As a Captain and one who has heard many stories and seen many things, I think the one thing that amazes me the most is the ability of “sacrifice”we as humans have for one another.
I know that sounds crazy in a world and generation of self- centeredness, but is it really that crazy?
If your friend was dying, would you sacrifice yourself to save them?
Take for example the story of Cameron Kirkconnell and his friend Steve Bennett.
You may have heard of Cameron before, because he's is a very successful spear fishermen known around the world, but we’ll get into that later.
I had the privilege of speaking with Cameron today, we are trying to plan a spearfishing episode with him on our up coming series,
During our conversation this story was brought to my attention.
Its a story of fast thinking, heroics, and determination with a lot God’s grace to pull it together, here it is in Cameron’s own words...
We Were diving in 180 ft of water with a friend Steve Bennet who is a 21 year old from Tarpon Springs. We were diving on an area of broken bottom in strong current from an anchored boat. Making one dive down and getting swept away each time before swimming back to the boat and resting to make another,
he dove to down and was on his way back to the surface, I watched and he looked fine and regretfully, left the surface myself and headed down. I dove and while I was down at 75 ft his gun floated past me,
I immediately looked around and saw my friend upside down drifting unconcious and convulsing about 60 ft away at that same depth.
With a strong current and no one else in the water, I had one chance, so I ditched my weight belt and swam hard towards him extending the gun to shoot him. I was well past my breath hold limit and knew that there was no point of us both dying but there was only this one brief glimmer of hope to even get his body. I knew I couldn’t get close enough to be confident in penetrating the meat in his leg so I wound up shooting him in the fin, I
headed for the surface and was as close as I have ever been to blacking out in my life. Before the dive, by pure luck we had secured my gun to a huge fishing reel on the boat in anticipation of me shooting a 100 lb Cubera snapper which we had seen at depth.
I screamed for the boat to cut the anchor line and to reel up my gun because it had my friend Steve on it.
Suffice to say and despite my yelling trying to get them hurry because Steve had drown and we were about to have to perform CPR on him they continued at a normal pace having no idea the gravity of the situation.
We pulled him to the boat and he was completely limp, bleeding from his eyes, nose, mouth and ears and was completely blue.
I put him on the back of the boat and checked his vitals immediately found a faint pulse and no breathing. From freedive and medical training, I opened his airway while talking confidently and softly to him and blowing lightly across his cheeks, which triggers the breathing reflex like a new born. within the first minutes and just before I was going to start rescue breaths, some foamy blood leaked from the side of his mouth and I turned him on his side and supported him, so as to ease the flow of fluid from his lungs.
A short while later he sputtered a bit and was able to take in what I would estimate was a 1% capacity breath. Tweenty seconds later he made another one and expelled more foamy blood from his mouth and nose.
With each sputter, he expelled more and more, within 10 minutes he could take about a 15% breath, but was still completely unresponsive and from what I could see, in a comatose state with only his body barely functioning.
During this whole time we are on the radio with the coast guard and are still 70 miles off shore.
After 15 minutes he started to slurr and for the first time was able to squeeze my hand slightly, letting me know that he could hear me.
From there I sat him in my arms and over the next 20 minutes as we sped in as fast as the boat would go, he regained more and more motor functions and was able to talk more and more. Forty five minutes from the time it happened and still 55 miles off shore we rendezvous with a coast guard helicopter, which airlifted him to Tampa General hospital.
He had severe lung damage but is alive and has no noticeable brain damage. He is stable and will live a lot happier having not been shot in the leg or having sunk to 180 feet never to be seen again.
This was the best shot I have ever made...
This is the single heaviest thing that was ever happened to me or any diver I’ve ever talked to.
Throughout the ordeal, if I was looking at it from the outside I would have told anyone with a 99% certainty there was no chance he would ever regain conciousness or be able to be recovered from that depth, or the fin would have stayed on, or the second diver would have been able to get him, or the fin would not have split.
Once in the boat… the worst sight I’ve ever seen. NO one should be able to live through that, but the human body is an amazing thing and that he was able to came back, is a miracle.
Thank your lucky stars tonight because it is possible for everything to align perfectly and work out sometimes.
Told you it was an amazing story...
As time passed, Steve made a full recovery and continued on to play football for the University of Florida. Today he owns his own insurance company and resides in
Tarpon Springs, Fl.
As for our friend Cameron, he hasn’t slowed down at all.
After receiving the Silver Lifesaving Medal from the U.S. Coast Guard for the rescue, which was presented with an award- Senators, Congressman, Admirals and Generals stood while they read the story, the presenting admiral said in his 35 years of service he’d only presented the medal twice, both posthumously..
Today, he is the owner of Spearfishing with Cameron Kirkconnell, he has worked with the National Geographic and the Discovery Channel and has set 18 personal World Records Spearfishing, 30 World Records for clients, he has Unlimited tonnage Master Mariner, he's
the coach/captain of Team USA Spearfishing which is sponsored by Saltlife, Papas Pilar, Yeti, BubbaBlade, Plantation Ford, and Mercury Marine and runs guided trips worldwide putting clients on the fish of a lifetime...
How’s that for a resume?
The most exciting thing...
You can dive with him and go Spearfishing yourself...
Don’t know how? He can train you here’s how you make it happen.
You can contact Cameron at
http://CameronKirkconnell.com Or email him at- freedive2spearfish@gmail.com
Don’t forget to follow him on Facebook and Instagram
@camkirkconnell
Be watching for our episode and interview with Cam in the near future.

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