The Helldivers' Rodeo: A Deadly, X-Treme, Scuba-Diving, Spearfishing, Adventure Amid the Off Shore Oil Platforms in the Murky Waters of the Gulf of Mexico [Hardcover]

Humberto Fontova (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 24, 2001

An account of some of the wildest, most x-treme sportmen in recent memory.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This highly entertaining read follows the adventures of a pack of New Orleans-based middle-aged crazies whose idea of "sport" is hunting dangerous fish near offshore oil rigs. The book is part Hunter Thompson "gonzo"-style tale about "kick-ass, deep-diving, monstrosity-spearing rig divers," and part paean to the fearless diving sportsmen of the 1950s including a young Jacques Cousteau, who first taught American divers about the "kill zone" at a shark's forehead who the author sees in the same role as the first men who crossed the Bering land bridge and found virgin hunting lands teeming with unsuspecting prey on a new continent. Fontova provides a fine, detailed history of the pastime that causes 98% of all diving accidents. He artfully describes the birth of the nation's first fishing rodeo, which later introduced a spearfishing division attracting "divers from all over the world" to the fertile waters near and then farther beyond New Orleans. He adeptly depicts the development of technology that allows men to dive to depths below 200 feet; the reasons why grown men band together in small groups often in competition and risk the loss of life and limb to see who can capture the biggest fish; and the helldivers' moments of relaxed triumph, which can all be summed up by one of Fontova's diving pals: "We had our thrill, and we got some dynamite steaks." (May)Forecast: The current enthusiasm for extreme and dangerous sports of all kinds, combined with an ecstatic blurb from Ted Nugent, bodes well for this book.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Fontova is a Cuban immigrant and freelance journalist living in southern Louisiana who scuba dives and spear fishes around the oil rigs that dot the continental shelf near New Orleans. The oil platforms have become artificial reefs that attract an astonishing variety of sea creatures and, consequently, divers. The sport is dangerous, but not insanely so; its enthusiasts have swum and hunted for decades, experiencing plenty of scratches and bites but relatively few fatalities. The author apparently decided to write in the style of the World Wresting Federation, which is somewhat off-putting at first. But beneath the macho posturing is his sincere lifelong love affair with skin diving and the mostly male friends who club together to share the adventures, thrills, dangers, stories, and parties. Like most hunters, they are conservationists at heart, and like many men, they look back at their wild youths and marvel at their survival. Fontova gives a nice sense of the primal thrill that comes from testing oneself against the forces of nature. This is a man's book and will fit in nicely with sports collections in public libraries. Edwin B. Burgess, U.S. Army Combined Arms Research Lib., Fort Leavenworth, KS
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 244 pages
• Publisher: M.Evans & Company (April 24, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0871319365
• ISBN-13: 978-0871319364
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #337,838 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #57 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Exercise & Fitness > Swimming

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars SEA HUNT IN A STRAIGHT JACKET, June 19, 2001

By 

Gordon H. Hutchinson (Baton Rouge, Louisiana United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Helldivers' Rodeo: A Deadly, X-Treme, Scuba-Diving, Spearfishing, Adventure Amid the Off Shore Oil Platforms in the Murky Waters of the Gulf of Mexico (Hardcover)

If he were alive today, Lloyd Bridges would just die.

As it is, in that great water world in the sky, he's probably reverse-inducted his air supply, causing his regulator to reverberate and self-destruct, or whatever it is regulators do when they implode in dismay.

Humberto Fontova has created a first book that is a paen to Louisiana and its Gulf fisheries.

In doing so, he has spear-gunned every sacred sea cow the Sea Hunt crowd--and the wine-tasting, escargot-slurping,environmentally-connected Sierra Clubbers--have ever embraced in the pursuit of politically correct, fish-hugging, non-consumptive usage of the Gulf of Mexico, and her abundant piscatorial plenty.

Thumbing his nose at all in a juicy redneck/sea-scum dialect, Fontova writes the following: "...In the Fund for Animal's annual 'Body Count,' which scores states in its 'Cavalcade of Cruelty' by the number of animals 'murdered' by hunters as reported by fish and game agencies, Louisiana was: NUMBER ONE! the last two years running..."

Hilariously irreverent, Fontova is a fast, furious, funny read about the ultimate extreme-edge sport, deep-water scuba diving and fish hunting around the lush fisheries environment of oil rigs off the Louisiana coast in the Gulf of Mexico. What makes it interesting is that not only are these characters going entirely too deep to be doing this stuff, but sometimes, the fish hunt them...

Rip Linton, head of the East Baton Rouge Parish (Louisiana) Sheriff's Office Flotilla Dive and Rescue Team, is a certified dive instructor, certified cave diver, and certified rescue diver. He has dived with most of the South Louisiana characters and clubs described in Fontova's book.

"When everyone started getting into diving back in the fifties, the tables for safe depths were written by the U.S. Navy," Linton said. "When I started diving with the Helldivers, and some of these other clubs, I was amazed at the depths they were reaching. Some of these characters were bending themselves, they were going so deep, and staying so long...and you can't 'bend' yourself over about three times before there's permanent damage. These guys were going down as much as a hundred feet below the Navy's recommended safe depths. They literally rewrote the books on maximum depths for scuba!"

THE HELLDIVERS RODEO is at once a description of middle-aged crazies who dive the rigs and platforms of the Gulf in polyester disco outfits from the Seventies, hunting big fish to spear and ride, and it is also a love affair with Louisiana and its waters as only an adoptee can describe and appreciate.

Born in Cuba in the fifties, Fontova starts his book describing how he and his cousin, watched over by their long-suffering nanny, Tata, would swim the shallow waters of the beaches east of Havana, using home-made spear guns and straightened coat hangers for spears. Stern milicianos, teen-aged boys with machine guns imbued with the spirit of la revolucion, stood watching them from the beach. Fontova describes how his family eventually escaped Cuba and Communist oppression, and landed in Louisiana.

"That was thirty years ago. Now Pelayo and I find ourselves a few hundred miles north of Cuba, and speaking a different language. We're brushing that 'continental slope' again, spearing fish again. We arrived a gaggle of penniless and terrified Cuban refugees--didn't even speak the language. But terror was short-lived. Louisiana has always embraced immigrants and even visitors. She greets them joyfully at the gangplank or tarmac like a lost grandmother, beaming and waving frantically. She rushes out, lifts and twirls them. She mashes them into her ample bosom...her stubbled chin poking them and her garlicky breath suffocating them. But no matter, she makes her point: 'Welcome! You're family now!'"

According to Fontova, when scuba diving started becoming popular in the mid-fifties, the rigs had been placed off the Louisiana coast less than ten years. Jacques Cousteau had just written the first book on scuba diving, THE SILENT WORLD, and the first underwater film, RED SEA ADVENTURE by Hans Hass, had just come out. All this led south Louisiana good ol' boys, raised on a culture of hunting and fishing, to see the benefits of combining the two by diving and spearfishing.

Many states have more certified divers than Louisiana, according to Fontova. But JBL, the world's largest manufacturer of spearguns, sells more spearguns in Louisiana than any other state in the union. In fact, most are sold out of a couple of area dive shops in New Orleans--the jumping off point for extreme diving and dangerous spearfishing...

A love affair with the outdoors and Louisiana's bounty, a history of skin-of-your-teeth diving by crazy south Louisiana Cajun cowboys and Cuban expatriates, and a hunt for the biggest, baddest fish, some of whom turn and come back at you when you stick them with a spear, THE HELLDIVERS RODEO is JAWS on steroids, and SEA HUNT in a straight jacket.

Ninety-eight percent of the deaths in skindiving occur while spear fishing. Read this book, and discover why. Discover a world so alien to your sensibilities, you will truly begin to understand why deep water diving has been compared to the aloneness, the vast blackness of outer space.

And when the Helldivers "bounce" dive the rigs, hunting the biggest, and frequently foulest-tempered of the fishes, spearing them and then ducking back into the web of rig legs so the teeth chew on steel and barnacles, rather than polyester and Cuban/Cajun machismo, you'll grit your teeth as the "pucker factor" causes you to grip your seat without use of your hands...

If SEA HUNT was an undersea rendering of outer space, THE HELLDIVERS RODEO is ALIENS on ..., and an unabashed thrill-seeking ride down deep for the high of the ultimate hunt. Get on board,pop a brew, hyperventilate, and take the ride. You'll never look at the Gulf of Mexico (or Cuban expatriates) the same again.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting read, ignore Ted Nugent's jacket review, July 2, 2001

By 

David (Houston, Tx) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Helldivers' Rodeo: A Deadly, X-Treme, Scuba-Diving, Spearfishing, Adventure Amid the Off Shore Oil Platforms in the Murky Waters of the Gulf of Mexico (Hardcover)

The Helldivers' Rodeo is an insider's view of the captivating world of deepsea spearfishing. The action takes place in the Gulf of Mexico, miles from shore, near the massive oil and gas platforms, manmade structures that draw big fish at such numbers as to shame nature's reefs. The story is presented in the first person when the author recounts his own hunts of large cobia, massive grouper and man-sized amberjacks. The author weaves into third person when relaying significant events second hand, such as untimely diving deaths (including divers tangled and dragged deep by freshly speared fish), encounters of schools of jewfish (grouper weighing up to 700 lbs) and lunatics spearing 15 feet sharks (which can and have turned on their hunters). These stories are interspersed with the author's personal stories, ranging from his boyhood in revolutionary Cuba (where his dad was arrested bye Che's milicianos) to his tales of aging in decadent Louisiana. The book is not award-winning prose, but it reads quickly, and the reader gets a glimpse of an incredible aquatic hunt with the occasional detour into the life of a Cuban immigrant [and]... Louisiana Good-Ole-Boy.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Helldiver's Rodeo, July 23, 2001

By 

Chris Harbuck (Shreveport, LA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Helldivers' Rodeo: A Deadly, X-Treme, Scuba-Diving, Spearfishing, Adventure Amid the Off Shore Oil Platforms in the Murky Waters of the Gulf of Mexico (Hardcover)

Attention "non-divers"!! You too have to read this book. Humberto Fontova takes the reader into a world most people have never experienced. You experience thrills, fear, anxiety, ecstacy, humor, nostalgia, and large doses of political incorrectness. Sounds strange, but this book does not fit into an Amazon category. This guy can flat out write.

Caution to environmentalists in California.... this book might change your preconceived notions about the environmental effects of offshore oil platforms. Fish love them......