Father's Day - Swordfishing with my son Paul in Venice - June 16, 2019© Photos Posted by Mark Primo Miller © Hi-Res Source
This was a last minute trip to Venice, Louisiana, where my son Paul works. He called me the evening before and asked if Pam and I would like to go Diving and Swordfishing on his boat (a 24' BlueWave Bay Boat). So we got up at 3:30am and headed on over on the 3 hour drive. We went to the Lena Platform (MC-280A) first which I had really been wanting to dive because rumor has it that they will be removing it soon. Exxon’s Mississippi Canyon 280-A (Lena) platform represents the first commercial application of the guyed tower concept for offshore drilling and production platforms. The Compliant Tower is in Mississippi Canyon Block 280 at a depth of around 1,000 feet and began producing oil in 1984. Sadly, It is scheduled to be removed by 2021 due to Idle Iron Policies. The dive went well but all the record fresh water flooding was making it less than ideal. There was heavy murk down about 20 feet and it gradually got better and was eventually diveable around 100 feet. I pushed on down to 218 feet where the water was clear but it was very dark and was more like a night dive. I came back up around 100 feet and went toward the interior but realized there was so much piping and it was so dark that I could easily get lost in there like cave diving so I went back out to the exterior where I had some light. There was a Supply Boat on the East side that was pushing a lot of water and apparantly many of the Sharks and Fish were hanging over there. I was able to come across a large school of Ocean Triggers and poked one for dinner. Afer the dive we went on out to the Sword Fishing Grounds in 1500 feet of water. Quite an experience to watch Paul rig up a big squid and drop the hand crank Tiagra 50 Wide down 1500 feet. At one point the line went slack indicating something was swimming the 5 pound weight up toward the surface. However, after all the cranking we had a little line tangle but no fish. We were fishing with the Big Boys and I did my photography thing and got some shots of their beautiful vessels and even some hookup shots. It was a grand Father's Day even though we did not land a Sword.
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