Diving and Collecting Vacation?

[Kannon50]

Recently had a few friends go to vegas for "Men's Weekend" ..... i being married with a 2yr had not even heard of this concept of "Men's Weekend"..... which got me thinking....

I NEED a Men's Weekend.... but would rather not go to vegas....

Does anyone know of or have gone on a Diving and Collecting Vacation?
where you hire a company that has a licence to collect and they take you to a dive spot and you harvest and collect your own fish/crabs/coral etc ?

Would love to get a few fellow hobbyist together for this kind of vacation.

i know im not the only hobbist that has thought about this.... i would like to plan this trip for next year.... so any help advice experience would be awesome

TIA

[Mark9]

Good question.
I had researched this a bit recently, found this site.
Still in the dreaming stage for me.

AquaHunter

[primo21]

that sounds amazing...how do you get your catch home? especially for us northerners, do you ship it, do they ship. will need to have someone at home to accept since you will be in florida. would imagine i would want to be there for a few days, at least, and would have to ship daily catches home unless there was a holding tank. could get $$$$ shipping multiple overnights.

[Kannon50]

Originally Posted by primo21

that sounds amazing...how do you get your catch home? especially for us northerners, do you ship it, do they ship. will need to have someone at home to accept since you will be in florida. would imagine i would want to be there for a few days, at least, and would have to ship daily catches home unless there was a holding tank. could get $$$$ shipping multiple overnights.

i would assume it would be no different than when i ship fish/corals to customers. or im more interested in chartering with a company that has i license to collect that also has a holding system that can care for the fish before i am ready to leave. .... . shipping can get expensive but how cool would it be to say yah i caught that beauty in Florida/Hawaii/Figi etc

[Reefer4evaa]

Originally Posted by Kannon50

i would assume it would be no different than when i ship fish/corals to customers. or im more interested in chartering with a company that has i license to collect that also has a holding system that can care for the fish before i am ready to leave. .... . shipping can get expensive but how cool would it be to say yah i caught that beauty in Florida/Hawaii/Figi etc

Couldn't agree more about the satisfaction of knowing what you caught in the ocean is in your tank

[JoelA7]

I did this with a friend many years ago when collecting rock, NOT coral, was legal in the Florida Keys. We "hired on" as temps with a collector who was fully licensed etc. We dove for fun but collected in shallow water snorkeling.

I wrote this up as an article and it was a fantastic experience. Short version:

Rented 24' box truck. Insulated it with double 4x8 styro panels. Packed our rock in 12 @ 60 gallon drums in a double cross pattern with 4 barrels filled with ice in the corners of what was a 4x4 square secured in the truck. Air stones in all rock barrels with valves to regulate flow.

12 hours drive day one. Sleep 7 hours. 22 hours drive day two we were back in Boston.

Lost 2 barrels to excess die off in transit. Remainder stocked my 150 fowlr and my friends 1,000 reef.

AWESOME BABY!!!