Tom Rowland Podcast Episode 299 is a live Q&A with Cameron Kirkconnell, one of the most accomplished spearfishermen alive. Cam holds 18 spearfishing world records, has guided clients to 30 more, and is an unlimited tonnage master mariner. He has visited 90 countries, including Antarctica and the Arctic, and runs a premier international spearfishing guide service. We streamed this one live across Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram and took questions from the audience while Cam walked through a life spent entirely on the water.
Listen now: press play in the player above to watch the full conversation, or stream Episode 299 on your favorite podcast app.
Cameron Kirkconnell is an elite spearfisherman and international spearfishing guide. He holds 18 spearfishing world records and has guided clients to 30 more on guided trips. He is an unlimited tonnage master mariner and ship captain who has visited 90 countries, including Antarctica and the Arctic, and runs a premier guide service targeting world-class fish around the globe. He has never held a job that was not on the water.
Cameron holds 18 spearfishing world records of his own, and he has guided clients to 30 additional world records on his guided spearfishing trips. That combination of personal records and records set by the people he guides is part of what makes his resume so unusual in the sport.
Cameron has visited 90 countries, including Antarctica and the Arctic. His travel started with his career on ships, where he worked roughly six months of the year and used the rest to explore, beginning when an engineer on his first ship told him not to go home but to travel, prompting Cam to grab a backpack and head to Bali.
Cam attended the Merchant Marine Academy to study working on ships and started his career as a ship officer, ultimately earning an unlimited tonnage master mariner license. Because ship jobs ran about six months a year, he spent the off months traveling and spearfishing, which over time grew into running a premier international spearfishing guide service.
Cam describes how the freedom of the lifestyle reshaped his personality. Being able to be as solitary or as social as he wanted removed any fear of walking up and talking to anyone, making him open and outgoing. He also recalls the early days when underwater cameras were so big he had to carry a five-gallon-bucket-sized rig in one hand and his spear gun in the other just so people would believe his catches.
Tom Rowland Podcast Episode 299 with Cameron Kirkconnell is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and wherever you get your podcasts. The video version is embedded at the top of this page.
Cam's resume is hard to believe: 18 spearfishing world records, 30 more for his clients, an unlimited tonnage master mariner license, and 90 countries including Antarctica and the Arctic. We tried something new with this one and ran it as a live Q&A across three platforms so the audience could ask him anything in real time.
Press play in the player above to hear the whole conversation.
The number that stops people is the records. Cam holds 18 of his own and has put clients on 30 more. He talks about what it actually takes to chase a world-record fish on a single breath and why guiding others to records means as much to him as his own. Worth hearing in his own words.
Cam has never had a job off the water. He went to the Merchant Marine Academy, worked on ships about six months a year, and used the rest to travel. He explains how an engineer's advice on his very first ship, do not go home, just travel, set off the journey to 90 countries. Listen to that section of the episode.
I had to ask what he was doing at the poles. Cam has chased fish and adventure across 90 countries, and he describes how the ship career and the spearfishing fed each other, turning off-season travel into a global guide business. Press play in the player above.
Beyond the records, Cam is candid about how this life changed him. The freedom to be alone or social on his own terms erased any fear of approaching people and made him completely open. He even remembers hauling a bucket-sized underwater camera alongside his gun in the early days just to prove his catches. Scroll up and watch the player above.
Listen to the full conversation: press play in the YouTube player at the top of this page.
What stays with me about Cam is that the records are almost a byproduct of the life. He built everything around being on the water, and the achievements followed.
Doing this one live with the audience asking questions made it even better. It is a rare look inside one of the most accomplished careers in the sport.
Press play in the player above to hear how it all fits together.
Cameron Kirkconnell · Merchant Marine Academy · Saltwater Experience · The Bahamas · Antarctica · the Arctic · Bali
The Tom Rowland Podcast brings you long-form conversations with the most accomplished anglers, hunters, conservationists, and outdoor professionals in the game. Listen to every full-length Tom Rowland Podcast interview.
Cameron Kirkconnell is an elite spearfisherman, international spearfishing guide, and unlimited tonnage master mariner. He holds 18 spearfishing world records and has guided clients to 30 more, and he has visited 90 countries, including Antarctica and the Arctic. A Merchant Marine Academy graduate who has never worked off the water, he runs a premier guide service targeting world-class fish around the globe.
Full transcript of the Tom Rowland Podcast, Episode 299 with Cameron Kirkconnell.
Cameron Kirkconnell: The realization that you can really be whoever you want. You can be as outgoing or as introverted as you want. If you want your time alone, you can have your time alone. You could spend as much time by yourself as you wanted, or you could go out and talk to anybody. And it really changed my personality in that it allowed me not to have any fear of going up and talking to anyone and just being open. So that was the biggest growth for me.
Cameron Kirkconnell: And then the next level of that was opening up and being able to find new spots and to get really, really good at spearfishing, tweak my gear, and start videoing as well. Because back then, the underwater cameras were massive. So in addition to the spear gun, I had to carry down this basically five gallon bucket in the other hand to try to film anything so people would believe me about what's going on.
Tom Rowland: If you don't know who Cameron Kirkconnell is, he is an incredible spear fisherman. He has traveled all over the place. We're going to go through his resume. This is being live streamed. We're going to try something brand new. We've never done this before, but a live podcast where we're going to talk to Cameron today. It's going to be on my own Facebook page at the same time simultaneously, and it's also going to be on YouTube live simultaneously. So three places live, and also on Saltwater Experience Instagram. So glad to see so many people here. It's awesome. I'm sure a lot of you guys are fans of Cameron Kirkconnell. He is really an impressive guy with an incredible resume.
Tom Rowland: Hey, Cam. How are you?
Cameron Kirkconnell: Hey, Tom. Thanks for having me on. I'm good, man.
Tom Rowland: Thank you. We had a bunch of people on here waiting for us to get started. I had a little technical difficulties, but I think everything is working well now. So you got a little bit of time?
Cameron Kirkconnell: Yeah, man. We got the kids the first half of the day since they're not in school, we've got to do homeschool. So that's a challenge. And I'm constantly shuffling around our trips because most of our trips are international. So right now we're kind of shifting everything to do a lot of Florida. I was on conference calls all this morning to set up the yachts and kind of show them the different itineraries that we're going to do instead of going to The Bahamas and international right now.
Tom Rowland: Wow. So The Bahamas is completely shut down to all international travel, right? You come by boat, come by plane, everything's shut down.
Cameron Kirkconnell: Yeah. Just yesterday some guys said, "Yeah, we're over there at Tuna Fish, and we just anchored up on the bank for the night." I said, "Man, you cannot do that." The coast guard and the guys over there are both patrolling, and you absolutely cannot do that right now. They will take your boat. So don't play around. You definitely don't want to go to jail in The Bahamas right now.
Tom Rowland: Right, that would be a bad deal. What do you think about that decision to stay closed? I mean, The Bahamas have zero COVID-19 cases that I've heard about, and the Americans are dying to get over there and go. So I don't know what to think about it.
Cameron Kirkconnell: There are a couple different ways to think of it. First, from their standpoint, they're a very small group of islands that have very poor medical facilities, and the country with the largest number of cases is wanting to pour into there. So from their point of view, I can understand it. But their economy is already hurt so bad by, you know, the Abacos getting smashed by Dorian. This is just like a punch while you're down. It's really unfortunate for them.
Tom Rowland: Yeah, I know. The way to revive The Bahamas is obviously tourism from America, mostly Europeans as well. But when it's unsafe and they don't know what's going on, we don't know what's going on. This whole COVID-19 thing is really a mystery to me. Are we doing the right thing? Are we overreacting? Are we underreacting? It's just a weird situation that nobody has any idea about, I don't think.
Cameron Kirkconnell: And I know everybody doesn't want to hear about all that stuff. But to close that off, I will say that I think the best thing that will come from this is that people be more aware of just watching what they touch, watching what they do, and just take precautions, because that'll help us in the long run as a world.
Tom Rowland: Right, you're exactly right. So Cameron, to introduce you to the audience, because not everybody knows who you are even though you're very well known around the world. Cam sent me his resume before this: 18-time spearfishing world record holder, 30 world records for his clients on guided spearfishing trips, unlimited tonnage master mariner as a ship captain, United States Coast Guard Silver Lifesaving Medal awardee. He's visited 90 countries, including Antarctica and the Arctic, which I would love to know what you were doing there. And he runs the premier spearfishing guide service for international trips targeting fish of a lifetime, both yacht and land based. That's incredible, man. How old are you?
Cameron Kirkconnell: Oh, gosh. I still feel like I'm in my twenties except for my back hurting me today. But I'm, I think, 43.
Tom Rowland: 43. Alright. So that's a lot in forty three years.
Cameron Kirkconnell: I've never had a job that was not on the water. In high school, I worked on charter boats in Puerto Rico and dive boats down in the Cayman Islands. And then I went to the Merchant Marine Academy to study working on ships, and got out of there, started working on ships. And the ship jobs, you work for six months of the year, and the rest of the time you have off. So my very first ship I was on, the engineer said, "Man, don't go home. Just travel." I was like, "Alright." So I just took a backpack and went to Bali and started traveling from there, and that basically turned into the next ten years of traveling in between ships. I basically went everywhere I ever wanted to go and just immersed myself in each spot. And that's how I became better and better at spearfishing, and got to travel to all these places on my own dime to figure them out.
Cameron Kirkconnell: Now it's so easy to go online and find out so much information. But back in the day, you had to be there, and you had to put the time in. I mean, you guys are down in the Keys. It's an old boy network down there. Back in the day, you'd get shut down if you burnt the boys. And now it's everybody and their brother. It's the same thing in many of the different fishing talents. There was that level of respect that had to be built over years and years of working your way up. And sometimes it was nepotistic. Like, you had to be family. You had to be a Bubba.
Tom Rowland: Yeah, that's something we talk about often on this podcast, how with the legends, like when a Robert Trosset or somebody comes on, we had him on recently with his boys who are quite a bit younger, younger than me even. And there's a real difference in how somebody like Robert Trosset started or how somebody like me started, and then how somebody that's starting in the business today starts. It was all about being first on the water, being last off, spending your time on the water, getting referrals from other guides. And now, it's not that that's not important, it's super important, but now it's social media. Can you build a good website? Are you a good photographer? Can you take good videos? It's just a weird kind of a change. I bet that's happened in the spearfishing world as well.
Cameron Kirkconnell: It has. I always make the joke, there's people that grew up doing all the stuff that we do, hunting, fishing, diving, just outdoors period. And then there's the insta-divers and the insta-fishermen that are in it just for the photo. But it's good to have programs like you guys have doing the podcast, because people can learn from this that there's a lot more to it than just the photo. It's the adventure to get there and the process of figuring all that stuff out.
Cameron Kirkconnell: And I hate to say that a lot of that is lost, but a lot of that is lost now, because if you've got the money, you go spend the money on the right charts and the right boat and everything, and you can get there. Whereas even some of those little wrecks that everybody knows about now out in front of Key West, back in the day nobody knew about it. When we were spearfishing Wahoo and stuff back in the day with Steve and Rush, it would be like us and one or two other boats out there. And if they had who's there, they'd call us over and we'd jump in and shoot them there. But now you go out there, and it's a field day with 100 boats. There's no etiquette, and it's sad to see, but that's growth.
Tom Rowland: So how do you deal with that? That's a fine balance. You are operating worldwide. You're going to the most pristine places in the entire world, if you have your choice. Those are the type of places that you're seeking out so that you can go spearfishing where somebody else has never been in the water before. That's the idea, right? So how do you balance what you post online, what you talk about, what you write about, the photos? Are there places that are just off limits, that you just don't talk about?
Cameron Kirkconnell: Oh, yeah. And we talk to the clients as well. One of the challenges, and this was one of my worries very early on is, okay, people are going to try to steal this knowledge. And I'm lucky that in the beginning of starting to do the actual charters, my clientele was very, very high end. So we do minimum three-day trips. So already, it's a pretty big investment. And I tell them, "Look, we're going to go to places that provide my family our livelihood. I've invested my time and money to find these places. I'm happy to take you there, but you've got to understand, we manage these spots over many, many years." And the other guys that work with me, we communicate about it. So we know that we're going to go to this spot. The spot we're anchored on here in this picture, this boat is a 185-foot boat that the client owns, that's him there, and we're anchored up more than a 100 miles offshore out in the middle of nowhere.
Cameron Kirkconnell: As far as I know, there's only been two other boats there. The way I found out about it was my grandfather used to go there on a ship, and then another yacht had told me about it. So this spot, no one's ever going to go, even if I told where it was. But what advantage does it give me for telling people about it? None. And without ever saying where I am or putting up some BS, I'm still able to keep people entertained. It drives me nuts when people tag where they are. The day that Cobias show up or the day that Tarpon hit the Keys, if somebody posts that, the next day everybody and their brother is going to be out there. Why do that? You're just taking away spots. And for the guides, my suggestion would be if and when it turns on, call your clients. You don't have to post it. Wait till the season's over and then start posting it. If you need to fill dates, that's your call, but it just brings more and more people out to the spot. And there is only a finite amount of bottom to fish. So you really have to be conscious of taking care of those areas.
Tom Rowland: Right. And especially as that applies internationally and all these other places that you're going, right?
Cameron Kirkconnell: Yeah. For instance, in Fiji, we've spent a ton of time. I've probably been there 15 or 18 times. Back fifteen, twenty years ago, you would have to go to the local village. Each village owned a portion of the reef, and that was basically their refrigerator. So you go to that island and you present yourself to the chief, and you have a ceremony that sometimes it was an hour, sometimes it was three or four hours. You give them Kava and you give them some gifts, and you're basically asking permission to use the reef. And sometimes you'd go through all that, have a great time with them, and be like, "Nope, you can't do it." It's opened up a little bit now, but that way of thinking is probably the right way to do it.
Cameron Kirkconnell: In my opinion, when I come down there to, say, The Bahamas, like the Far South Islands, we always give the guys that are ashore there the fish. Give them the first choice. What would you like? Because in my mind, they're their fish. We just went out and got them. We're always going to have enough to eat for ourselves, but you're taking away their own personal grocery store. So I think people just need to be very conscious of that. The same thing, if I show up to a wreck and you and Steve are out there fishing on it, I'm going to idle up right to you straight away and just say, "Hey, do you guys mind if we get in when you're done?" Or my classic line is, "Do you mind if we snorkel around a bit?" Because they don't know me from anybody else, and they don't know that I can dive a 100 plus feet and I'm going to find whatever is there. But it's just common courtesy, and it's gone out the window in a lot of places. It's unfortunate.
Tom Rowland: Well, if you do know who you are diving with, I'd be happy for you to go down and let me know what's down there, because that's the best part about filming. With Jake Perry, I know that you dived with him too, he's our camera guy. We stop and get started, and we don't even start fishing until he takes a couple of dives. He's like, "Yeah, looks pretty good, you guys should probably stay here." I mean, it's one thing to look at it on the electronics, it's another thing to have actual eyes down there, which is pretty awesome.
Cameron Kirkconnell: And we fish a lot too. Recently, we were out on some wrecks. You've got the wind and waves going different ways, and we're trying to set up the anchor, and the guy anchored up and was like, "Man, I know you're over the mark, but the fish are 50 yards over here out in the sand. You've got to change." And they weren't catching anything. Sure enough, we shifted the boat and put it there. And that's another reason to have good electronics and use your electronics. Here's the structure, yes, but look where the bait is, and look where the mass of animals are, because the surface wind and surface current is going to be different usually than what's going on underneath. So you spend all this money on electronics, actually use them.
Tom Rowland: One of the questions I wanted to get to, you mentioned that you were in Bali just with a backpack. And a lot of the people listening to this podcast are people that are trying to figure out what it is that they want to do. How did that experience... I had an experience kind of like that too. I went to Yellowstone National Park and kind of found myself, found my calling or whatever, and came back a different person. I'm interested in what in the world happened to you in Bali that gave you clarity on what you wanted to do.
Cameron Kirkconnell: Honestly, the biggest thing, because I was traveling by myself and I had never traveled by myself before, was the realization that you can really be whoever you want. You can be as outgoing or as introverted as you want. If you want your time alone, you can have your time alone. You could spend as much time by yourself as you wanted, or you could go out and talk to anybody. And it really changed my personality in that it allowed me not to have any fear of going up and talking to anyone and just being open. So that was the biggest growth for me.
Cameron Kirkconnell: And then the next level of that was opening up and being able to find new spots and to get really, really good at spearfishing and tweak my gear and start videoing as well. Because back then, the underwater cameras were massive. So in addition to the spear gun, I had to carry down this basically five gallon bucket in the other hand to try to film anything so people would believe me of what's going on. So there was a lot of growth in Indonesia, and I had a fantastic time. I wouldn't change it for the world. Again, that place has changed so much in the last twenty years that I've been going there. It used to be just awesome and very few people, but there's still amazing fish there. We go there for dog-toothed tunas, which are about my favorite.
Tom Rowland: That is your favorite? That is a badass looking fish, man. I've never caught one of those, but the first time I ever saw a picture of one, I just thought, that can't be real. I mean, it's like a barracuda tuna. It's the weirdest thing ever, but that has got to be one of the greatest predators in the whole ocean.
Cameron Kirkconnell: Man, they are bad. You'll shoot a fish and there'll be a bunch of sharks eating it, and a dog tooth will come rushing in. This is what makes diving so awesome, even if you're not getting anything, which we were getting plenty of fish, how amazing is this experience? You would think you'd just be dead right here, most of them are like six-foot sharks. Those are all spinners and black tips, so they're not even worried. That's just that same migration that we have off of here, when there's a billion of them.
Tom Rowland: You've got so much experience now. When I'm around Jake in the water, he's totally fine with some situations, and other situations he's done it before where he says, "Okay, time to get out." And I'm like, "Okay, no arguing, whatever you say goes." Sometimes I don't even ask him what he saw down there. You have some different protocols when you are spearfishing with one of your buddies versus spearfishing with some of your clients. There's a skill level, there's a comfort level. How do you communicate with people that you haven't spent as much time with in the water to find out where their comfort level is, where their skill level is, and what situations you're going to be comfortable taking them?
Cameron Kirkconnell: So one thing that is unique with our business is, unlike a normal fishing charter, which is usually you've got a new six-pack every day or two or three guys, we have the same groups over and over. And they're usually three or more day trips. So before any trip, everybody has to have a freedive class. And for anybody watching here, if you're even remotely interested in freediving spearfishing, go take that class. There's no better preparation for it, and we won't do a trip unless someone has had that.
Tom Rowland: You offer that, and it teaches you as well as other people, right? Like, you have those classes, but there's other classes besides your own classes, right?
Cameron Kirkconnell: Correct. Obviously get it from whoever, but if you guys want a class, contact me and I'll get you set up. So that gives you a baseline to work off of, because you're the most dangerous thing in the water to yourself and to everything around you if you're a good spear fisherman. But being safe in the water is the most important thing, and I want the clients to be able to watch me too. Because the only thing that matters is that everybody comes back. We're going to get good fish, I promise you. But safety is the paramount thing. And the environmental factors, it's a play-by-play call.
Tom Rowland: Oh, the ocean's a very fluid place. All kinds of things are changing all the time.
Cameron Kirkconnell: Right. And you can tell the personalities of the sharks and stuff. There's going to be that wild one that does bite somebody, but it's usually pretty situational. And we prep people for that. So, okay, we know we're in The Bahamas, we're going to dive this cut, that's like a guaranteed chance for a shark to come that is very conditioned to even hearing the pole spear go. So you shoot that fish, you get him out of the water very quickly, and you're always looking down and around. People get so focused on looking at what's in their hands, they don't look at the big picture, and that's how you get hurt. But yeah, there's definitely situations where you're like, "Okay, it's about to get bad here. Don't shoot anything. Let's move."
Tom Rowland: So a couple of people chimed in wondering about the info on the classes. Where do you find out about your classes, and how would somebody take one of your classes?
Cameron Kirkconnell: Just send me a message. So we do all private classes. Most of what we do is go to the people's house, and we actually have one going on today. So it's four hours of classroom where we teach everything you could ever imagine about freediving, your body, and the process of freediving. And then the next step is the pool, which you usually do in the afternoon, and that's about three hours in the pool. We're just refining your basic technique and getting your breathing kind of trained up. And then there's about another three or four hours out in the open water. The open water portion, we take you to, I think the max is 66 feet. And I would be very surprised that anybody that's here talking back and forth wouldn't be able to do a three-minute breath hold and 66 feet.
Tom Rowland: So you think that you can get pretty much anyone to a three-minute breath hold and 66 feet deep?
Cameron Kirkconnell: Yep. And that'll be our next challenge. If and when you and I can get together, I'll come down there and I'll teach you the class. I would pretty much guarantee it. And it makes a big difference in what opportunities it opens up for diving.
Tom Rowland: We were talking about the freediving classes and how you feel like anybody can get to three minutes and 66 feet after just a little bit of instruction.
Cameron Kirkconnell: Yeah, basically a day and a half class. And it really is eye opening. I grew up spearfishing. My family spearfished. All of our extended family from the Cayman Islands spearfished. So we just grew up doing it, and we didn't have any technique. We just powered through it. And I didn't take the class till I was probably in my mid-thirties, and I was like, nobody's teaching me anything about freediving. I mean, we've been diving 100 feet since we were kids. And the first day of the first class, I was like, "Holy cow, how are we alive?" Just the smoothness of the way that the instructor dove and the way he showed us how to do it and the way to do the breathing, I was like, "Oh my god, I can't believe we didn't do this." And it's pretty amazing. It's nice to have raw talent, like people that have never done it and don't really have any bad habits. It's really nice to teach them, but that's a part of being a good teacher, the challenge of also being able to teach an old dog who's stubborn.
Tom Rowland: What about breath hold in particular? How important is physical conditioning to the length of breath hold? Does that translate? Like, if you're in better shape, you're probably going to be able to learn a little faster, or is it all about technique?
Cameron Kirkconnell: It's a combination for sure. It's a balance. Obviously, the better shape you're in, the less fatigued you're going to get. I couldn't go out and run a couple miles, but I can outswim anybody. I can swim all day. It's just the way my muscles are in my legs. But if you're able to be in relatively good shape, like anybody that bikes or runs or does a cycle or whatever, they're going to be fine. Your body is used to straining itself and then relaxing, straining itself and relaxing, because that's what you're doing all day long.
Tom Rowland: Okay, so I did tell people that I was going to leave a little bit of time for some questions. I have some questions I'd like to just kind of fire at you real quick, and you can spend as much time or as little time. And I want to leave time for some people to ask questions since this is our first live Instagram podcast, inspired by you, by the way. I love what you're doing with the evening things. Very disappointed that you didn't get Mark the Shark on yet. Has that happened, or did I miss it?
Cameron Kirkconnell: I haven't done it yet. He's such a pain.
Tom Rowland: Well, I had him on this podcast too. It was the most controversial, the most popular, the most shared podcast of any of them that we've done. He's a very interesting guy. I actually quite enjoyed spending some time with him, despite what you think.
Cameron Kirkconnell: He's knowledgeable, man.
Tom Rowland: Dude, the guy takes 400 trips a year. How do you not learn something spending four hundred days a year? Anyway, this one's not about Mark the Shark. I just saw your stuff, and I thought what you were doing on Instagram live was really cool. I thought we'd try it here too. So, what do you think about competitive spearfishing? I know that you've had a background in that. Is that a thumbs up or thumbs down?
Cameron Kirkconnell: I think that it has its place, but I'm sad that I think it's been on its way out for a long time, and the people that are most involved continue to shoot themselves in the foot with it. So it's mostly a thumbs down for me.
Tom Rowland: That's a very similar kind of feeling to a lot of the fishing tournaments. A lot of it goes to the organization and the rules and then the politics that go into it as well. What do you think the cheapest thing that determines success or failure in your business is? Something that is crucial to your success that is very cheap, easy to find.
Cameron Kirkconnell: It sounds simplistic, but your mask. If you don't have the right mask, you've got no reason to be in the water.
Tom Rowland: I was going to say boat plug for me. If I don't have a boat plug, it's not happening. What's your absolute favorite fish to spear and why?
Cameron Kirkconnell: Oof. I've got to give it a tie with dog-toothed tunas and Wahoo. I love dog-toothed tunas just because I think they're the ultimate challenge. And that was the first major world record that I have that was kind of wow, and it held for many, many years. And then I beat it again with another one that just blew everybody out of the water. They are the perfect combination of it's like having a big elephant tuna and a Cubera personality and bodies combined. You shoot them and they're on the edge of the reef, and they dive down 150 feet and wrap up in the rocks or go in a hole and break you off. Wahoo, every one is unique. I'm sure you've hunted mutton snappers. They're very similar in that each one has their own personality, and the trick is to be able to look at the whole school of them and find the right one and be able to bring him over.
Cameron Kirkconnell: And for me, I'm always patient enough to wait for the big ones, because when those opportunities come, when you've got a 100 of them there, I'm not going to pull the trigger on the first one. I've had many, many times where that opportunity has come up and I've been like, "Okay, this is your one chance to shoot the fish of a lifetime. Hold off and try to bring the biggest one to you." And there's just not a lot of people that are patient enough to do that.
Tom Rowland: Are you right next to them kind of touching their arm like, "No, no, not yet," and then, "Right there"?
Cameron Kirkconnell: It's timing. Yes, it's timing.
Tom Rowland: But can you have that kind of communication with them where you're either tactile, you're touching them, or they can see you all the time, or do you prefer to be behind them?
Cameron Kirkconnell: You're talking about the client? I've got them right beside me, and I've got a death grip on their arm. And I will not let them leave the surface. And what I do is I just squeeze when the right one is coming. And that's part of the knowledge that we impart on our clients, how to do that themselves, because as much as I would love to be there on every trip they do, it's just not realistic. And I tell people, more so than any fish we're going to get this trip, the amount of knowledge that you're going to get each day is twenty, thirty years of trying to figure it out on your own and even diving with other people, because this is our specialty. And it's pretty incredible to see the jump in a client's skill level, even in a very short period of time.
Tom Rowland: Has there ever been a book that you've read that you liked so much that you gave away a copy? What's the most gifted book?
Cameron Kirkconnell: A Land Remembered.
Tom Rowland: Who wrote that? What's it about? I've never read that book.
Cameron Kirkconnell: A Land Remembered is about old Florida, basically. A family that after the Civil War moved down to North Florida out in the boonies, and basically started catching cattle and raising cattle, and then how they made a living from it through generations. Patrick Smith is the author.
Tom Rowland: That's what a Florida cracker is. I learned that from Robert Arrington. He told me the story about why they call them Florida crackers and the whipping, moving the cattle through all of old Florida. Very interesting. I'll put that one on my list. Who is the best spear fisherman in the world that you've never heard of?
Cameron Kirkconnell: Jiar Tarr.
Tom Rowland: And who is he?
Cameron Kirkconnell: He's red tide spearfishing on the West Coast of Florida. There was no hesitation there. Yeah, definitely not. He's one of my best buddies, and a lot of what I figured out, we figured out together or on these long drives. Me traveling all over, we just get on the phone and talk and figure stuff out. And he's very hands on too. He just turned 60, and I put him up against any diver in the world. He won our nationals last year and beat everybody at 60 years old. He's a phenomenal diver. He shot a monster black, probably over a 100 pounds, and all he got back was the head. And he shot at 127 feet freediving. It's like two years ago. He's an animal.
Tom Rowland: So we've all had, in getting to whatever point it is in our career, we've all had success and we've all had failure. What failure has taught you the most?
Cameron Kirkconnell: Judging people, honestly. Like I said, the only thing that matters for us is that everybody comes back. And I'm almost able to tell over the phone now. When you first start a business, you're pretty hungry and you want to take everybody you possibly can, but learning to say no to people is difficult. When you know it's not the right thing, you need to be able to say no. And that's how you put yourself in trouble. We call it the race car mentality because we've got some clients that are race car drivers, and all the people that we deal with are the absolute elite in whatever business they do. So they're very, very strong personalities and very driven people. I've had so many of them tell me, "You are the only person I've ever listened to in my life." And that's very important because I'm the one that's going to help them get home. But it's up to them to want to. And there's some people that just do not have that synapse in their brain that has that self-preservation gene. So you've got to be able to say no when you know it's not right.
Tom Rowland: That's interesting. That's when you know that you're doing pretty well, in the outdoor profession, when you start being able to pick your clients and just say, "This is not a good fit. We're going to go out, you're going to catch some fish, but I really think that somebody else would be better for you." And you watch them go with that other person, and they have a wonderful relationship for ten years, and you're just like, "Good, that was great, because it just wasn't going to work out for us." For whatever reason, personality wise, you guys are getting put on a boat, very close quarters with people, international travel and on and on. That makes for tight quarters.
Cameron Kirkconnell: We have no hours. We're twenty four seven with our clients. And some trips are two weeks. So from dawn till dusk and through the night, if they want to do something, we're ready to roll. So personality is very key. And like you said, you recommend a client to somebody else. I've got three other guys that work with me, and I love these clients to death. But just personality wise and the way they like to do things, they'll end up being career clients for the guys that work with me, and that's fine. Because in the end, I just want everybody to have fun.
Tom Rowland: Good attitude. So what's one thing that the spearfishing community does not know about you?
Cameron Kirkconnell: Oh, jeez. I don't know. I'm pretty open. Probably much about my wife, to be honest. I keep her under wraps pretty good.
Tom Rowland: There you go. You're an open book. Well, speaking of that, you just had your two children there. Has becoming a father changed your risk assessment or your risk tolerance at all?
Cameron Kirkconnell: Yeah, for sure. I've always got something in my mind, I've always had that preservation gene where I want to come home. And the number one rule in freediving is don't dive alone. But there's been opportunities many times over the years where I dove alone. It just wasn't feasible. And then when I started dating my wife and I knew there was no way I was ever going to upgrade from this, I didn't want to blow that. So I'd be down and I'd have a chance at a fish and be like, "You know what? This is not worth it. Let's go up. There'll be another chance for that." When I first started going on these trips when I had my kids, I would take, and I still do, I take something of my kids with me every day, and I usually put it on my knife so that it's on my weight belt. So I'm constantly there touching it, and it's just a good reminder. And it shows the clients too, like, "Hey, he wants to come back. You need to want to come back too."
Tom Rowland: I love that. That's so cool. So I want to leave time for a couple of questions from the people here. Chris H. Jared says, what tips do you have for getting from spearing in 70 to 80 feet of water to a 100 to a 120?
Cameron Kirkconnell: That's level two class for sure. And again, contact me for that, because the majority of the freedive classes were written for freedivers. We teach it for spearfishing. So we teach the same content, but we teach more body positioning and how to hunt and incorporate that, which is two different kinds of skill sets. Because being a strong freediver is only so valuable. You've got to be a strong spear fisherman too. You've got to be a good hunter.
Tom Rowland: One thing I wanted to know before we get to other questions is you're doing international trips, you're doing something that is extremely dangerous. You're taking people with a variety of skill levels and interest levels probably. What kind of medical do you have? Are you like an EMT, or do you have any sort of medical background?
Cameron Kirkconnell: Lots. So from working on the ships, the last five years that I worked I was a captain. So basically I have a license that I can captain anything that floats. I have a list of certifications from fork truck driver to crane operator, and about this much of it is medical stuff. Because when you're on a ship, if something happens and you're between China and California, you're it. You've got to deal with it. So I have had a lot of it, and we do trauma training as well with our other guides. So everybody is trained up on that. Our big challenges are boat strikes. If somebody ever got hit by a boat or a prop, then obviously shark bites and getting stuck or something, allergic reactions, all that stuff. So everybody, no matter what you do in life, should have at least some basic classes.
Tom Rowland: Are there ever places that are so remote, when I mean, you have a 150-foot boat that can go pretty much anywhere. You're with people who have boats that could absolutely go anywhere. Does it ever get so far out that you start factoring in, okay, there's going to be no medical opportunity here?
Cameron Kirkconnell: We always have a plan. So that's one of the assessments, we do like a risk assessment, and the clients always have an out. And we've done it with The Bahamas a lot as well. And this is something for everybody, whether you're fishing or diving. In The Bahamas or when you're far out, you need to be able to make the decision: is it better for me to go to The Bahamas right now, or even if it's 120 miles, to just start hauling back to the U.S. and call the coast guard on the way? And generally, the better call is to start running back to the U.S. and call the coast guard, because they can come out a lot farther to pick you up. And in The Bahamas, man, it's scary. When I cut my finger off in The Bahamas and I walked out of the emergency room, because I felt like I was going to bleed fast, it was pitiful. I stopped the bleeding and everything myself.
Tom Rowland: It's just better to make the run back, get to Miami or Fort Lauderdale or wherever your port is in some cases. I can see that.
Tom Rowland: One question here: what kind of dry land training can you do to improve your breath hold?
Cameron Kirkconnell: Just biking, running, anything like that is going to help. You can research online breathing tables, and there's some apps to help your breathing. But honestly, being in good shape, being able to relax in the water, doing yoga, and doing that deep diaphragmatic breathing helps immensely.
Tom Rowland: That's cool. Except don't do that around the water, right?
Cameron Kirkconnell: Don't ever train in the water. The majority of deaths are in the pool. So never train in the pool unless you're with another certified freediver buddy.
Tom Rowland: Got it. I had one of my friends, Toby Hanson, he asked what your dream fish would be to spear. Big or small, doesn't matter. Is there a fish that has eluded you or one that is particularly attractive to you?
Cameron Kirkconnell: Bigeye tuna. So one of my goals this year, this is a challenge because I don't get that many opportunities to actually spear because I'm usually guiding, but one of my goals this year is to shoot a bigeye with a pole spear.
Tom Rowland: With a pole spear. Wow, that's awesome.
Cameron Kirkconnell: So I've had clients shoot two or three of them, big ones. The smallest one, I think, was one fifty or one eighty. And we had another client shoot a two eighty two. And I had one come up in the chum a couple years back that I thought was every bit of two seventy five, two eighty. And I chummed him for forty five minutes until I ran out of chum, and the clients missed him seven times. The video is up on my YouTube, but it was here actually in Ascension. So you can see how blue the water is. It was so painful. They missed so many times, and at the end, I was talking about this the other night on the podcast, I came to the surface and I was crying at the end of it.
Tom Rowland: Well, I know the feeling. It seems like you can have the same feeling with an eight pound permit when the thing is just dying to eat the fly in front of the boat, and it's just like, you could literally throw it out there with your hand, and they don't get it for whatever reason.
Cameron Kirkconnell: So here's a question for you. Having spent a lot of time both in shallow and deep water, do you think permit are a deepwater fish or a shallow water fish?
Tom Rowland: I think they're a deep water fish that has a shallow water behavior. I think that's a learned behavior, just like the mutton snapper. I think the mutton snapper is a learned behavior too. They go up there, and they can eat on the flat. That's probably not where they're the most comfortable, which is why they're hard to catch and really spooky, because they don't have a hydrodynamic body like a bonefish. A bonefish is obviously a fish that is probably more comfortable in shallow water than deep water, even though you catch them in deep water and shallow water. But it just seems like that is one that has just, you know, is perfectly designed for the shallow water. Where the permit, it still looks like an offshore fish that's just up in really shallow water.
Cameron Kirkconnell: You wouldn't think that a fish that lives up on the flats would be that dark, with the top fin and everything. And we see, and you do as well, I mean you guys fish the heck out of them. I cannot tell you how many thousands and thousands we see on the reef, in caves, out of blue water. I think it's a rarity that they come up on the flats. And that's one of the allures for you guys, okay, this is such a cool fish already, they're so powerful. When you hook them, they are going to get off this flat and go back to where they want to be.
Tom Rowland: Right. They're my favorite fish by far. I think just because I started in Key West and that was kind of the target destination for people to go down there. So they were already hard to catch. And so if you came back and you didn't catch any, it was no big deal. So as a very rookie guide, I was like, "Well, that's a good one for me to go for," because did you catch any? Nope. And it was cool. So honestly, it took the pressure off fishing for a fish like that where some people would be like, "Man, that's the fish that you decided to go for." But for me, it was like no pressure because very few people caught them. So if you didn't catch one, it wasn't like you go tarpon fishing and everybody catches three or four and you catch zero day after day. So I always thought it was less pressure. But I love them. I just think that they're a very interesting fish. They all got different personalities. You approach each of them a little bit differently based upon the behavior that you see, very much like spearfishing, like you're talking about the Wahoo. That's the one right there, that's the one that keeps doing this little turn, and here's the way I'm going to get him. It's the same kind of thing with permit. You look out there on some of them, and you're just like, "Not even worth trying, that thing is so edgy that we're never getting close to them," where this one coming down here is so stupid, we're definitely going to catch it. But you don't sometimes.
Cameron Kirkconnell: So here's the next question. When's the last time you kept one?
Tom Rowland: The last time the tail got bit off of one by a shark, which happens regularly. A little lemon shark or something that comes in can bite the tail off of a permit. Then that's usually where they take them out at the motor, and then I always keep them. And they're very good. But I don't keep them just for keeping them. There are other fish. I just catch a few snappers on the way home, and we'll be good.
Cameron Kirkconnell: Which I think I already know the answer to this because this is a total Keys fish, but what are your thoughts on spearing permit?
Tom Rowland: Well, I would imagine that they'd be pretty easy to spear, just with my experience of swimming with a few. I don't know what I think about that. There's a big controversy right now about the Western Dry Rocks and what's going on out there and just this complete protection. And I don't even know where I stand on that, quite honestly, because the flats guys are not going to like what I have to say, but you have some data. Who knows if you don't have the other side providing data. So the data could be very one-sided. I think it's a very emotional issue because both the offshore fishermen that want to fish at Western Dry Rocks love the permit, they want to catch them. It's a big part of what they do. The flats guides obviously love the permit to a point of being like a religion. And so you have differing opinions, but both parties want to protect the fish.
Tom Rowland: So do I think that you could spear a permit? I mean, if you have a limit on them that is sustainable, one per vessel per day, I guess. The fishery, you always have to be fair to all people, all fishermen, because if you completely exclude the commercial fishermen, or you have the bait guys versus the fly guys, or the spear fisherman versus the conventional fishermen, generally the fisherman lose, because there's not a lot of us anyway. We all want to protect the fish so that we can keep doing what we love to do. And then if you split us into these little groups, it's very easy for somebody to come out there and just say, "Well, we can have it our way," or law enforcement says, "There's no way we can enforce what kind of fly these guys are throwing, there's no way we can enforce what kind of spear these guys are using or how many. We're just going to close it down because we don't have enough law enforcement to do what we want."
Tom Rowland: So I don't like closure. I think that once things close, you rarely get them back. You look at Boca Chica Beach. When I first started fishing in Key West, you could fish all the way up and down Boca Chica Beach. Now you would think that you were committing a felony if you went there and threw a cast net or whatever. Jet skis run up and beach themselves on the bar, and it's just a weird thing. But they closed that down and said, "We're going to do fish counts here, and we will reopen this when the fish counts show that we should," which in my opinion, there's never ever been another word about reopening Boca Chica Beach. Not one. And then we just lost it. And so I don't think that that was the result that anyone wanted. And I don't think that if they just closed Western Dry Rocks to fishing entirely, that that's the result that anyone wants. I just think that we all ought to try to get together, understand what each group wants, and then try to figure out how that's a sustainable way to move on. And sometimes it's not. Sometimes fishing methods are too effective, and you're going to eliminate the species like that.
Cameron Kirkconnell: What do you think about spearing permit? We shoot them. It's a good eating fish. As far as I can see, the numbers of them are good. It seems like they repopulate pretty darn well, and we just do it within reason. And the majority of the time, we pass them up. And we tell the clients, "Look, if you really want one, you can get one, but we're going to get other fish. There's other stuff that's better eating." These things fight hard, and you've got to make the call. If there's Goliaths around, they're going to get them. If there's a school of APs, African pompano, and permit on the same wreck, nine out of ten permit are going to get eaten by a goliath or by a shark. The sharks are not afraid of them. The APs, though, when you shoot those, the goliaths don't usually get them, and the sharks won't eat them. We've only had, like, one AP ever eaten. I think they're scared of them.
Tom Rowland: It's a funny thing, though. There's just certain baits. You put down a certain bait and a fish won't bite it, but you put down another one that's slightly different, like a blue runner versus something else. A blue runner versus a Jack Crevalle, you get bit on a blue runner immediately. But if you put down a little Jack Crevalle about the same size, not so much, in a lot of places. And I don't know what that is or why.
Tom Rowland: What do you think about the lionfish situation?
Cameron Kirkconnell: It's so far out of control. There's obviously no way to ever stop it. It started with whatever, one or a half a dozen of them. It's unstoppable. I've unfortunately been hit twice by them. It is not fun.
Tom Rowland: Now when you say you got hit by them, you're free swimming and get hit, or you spear one and you're getting it back in the boat or putting it in the cooler and get hit?
Cameron Kirkconnell: Free swimming. The most recent time I got hit, I was getting a big grouper out of a hole in The Bahamas. And as I was pulling the fish out, he pulled me, and there was a lionfish right there, and it went into my shoulder here. And the first time I got it, I was filming a client and I was coming down to the bottom, and I hadn't even hit the bottom yet, and I looked and I was like, "Oh, come on." And that one hit me right here in the wrist. Let me tell you, that sucked.
Tom Rowland: So what do you do?
Cameron Kirkconnell: The number one thing to do is to put as hot a water as you can possibly take on it, kind of like a stingray, and then take Tylenol or Benadryl or something like that. But that one, because it was so close to all the veins and blood vessels and everything, holy cow, it screwed me up, man. I was sick for probably twelve hours.
Tom Rowland: I've heard of people, kind of like the COVID-19 thing, some people are getting very sick, other people not so much. I've heard the same thing with the lionfish stings. I know one guy almost lost his hand, and I don't know if he just got MRSA in there as well as the lionfish sting, but he really had a hard time with his hand. Other people, it really hurt, but no danger.
Cameron Kirkconnell: It depends on where they hit you and with what spines and how bad. Both the ones that hit me were not very big ones. And the second time, the one that hit me in the shoulder, I was totally prepared. I was on a 53 Hydra-Sport, and I said, "Go boil water." So we had as hot a water as I could take, and I took a bunch of Tylenol, and it was fine. I dove through the rest of the day, no worries. But that first one, I was down for the count for like twelve hours.
Tom Rowland: A couple of people were asking what hot water does, and Don Hasselhoff said it denatures the protein of the poison, which was my understanding of what it does too, but it makes it stop hurting just like a stingray.
Cameron Kirkconnell: For me, it makes it stop hurting. And obviously clean it with soap and water immediately as you should with any of those different things. And part of what we do with kids on our trips is we go through basic boat safety, different stuff on the boat to teach them about the boat. And for x, y, z, shark bite, stingray spine, lionfish, what is the thing to do for that? Jellyfish or whatever. So that they take that knowledge with them, and it's basically a summer camp for kids on the boat every day.
Tom Rowland: Oh, that's cool. And I would imagine that a lot of your clients are bringing their family. This is their family kind of thing, and you almost become part of the family just like a lot of the people that I know that work on private boats, as a fishing guide or just a captain. They kind of become part of that family. I'm sure you have clients that you've been working with for a long time that are like family, right?
Cameron Kirkconnell: Oh, yeah. All of them.
Tom Rowland: Okay, a couple more questions and then I know you've got to go. One of the things that I didn't read in your resume, I read this long resume, and then at the end it says "also runs homeschool," and that is the most...
Cameron Kirkconnell: I don't run homeschool. I'm an assistant assistant. And janitor. Mostly a janitor.
Tom Rowland: So of all the things that you've done and all the fish that you've shot, is that easier or harder than being assistant janitor and assistant principal at the homeschool during COVID-19?
Cameron Kirkconnell: This is way harder, being assistant janitor.
Tom Rowland: Yeah, I'm with you. I was telling you before we started, my kids are now 22, 20, and 16. It's a little different having them at home, but man, to be cooped up in a house with a couple of little kids. Are you getting outside?
Cameron Kirkconnell: Oh, yeah. My wife is the same. She's crushing the homeschool thing. So thankfully, I've got her.
Tom Rowland: Cool. This last question came in: what's the weirdest object you've seen or found underwater?
Cameron Kirkconnell: Oh, man. I found a lot of weird stuff. I think the weirdest things, I found a number of good sized shark's teeth like this, actually in the rivers here in Florida, out at our hunting camp. But gosh, the weirdest thing... I saw a sawfish the other day, which was pretty wild. That's the first one I've seen in all the millions of dives that I've done. It was giant. It was like 14 foot. I put the video up on my YouTube.
Tom Rowland: Was that deep water or shallow water?
Cameron Kirkconnell: It was like 85, 90.
Tom Rowland: We see quite a few of them in shallower water. They get, they like those channels and stuff, and then they'll get up on the flat as well. Actually, I do have a drone video of one up on the flat.
Tom Rowland: So two last questions. What's your definition of a successful trip?
Cameron Kirkconnell: Everybody has the time of their life. I want people to say at the end of the trip, "That was the best trip of my life." And I can't tell you how often that happens. And each time, we're like, "Well, for the next one, we're going to have to do something better." And we do. These people that we go with are such wonderful humans. They've done everything, they've gone around the world, they're very humble, and they're all family oriented. And they're just looking to have a good time. So they put a lot of trust in us to plan their yearly adventures with their family and do cool stuff, and it creates that constant challenge to do something better. And when I look at trips, I think big. When people are like, "Oh, let's go dive," I'm like, "Alright, but let's really go dive. Let's really do something cool." And that's what gives us our edge, we go way beyond what anybody would ever think.
Tom Rowland: Yeah, man. I was thinking about that last night when I was thinking about all the different questions I wanted to ask you. One thing that struck me is, when I first started guiding in Wyoming, I fished on a couple of rivers. And at the time, I thought, "Man, I'll never learn this river as well as that guy over there." And then the next thing you know, a couple years later, you're like, "Oh, I got that river down pretty good. Now I'm going to move, and I'm going to find this river and this river." And then you start fishing in the Keys, and it's like, "Oh boy, I hope I can find my way to the other side of the Northwest Channel." And then you're like, "But Steve Huff, he knows all the Keys, and he knows 10,000 Islands. How in the world would he ever figure out where to fish?" That must be so confusing to know where the fish are in all those places. And sooner or later, it was like, "Okay, now I know a lot more of the Keys," and yes, it was confusing, but it was also very comforting to know, okay, it's blowing 25 out of the north, these are the places that I can go.
Tom Rowland: And when I read about what you do, you're doing this in the world. There is no condition, there's no season, there's no anything that could happen. You got a typhoon over here, you got a hurricane over here, well, that means that we go over here to this other part of the world, right? How did that develop for you? All of a sudden, you're operating on a worldwide scale. And I know a lot of that is the customers that you have and the equipment they have, but once you gain all that knowledge, is that comforting to be able to go anywhere in the world, or is it confusing at times?
Cameron Kirkconnell: So the most frustrating thing, it's frustrating honestly more than anything, because I know where the absolute best place is right now and not being able to be there. So I have major FOMO, and all the other guides make fun of me because I have the worst FOMO because I want the fish more than anybody. Even though I'm not pulling the trigger or reeling them in, I want them more than anybody. And when I was doing it on my own, I spent my time and money to be at the absolute best place all the time. And if I didn't know that place, I would find out. And that cumulative knowledge, I keep in a book that sacrilegiously I call the Bible. And I've kept track of it, but I know it now. So if a client says, "Hey, I've got a week, the boat is here, where should we be this week?" I'll say, "This is the absolute best place to be right here. And if that's not good, here's second, third, fourth, and fifth options." And those are the best suggestions that we make to clients. They have a general idea of what they want to do, but let us use our intellectual property, which is where and when to go, and put you on the right stuff.
Cameron Kirkconnell: And that's the stuff that is so valuable for you guys too. Think about how well you know the Keys. It took that long to find that information out. There's some guys that'll come down there new that haven't been down there very long, and they'll figure it out pretty quick. And that's a skill set, to be able to go anywhere and figure it out. And those are the people that I respect most in fishing and spearfishing and hunting, the people that can show up anywhere in the world and figure it out. Some people are just fishy and know what to look for, but I've literally gone to college to figure out the ocean currents and everything that goes on in the ocean and the right conditions. And you can figure out that, okay, you need x, y, z in Key West for the Wahoo to show up, for the black ones to show up, for the tarpon to start migrating, for the shrimp run to start. If that's possible here, take that and move it to an area that is similar. Like, okay, Okinawa, Japan has very similar conditions that we have, because they have the equivalent of our Gulf Stream, which is the crucial current called the black current. And it's amazing how similar it is. So you have the same conditions that make the same thing happen over there. And being able to do all that, to put together this huge recipe, that's what makes my job amazing. I love it.
Tom Rowland: Man, that's awesome. Well, kudos to you, man. You've done something that is really cool in my opinion. These are the people that I have the most respect for, the people that can take something that is extremely unorthodox or extremely unlikely, and then create a career out of that and thrive. And that's exactly what you seem to have been able to do, and it's super cool. So the last question I have for you: we just talked about a successful trip, but what is your definition of success?
Cameron Kirkconnell: Happiness for yourself and those that are closest to you.
Tom Rowland: Love it. I love it. Cam, thank you so much for this. I appreciate your time. We did a weird thing here with the Instagram live and asking people questions. I'd love to try to do another podcast in person with you sometime. And I'd love to get together with you and do one of your classes. If you've got a class, maybe I can drop in on something like that. That would be fantastic. Can you tell everybody how to get in touch with you?
Cameron Kirkconnell: Cameron Kirkconnell. Just hit me up on Instagram, or you can send me an email at cameronkirkconnell@gmail.com. And yeah, we'll help you get set up wherever you need to go, help with gear recommendations. Whenever clients go on a trip, they call us, and we put together their entire gear package and just have it sent straight to them so that they have the right stuff for doing what we do.
Tom Rowland: Okay. Alright, man. Go back to homeschooling. Thank you very much for your time. I really appreciate it. I love the conversation. It was awesome.
Cameron Kirkconnell: Yeah, man. Thank you guys for watching. Thanks, Tom.
Tom Rowland: See you. So that's it. Thank you for that, Cam. That was amazing. Man, what an incredible story of a career, to take something that unlikely and then to be able to thrive at it just like he has been able to do. That's truly amazing. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the podcast. It was kind of a little bit weird because I was having some Facebook issues, and it didn't go exactly as planned, but it was good. You guys hit up Cameron Kirkconnell on Instagram. He's got an amazing page. Go do one of his freediving classes. And we'll see you next week. Alright.
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