Lionfish Culler Bitten by Nurse Shark, Grand Cayman

[The Chairman]

Hard to imagine how any animal bite that involves a statement like “it just tore a chunk off. It didn’t do any nerve or muscle damage” from an area behind a human knee could work.

Look at the teeth. They have a max penetration of a 1/4" (7mm). It scraped the skin off and maybe the top bit of muscle. Their suck is more devastating than their teeth. They're just big fairly dorky catfish. Look at this doofus:

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[chillyinCanada]

Hard to imagine how any animal bite that involves a statement like “it just tore a chunk off. It didn’t do any nerve or muscle damage” from an area behind a human knee could work. Either a really little “chunk” or a knee surrounded by lots of fatty tissue. Certainly not implying that there was not an incident but something parts of this tale seem totally out of whack. Still cannot get over getting bumped by a shark and carrying on business as usual. Incredible.

Because it was a nurse shark. I've had them bump me and swim between my legs as I've descended. Never caused me to think more about it except to be amused.

 

[caydiver]

Doofus is a very kind word. Ironically we were talking about people doing really stupid stuff just yesterday and he came up. Thank you for posting. The octopus selfie was mentioned too. I guess the candidacy list for Darwin Awards gets longer by the day

 

[The Chairman]

I guess the candidacy list for Darwin Awards gets longer by the day

He lived, as did the maroon with the octo-selfie... The Darwin award is for those who die childless.

 

[Barnaby'sDad]

Bitten by a nurse shark...almost as good as getting fired on your day off.

 

[OceanEyes]

He lived, as did the maroon with the octo-selfie... The Darwin award is for those who die childless.

It is not absolutely necessary to die in order to be issued a Darwin Award. There are several living recipients who have survived the events that led to their recognition. They simply managed to remove themselves from the gene pool permanently. Think of the underwear bomber, side saddle trapeze artists, fireworks experimenters, and various other practitioners of actions which could result in sterility.

 

[caydiver]

I must admit I didn’t realize this. Thank you. I suppose it only makes sense!!!

 

[KathyV]

Look at the teeth. They have a max penetration of a 1/4" (7mm). It scraped the skin off and maybe the top bit of muscle. Their suck is more devastating than their teeth. They're just big fairly dorky catfish. Look at this doofus:

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Interesting that Frazier Nivens is the photographer on that nurse shark feeding dive. We did 2 or 3 dive vacations with Frazier in the Bahamas back when he was proprietor of the now gone Nassau Scuba Centre. They were great trips and I have a lot of respect for Frazier and many good memories of those trips.

We were not at all interested in doing the shark feeding dive with Gray Reef Sharks that was offered by NSC but we strongly urged to try it out by the divemasters, so we finally decided to sign up. We may have been mistaken but at the time we felt the divers that took part in the shark dive were treated as "elite club" and were more likely to be taken to the better dive sites.

It was an interesting experience, we were over-weighted and we sat in a circle watching the shark feeding. We were instructed to keep our appendages tucked in and not to touch the sharks. The divemaster was wearing chain mail while Fraizier took the video. The divemaster used a pointy stick to feed the Reef Sharks out of a bucket, but a Nurse Shark kept coming in close and he would feed it by (mail-gloved) hand.

Things started out slow and tentative and then the sharks went crazy! They grabbed the bucket of food and fought for access. A Grouper hovered next to me to watch and waited patiently for the frenzy to end so it could move in to grab the scraps. I liked that Grouper best of all.

It was a memorable dive but I still think that it is a mistake to teach predators to associate food with people. Consider all those stories about idiots that leave food around when there are bears in the area., or even try to feed the bears!

I know that when lionfish first started invading the Caymans there was an early attempt to teach predators to eat lionfish to try and control the population, but I think that most folks have now figured out that isn't such a good idea. It just taught them to look to humans for a meal.

 

[KathyV]

Another article about the incident:

Lionfish culler bitten by nurse shark - Cayman Islands Headline News

 

[johndiver999]

Nurse sharks can cause significant tissue damage and have a reputation for being extremely persistent and also for not releasing after they bite something.

This is second hand info, but I had good friends who reported that their female neighbor was diving in a swim suit and suffered an unprovoked attack and required skin graph(s) on her butt. The particular shark had developed an aggressive behavior (for some reason) and had gone after other divers previously.

Nurse sharks are generally not a problem if you don't mess with them (or feed them), but they are not something to trivialize.