Dive Instructor Pulls Knife from Nurse Shark's Head
- Thread starter KathyV
- Start date
Please register or login
Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.
Benefits of registering include
- Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
- A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
- You can make this box go away
arcticat99
Contributor
i guess this shark is "nursing "itself back to health
OP
OP
Good point! Maybe we should name it Florence (after Florence Nightingale) because it is a nurse shark! Or Nancy after "Nurse Nancy"!
I have cleaned a few small sharks caught back in my fishing days a couple decades ago. That skin is tough. There is no way that a knife falling down will deeply embed itself. Most likely not even make a cut.
I have never seen a diver carry that type of knife.
If you have a fish and wish to dispatch it, that is the precise location that you would go for but it still takes pretty deep penetration to do it.
Fisherman in different parts of the world have been known to dispatch sharks (and dolphins) because they viewed them as taking the fish they wanted to catch. Either that or going for a fin.
Also shark is edible, I assume the same for nurse sharks. Not high on the list but if you or somebody's dogs are hungry, and you know how to prepare it. I have eaten three or four kinds.
I have never seen a diver carry that type of knife.
If you have a fish and wish to dispatch it, that is the precise location that you would go for but it still takes pretty deep penetration to do it.
Fisherman in different parts of the world have been known to dispatch sharks (and dolphins) because they viewed them as taking the fish they wanted to catch. Either that or going for a fin.
Also shark is edible, I assume the same for nurse sharks. Not high on the list but if you or somebody's dogs are hungry, and you know how to prepare it. I have eaten three or four kinds.
Dish
Are you for Scuba?
Personally, I'd think Brett should have the first crack at naming that little nurse shark.
OP
This sounds like the same mentality of the fisherman that no doubt tried to dispatch the shark as described in other posts. By the way: Red on yellow--kill a fellow is the coral snake. If you feel you have to kill a snake, please do not kill the king snake as they are harmless to you, and are very beneficial to keeping rodents and rattlesnakes under control. Consider this my conservation good deed for the morning.
Positions like that are always easy to take when you are not the one directly involved. If i daily came across the snake you learn to quickly identify the good from the bad. If its a 50/50 guess adn you have family or other considerations. The snake is history. Especially when it is sunning on a rotted tree stump. Same goes with any snake with a viper shaped head. Im not running to google to check it out Im going for the hoe. The issue is not whether the snake is harmless, Its often and issue of identity unsurity and the question is always present "DO I FEEL LUCKY with my guess and if i guess wrong and it nails a neighbor kid walking through the yard????????. In regard to the nurse shark incident.; In sure the prior owner of the knife probably attempted to identify the type of shark when he got home. Either way it sure sounds like a case of panic driven action. My first crossing with a nurse shark was on a night dive and i thought it looked a lot like a bull shark with the big rounded head. Its easy for imagination to take control of you when tensions rise. I have had to calm other divers on 2 occasions when starting to leave a ship hull and finding a nurse strolling the outside of the hull entrance. Most people would choose not to confront any sea life so long as they have a safer alternate way out. Unless you know why some diver stuck this shark, its hot really fair to blindly condemn the action, As people we often do dumb things. IE how many moms insist on driving the kids to school when its only a few blocks away so that a child napper won't get the kids ,like what happened 1000 miles away in a place called ____________ . Rationality almost always always takes over after the fact.
Last edited:
I am not blindly condemning divers for the knife stuck in the shark. In fact, I fully agree with other posters that believe this knife was not the result of an attack by a diver, and like them, I have never seen any diver carry that type of knife. Like other posters have stated, this knife is the type fishermen use, and I have one very similar to the one pictured which I used for boning and skinning fish.
As far as the snakes are concerned, like you, I live in an are of South Central Texas that has all of the venomous snakes known to be in Texas, and in 24 years, I have seen only one water moccasin in a backwater area of our lake. We teach our grandkids to leave all snakes alone, but if I would ever see a viper or coral snake any where near our house or where the family plays or walks, I will kill it in a heartbeat because I would not take any risk of a family member being bitten. But, I also have made it my business to be able to identify which are harmful and which are not. It is not that hard of a task to learn to identify the threats.
As far as the snakes are concerned, like you, I live in an are of South Central Texas that has all of the venomous snakes known to be in Texas, and in 24 years, I have seen only one water moccasin in a backwater area of our lake. We teach our grandkids to leave all snakes alone, but if I would ever see a viper or coral snake any where near our house or where the family plays or walks, I will kill it in a heartbeat because I would not take any risk of a family member being bitten. But, I also have made it my business to be able to identify which are harmful and which are not. It is not that hard of a task to learn to identify the threats.
Similar threads
