There must be a more detailed story to that Bill!?
please tell....
OK, if I must.
Petros shot that yellowtail at about 45 feet and it wrapped up in the kelp on the bottom at 55 feet. It was pretty murky down there. He made a couple dives braining it and cutting its gills while I held his gun and the float line. After those first two dives he was holding the float line on the surface and felt a big jerk. On the next dive, he found a giant black sea bass with his yellowtail in its mouth, but it turned loose as he came down on it. On the dive after that, the yellowtail was not where it had been, so he thought the black sea bass had stolen it. Keep in mind that with all that kelp wrapped in shooting line down there in the poor vis, its not really easy to tell what is going on. We kept kicking and pulling the float line as hard as we could, and made progress to the point where we could see the swivel attaching his float line to his mono shooting line. He went down and detached the shooting line from the float line, kept on going, and finally swam up with the fish. I was nervous as hell during all this since he would disappear into the kelp and murk on every dive, and I'd wonder when I was going to see him come up. Also, I had my doubts about my ability to save him if required.
When we saw the bite out of the fish, our first assumption was that the black sea bass had taken it. But the more we thought about it, that doesn't seem likely. Black sea bass don't really have teeth. Our best guess is that a shark got in on the action at some point. Seven gill sharks take a lot of fish from divers down in the San Diego area, and we aren't all that far north. The area where we were diving is famous as a nursery ground for juvenile (8 to 10 feet) great white sharks, so that is another possibility. When they get bigger they switch to marine mammals as their diet, but the smaller ones still eat fish.
As long as I'm telling stories- When we first arrived at our kelp bed of choice, there was a guy diving from a jet ski, and it was obvious he was trying to retrieve a fish. We anchored a respectful distance down the kelp bed. By the time we suited up, he got his fish and came by to ask if we had a scale. Its hard to hold a scale steady above your head, but the fish seemed to weigh about 50 pounds. That is the biggest yellowtail I've ever seen- my biggest is only 40 pounds. I took photos and sent them to him, and last night he said that the fish weighted 51.2 pounds on a certified scale back at the harbor.