Full transcript of the Tom Rowland Podcast, Episode 865, with Steel Rockett. Each section heading links to that moment in the video.

Meet Steel Rockett

Tom Rowland: What's going on, everybody? We've got Steel Rockett on the podcast. Slingin' Steel — you may have run across him. He's a commercial diver, a third generation commercial diver out of Big Pine Key, Florida, out of the Underseas dive shop. His family started that, and if you're familiar with Big Pine, you know exactly where that is. A lot of history, and he gives us a good perspective on commercial diving — making a living doing commercial diving, what that involves, what it entails, and what the challenges are, including getting bit by a loggerhead sea turtle. Alright, that's Steel Rockett coming up. Here we go.

Steel Rockett: Oh, like a hit in the back. I'm like, what the heck? I'm like, I'm dead. You know what I mean? I look over my shoulder and it's just a giant three hundred — two hundred fifty pound — loggerhead. He just cried, bites my shoulder, and grabs my wetsuit like this. I went, oh my god, and I elbowed him in the face. That's it. Like, I'm Steel Rockett, and this is the Tom Rowland Podcast.

Tom Rowland: Steel, what's up, man? How are you doing?

Steel Rockett: Good. Same old, same old.

Tom Rowland: I'm good. You've been out diving today — when's the last time, yesterday?

Steel Rockett: Yesterday was the last time. Couple days in a row, starting from yesterday back.

Three Generations of Diving in the Florida Keys

Tom Rowland: On your Instagram and YouTube it says you're a third generation commercial diver — is that correct?

Steel Rockett: Yes, sir. Yep.

Tom Rowland: Third generation. Tell me how that starts.

Steel Rockett: Well, long story short, my family came to the Keys in 1969 and they started one of the first dive shops. Basically, my grandfather was running trips anywhere out to the reef — Looe Key, out to the wall — back in the seventies.

Tom Rowland: What was the dive shop, and where was it?

Steel Rockett: It was in Big Pine Key. It's called Underseas Incorporated, right next to Tom Thumb, the little gas station. It's an old property there.

Tom Rowland: Does your family still own that?

Steel Rockett: It was sold — from 1969 to 2017.

Tom Rowland: That's where — wasn't that where Manny was home based out of, too?

Steel Rockett: Oh, yeah, no — that was my dad's. He's one of his best friends. They used to dive together commercially. They lived together a couple years, even, I think.

Tom Rowland: I remember the first time I ever ran into Manny back in the day. I pulled over to look at somebody fishing off the side of the road — this famous fishing guide — and I was wondering what he was doing. So I pull over right by Ramrod Key, and I'm just watching this guy fish, and then I look up and there's an alligator right in front of my car on Ramrod Key. And Manny came flying in there, jumped out, and got that alligator — tackled it. It took him down into the mangroves and I was like, oh my god. I went out there and said, hey, you okay? He's like, you got a rope? I said, no man, I don't have a rope. He goes, alright, call Underseas and tell 'em Manny's got an alligator. And I was like, okay, I will. But that was my introduction to him and the Underseas dive shop. So your family started that in 1969?

Steel Rockett: Yes, sir.

Tom Rowland: That's amazing. Was your family already in the diving business?

Steel Rockett: So, basically, my dad's side came from Philly, and my mom's side was from upstate New York. My mom's side would vacation down in the Keys back in the seventies, and then my dad's family ended up coming down and making a dive shop in '69. My dad was six years old when they came down — his birth year was '63.

Tom Rowland: Okay.

Steel Rockett: And they just jumped in. My grandfather was a world champion motorcyclist at the time, and I guess it comes with the adrenaline seeking, but he just wanted to pioneer and come down somewhere where it wasn't much yet, and kind of go into that world.

Tom Rowland: Man, in 1969 I would imagine tourists didn't really dive. I don't know — what was it like then? It seems like that was back in the day of Jacques Cousteau, and there was a good bit of diving on TV. I was born in 1968, so your dad's six years older than me, but in my childhood Jacques Cousteau was a big deal — there were only three channels and it would be on there. So I'd imagine that brought some tourism down to the Keys to dive, but it seems kind of early for that. Were they busy back then, or was it mostly commercial?

Steel Rockett: It was weird, because my dad would always tell me — hard to believe now — that in front of the dive shop on US 1, they would play football and yell 'car!' You go there now and it's a normal highway, US 1. So they definitely didn't have as much circulation of people as we do now, but I guarantee you there were people with similar ideas who just wanted to venture down and see an incredible place. It was just a lot less accessible. Before that, we only had a ferry from No Name Key to, I think, Marathon.

Tom Rowland: Right.

Steel Rockett: That's all we had. And we had these roads or nothing, so I could see people being like, wow, we have roads down here now, maybe we should have access. So they probably made some profit off the people coming through, and also the few commercial divers at that time, since it was still being established.

Tom Rowland: And so the commercial diving then — where were the fish being sold?

Steel Rockett: Some of these places — I know some in Key West, definitely. And I believe, I'd have to confirm with my dad, but I'm pretty sure some of the places, like the one on Cudjoe, that same building's been there so long — there's a Cudjoe sales place, Loki Fishery it's called now. I actually still sell to them, so it's kind of funny, but I know they've been in business as long as I've been selling fish, and I believe they go back a ways.

Growing Up in the Water

Tom Rowland: That's cool, man. So your dad gets there when he's six, his dad's already diving, and that was his idea to start the dive shop. So when do you start diving — when do they get you in the water?

Steel Rockett: What kind of diving? I mean, I could swim before I could walk, I know that. I was freediving around two or three, scuba diving around four or five — I hit eighty feet and shot my first black grouper when I was nine. I've got a picture of that.

Tom Rowland: Wow, and that's scuba?

Steel Rockett: Yeah, that was scuba. I could freedive to a hundred feet by the time I was fifteen. I just can't really remember when I actually started — it's kind of like it's all I know, same as my dad, who started really young too. It's kind of a family thing.

Tom Rowland: And so when you're fifteen, did you get your own boat and start heading out on your own, or were you still diving with your dad?

Steel Rockett: When I was six or seven I had a little water tender — one of those old-school West Marine dinghies, kind of a mini whaler, with a two-and-a-half horsepower engine on it. It's funny, because now I have twin three-hundreds. I think the prop was plastic because they were so worried. I'd go out in the bay, and I wasn't allowed to go past the first island outside the canal there, so I'd dive a lot of the canals. Then I moved up to a Boston Whaler around twelve, and I was able to do a bit more, a little older and more knowledgeable. Eventually I got a 42 — had a Gulf permit on it, used that for a couple years, and now I'm running my 29 CB with an Atlantic permit.

Tom Rowland: And when you first start commercial diving, what kind of license do you need? How young can you be? Sounds like you're selling fish pretty young.

Steel Rockett: It matters which aspect you mean — there's the MLD, the tropical fish license, that's my other job, by the way. And then there's commercial spearfishing, which falls under the same commercial fishing requirements mostly, unless you have a stipulation like a longline permit. A snapper-grouper permit and a Gulf reef permit are both spearfishing permits — they cover that. My dad had those, and they're really hard to get. They don't just sell them from the government — you have to buy them from another person, and there's even more to it than that. It's kind of grandfathered in. So I was diving on my dad's boat when I was young, doing it commercially the right way, and on my own boat I was doing a lot of recreational stuff, but I'd go on my dad's boat and be covered under his license for the marine life work.

Tom Rowland: And so how do you split up the year between tropical fish collecting and spearfishing when this is your sole occupation?

Steel Rockett: A lot of it is seasons. Grouper is a big one — that's my top seller, very hard to get, very good food grade. So when it closes and I have to get amberjacks and pompano to make up for it, I have a little more time to do the tropicals. Also the algae that covers the bottom is less plentiful in the winter, less photosynthetic activity because there's less sun, so it's actually a better time of year to find critters.

Tom Rowland: So is there ever a time the tropicals pay better than spearfishing? I don't know what the collector is getting off that — maybe they're marked way up in the pet store.

Steel Rockett: Here's the thing about it: spearfishing is a gamble, it's exciting, it's dangerous, and it's very exploratory. I can shoot a fish that's a fifty-pound black grouper — that's a five-hundred-dollar fish, prices are around ten dollars a pound for restaurants. And I could either shoot that fish and get five hundred dollars, or lose it to a shark, or rip off, or bend my shaft, ruin my shaft — that can go from five hundred dollars of profit to losing a hundred dollars per shaft. So it's definitely a gamble. Tropicals are more like, I know I'm gonna get what I'm after usually, and I'll have some visibility — even if I only have twenty inches of visibility, it's fine for collecting sponges and things like that. So the income's more reliable, but it's a slower pace. It's not the opposite, I'd say, but it's very different — more reliable, less of a gamble, where one choice won't make or break you.

The Hot Seat

Tom Rowland: Yeah, I want to know more about the tropical fish collection — I know people who do that, but I honestly don't know much about it. But we have this section of the show where we do the Hot Seat — either-or questions, which you prefer, and sometimes it gives us a good jumping-off point for other things to talk about. You ready?

Steel Rockett: Yeah, yes sir.

Tom Rowland: Cooking or catching?

Steel Rockett: Catching. I like both.

Tom Rowland: Drive or fly?

Steel Rockett: I'd say fly, but if I'm on the water, it'd be drive.

Tom Rowland: Chocolate or vanilla?

Steel Rockett: Chocolate.

Tom Rowland: Text or call?

Steel Rockett: Text.

Tom Rowland: Favorite social media platform?

Steel Rockett: Instagram.

Tom Rowland: Do you answer every comment, or never look at them?

Steel Rockett: I answer some.

Tom Rowland: Favorite fish to spear?

Steel Rockett: Cubera.

Tom Rowland: A million dollars now, or ten million later?

Steel Rockett: Ten million later.

Tom Rowland: One thing you've learned in the last year that's made you money?

Steel Rockett: Look behind me when I feel like there's something popping up.

Tom Rowland: Most challenging thing about commercial spearfishing?

Steel Rockett: Conditions.

Tom Rowland: The easiest thing?

Steel Rockett: Being in the ocean.

Tom Rowland: A movie that makes you laugh?

Steel Rockett: History of the World, Part One.

Tom Rowland: Would you have a reptile as a pet?

Steel Rockett: Oh yeah, I have. I love them.

Tom Rowland: Non-fishing destination you'd like to visit?

Steel Rockett: The Amazon.

Tom Rowland: Top fishing destination on your bucket list?

Steel Rockett: It's between Norway for giant halibut spearfishing, and somewhere like Tonga for giant dogtooth tuna.

Tom Rowland: That dogtooth tuna, man, that thing is amazing.

Steel Rockett: One day. And I really want to — I tried to pole spear one for a record, but it's too fast. I want a roosterfish too.

Tom Rowland: And Baja's where you'd go for that?

Steel Rockett: I was in Colombia, I almost got one. But yeah, anywhere along that stretch.

Tom Rowland: One thing you've changed your mind on in the last two years?

Steel Rockett: Not expanding outside of commercial spearfishing.

Tom Rowland: And now you do want to expand?

Steel Rockett: Yes, I've been doing guiding a lot more. When I was younger I was like, no, the commercial realm takes you away from that kind of stuff.

Tom Rowland: Right, we'll talk about that in a minute. One piece of advice you live by?

Steel Rockett: Stay positive.

Tom Rowland: I thought you might say watch your six.

Steel Rockett: Yeah, I want to be super positive though.

Tom Rowland: That would be my advice for someone who makes their living in the water. That was the last one.

From Commercial Diving to Guiding

Tom Rowland: So tell me — at one point you didn't want to expand past commercial spearfishing. Growing up you were just like, that's it, I'm gonna be a spear fisherman and nothing else is even interesting.

Steel Rockett: I remember being in school, and my dream for so long was seeing my dad's pictures of Manny and all those fish, the square groupers, all those pictures of my dad and stuff, restaurants over here — when you're little you look up to that so much. I just wanted to set a goal for myself to get a nice big boat and travel the Gulf and do seven-day trips. And I never thought I'd achieve that dream, because it alone was so incredible — buying a Gulf permit and doing that. I ended up achieving it, doing that for a couple years, and it was incredible. But then, you know, we're human, we always want more, we gotta shake ourselves up sometimes. When I went outside the country the first time, to Costa Rica, and dove there, it just blew my mind — I can set huge goals for myself, and if you really put your mind to it you can almost do anything. Now I've guided people in the Bahamas, I've worked on yachts, I've done some awesome things. And of course it's a learning process, because if you're a commercial fisherman you don't learn the same skills as a charter guy — the patience that comes with people. There are some amazing people you'll take out, you'll meet incredible people. That's probably one of the biggest things I've learned — not everyone is going to be hard to deal with, but you're going to have some, and that's part of the game. Physically it's easier — mentally I always say it's not, but physically the work definitely isn't going to kill you as quickly as the commercial stuff. I used to load my 42-foot boat — my ice hold alone would hold four thousand pounds, plus two thousand-pound boxes, six thousand pounds of ice, sixty totes. I'd go out for up to seven days with one other person, and I loved it, I'd explore incredible places some people may have never dove. But it's not something you can do forever — especially spearfishing, it's so much on your body.

Tom Rowland: Oh, I can imagine. And when you're spearfishing, are you on scuba, freediving, or a combination of both?

Steel Rockett: That's a good point, because that's another thing — the deep scuba stuff especially. I used to drive all night out there, dive all day, do two-hundred-foot dives on air. I've had the bends before — it's terrible. Long term, doing a lot of dives like that isn't gonna make you any healthier, obviously. So it's like anything in life, you gotta find a balance — it's like buoyancy, you gotta find a balance. I want to do commercial diving probably as long as I can, but I could have something else as income that's still something I love, being in the ocean, but branching outside my box a little bit and improving, not only my business but myself.

Tom Rowland: For sure. And so you look at guiding as a way to do that?

Steel Rockett: Yeah — seeing someone else go down and safely get one nice beautiful fish, and they come up happy, and I'm so used to my head being like, that's not even gonna pay half my gas.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, that's the difference. Same with a charter captain — if you're a tournament fisherman and then go into charter fishing, somebody catches one fish and it takes forever, but they're having a great time, and you think, man, we would've caught fifty by now.

Learning to Slow Down for Clients

Tom Rowland: Me and my partner, we would've just kept catching, but there's this whole mind shift of, okay, that's not what we're out here for. Until you get there, some people never do, and they're stuck thinking their clients aren't very good and they're not willing to teach them, and they're impatient and grumpy all day. Then you have the other people who understand this is very different than commercial diving or tournament fishing, and we're just out here to have a good time. Those people, catching the big fish isn't what makes their day — learning something, seeing cool stuff, and having a little success is what makes their day. What's been the hardest part about moving into being more of an entertainer, a guide, than a spearfisherman or collector?

Steel Rockett: Well, for one, I live for the variable — that's why I like diving, and nature in general, not just the ocean. You never know what you're gonna get. So to seek that variable, and also open up opportunities for me to learn and go places I don't know what I'm gonna see, and to teach people there. Sometimes I can't go commercially somewhere — I have a friend in the Yucatan who's a commercial spearfisherman, and I've gone and helped him, but most of the time I'm not gonna dive commercially in another country. So going there to learn from someone else, and to teach another person, especially when I've taken someone else to guide there — it's another form of not knowing what I'm gonna get. It opens up opportunities, and it's personal growth, because I came from a place where everything's gotta be perfect, on time, every spot, there's so much pressure. But to go out and just put someone on one nice fish is different in itself. It also lets you plan your trip differently — commercially I can go to a spot and get forty snappers a tank and load up and start making profit. But with a client, I'm thinking, okay, he might get one big cobia, and that makes the guy's trip. It's a different challenge.

Tom Rowland: What about the skill level of the people coming out — are they generally capable? As a fishing guide above the water you can assess someone's skill pretty quickly and decide, okay, we're not fly fishing for tarpon today, we're snapper fishing by the bridge. How do you quickly assess that in a spearfishing situation, where physical capability and experience and know-how is life-or-death important in a lot of cases?

Steel Rockett: That's the thing — especially while things are new, I want requirements. Like, they should be at least a level-two freediver, or have their scuba dives, and I'm mostly taking people I already know as clients. But as I get more established and learn the side of it more, I'd like to take people a little further down the line. But safety comes first.

Tom Rowland: Down the line meaning more beginner?

Steel Rockett: More beginner — just for safety, because it's a new thing and you gotta get all the aspects of it. I'm the type of person — I told you I did two-hundred-foot solo dives — I love the adrenaline, the craziest spots possible, the opposite of what you're supposed to bring someone to on a charter. But that's why I feel it's a good balance, because I can always do this without having to rely on it and hurt myself and not be able to sleep at night. I could have some balance there, but definitely with people who know what they're doing in the beginning stages.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, that does seem like the trickiest part. But I'd think there'd be a great opportunity to have people book a week-long trip, and you could take them from wherever their skill level is and progress them through the week — if they knew going in, look, we may shoot some fish, we probably will have some success, but the goal is I want to go from this level to wherever you can take me by the end of the week. Then next year you come back at this level and we take you to the next one, and every year you're progressing a little bit until you can do the stuff you want to do. It doesn't come fast — you need experience.

Steel Rockett: That's also why I'm chipping away at that piece of it, because I want to become a freediving instructor, for instance — I'm one or two stages underneath that right now. Then I could say, hey, I can teach you to go this deep first, because that makes me feel more comfortable, and that person should feel more comfortable too, because then they'll have confidence, and I'll have confidence in them knowing they can hit a certain depth.

Inside the Tropical Fish Trade

Tom Rowland: What about the tropical fish collecting — I think that's interesting, we've never talked about that on the podcast. The collecting you're doing is mostly for tanks, for collectors and fish tank enthusiasts?

Steel Rockett: Pet shops first — we don't sell directly to the public usually, but to the retail stores. And it's interesting, there's only about forty of us in the United States.

Tom Rowland: In the United States?

Steel Rockett: I think they shut down Hawaii, and there's just the MLDs in Florida — thirty-five to forty of us, that's it.

Tom Rowland: And do fish come from the Bahamas and other places, do they collect over there?

Steel Rockett: Haiti is a big one, some from Puerto Rico. But especially places like Haiti, some of the practices aren't that great for the fish — sometimes they use formaldehyde as their scarer, where we have quinaldine, which we rarely use, but if we do it's been proven okay, FWC allows it.

Tom Rowland: How would you use that?

Steel Rockett: Basically it's the same idea but a different chemical — they spray it into a hole and the fish comes out the other side. There's only some fish you have to use it for — a lot of times you use your hands to catch everything. I haven't used it in years. But they'll use formaldehyde the same way we'd use quinaldine, and what happens is the fish gets cancer and dies six months later. And then the reef around it dies too. So those practices are really not good, and there's not enough regulation. We have all these stipulations, and there's only forty of us, and we're fighting these huge operations overseas that have no stipulations at all pretty much. It's not something you buy outright either — it's an expensive permit, a hundred eighty dollars or so. But the funny thing is it's a labor of love, you're not gonna get rich off it. There are so many rules — every species has a different slot. A snook has a slot — I have to get a black angel between an inch and three-quarters and eight inches. If he's bigger or smaller than that, it's not legal. And blue angels and other species are a little different again. It's an interesting trade, definitely its own thing.

Tom Rowland: So how do you know which fish are most in demand? I'd imagine that changes year over year. Is there a resource where you can check which fish are in the highest demand, kind of like checking fish prices before you go spearfishing?

Steel Rockett: With this business it goes by orders — you have a client, like a pet shop, put an order in, and you see what you can fill. Usually the most expensive ones are rock beauties and angelfish, tangs. But a lot of the time you can't just get fish — you gotta get inverts too, invertebrates. A common one is turbo snails, Astraea snails. You've probably seen my dad's boat, the blue CV, by Spanish Harbor, sitting there catching those snails. There's a bunch of us around the Lower Keys, though there are other boats on the grass flats too — that's just one of many areas, there's millions of these.

Tom Rowland: And on the grass flats, do they walk around collecting? I see one guy a lot who takes his boat, waits for low tide, gets out and walks the flat — he's not fishing, he's collecting something.

Steel Rockett: Sea cucumbers, probably — that's one thing they sell, sold for pesto sometimes, and people believe they have certain properties, that they cure cancer, big in Japanese or Chinese medicine. I've even had calls for it.

Tom Rowland: Okay, and the snails I see on the bridge pilings, the black ones?

Steel Rockett: They're triangle snails — there's millions of them, with a pearl-colored operculum on the bottom. They're the most common shell around here.

Tom Rowland: And you can collect as many as you want, or is there a limit?

Steel Rockett: They're limited — it's a one-bag limit per license. But there are thousands of these things if you look close at the seagrass. You only take the big ones, too — we have our own unsaid regulations between us as well.

Tom Rowland: Okay, so forty guys. How do you catch all these fish — what's the method? You said you catch some with your hands, but some of those fish would be pretty tough. Is there a sucker-gun kind of thing?

Steel Rockett: That's funny, people always ask me about sucker guns — the only thing I know they work for is neon gobies and some small stuff. But usually I don't use sucker guns, I usually use a tropical fishnet, or my hands. I haven't used the soluble chemicals in years — usually you don't need to. If a fish can be caught between a rock, you're good, but if it's something like a jawfish where there's no other way to get them, you have to spray that stuff in there. So I've only caught normal fish between rocks, and this is one of the biggest things that's helped me be a good hunter, I believe — because it's one thing to put a shaft in a fish and kill it, but now you're catching them alive and healthy, and that's much harder than spearfishing. It's so mental. I plan what I'm gonna do when I see the fish, depending on how that fish thinks — down to the species, not just the family. A queen angel versus a black angel behaves differently. I can catch queen angels, and sometimes French angels, blues, with my hands alone, no net, if I do the right thing. I'll wait for them to go where I want, slowly swim by like a turtle, something non-aggressive, and they stay curious and keep doing their thing. If they're by a big coral head, I leave them alone, but when they swim off toward a small rock with a couple openings, I jump like a bull shark and scare them, and that makes them hole up out of instinct, because they think I'm not human, I'm a shark or something. So his mind is going, I'll get into this rock, I'm not bleeding, nothing's gonna come after me in here — that's their instinct, because in all those years nothing really goes after them into a rock. So I jump on him and he shoves his body in there, and sometimes I can put my hand underneath and just pull him out, because they don't expect that. If you scare them toward a big coral head instead, they've got plenty of places to go, so it's all about the structure you're working with — if there's a badass reef, forget it.

Tom Rowland: So when you're spearfishing you can have a stringer and shoot more than one fish, especially on scuba. How do you carry fish when you're collecting — do you take just one up at a time, or is there a way to carry them?

Steel Rockett: You know those old Flambeau Plano tackle boxes? We just cut holes in those — been doing it for years.

Tom Rowland: Oh, like a shrimp bucket?

Steel Rockett: We call them Planos, and we take the buoyancy out of it, and bring those with us. The thing is, people don't realize fish get bent, fish get the bends — the majority of the population doesn't understand you can't just pull a fish straight up, their air bladder will expand. And when these tropical fish are in distress, semi-distressed, they won't regulate their air bladder correctly, so you gotta decompress them like scuba divers. So you hang them off the side of the boat — say I caught something at fifty feet, I'll hang it at twenty-five, twenty feet, let it decompress, and I'll get in the boat and let it regulate its air bladder. And if it comes up still bent, you get an IV needle with a hole in it, and you can pop their bladder and let the air out, and they heal up incredibly — you just gotta do it the right way.

Tom Rowland: And to transport them back to shore, do you just throw them in a livewell, or is there something special you do?

Steel Rockett: It matters what it is — a lot of times with angelfish and stuff like that, you actually have to separate them into cups, because they'll beat each other up after being caught. It's crazy — anger is blind. They don't even see the real enemy, meaning me, the one who caught them, and they'll still kill each other, so you gotta separate them, species-specific. Otherwise I'll have a big trash can full of water for them. If it's inverts, anemones, corallimorphs, they're incredible — I just have a bucket of water and as long as they're not on top of each other, they're good. Those inverts are super hardy, that's why they're a big thing in the trade.

Tom Rowland: What incredible things have you seen them do?

Steel Rockett: I've seen pictures my buddies sent me, like he got an anemone from me for his tank, and he's like, oh man, I had this one left in the bag by accident, and he looks and it's in just a couple drops of water, and the anemone's just fine, hanging out. It's weird how they stay wet. But you gotta realize what an anemone is — it's not one animal, you're looking at a city. The structure you're seeing is the animal, and then the colors are the photosynthetic dinoflagellate algae living in the tissues — they have a symbiotic relationship, one needs structure, the other needs food. So you're looking at a little city there. That's why when they die or get hurt they start turning white — same idea as when you see a reef turn white when something bad happens.

Tom Rowland: That's crazy, I didn't really know that about anemones.

Steel Rockett: Yeah, incredible — that color you're seeing is individual organisms.

Tom Rowland: That's wild. And then once you bring them back to shore, what's the process to get them to whoever ordered them?

Steel Rockett: It matters where they're located — some we've shipped to Japan, even. Canada was a big one for a while, a place called Big Al's. A lot are just South Florida, or throughout the US — Chicago's another place, California too. We pack them with a hundred percent oxygen, put heat packs or cool packs in depending on the temperature at the destination, ship them overnight, and label them tropical fish so they hopefully don't throw them around.

Tom Rowland: And one of those fish can live in a bag with pure oxygen for a couple days?

Steel Rockett: Definitely at least two days minimum. It's incredible.

Lionfish, Cubera, and the Toughest Fish in the Keys

Tom Rowland: Does anybody order lionfish from the Keys — is that a market?

Steel Rockett: That's a funny thing — over the years I've noticed lionfish are worth more dead now. I could sell a live one for maybe five or six dollars, but honestly, we haven't done it in a while because it's not even worth it. When we were doing it, it got to the point where a live lionfish was maybe five dollars, and I could sell it dead to a restaurant in Marathon for five to seven dollars a pound.

Tom Rowland: We were just talking about that earlier — how it's a success story of a fish once considered not a food fish that's become one, and it's probably worth more dead than alive now. They're tasty, and people are embracing eating this invasive fish — I see them in a lot of restaurants.

Steel Rockett: I'll be honest, of all the fish I've eaten — stuff from the Pacific, stuff from here — lionfish is in my top three.

Tom Rowland: Lionfish is in your top three? Do you do anything special to them?

Steel Rockett: Honestly I eat it raw, or just salt and pepper, or fry it. It's such a good fish, so mild — that's the fish I'd pick for someone who's never eaten fish before, so they don't get a bad impression, because I feel like that happens to a lot of people with seafood being mislabeled nowadays. That would be the one, along with African pompano, scamp — those, and queen snapper, are just so good.

Tom Rowland: And available, too — for the most part. Do you get African pompano year-round?

Steel Rockett: Yeah, I've actually dialed them in finally — I've learned to look behind me, because they don't like your eyes, they come up behind your head. I get them on every trip now, it's like my gas payer, a sure thing. They're hard to shoot, though, because if you don't have a reel on your gun, their reaction speed is like a wahoo — my commercial tip is just a single barb, so if I don't have a reel, when they take off it's so fast that the shaft still has forward force pushing through them, keeping the barb closed, and the shaft doesn't get a chance to stop and let the barb open. So if you have a reel, or shoot them toward the tail, the barb flicks open. You gotta watch them.

Tom Rowland: And you mentioned cubera was your favorite to spear — is that because of the price, or you just like that fish?

Steel Rockett: The price is good, but when they get big — it's weird, ciguatera is more of a Miami and Bahamas problem, that algae grows there and Miami's waters are near there, but in the Keys it's just not something I've ever heard about. As long as you're within the size people around here want, fifty pounds or under, it's a good price, like a mutton price. But the reason I like them is because they're incredibly smart, total beasts. I shot one over a hundred pounds and it didn't even speed up its pace when I shot it — it's like they don't feel pain. In Costa Rica I shot a big seventy-pounder with a three-band gun, and it just bounced off him, he looked down, looked up at me — it wasn't even point blank, but they're just such badass animals, there's no other way to describe it. My dad's got a hundred-twenty-four-pounder off Marathon back in the day, so I always looked up to that. They put all your skills to the test — the little ones, thirty and under, a lot of people get shots at those, but over fifty they really make you work for it. I've got eighty-seven pounds as my biggest so far, but I've put shots in bigger ones. They're incredible animals, so resilient.

Tom Rowland: They are — I think that's the toughest snapper for sure, and you're saying maybe the toughest fish down there, period.

Steel Rockett: Intelligence-wise, there's no other fish — if you were a fish and you knew someone had a spear gun, they do exactly what you would do, the big ones. They don't get close to look at you, they see you and they're out. Black groupers even, the big ones are semi-aggressive sometimes — I've had eighty-pound blacks rush me out in the Gulf off the Tortugas. But most of the time cuberas will see you, give you one look, and then they're gone, or sometimes you'll just see the tail.

Tom Rowland: When you see one take off like that, do you expect another one nearby?

Steel Rockett: Sometimes. One of the most incredible things is that they're one of the only fish that, if you injure it, they don't always hole up — they seem to somehow know that you'll go into the wreck after them. Of course a nurse shark will go in there, but a lot of fish will see cover right away because it seems safer. But I've seen an injured cubera swim past a shipwreck in the Atlantic where there was nothing else nearby, and just keep swimming out into the sand where I could keep chasing it. It's like it knows if it was a bull shark chasing it, it would go in the wreck, but it knows I'm not a shark — it can get chased down eventually, but it knows that thing over there isn't made for the ocean.

Sharks in the Florida Keys: A Waterman's Perspective

Tom Rowland: Right. That's funny. So, for a third generation waterman, tell me your opinion on where we are with the sharks right now.

Steel Rockett: I feel like sharks are different, because there's a lot of misinformation going around. There are other parts of the world where sharks are definitely in decline, I won't deny that. But in the Caribbean, between the Bahamas and the Florida Keys, I don't think there are fewer sharks — I don't have the science to say it for the whole region, but maybe in the Keys I could prove it. I feel like there's almost more of them. You gotta realize what humans do to the ecosystem — one thing is we put a lot of food in the water, naturally. If you've been on a commercial yellowtail boat and roll up to a spot, those yellowtails know the sound of the engine — there's stimuli being put out there that these animals are addressing differently than they've done in all those years. Same thing for sharks — on top of a bigger food source because we drop so much in the ocean, they're more comfortable with humans, and they can be more plentiful because there's a higher food source. They know if they go somewhere, they're gonna get fed a lot of the time.

Tom Rowland: By chum, or divers feeding them, or fishermen catching fish?

Steel Rockett: Fish being caught, tasting the fish, right off the line.

Tom Rowland: Right off the line. Yeah.

Steel Rockett: They absolutely know it. And I'm not saying go kill them all — I love sharks, I'm not gonna lie. We need them, that's the balance people don't understand — we've messed with nature a bit, and things like this are gonna happen. But at the same time we can't just say things are getting dangerous everywhere — you don't wanna constantly feed sharks right up next to a community area where a little kid could jump in and get bit. But at the same time, I've noticed if people go to a spot and kill the shark there — and this is controversial, I have friends who don't agree — something weird happens. I know for a fact the sharks smell it and they leave that spot for a bit. There's some kind of symbiosis where when those sharks die, I don't think the spot is quite as good for a while — maybe the sharks bring in something behind them that affects the filter feeders too. This planet is very intricate and we still don't know everything about it. So there's definitely a fine line about what you should and shouldn't do with sharks. But if it's an area where someone could get hurt, and this animal is dangerous — I've been under a bridge and had bull sharks come right up and check me, that's what we call it, because they see how you react. That's why when they do that to me, I rush back at them. I've had some that are just dangerous, actually dangerous, no fish on me, nothing, just territorial and aggressive. Do I think a shark like that should be creating more offspring that are possibly similar? No, I don't. So there's a balance that fishermen, divers, and conservationists — commercial, recreational, whoever — all gotta understand and come together on.

Tom Rowland: Well, I believe that coming together is what's missing entirely. I think there are so many — that's why lately I've been asking people what their opinion of sharks is, because your perspective is way different than mine. I'm looking from the top down, I can see them a little and then they're gone. You're underwater with them, and when you say a spot changes if you kill a shark, that's a slightly different perspective — a fisherman on top might sense something similar, but the perspective is different, you're experiencing a change from the bottom to the top. It's easy to say kill them all, or easy to say never kill any, but I like hearing everyone's perspective on where we are with this population, because it does seem like in Florida it's really exploded — spearfishermen, above-water fishermen, tropical fish collectors, everybody's seeing more sharks, it seems. So what does that mean, and what do you do about it? Maybe nothing, I don't know. But it seems like a lot of people want to talk about whether you should kill all the sharks, kill no sharks, or have some kind of season. Everybody's got an opinion, and I think it's interesting to hear different perspectives from people who make their living on the ocean.

Steel Rockett: Oh yeah, and then there's the other side — you gotta be careful with misinformation, because you've got people who just say save the sharks and don't realize that's a great thing to say if you go to where they're finning sharks like crazy, in Asia and places like that, where they're really tearing them up. But a lot of these people live in the mainland US, saying things like the sharks are dying, and the problem is misinformation, especially in this century, is cancerous — it just grows and it's very bad. People who actually make their living on the water see this firsthand, and that mixes with all these other views and voices. That's the only big problem with our communication nowadays, it's hard to filter it out sometimes. So you have a fact that there isn't a small number of sharks, and that's factual, you can prove it. But then you've got things that challenge that which are baseless a lot of the time. It's definitely a hard subject.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, especially between someone in a very similar position to you — a commercial spearfisherman, or someone collecting something, not that different from someone taking people snorkeling. You're making your living in the water, and one wants to see more sharks, one wants to see fewer, but you're basically doing almost the same thing. I mean, don't get me wrong, there's a big difference between a snorkeling trip and a spearfishing trip, but you're both in the water with people, and at the end of the day that's how you're getting paid. And those two groups are often as different in opinion as a commercial fisherman and a recreational fisherman, or a bait fisherman and a catch-and-release fly fisherman. The point is, man, we've got a lot more similarities than differences, and we should really try to understand that and band together rather than letting other groups pry us apart. Because once that happens, we're not very strong, and none of us will be able to make our living on the ocean — no more spearfishing, no more tourism, no more boats, and that's what I'm all about, protecting the access we all have. And I think the more we disagree about little things — and shark population isn't a little thing, that's a big thing, and it certainly deserves to be studied with some correct science around it — but there are a lot of little things that do pry us apart as groups of fishermen, spearfishermen, regular fishermen, whatever kind, and we shouldn't allow that.

Steel Rockett: I know, it's probably the sport — there's so much ego in it, in all types of it, every kind of sport, I should say plural, just watermen in general. There's so much ego, and it's like, this person right here doing this type of fishing, let's say deep dropping, the spearfisherman over here can't tell them what a snowy grouper eats a lot of the time. But then vice versa, they can't tell a striper fisherman where the hogs have been running. The problem nowadays is a lot of people feel like they know what's best for another trade that isn't their trade — that's the problem sometimes.

Tom Rowland: Yes. And it's okay to put regulations on that group over there because it doesn't affect what I'm doing — that's dangerous, too.

Steel Rockett: That's their thing. I will say, though, you gotta be careful, because with the tropical fish trade, there's forty of us — that could just be shut down like that, there's no power there. But then look at all the other commercial trades — I get blanketed as a commercial fisherman, but I'm a spearfisherman, and there are so many little distinctions like that, but I'm still under all those same laws. It's about who has the biggest industry, this and that — it can do the most, really. That's a really controversial one for sure.

Best Catches and a World Record Parrotfish

Tom Rowland: Yeah. So, as we're wrapping up, let's move off that subject into something cooler — what's the best fish you've managed to spear this year?

Steel Rockett: This year? Since January?

Tom Rowland: Well, we're only about twenty-one days into this year, so I'm sure you've got some good ones, but I mean recently, in the last three hundred sixty-five days.

Steel Rockett: I got a nice cubera that was a sixty-five pounder out front, pretty close to home — that was nice. My biggest black grouper last year was fifty, fifty-five pounds, pretty good. A lot of nice fish, I didn't have any crazy prize ones. I got some giant lobsters in the Bahamas, one that was twelve pounds, that was cool. And I got a world record parrotfish in the Bahamas.

Tom Rowland: Really? Wow.

Steel Rockett: Yeah, it's funny, because I've grown up collecting tropical fish, I've never hunted them, that's kind of our lady thing. My Bahamian buddy who was my driver was telling me, man, give me a nice fish for my Christmas dinner. I said, alright, you got any ideas what you want? And the second time he told me, he said, I want a big parrotfish. I said alright — the laws there are different, you gotta use the whole spear. About an hour later I saw this beast of a parrotfish, about forty pounds. I looked down, looked up, and said, Joe, you sure you want a parrotfish? And he said, yeah man, for sure. So I went down, got it on video, took a full-spread shot, got him up, and didn't think much of it — I was like, wow, that beak is crazy, his beak is this big, giant beak. I gave it to him, and he goes home and starts cleaning it. And it's like nine o'clock at night, and I'm relaxing, and I think, let me look up the record. And the parrotfish record for pole spear is like twenty pounds — it wasn't even close. I called him and said wait, wait, wait — he'd already gilled and gutted it, but it was still ten pounds bigger. So I submitted it — came out to thirty-one pounds gills-and-guts weight, probably thirty-six pounds whole.

Tom Rowland: Will they take that? What's the record-keeping organization for spearfishing?

Steel Rockett: Yeah, they said they'll take it, it's all good, I did everything right. It's the IUSA, all freedive-only records.

Tom Rowland: That's interesting, because in regular fishing, if the fish is mutilated it doesn't count as a record — like in a tournament, if a shark bites the tail, it won't count, and people have lost million-dollar marlin like that. But I guess that's the nature of spearfishing, it's always gonna come up with a hole in it.

Steel Rockett: Yeah, but gutted, I feel like — if I ran something like that, I'd make everyone gut their fish. But I'm commercial, so gutting a fish is just a normal function to me, like eating breakfast. I know a lot of people aren't gonna want to gut their fish, but it's the best way, because people put weights in fish, and if they're gutted, the weights will fall out the bottom.

Tom Rowland: Did you see the walleye guys who did that, trying to win big money?

Steel Rockett: What a joke, those guys.

Tom Rowland: And then that guy got in trouble again for something else — they went to his house, allegedly, and he had all these deer mounted on the wall, and they could tell a lot of them were poached. If you deer hunt, you know deer, like other species, have identifying traits — their antlers look a certain way, you see them year after year on trail cameras, and then one date it's gone and never shows up again. People have gotten in trouble at sports shows bringing in a head saying, look, I got this, and the landowner says, that's the deer off my property, and they go back through the trail camera pictures and see the deer every day until one day it never shows up again, and then it's at the sports show. Apparently those walleye guys got in trouble for something similar. Some people just can't stay out of trouble — they know how to hunt and fish, but they can't stay out of trouble.

Close Calls: A Cubera Bite, a Reef Shark, and a Sea Turtle

Tom Rowland: I don't know why you'd be driven to do that.

Steel Rockett: No, where's the valor in that? Where's the honor?

Tom Rowland: I don't know. But I could tell you, when you go down and spear a big cubera, that would be pretty awesome — I've never done that, but it sounds awesome.

Steel Rockett: Incredible animals, big teeth too — that's so cool. I've been bit by one, actually, after it had already been speared.

Tom Rowland: A speared one, not a free-swimming one?

Steel Rockett: No, I shot him in the knee area, and in self-defense he grabbed my leg. They get you good.

Tom Rowland: I bet. Stitches?

Steel Rockett: I didn't get stitches, no. He didn't get me that good, I'll tell you what, but it still hurt — he was only twenty, twenty-five pounds.

Tom Rowland: Was that one coming after a fish on your shaft, or free-swimming and it just bit you?

Steel Rockett: It's a funny story — I've had them almost get me while chasing. For some reason, when you shoot a rainbow runner they just go crazy, or a yellow jack — those two fish get cudas seeing red. I've had one grab the back of my — since rainbow runners don't have structure near them, they use you as structure. I had one run by my face, go behind me, and then a cuda took off by my neck, grabbed it, broke the line, and the line laid across my shoulder before I even knew what happened. When I pulled the line I was like, oh. But the one that actually bit me, I'd shot a cuda for deep-drop bait — I was on my way out to Pulley Ridge on a long trip on my big boat, diving my way out before it got too deep, then deep-dropping bandit reels. I shot him for bait and he went crazy. I had five amberjacks on me already, big ones, and I'm on my anchor line in deco after a two-hundred-foot dive, I think I was diving a submarine wreck out there. I shot the cuda and he's going crazy, wraps around the anchor line above me like a pivot point, like a protractor, and I see him coming — keep in mind I've got five amberjacks, each over forty pounds. I couldn't move. I covered up best I could, and he grabbed my thigh — not aggressive on purpose, cudas aren't aggressive fish at all, I've had them in aquariums getting beat up by other fish. But this one came in out of fear, shot in the face, freaking out with his mouth open, hit my thigh, put a hole through the top of my wetsuit and a small one in the bottom — I only had board shorts on with a bottom wetsuit, and it hit my fat, yellow fat hanging out. Luckily it missed the artery, it was leaking slowly but I knew I was okay. It was the first day of a five-day trip, and I'd put a couple thousand dollars into the boat to get out there, so I just put alcohol, hand sanitizer, Betadine on it every day, wrapped it up, and kept diving. The funniest part was the dive after, four hours later at the surface, wrapped up, and dusky sharks on the tugboat wreck north of the Tortugas were firing at me and messing with me before I even had a fish. I realized I was still leaking, and it's true what they say, they really do go after your blood.

Tom Rowland: Dang. And then you stayed the five days and went to get stitches after?

Steel Rockett: I should've gotten stitches, it was worthy of it, but I just kept wrapping it up, cleaning it at night in the saltwater. I believe clean saltwater works wonders — I got bit by a reef shark not long ago, had a good glove on, cleaned it out real good and kept diving. Saltwater people underestimate how good it is for you — not dirty saltwater, you gotta worry about infection, but clean saltwater after the initial clean is incredible for wounds.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, everything heals fast, and your fingernails grow like crazy.

Steel Rockett: Yeah, it's a weakness too, I think.

Tom Rowland: I think the ocean is the heart of the whole world — it's a living organism and you're in it. What else have you been bit by?

Steel Rockett: The reef shark was the other day, I got so lucky — I had an armored glove on, but it still punctured my fingers here, you can kind of see. He ran up and got me, but that was the most recent one.

Tom Rowland: Why were you wearing an armored glove — did you know something might happen?

Steel Rockett: These are gloves you see in red and black, they've got a hammerhead shark logo on them — not metal armor, but rubber, armored enough to make a big difference. It's got this rubber, Kevlar-nitrile construction, rubber tops, and that's what saved me the most. It's my normal dive glove, but the strongest one I have — that's the game changer. And I had a sea turtle get me once, too.

Tom Rowland: A sea turtle bit you?

Steel Rockett: Yeah, I'll never forget it — it was dirty water, a funny story. Really dirty water, and I'm looking around, I'd shot a grouper and was pulling up with it on me, worried about something coming up on me. All of a sudden, boom, I got hit in the back. I'm like, what the heck, I'm dead, and I look over my shoulder and it's a giant three-hundred, two-hundred-fifty-pound loggerhead. He bites my shoulder and grabs my wetsuit, and I went, oh my god, and elbowed him in the face — I was scared for maybe fifty milliseconds before I even knew what happened, because I had a fish on me and something just smacked into me.

Tom Rowland: A turtle doesn't give either, there's no give in that thing.

Steel Rockett: No, that was crazy — I was at a rubble pile on the Atlantic side, you know those rubble piles.

Tom Rowland: I've never heard of a turtle biting someone — is that common?

Steel Rockett: No, they're old and blind, and you gotta watch out during mating season, because they think you're another turtle. That's rare, though — this thing's eyes were like clouds, they were so old. It's not something that happens like you see a turtle on the reef and, oh no. It's the kind of thing that happens if you're in the ocean a lot, a lot, a lot, and that little statistical draw falls on you.

Tom Rowland: That's like the last thing you'd think would happen — getting bit by a turtle. I hope that's not what takes you out, that would be ironic.

Steel Rockett: I know, right?

How to Dive With Steel Rockett

Tom Rowland: Well, if somebody wanted to go with you on one of these dives, what would they do? We're running out of time here.

Steel Rockett: I'm still setting up everything for the guiding side of it — right now I'm doing trips in the Bahamas, but I'm getting everything into place to do it on my own vessel. Basically, people can contact me on social media — Slingin' Steel is my Facebook, and my name, Steel Rockett, works too. And if they like diving, love the ocean and nature, want to see some sharks, some intense harvesting, they can check my YouTube out too, same name, Slingin' Steel — a lot of shipwreck history, World War Two shipwrecks, all sorts of interesting stuff on there.

Tom Rowland: Oh, that's cool, I would definitely check that out. You'll pick up some new people from this — definitely check out his Instagram, that's where I've seen most of your stuff, but I'll check out the YouTube too. Sounds cool. Alright, man, well it's been great — I learned a lot about tropical fish collecting for one thing, but also diving, and I really appreciate you giving us your perspective on the sharks. I'll run into you maybe in Big Pine — where do you live, in Big Pine?

Steel Rockett: Yeah, yeah, I'm on a houseboat in the Big Pine area.

Tom Rowland: Right off the boat ramp, or where?

Steel Rockett: I'm in Pine Channel there.

Tom Rowland: Alright, cool, fishing there all the time. Alright, well it was great getting to know you, and we'll be back with another great guest just like Steel Rockett next week. Alright, so come back, see you.