I immediately received a text asking about them. Several months later I posted some of my white shark photos from Guadalupe on social media. A friend gave me Al’s number, and after a few quick texts the timing didn’t work out. A few years back I was looking for someone to teach me to spearfish and free dive. My trips to Guadalupe are actually how Al Junior and I became friends. Al Junior has never been back to Guadalupe. On the big boats, we take now that trip is 18 hours in good conditions. Al Junior remembers little of the trip back to San Diego, 150 miles of open ocean. When Al was pulled on board, he was already unconscious. The math on that isn’t promising when the main circuitry is severed, and blood pours out of the body instead of circulating within. An adult male has between four to six liters of blood, and the heart pumps about five to seven liter per minute. Al yelled one final word, knowing he had been hit and his blood was draining through a severed femoral artery in his leg,”Tourniquet!” The crew pulled him onboard, but the blood loss was too severe. The shark wanted a tuna, not a man, but the man paid the price for the aberration.Īl surfaced and yelled the word that every waterman dreads hearing when there is a tinge of panic associated with it, “Shark!” His son, Al Junior, who was nine at the time ran to the back of the boat for help. The shark, immediately realizing its mistake, vanished back into the depths, but humans are foreigners to this sometimes violent world, and our soft bodies are not designed to avoid or withstand the investigative bite of a toothy fish that can be 18 feet long with the girth of a mini cooper. It bit into his leg, and its razor sharp teeth inflicted instant irreparable damage. Just below the surface, a white shark, hunting in its natural habitat, mistook Al for a meal … or maybe for competition. They attract predators of many kinds, not just the two-legged, breath-holding men who have to don wetsuits to share the space with the more adept and native ones. The waters around Guadalupe Island are 200 feet deep and full of life. It was late afternoon, and Al was alone in the deep blue as his son watched from the boat. On September 9, 1973, Al Schneppershoff, 37 at the time, was spearfishing for tuna off Mexico’s Guadalupe Island. “MAN ATTACKED AND KILLED BY GREAT WHITE SHARK,” was the Los Angeles Times headline in September of 1973. … an equally talented waterman who learned to dive before he learned to ride a bike, followed in this father’s watery footsteps, became a respected spearfishing guide and ocean enthusiast. But this story isn’t entirely about Al Schneppershoff Sr., it’s about his son, Al Schneppershoff Jr. Al loved to make people happy, and he wanted nothing more than to share his passion for salty water and hunting fish. He swept competitions like polished tile floors and pulled up game that made Loch Ness sound a little more plausible.Įvery article I’ve read about Al mentions his good nature, his contagious belly laugh, his generous personality and of course his connection to the ocean and its inhabitants. An MVP, always first in the water and last to leave…and he always got the prize … the biggest fish. In the 1960s and 70s Al, a big man with an uncanny stamina for diving and stalking fish, was at the top of his game. He, and the men who came in the few decades before him, are considered the founding father of the sport in American waters. Al Schneppershoff was one of the most respected blue-water spearfishermen, freedivers and all around watermen in the world.
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