a great white they you can ride one tomorrow if you get the wrong one the wrong time it might not come out as well okay so they have like they have like different personalities well this the shark is not being aggressive is not being hungry that's none of that he's just cruising yeah she drives down and she grabs this great white by the dorsal fin at that point is if he wants to kill you he can oh my God at that point it's like Jesus at that point it's like riding a whale shark how big is that thing Manny that's about as big as they get 15 foot 16 Maybe more I think the biggest one ever taken was 19 and a half feet in Cuba it was long line when they were hunting for the liver sharks are depleted back in 1945 completely the ocean was wiped out then they came back pleaded again and now they're back again so it's always been depending on on the harvesting there's been a bunch of um tiger sharks attacking people in I think in Hawaii recently there was that you saw the video the tiger shark attacking the guy in the kayak yeah the thing just like Torpedoes and grabs his kayak uh why in the old days they've always had shark attacks here they have a higher tiger shark population than other areas they don't have bull sharks in Hawaii to compete with them this is it yeah but that's crazy for a tiger shark to do that to a kayak look at this they you just had a full screen see when that shark is acting like that I've had them before where they attacked the the Allure you know the boat they attacked the cameramen oh see if you jump in with that shark at that moment it may not be as docile it may be a view if that shark sneaks up on you it's not gonna be it's not gonna be pretty right see the speed of which she comes you got to know uh people who know they know who to play with who not to right there was that there was a I told you another story recently there was these this film crew that was out off one of the one of the um outer islands off of Oahu and they were like scouting for a film shoot or whatever and they had one of those inflatable motor uh what is it called what are the inflatable boats called with the motors on them oh yeah um uh zodiac yeah the Zodiac they were in a zodiac and a a tiger shark bit the Zodiac like a bunch of times the thing was deflating so they had to like haul ass back to shore they're like 300 yards or something off the off the beach so they had to like take the Zodiac full speed back to the beach they got back just in time the the tiger followed them all the way back to the beach these tiger sharks these animals they have behaviors the humans beans I've never seen before when people think they know everything they don't know anything they're going to do something you've never seen them do before they seem hungrier than they've ever been though like they seem like they're with us more and more well there's more sharks they're gonna wipe out their food supply right right and you know it's just like normal there's more the more sharks there are the less fish there are to go around something like that in Brazil there was people there was a slaughterhouse so I used to throw all the leftovers from the cows into the ocean and the bull sharks will come and eat them they shut down the slaughterhouse so the Sharks moved on to the beach and started attacking people um so that's that that's another result of that um we've always fed animals just in the last few years people say oh it's bad to feed you all but men that for hundreds of years of fed wild animals we've always have right we've fed Bears we've had alligators we fed deer everything is out there then in my lifetime I saw an awesome oh that's a bad idea it became like a political thing illegal to feed animals is bad they're getting accustomed to this accustomed to that back in the days that's like yeah people went the Yellowstone to feed the Bears they weren't the keys to feed the kidir and the Everglades National Park and fed the alligators that was normal behavior for humans to do it's a political thing because everybody is so against killing the sharks like don't with the sharks before they wanted to kill them all let's see that's politics and now they don't want to kill him when everybody was killing them when I was trying to film them and I said guys I told my friends you know we're going to fish don't kill them over here because they're trying to get footage you know they're dead we can't film them you know right yeah we need more I need I need sharks you know to you know it's like go get them somewhere else you know that's my mentality I'm not I'd find a honey hole okay leave the spot alone for me and let me work this area where I can find them because we'd go out time after time we couldn't find them and I was a expert at drawing in sharks there's a shark 10 miles away you're coming them up you couldn't find them and I'm an expert I I was the best shark jumper on the planet right I mean I'm stupid of many things but I was good at that so if the president of the United States came to you if uh president uh Joe Biden said Manny pwig I want you to be in charge of all of the Fisheries around the world you're in charge of conservation of all the sea life what would you make the rules for shark sharks how about do the smartest thing to do you know I don't want any species going extinct I would divide them up according to numbers and say we can take this we can't take this so many of this so many of that and I would encourage like harpooning so people don't get the wrong type of shark spear fishing and harpooning spear fishing harpooning exactly what you want Target exactly what you want a lot of people you know it I'm not going to go against Rotten real guys and everything but you know some of the sharks that catch on and let them go They're Gonna Die anyways they've ran into death anyways but you know you kill one shark another one was born to take his place none of the species that I know have people made extinct we didn't make the Hammerhead go extinct we need to make the lemon go extinct the Bulls are not extinct the great whites didn't go extinct a matter of fact they come back so we haven't hunted a species in Florida into Extinction the only thing we ran to Extinction Florida was a black wolf the gray wolf and the red wolf we wipe those out now they got coyotes now we got Caitlyn Florida now we got coyotes bro we're our bear is still here and good numbers lots of them are Florida Panthers coming back versus a Florida Mountain line that's what it is it's those animals are widespread over North America including Florida but everything else yeah the the boys will put up at the Spaniards of 500 years ago the boars yeah they're good the Hogs they're good because that's what a panther eats if you get rid of them the Panthers going to eat the the farmer's cow they're gonna eat the deer the Hunter's gonna get pissed off at him is it killing all the deer right so don't wipe out the wars um you I don't want the Panthers extinctly so don't worry about don't wipe them out I see everything as renewable resource in a game animal if you cut a tree another tree will grow but you don't abuse anything but you can Harvest so many pounds of fish so many pounds of this as food the ocean is not a natural park you know God made us so we could catch fish and eat you know uh I have my views this planet is not overpopulated we can have dense populations in one place like Miami maybe there's a lot of people there but overall the entire planet we're not overpopulated you know that's fallacy we have a lot of wildlife we have a lot of good land a lot of this planet produces a lot of food and properly managed we got room for double what we have a triple what we have as far as human beings I was I was reading something recently there's like a study or uh there was a statistic that if you took all the human beings on Earth shoulder to shoulder you could fit them all inside the city of Los Angeles that's how few humans there are yeah it's like nine billion yeah you you can a population has dropped the last uh 10 years or so we're losing people yeah it's a lot to do with uh like the Plastics and so we drink this uh the water out of cans not plastic but the phthalates there's elastics it's a lot it's a culture you know people are not having kids yeah and uh uh some people yeah they're bent on Wars you know probably in Russia Ukraine is about a quarter of a million dead people on both sides there easy you know so yeah that's a lot of people that would have been alive it wasn't for the war you know you get a war people die you know that uh that tiger shark that killed that guy that was a Russian guy and there was a footage of him when he was right before he got eaten by that tiger shark I guess he was piling around in a kayak like 10 minutes before that and he was talking about ukrainians so then he gets eaten by a tiger shark yeah you know people no reality I don't know I I respect human life I'm a Christian I do uh animals you can kill them for food I don't believe in abusing animals torturing or anything but yeah hunting for food growing cows for food is fine growing crops harvesting Lumber it'll slow down the fires trees grow back we recycle the forest makes everything humans are not just damaging when you clear land let's say for cattle in Florida that brings more grass when you've got more grass you got more deer more Hogs and then you got more Panther more Bobcat right when you have a very a version force it has less wildlife we go in the ocean we sink a wreck that's fish come and live there right so a lot of what we do uh helps out we dig a canal there's a drought the fish go in the canal I have not a lot of the fish would have died so not everything uh the deer there's more deer around the farm than in the middle of forest because the farm has got sources of food right so for every deer we had in North America now uh we got 30 more than a time when the European settlers first got here right the pop-langer deer has grown 30 times over for every one they had we got 30 now that's so much deer we have because woods and farm woods and farm woods and farm yeah one of the biggest con one of the most controversial topics surrounding this to debate is the uh the Amazon rainforest in like down in Brazil and then it's a bunch of baloney when I was a little boy you know I can go back the Amazon was was going to be gone in 10 years so it's completely destroyed the recording and burning it like you could see from outer space I was like I was oh wow they're gonna wipe out the Amazon that's terrible they're going to be no animals left they're gonna do it this is me back then when you were 10 yeah now the Amazon is the same if anything is bigger there's animals like crazy look at pantanalis there's uh every 10 feet there's a Jaguar nowadays well they wiped out all the Cayman so the Jaguars started attacking the cows and they shot the the Jaguars now they came in our back the Jaguars are laying off the cows mostly and eating the Cayman you know pantanau but the Jaguars have you seen the footage just like this they're like 20 feet away from the guys look at my phone every day so there's um my buddy Paul Rosalie who wrote that Mother of God book he uh he moved down to the Amazon like when he was like in his late teens and he started Living down there and he's been like following what's been going on and it's crazy how many more roads there are now 20 years later and how many people are coming in like they're the Chinese and the well are coming in and Contracting all the locals there to cut down all the trees and sell them off well they're they're going on Indian land which that land belonged you know if you own a ranch it's your Ranch if the Indians have a plot of land that you know it's that's your wrench you know private property yeah they're just stepping on uh well they're bringing the Chinese this communism kicking in there again they're going to wreck the place but yeah they but all those roads guess what the jungle will grow over that in 10 minutes you'll leave it alone right the wildlife will come back right but they're not going to be clear well they sooner or later something will happen they'll leave it alone will happen like our species will get wiped out if you clear a forest like in the Amazon when the grass starts to grow all the animals of the forest will be there eating that hmm so when you yeah oh in Florida when you burn a field you burn it down you go back three six months and all the deer and Hogs are there they're eating the new grass growing so the forest has to be recycled so when you do that in certain parts of the Amazon they get burned they get cut down when it starts to grow back that's where the animals go the the pure pure virgin Forest doesn't support that much wildlife and Russia yeah it doesn't they go to where the people are in Russia when they started cutting down all the trees to sell them oh wow they're destroying the tiger forest there's more grass yeah the Stag population exploded so then the wolf population went up to 200 000. because there was so much stag wow in other words if there's a lot of fish out there you're gonna get a lot of sharks and there's a lot of hogs in the woods you're gonna get Panthers you know it's a an area with a lot of fish in game you're gonna get alligators the animals or the deer if you have a cornfield in the middle of force all the deer are going to be there right and they're gonna grow bigger eating that corn right so whatever will like the the Native Americans that lived in the East they didn't have to go in the woods to get a deer they grew corn so they had to do is wait on the edge of the cornfield the bow and arrow and they could get all the deer they wanted right because they were going to come there that's nobody ever thought of that but that's typical if it's like that now it was like that back then nothing has changed right that's interesting people have a lot of fallacy about everything about the wildlife and and what to do about it and how to manage it and this and that they go from extreme to extreme yeah they go from exterminate everything to overprotect everything they don't seem to do things properly the way it should be done over the years of taking a lot of interest and that kind of stuff is I've been watching it all my life and I kept track when I was a kid there were 8 000 polar bears I was into it back then I looked it up now there's between 30 and 50 000. when I was a kid but I was in high school the leper population in Africa sub-sahara was about fifty thousand they were getting wiped out for the Skins now it's about 700 000 leopards the tiger population was down to 2000 last year went up to 3 000 overnight one year in India uh the Java tiger when I was a kid around completely extinct so a few areas that were completely annihilated but other areas grizzly bear populations 120 000 worldwide including six thousand in Japan most people don't know that there's six thousand Grizzlies live in Japan whoa does anybody talk about it no there's a are people worried about Grizzlies being endangered they were back then the Mexican grizzly was wiped out when I was a kid there was still some there I I kept track of that um a lot of a lot of different species like that Mexican wolf I think was completely warped out they're trying to bring it back Jaguars in North America there's a few in Arizona they used to be in Texas there's no Cayman up there in some of these areas there's a few alligators but they're eating cattle so the ranchers shot them all so there's none and except a few in Arizona they're crossing the border from Mexico if Madeline is found from Canada to Argentina's Patagonia Southern Argentina through the Amazon deserts every type of terrain you can find near their mountains lowlands everything wow yeah it's crazy how much different information you can find when you try to search for this kind of stuff it's just like it's really hard to find the information you've got to go all over the place you gotta go the old old information from the old days so they don't change it and go to the archives because somebody will grab the book and rearrange it right so I go back to to what I knew back then I'm a history fanatic most people don't know that um but I like to read the history I like to read my Bible uh a firm believer in Jesus Christ and definitely we're supposed to manage the Fisheries the forests food and all that not to destroy it not to wipe it out or not to to treat it like a god where you can't you know some people want to make the entire ocean to National Park you know it's like what are we gonna eat you know do they really that's some people do yeah they want to save everything and they think that humans are a scourge of the earth and they need to get rid of the world population and get you know get rid of people because they're bad as a Christian I don't believe that mm-hmm but people who don't you know they well I mean it's it's I can see their perspective for sure man we are kind of like a cancer on the earth we're just eating up the Earth then our history look at what we've done like with the way we devour everything because we're sinful we're sinful we kill each other never mind what we do we do wild animals we're killing each other we have uh people need to respect other people respect life in general and uh but no while life is is is a renewable resource and certain areas need to be protected other areas need to be open and back and forth yeah but uh there's nothing wrong with raising cattle there's nothing wrong with growing rice there's nothing wrong with fishing I use a commercial fish myself and we sold the fish so back then everybody whole meat is bad for you sir but it's eating fish then they're complaining oh they're eating all the fish but before there was fish everywhere nobody nobody like fish everybody wanted beef and they started telling beef is bad for you it became a little thing you got to eat fish it's healthy so they then they say no everybody the commercial guys on the ocean then they ravish Wipe Out the sea and everybody whoa you guys said stop eating beef and start eating fish now they're complaining about it you know see the insanity of the whole thing yeah it really is insanity do people really eat Barracuda yeah how many people because it's just it's a Cuban thing I've eaten a lot of Barracuda in my time it's one of my favorite foods that it tastes good it's really good fish but what about single Terra poisoning that's the problem why now why do they have single Terra and what is secretary poison see what Terra is a toxin plus up to pass up the food chain it starts a little fish eating it off the coral and in the Barracuda the older the fish gets the bigger he is and older the more of that toxin accumulates when he has too much of the toxin in his body it becomes uh poisonous to human consumption it doesn't hurt the fish it looks perfectly fine but if you eat it you'll get real sick and why do barracudas have it it ain't just barracudas grouper Snapper amberjack Kingfish they all have it any big predatory fish in the tropics can have it it's called tropical fish poisoning it grows in a Tropics the further north the less likely your gets you got era unless a barracuda swine from the Bahamas to North Carolina right right which it could happen and then somebody caught a NATO over there and he got sick as I'll get out but they're up in that area none of that grows here so it's less likely they'll get up there but eat at your own risk but it seems like people associate sigatera with barracudas more than anything it's like it's politics it's just a presentation yeah yeah a lot of people never got it from a barracuda they got it from a grouper hmm I never got it from Barracuda I got it from a grouper oh really yeah what is it like when you have it what were your symptoms uh diarrhea non-stop uh things that are cold feel hot your it affects your nerves it's really messed up and it takes a long time to get over it for how long it could be years to finally get over you know and if eat another fish that has a little bit on it you'll get their symptoms right back really so you got to lay off a fish for a long long time I was eating freshwater fish for a very long time what is uh what does Barracuda taste like it tastes like I'll compare to Snook really good huh better than Kingfish oh way better that's wild no it's a great fish in certain places like in Central America talk to them people see what they are I never heard of that they ate all of barracudas they caught there are places that people eat them and they never they don't know see what Tara doesn't grow everywhere it's only in certain areas that it so if you catch one like the Carolinas or in Florida a small one you should be fine you should be fine should be but uh you know I'm not responsible for right you don't condone it right I don't know you can do it I just don't like I tell people you want to swim a sharks is a great idea but they're dangerous so they bite you you know I'm giving you a heads up warning um well you told me it was fine no no I'm telling you right now swimming of alligators or sharks is deadly picking up venomous snakes is deadly all that free diving for spear fishing you can black out you can get attacked by sharks sharks are not misunderstood put this in your head it's a very dangerous predatory animal you know it makes it sea unsafe simple as that do I like sharks yeah I think they're magnificent whatever but they are dangerous and same thing with alligators they're magnificent all that but they're dangerous now alligators are very well managed in Florida they're not protected they are protected unless you get your your license if you when season comes around you get a tag you get your license you can hunt it so they don't like just Squat and fill up a truck with them you know you got to have follow the rules and regulations which is orchestrated to protect the alligator is a natural resource and a game animal in Florida you know it's big money in gator hunting and Gator farming and the whole nine yards it's a valuable resource but he's also a very dangerous resource the alligators 400 years ago when the French nationalists came to Florida he couldn't cross St John's river in a canoe without getting attacked by alligators they attacked the Indians and brought daylight they're very aggressive very dangerous after 400 years of people shooting them they they tend to shy away from people when I was a kid alligators didn't attack people you could read in a book they don't attack people as soon as they were protected and their numbers start to come back and it started getting more abundant attacks started happening left and right so alligators do attack people look at the history they did he just when they came back they started doing it again so then they started hunting again to slow down the attacks but for a while they were attacking people left and right now they got a nuisance control that if he's in the city he's in your swimming pool on your canal in your backyard whatever they remove them before he attacked somebody kills your dog or your kid or you you know just last month somebody got the Devour by an alligator on red thought I saw that this video of it yeah there's all kinds of people getting attacked all the time I've been attacked a bunch of times by Gators I spend I spend more time in the early days of the alligators and even the Sharks really my I encounter sharks they started working hunting sharks at 25. in my 40s I started interacting with sharks but I was hand catching alligators since high school all the way until you know the later years now what is your process if you're you know one weekend you feel the urge to go catch an alligator in the wild in some lake in Florida how was the process on in going about catching a Gator by hand well back in the day I would dive on them have somebody to hold the light on them I come running and dive on them exactly at night tackle them hold them anyway sure any which way I could suicide attack basically now I levitate the alligator I back away from him grab them back away from and when he tires a little bit then I I take him down so you only at night though no I I do it I can do it in a daytime underwater now I can go get an alligator underwater okay anytime I want do I do it nowadays not really I haven't done it since uh TV shows I've avoided it I'm an artist uh you know already lost a finger to to a rattlesnake like a bit by an alligator in the back the good Lord told me enough is enough I was swimming down a canal I got ambushed so I got bit by rattlesnake I got bit by an alligator and scored by a hog all within a couple of years to agenda of my time doing all this kind of stuff it's sometimes okay the Lord does something keep you humble I slow down I got a family now so right you know I got more responsibility so I do I focus more on my artwork right pull up one of those videos of Manny levitating a giant alligator was that the canal monster I think I think the monster is one of my biggest I have a tab pulled up for the canal monster I believe I got the two biggest gators one is in North Florida and this one is in South Florida okay gave you some a little bit of volume yeah he's already gone under so I'm gonna tell you okay so you are this this canal is full of hydrilla on the bottom yeah I've seen him from the from the van I I encounter them twice of the monster and then like a ghost he begins to materialize he has left the bank and is facing directly at us what you're seeing on the surface yeah he is about to mount a full attack I like the voiceover he is arching his back as a threat is he really arching his back yeah this thing is literally swimming right towards you right but if he's gonna attack you he's not going to just be chilling on the surface like that is he he's going under now oh now he's going under as he sinks below the surface I dive all the way to the bottom get below him and grab him by the shin oh my God this stops the attack but now I have a dinosaur on my hands you just grabbed him by his like his neck fat skin of his neck s and barrels away that's like a what 15-footer 13 plus they haven't seen a 15-foot alligator I think in Florida oh really the record is 14 foot and a half around there he Glides so I stop near the bank not much bigger than that so if you move it forward uh it's gonna be he's gonna I'm gonna run him out of there but I'm still killing time but he goes into a hydrilla and I levitating one more time all the way to the surface oh wow yeah just move it move it uh a little bit so he's hiding in like a little Cove right now and like the mangroves yeah no he's gonna I'm gonna he's gonna go I'm gonna I can't get to him so I'm gonna try to get him out of there I can't even I I can pick up an alligator by the scoots just when he's so big I can't oh my God and he's not even doing anything hmm even though you're with him he's just laying there yeah I like it is that big or great to work with and very deadly we bite you he will crush everything in your body that thing will kill a horse or a cow that'll kill a whole drag a whole cow in the water and alligator that big one oh he's trying to escape he's trying to run away I'm gonna run him out of there things are Goliath I'll pick him up once or two or three times and no more because then he'll he'll he'll attack you still trying to escape on the very bottom well no he goes into the hydrilla now I gotta go find him in the hydrilla he's like Manny please just leave me alone bro just trying to take a nap how long can they hold their breath for the whole day of one that big forever how long hours after hours they can hold their breath a big one like that that's an incredible are there any other animals that can hold their breath for that long uh sperm whale oh yeah whales obviously uh they go one hour on the bottom a mile deep to find squid look at this you just got him right out of the hydrilla see when I put the head straight up he goes into tonic immobility just like a shark so when you put his head vertically like that he's like sort of in a trance yeah it it gets for a few seconds he's out of but see once I hit the surface he exploded right but you can see the size of them as you spun around them but I've done that so many times over the years I had so much time with the alligators now he's gone no no he's still he's cruising yeah producer's running he's got the camera on him right now he's chasing him looking at him he's talking about it see do you think that your mother no no no more leave them back off right right he's pissed now that thing what I'm saying are are you are humans more vulnerable in the water with a gator or like right next to the shore uh in the water probably probably because I'm sure you can jump back or do something you still got you're more clumsy in the water the alligator is very agile in the water you know he can catch fish underwater he's super fast but they can run extremely fast can't they short no just a short burst from here to here he's not gonna catch you have you seen him coming down the road out here just run the other way he's not going to catch you really everyone I've always heard that like if you run in zigzags like they can't they can't make sure just run straight uh if you're behind a a tree or something or a post you could behind him he's got to get around it so you can always get around it and he he can't get around you know Levy's here he's gotta attack this way he's got a back way so you can get on this side so you're gonna be around the pulse all day long oh okay like a telephone pole he can't get you no have you if you use your brain he can't bite you right if he could be on the telephone pole it goes this way you go this way you go this way right right right right he can't get you and what happened when you actually got bit by one uh I felt like somebody having a baseball back across baseball bat across my back I was swimming down a canal and I was looking for fish a hand catch I really levitated a couple alligators that day and I got lazy didn't look behind me it's supposed to look behind you in case we want to sneak it up on you and sure enough one came behind me and bit me in the back I felt like a bomb went off on my back he didn't get a good grip on me if you would have got a hold of my arm you would have ripped it off but he kind of like slipped away from my wetsuit pulled away with and he didn't he put 12 scratches on my back and a bruise here he didn't get a good grip on me and I was able to get away from him and I came out pretty good from that one I went after him chased him off well you charged him yeah right after he did that yeah grab him by the neck and all that and went with them to the bottom and then he took off what well in order to turn around over so he doesn't come after me again and then I I was able to get on the Airboat and I said if I could get an airboat you know kick up on the side I might be okay when I pulled my wetsuit back they took a picture okay it's not that bad but I said I I gotta get in and put bleach on it and everything's up because they can infect you yeah and but when I saw it wasn't that bad it came out very good out of it I just pour some some liquor on it and you were good uh yeah it came out very good from that one good Lord now what about crocodiles what's the difference between crocodiles have you ever with a crocodile before crocodiles are faster but they don't have the endurance of an alligator that's what I know about them hmm the alligators a guy from a fishing while I told me a long time ago when they used to caption for tagging and all that the alligators fight twice as hard really that's fascinating I know in like uh Costa Rica the Crocs are a big problem even when you surf near the river mouths like they chill out there it's the same Crux we have here I've never seen a Croc here um they're here I've seen them really oh God not on the beaches though I've seen them underwater uh and Key Largo the mangroves a flamingo it's a good place to see him okay uh yeah they're all over uh that's a Turkey Point uh Key Biscayne Coral Gables there's a lot of men like around Coral Gables and all that Miami and the canals right and Biscayne Bay um you know Florida Bay all that area has got all the way in the keys right all the way to a Big Pine all this crocodiles all through there right they just can't handle they swim over from Cuba so it's invasive right right listen everything's invasive everything is yeah yeah they either we brought them or they came on their own right coyotes came on their own manatees came on their own and crocodiles came in the room they all came from Cuba yeah and they were in the what a coincidence they found in south Florida Cuba and Jamaica what does that tell you in Haiti right American Crocs and in Costa Rica and both sides of Pacific so but it's the same crocodile the acutus American crocodiles it's a very big crocodile by the way what is uh are there a lot of deadly snakes in Florida like rattlesnakes and stuff like that where is the biggest population of man killer snakes in Florida or is this the US in general uh probably California's got a lot of rattlesnakes right they got Southern Pacific rattlesnake I've played with those before that thing bites you you're going to be bleeding out your eyes nose and ears and everything it dissolves your brain is horrific now those are in California yeah Southern Pacific rattlesnake now when in the in Florida we have the biggest rattlesnake the Eastern Diamondback it's dangerous rattlesnake is found here we have the cotton mouth and we have the coral snake and we have the pygmy rattlesnake the smallest the biggest and then in North Florida you get a few copperheads and uh Timber rattlesnip which is a king break in North Florida but South Florida is only four species okay two types of rattlesnakes coral snake and uh cottonmouth and water moccasin is the same animal um yeah they're yeah those things are swimming around the lakes and stuff yeah now the cottonmouth bites you it'll rot you away a rattlesnake if you get bit by Eastern Diamondback you don't go to hospital you're gonna die simple as that you get bit by any venomous snake just go to the hospital but what like if you don't value you may lose a hand or arm or who knows what so a cotton mouth if you give it by a cottonmouth there's no saving you yeah go to the hospital go to the hospital you could potentially be saved yeah yeah it'll save you survive it you may get permanent damage is there in your legs is there any snake that if it bites you there's there's no chance even if you do go to the hospital um if you have everything right there ready to go you'll survive but if you get bit by a cobra in the jungles of India you don't have uh anything to save that you're gonna die um a coral snake it'll kill you unless you get any Venom or get in a respirator because it paralyzes your lungs cruel snake is like same Venom as like a cobra what kind of snake did you get bit by when you lost your finger uh Western Diamondback which is like the second biggest rattlesnake where was that Texas Texas what was going through your mind when that when that rattlesnake bit you uh when that rattlesnc bit me I said I messed up um calm but I was like it's like depressing okay the trip is over all the plans you had are over uh uh you're in big trouble right if you look at the video when it's on uh and when it shows me getting bit real wild yeah there's children getting bitter I look real calm I'm holding the rattlesnake in my hand I told producer they got me and he goes you're kidding me no I kind of like I don't want to tell them but you know I gotta tell them I was like embarrassed to tell them that it got me you know that's it right there that's the one yeah into the snake the snake filled the entire frame and as he reaches in to pin its head and he got me to see it it was so lightning fast it was so powerful that everything just went crazy and I could see Manny did get control of it but my heart was racing and I was really hoping that he hadn't been bit but I couldn't really tell he had no clue I saw Manny's hand reached in and grabbed you can see it's here oh no I missed it well you had that the little camera in there yeah turn the volume up a little bit really hoping that he hadn't been bit but I couldn't really tell so when I saw Manny's hand reached in and grabbed a snake by the by the head oh that snake just started moving and twisting and it was such a powerful animal and I knew that Manny was in trouble I just didn't want to believe it can bring it up that I heard him say I got hit with my heart sank to my stomach when we came upon the snake to get that guy that's bug Metal He's famous he's got a great beard I mean he never misses a click so as I watched him his methods and his techniques I knew he was going to be able to get it done so as he went for the grab the snake was so huge he got the grab perfect I mean the snake's head was this big and the grab was perfect but the snake was it wasn't perfect I needed to be closer in his hand and actually sunk the Fang into one finger and into his hand see right there oh yeah a fight for his life because the snake was just Giant and the Venom amount was just huge I mean it had to pump everything it had into him and he calmly looks me in the eye and says he got me you're smiling and the chill ran down my spine it was like being kicked in the chest and I knew what Manny was in for he was in serious trouble and we are a long way from a hospital we're 50 60 miles from the hospital you got that yeah from that moment on I knew it was critical that what is that sound or he's going to die I mean this wasn't a little snake bite that when you're dove hunting or just out walking around he gets you you know because that's just a quick strike and the amount of Venom is just enough to kill like a small rat or a rabbit this was a huge Fang Viper that injected everything he had in the Manny give me the toss give me the snake tongs once we realize what had to happen our main concern the entire crew was get married to the hospital as quickly as possible every second counts to the guy let's get going come on Buck I need you to pick up so what was going on right here with your hand how did it feel so the pain is a unbearable pain just like you know you want to shoot yourself a penis so bad so you're immediately after that you're rinsing your hand with water they're all getting you to the car and it's just unbearable pain in your hand unbearable pain then go to the hospital and then the pain that lasted for months and months just wouldn't go away so right away what did you did you tourniquet around your arm or what did you do no you're not supposed to do anything really yeah I put a cool Chicken on it but not even supposed to do that you're supposed to leave it alone will write you out even more really yeah so you just let it roll you just let it roam so your body can fight it and how long was the car ride back to the hospital they did it pretty fast they were going 110 miles an hour they did uh like 70 miles away but they got me there and like I don't know real quick oh my yeah it was about 45 minutes or an hour before they started getting the Venom in me probably about an hour I was sitting around come on could you imagine having to get to the emergency room like oh yeah sure take a number wait in line yeah they were like real relaxed for the hospital guys I need about 55 gallon drum of Anti-Venom like now I'm gonna be dead in like 15 minutes we need you to uh hurry up so they went in there to put anti-venom in you and and then uh then what happened after that uh then I stayed here for several days four days Buck took me into his house I was in his house I couldn't get an airplane and go home I was in so much pain so two weeks later I went home and my brother-in-law saw me cleaning my finger and he saw a finger he said you need to go to the hospital took him to the hospital then they the doctor said you got to take that finger off it's rotting away how long after was it probably about a month I was riding away so it was just all black where you're where you got yeah you can take them off if you want yeah my ears hurting no it's okay we can take them off so you went to the hospital yeah and what was that what did they do the same day you went in there no no when I went to Amphitheater yeah they uh come a little closer they kept they kept me overnight and they amputated uh uh the finger and I told doctor we'll do it as quick as you can so I can get over this you know and I said uh he goes well I can take the whole bone out make it look better no I don't care how is the hand more efficient I don't care what it looks like he goes if the finger does survive it's gonna be like a hook you're gonna get in a traffic accident when you're driving um so to make your hand more useful you got to take it off sure that was it and how long did the pain last after they amputated it when I levited a large alligator I was already missing the finger wow but was like the sharp pain there for a for a while after the amputation month after month after month I forgot how long it was it was just a never-ending band a hand was swollen forever it was fully morning and try to stretch it the pain was unbearable it was just like I couldn't pick up a cup of coffee and it would fall out of my hand I didn't have a hand was so weak good Lord no more of that you're retired you're officially retired from catching snakes and alligators and sharks and uh you're just focusing on your art now uh focusing my heart um stigma that that's a gift that God gave me it was an art I was an artist since I was a little boy I was always in school I had terrible grades except for art class I was always the number one student in the art class so I was into art wild animals that's what I like I wasn't into sports you know basketball baseball or anything I mean it's great I like it athletes are great and all that and I'm happy for them but it was never my thing I'm not into it the wild the Sea and the the forest was always my thing now do you ever just like do you ever just like want to go out and just catch a fish on a rod and reel like traditionally or is there is that just for you I sometimes like I go out with my friends sometimes gigging Tilapia at night from the Airboat throwing a trident at him and that's like okay we'll go out and have a great time with the guys catch a bunch of tilapia take them home filet them and eat fresh fish that's more like my idea of hunting nowadays right uh I don't want to get big fish anymore I want to get medium-sized fish just tough to take home to eat my idea before was the action for the video but I've done so much of it that why am I gonna do any more I'm not gonna top it I've already done right pretty much so I've done it is everybody's out there messing with the sharks and everything right now but I was doing that 20 something years ago so I was ahead of the game and all that now I mean God bless them all and they're all into it now but it's uh yeah it's a dangerous thing and but everybody wants but there's so many people doing it it's kind of like you want to do what nobody else is doing at the time I was doing it nobody was really into that kind of to the point that I was doing it what made you want to specifically design these tridents like what is the Tactical advantage of having a trident these three-pronged people don't know what it is once you grab that trident you just made me for me and show and I'm pulled up so you can see it this is a trident this is one of my specialties a work that I do I make this out of 316 stainless these were done to catch fish to hunt the first stride and I designed a big one was because when you throw it instead of one point you got three points coming out and that's like that giant one on the wall back there that you made me that's for catching a wild boar wild boar alligators uh yeah that one's probably got alligators before that one's heavy as I could barely hold that thing yeah well that use a weight momentum for Hunter right I caught alligators by hand but when we took out you know I guided take out alligator Hunters these guys okay they want to get an alligator a trophy gate or whatever they can use a gun or they can use a trident on private land and a lot of them would use the Trident they would Mount the gator pack the meat take the skin or meet home with them and then a lot of times they bought the Trident yeah so now when you hit a gator with a trident like that or like this do you have to like aim for a specific part of their head no if you hit them in the head it'll bounce off oh you can't hit him in the head no and the body to hold them and then you got to cut the vertebrae here with a knife or an ax so when you when you hit him in the body with the Trident you like in the back or something yeah it's got a rope on it and you hold it off no they don't take off with a trident they take off with a harpoon tip and then you gotta follow them for a while when you hit on the Trident they stay in the same place and they just spin around and twist it uh they don't maneuver well it does it quicker oh okay and it Trident actually the Harpoon does they use doesn't actually kill them they tried in dust so after you hit them with the Trident they twist around then they tire out and then you have to jump on them and you have to well pull them out and have the guy uh you know this is a guy is hunting he wants to go on a primitive hunt he could have used his rifle he could use a bow and arrow against the Trident we left the option for him to do if we want to do a primitive on the Trident and you know a lot of times they do but I like medieval stuff I like history I like ancient weapons I mean dragons are used for fishing that was originally what they were four but uh the Roman gladiators decided to use them on each other so you see that in the arena Gladiators are fighting each other with these things which isn't you know it's a horrible thing to do but to attack another human being you know right having each other so for entertainment and going at it you know right uh I guess some people still like that kind of stuff they haven't changed I I there was a gladiator event and they were fighting each other I don't want to see it no I'm at that point in my life no I'm not interested in seeing two people go at it with this right uh you know that's ancient Rome mentality no so once I hit the gator with the say hypothetically if I'm gonna go try this and I hit the Gateway that needs twisting around how do I go in there and like actually like you pull him and his life you pull him and you you see I have an extra Trident an extra Harpoon sticking the other one in it's a process and then pull them out and then another it's just like three tools and a hatchet to hit them in the back of the head which I also make but I have a harpoon the once he's there you stick the Harpoon to double secure them this will usually hold them okay but in case you guys if you hit him in the back if you hit him on the side the skin closes in around this so it doesn't come out you hit in the back it can come out the same hole because the skin on the back doesn't contract it's like stays the same so I can pull out sometimes ah out of the middle of the back but the tridents that hit the the side here once you get off the scoots the skin will wrap around this and it'll hold it won't come out oh wow as soon as you have to surgically move it out of there so that's reason this is barbed is to it's really to catch a fish so when you're catching an alligator you're catching you know a large fish you know it would probably if you're in the shallows you could probably throw it at a shark very good well that might be too wide for a barracuda huh no that would work for a fat Barracuda yeah it depends you know anything will work on anything that other one that little one over there that'll work on a barracuda very well but like if I hit something like that with a shark or whatever I'm afraid it would take off and I would have to dive in after it and go get the no no you put a see this hole back here that's for a rope oh okay yeah yeah you put a strong rope and you just tie that to something yeah yeah exactly and that's uh yeah you tie that to it depends where you're gonna get yeah I mean if you're in a Flats you can get a shark with this no problem if you hit him from the boat yeah it'll and you put a buoy on it yeah he's not gonna you're gonna get him you know right but if he gets off you got a line and everything on it so you pull you try to back up you know this is pretty strong you know I mean yeah I think this is hard yeah it's industrial strength yeah industrial this is three this one here is three quarters thick solid stainless it's got a tail that goes in here this is crunched smashed in here all this I do it dig this out by hand with a handheld handheld grinder so I do all that and people you make these to order for people like when they hit you up and you know yeah they uh I can get them the fish and tried them which is more like when you got over there or this one those are the two that I'm making so they pick they tell me what they want and we'll take care of it how long can you hold your breath I used to do five and a half minutes 535 to be exact and now I haven't done a long time so I seriously doubt and I'm gonna hold my breath that long how long do you go right now not much long at all I haven't been trained for it you know how do you train to hold your breath longer you train a little bit but a lot of this technique is preparing when you're out of shape you got to prepare better when you're in good shape you can get there quicker you know it's your deep slow breathing but that's what also gets you to pass out on the water and die but like how would you like before you go out in like a a spear fishing competition like free diving competition a tournament or something like that how would you actually prepare to do that to hold your breath longer well you exercise you train you go and do underwater laps you do sitting still you know people spotting you you hold your breath as long as you can without moving uh you do your breathing exercises and everything and then I had a method I do when I was going to be on the water a long time 40 breaths first deep slow breaths now what can happen uh you can black out on the water and die and so and it's a deadly game how do you black out you know you're underwater swimming around you're relaxed you're fine all of a sudden you don't know what happened next you know you be your people rescued you and you what are you doing and you don't remember what happened it Total Blackout is that reality does the blackout happen only when they get to the point where you're like really close to being out of breath no the brain doesn't tell you how much oxygen you have it only lets you know how much carbon monoxide you have so you've been exhaling and breathing fast you could be out of oxygen you don't know so when you run out the brain doesn't let you know you think you got plenty of air and you don't have any you don't have any more oxygen left you fooled your brain and does that happen from just holding your breath too much and doing too much free diving friend us mainly from the deep breathing from the deep breathing from the breathing fast breathing hyperventilating before you go down oh you deep breathing you hyperventilate to get rid of the carbon it see to be able to relax on the water you got to have get rid of your carbon dioxide that's what makes you when you want to breathe it's not that you're out of oxygen as you have too much carbon dioxide in your blood so the trick is you fool the brain then you can stay down as long as you want till you die have you ever blacked out free diving uh yes I have in a swimming pool in a swimming pool yeah yeah uh the girl was training for free diving pulled me up and I asked her I asked her what are you doing you're disturbing my my routine and she goes no you're blacked out you're completely out so I will watch her she's watching over training a swimming pool as our team at the time uh his work on Mark and Megan she was Mark's girlfriend [Music] she was freediving Champion Megan freediving free diving Champion oh really yeah for the us at that time Shield a record for male and female at the time after you blacked out what did you do did you did you just like take a break for a while or did you go right back in did you grab I can start diving again no next day I was diving again the only thing I was more cautious because make sure you have somebody walking close if you're close to blackout and you don't black out you'll get like a dizziness and that's a Samba when you black out you won't get that you fall away you'll never get that warning but no warning at all you just black out but if you came close and you survived you're whoa you could feel there was a dizziness um so that that's that's like I did that too many times diving by myself going down 100 and something feet to shoot fish freediving waiting on the bottom to shoot a fish I would go 110 feet of water and lay on the bottom for like 40 seconds at 110 feet yeah just laying the bottom down there I would start counting at the time myself when I was on the bottom and then I swim back up so all by myself so with weights on your weight belt uh if I had a speed one I would use four pounds because I was very lean back then if I had a wetsuit on depending the thickness I would put more weight depending on the thickness of the wetsuit I could assume 400 feet underwater so important so you could go 300 feet dive down 200 feet and and uh 200 feedback you know but swimming both ways so when you go down you don't kick it's only halfway you fall you only kick on the way up right because you're fighting against the weight the weight belt once you you put a little bit of weight once you break 30 feet you should be able to Free Fall and then you just align yourself in the deeper you go as your lungs compress you speed up down and you keep clearing is there after a while I can't get air into my ears and I gotta stop I blew an eardrum doing that uh how deep how deep were you when you blew eardrum man it could have been 180 feet or 200 feet there was a marker 220 I could see it I was trying to get to it and uh the watch only marked to to 165 after that it quit marking oh my God that was a gauge so I kept going after that and then boom sound like a firecracker going off in my head you lose your equilibrium and when that happens but I got up so quick before I lost my equilibrium I aimed and shot for the surface a million miles hey you hurt yourself doing that yeah well I mean when you go home you blow your nose air comes out of your ear and I blew another one with a power head too so I've blown both of my I've blown both my eardrums blew him with a power head yeah it just blew up next to you I fired and it went off in the water and the concussion oh my gosh stop the eardrum that's insane man well Manny thanks for doing this I really appreciate it this is uh I thank you for the Trident and uh bringing this t-shirts and all the photos and everything maybe we'll do something in the future man you know get some other clients here I would love to get you here again man I'm a huge fan of what you do in your artwork especially where people that are like watching and listening where can they find some of your stuff or how can they contact you if they want to get a trident or show your knives too hold your knife up uh Manny Puig on Instagram I just contact you message yeah there's a picture of me holding a shark jaw I got my face in it yep a bull shark jaw and just Manny putting his contact in and let me know I got t-shirts hell yeah I got a nice I got necklaces all kinds of goodies look at that tiger shark teeth great that's a great white tooth right there great white and also have uh Fish Hooks oh that's great too Hawaiian style Fish Hooks that's incredible man yeah I made crosses too oh yeah my cross a new car of custom custom into them like people's names or yeah kind of custom messaging them yeah they can custom their name on there that's beautiful this one here has got 316 it's 316 stainless right 316 is also the most famous version Bible yep you know John 3 16. definitely awesome Manny well thanks again I very much appreciate it I'll link your Instagram below people to contact you and we'll get you back here to tell some more stories definitely cool Goodbye World great time take care

Channel: Danny Jones

Views: 150,465

Keywords: Koncrete, documentary, exclusive, independent, interview, interviews, koncrete podcast, podcast, underground

Id: bT1QPEEIgjI

Length: 128min 25sec (7705 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 09 2023