There’s a particular image that comes to mind when most people think of serious offshore fishing. A gleaming center-console or a flybridge sportfisher, a crew in matching shirts, and an expensive marina slip. That’s an aesthetic long associated with the culture of destination angling, but it’s one that Emmanuel Williams has spent the last several years quietly dismantling from the seat of a personal watercraft.
Williams, 26, is a Miami-based angler and the creator behind iBelongOutdoors, a YouTube channel that has become one of the most compelling voices in saltwater fishing. His content is mostly raw, first-person footage of a young man running a Sea-Doo 20-plus miles into open Atlantic water, dropping bait into the abyss, and hauling up the kind of fish that would make a charter captain do a double take. He has crossed 112 miles of open ocean to the Bahamas on a PWC. He has become the first person to ever catch a swordfish from a personal watercraft (a 100-pound broadbill he fought from an 11-foot Sea-Doo in the Gulf of Mexico off Venice, Louisiana).
Williams grew up in Miramar, Florida, fishing piers and bridges with his father, David; snapper off the Dania Pier, grouper in the Keys. It was the kind of father-son bonding that countless anglers recognize as the origin story of a lifelong obsession. But as Emmanuel got older, he wanted to go after the bigger fish that lived beyond the horizon. His dad wasn’t an offshore guy, and a boat wasn’t in his budget.
So Williams found another way. Inspired by videos of PWC anglers in Hawaii and Australia, he got himself a Sea-Doo Spark, a tiny, entry-level watercraft that was emphatically not designed for blue water. He took it offshore anyway, rigged it for fishing, and started filming the results.
Williams took his experience filming as a skateboarder, and his videos showed the offshore fishing community some genuine joy and a total absence of pretension.
The channel grew. He upgraded to a Sea-Doo FishPro. Sponsors came calling. A Bahamas crossing video went viral. By his early twenties, Williams had built a career out of proving that access to world-class fishing doesn’t have to start with a six-figure rig.
There’s a critical distinction between fishing from the deck of a 35-foot walkaround and fishing from an open PWC in rolling seas. On a personal watercraft 20 miles offshore, an equipment failure can be even more of a crisis than it would be from a longer-range craft. There’s no rail to brace against when a hooked fish starts dragging you in circles, which is exactly what happened when Williams’ swordfish realized it had been gaffed and began thrashing its bill inches from his legs.
That’s why eyewear is more than an accessory for someone like Williams. When your entire vessel is a personal craft on open water, the margin for error shrinks to almost nothing. Fogged lenses, shifting frames, or a momentary loss of visual clarity at the wrong instant can be the difference between reading a wave correctly and taking a wall of spray to the face at speed.
It’s why Costa’s decision to partner with Williams for the launch of the Pilothouse PRO makes sense. The new semi-rimless shield is Costa’s first to earn an ANSI Z87.1+ safety rating, meaning it has passed ballistic-grade impact testing. It features an integrated drainage system to shed sweat and spray, advanced airflow to combat fog, and Hydrolite retention temples designed to stay locked in place when conditions go sideways. For a traveling angler on a conventional boat, those are practical features, but for a guy fighting a swordfish from an 11-foot platform in three-to-five-foot seas, they’re non-negotiable.
The name iBelongOutdoors is itself a statement from a young Black angler in South Florida who built his own path to the offshore game. His audience, now numbering in the hundreds of thousands across YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, skews younger and more diverse than fishing media’s typical readership. They’re watching because Williams shows them what’s possible for a sufficiently driven sportsman.
Robbie LaBelle, Costa’s VP of Global Marketing, described Williams as the kind of angler the brand builds for: someone defined by curiosity, drive, and an understanding of real conditions on the water.
Williams isn’t anti-boat, but the core of his appeal is that the ocean doesn’t check your bank statement or your background before it lets you fish. A kid with a pier rod and a dream and a willingness to start with whatever he has can end up catching a swordfish that rewrites the record books.
If you’re a traveling angler reading this from a lodge in Costa Rica, the takeaway isn’t that you should trade your boat for a jet ski to get a new thrill, but it’s incredible to see that the community you’re part of is adapting to the next generation. New anglers are showing up with fresh energy and a fundamentally different idea of what it means to belong on the water.
The gear is evolving to match. The Pilothouse PRO, with its full-coverage shield design, impact protection, and foul-weather engineering, was built for conditions that don’t care how you got there, only that you can see clearly and stay safe once you arrive. Emmanuel Williams has been proving that point from the seat of a Sea-Doo for years. Now the rest of the fishing world is starting to pay attention.
