Eugene diver's hat trick tuna is a whopper.

Byline: Mike Stahlberg The Register-Guard

Longtime Eugene-area diver John Cheesman completed an unusual spearfishing "hat trick" last month when he took a yellowfin tuna while free diving in the Pacific Ocean off Mazatlan, Mexico.

The yellowtail was the third species of tuna Cheesman's taken with a spear. He bagged a bluefin tuna off the San Diego coast in 1994 and an albacore tuna off Cape Blanco on the southern Oregon Coast in 1997.

"I had a dry spell with my tuna hunting," Cheesman said of the time it took him to complete one of his personal goals. "Finally. After a dozen years and too many trips to count!'

But the wait was worth it. The yellowtail he speared last month weighed 210 pounds, or 10 times the size of his first two tuna, both of which were about 20 pounders.

Tuna are easily caught on hook and line but are extremely difficult for spearfishermen to get due to the speed at which they move through water and the fact that most are spooked by the noise and air bubbles generated by scuba gear.

Cheesman, however, is a devotee of free diving, also known as breath-hold diving, in which the undersea hunter holds his breath for anywhere from 30 seconds to two minutes while stalking his underwater prey.

"All together, I made almost 100 different breath-hold dives" on the day he got his yellowtail, Cheesman said. "We were really swimming hard. ... We spent eight hours in the water the first day."

He and several friends were hunting in relatively shallow water above an underwater mesa that attracted lots of smaller fish.

"Those tuna work the edges" of the rock formation, feeding on the smaller fish, he said.

Floating face down on the surface, Cheesman would look for an area with lots of bait fish, then dive 20 to 40 feet below the surface, hoping to encounter a feeding tuna.

One big yellowtail got a little too curious about that big thing floating silently in his territory.

The spear was connected to a line with a trio of inflatable buoys attached. Those brought the big fish to the surface, where Cheesman's dive boat could recover it.

There are about 20 different species of tuna in the world, but Cheesman figures he needs just two others - the dog tooth tuna and the big eye tuna, found off Australia and in the Indian Ocean - to complete a "grand slam" of tuna gamefish.

"Those would be my next targets," he said.

Cheesman has more time for deep-sea hunting since closing Seasports Dive Center in Springfield, which he opened in 1983 and operated through 2004.

"I wanted to spend time with family and focus on my fun," he said.

That fun usually has something to do with being aboard his 31-foot boat, Seasport I.

Cheesman offers charterboat services for tuna, halibut and salmon, for scuba as well as free diving spearfishermen. He's also doing diving work with marine researchers from Oregon State University and the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.

"I'm hoping to get to do more of this scientific stuff," he said. "It's really fascinating what they're doing with telemetry and computer chips that they're putting in some of these animals."

CAPTION(S):

John Cheesman, who closed his Springfield dive store in 2004, caught his yellowtail tuna while free diving.