Halibut diving

July 1, Mossland Halibut Diving with Dave Edlund
Take a day off and went diving with Dave to the pipeline for halibut. The goal of this dive was to get a 21 centry freediving record for california halibut. For the first time after the certification, I did the buddy diving with Dave. The plan is we scuba together and when we found big fish, need be bigger than 35lb and Dave will surface and take off the BC and freedive down and shot the fish, I will take the video to document.
Only about 10 minutes into the first tank, Dave spoted a huge one, it is hard to tell the halibut size in the water, but both of us believe it should be over 45lb. At that time, Dave already shot a 35lb fish, so I can tell that fish is much bigger than the 35lber. So Dave surfaced as planned, about 1 minute later, a wolf eel come by and directly landed on the big halibut, the halibut don't like it and took off ... and about another 4 minutes later, Dave freedove down, and I signaled him that the fish is already gone ...
So we got seperated and each went on diving. I saw at least 15+ halibut in the dive, after got my limit of 3, I started doing some testing on the halibut about a theory we discussed on the way to dive. We want to know which way halibut will be easily get spooked .. from behind or from front when it can see you. I successfully approached few halibut from front, and petted them! Yes .. I petted them! And on one halibut,  not sure she was so scared or she just too enjoyed my petting, I put my hand gentlely into the gill of the fish, and lifted the fish up from the sand, that is a 15lb fish! and she still did not move, I shaked her a little bit and she wagged her tail .. and I let her go!
I was totally amazing! I never heard of this kind of behavior from halibut! Late I took some video of my patting on another halibut, but the fish decide to take off before I can stick my hand into her gill. I have a video of me petting halibut at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xme2IdhW4oE&mode=related&search=