Moray Eel attack?

[annieols]

an uw videog friend of mine was trying to get a shot of a morrey in thailand, he was feeding it (i know, i dont agree, and he accepts fully that what followed was his fault) and ran out of food. morreys have relatively poor eyesight and good noses, so the thing bite his finger... bit it off and ate it... my friend now has his toe on his hand....

his video is entertaining AND a great lesson... check it out on metacafe (his name is mattysiam)

 

[H2O 70]

an uw videog friend of mine was trying to get a shot of a morrey in thailand, he was feeding it (i know, i dont agree, and he accepts fully that what followed was his fault) and ran out of food. morreys have relatively poor eyesight and good noses, so the thing bite his finger... bit it off and ate it... my friend now has his toe on his hand....

his video is entertaining AND a great lesson... check it out on metacafe (his name is mattysiam)

There is no video of his finger being snacked on...

 

[Scubagolf]

If you stuck you hand in the face of a cougar and got bitten would you feel that you had been attacked?

DM's sticking theirs hands in holes for octopus?

I always assume that people have common sense but I'm frequently wrong.

Darwin at work.

 

[ScubaFeenD]

This moray situation reminds of the situation with sharks. People chum the waters, film sharks going ape-sh*t crazy because of the blood, and give the animal a bad name. The people in the videos basically doing a similar thing. They are giving a bad name to divers and "confirming" public belief that they are belligerent, aggressive animals.

Who has one thumb and is a moron? Those guys...

 

[diver 85]

One of our sons has a left index finger with many scars on it from his 'pet' off Roatan from several years ago----they do have fairly poor eyesight & do confuse 'petting fingers' for food ----sometimes.......

 

[merxlin]

My friend Dave took this on a Manta Dive in Kona a while back (watch the last 15 seconds). I'm not sure this would be the same video had the diver (his wife) freaked out or reached up to "pet it". On my dives there I watched a morey chase a fish and strike at rocks, coral, and miss the fish badly.

I have seen the come out of lobster holes here in So. Cal, and watched as one came after my buddies hand while he was trying to feed an abalone some kelp (the eel was hiding behind the ab). Most So Cal divers give them nothing but respect.

 

[DandyDon]

an uw videog friend of mine was trying to get a shot of a morrey in thailand, he was feeding it (i know, i dont agree, and he accepts fully that what followed was his fault) and ran out of food. morreys have relatively poor eyesight and good noses, so the thing bite his finger... bit it off and ate it... my friend now has his toe on his hand....

his video is entertaining AND a great lesson... check it out on metacafe (his name is mattysiam)

Seen the youtube video here on SB a few times in these discussions.

My friend Dave took this on a Manta Dive in Kona a while back (watch the last 15 seconds). I'm not sure this would be the same video had the diver (his wife) freaked out or reached up to "pet it".

Tooooo close. :shocked2: I tell ya, I hated having one swim just under me last month. I eased back as I could, then started to go after the divers who chased him my way.

 

[drbill]

In all my years of diving Catalina I have NEVER had a problem with a moray and I've been very up close and personal with them, including free swimming ones. Of course I don't stick my hands out and watch where they are, especially if they are feeding. Their eyesight reportedly isn't great.

I did once have a green moray lunge out of the reef at me in the Sea of Cortez. It was definitely interested in me, but although it appeared to lunge several times it never really made a move that I'd consider aggressive.

It is always best not to touch critters, especially when you don't know how they will respond to contact. It may have thought you were attacking it and tried to defend itself. And then there are the critters you can actually damage by touching them.

 

[cdolphin]

We were in Roatan in December '09 and diving a site called "Calvin's Crack". To enter the crack you go head-down through a hole in the reef that's just a little bigger than a diver. I was the fourth diver down the hole. My dive buddy and one other diver were behind me.

When I levelled out after passing through the entrance hole, I was in a tube that was probably 6 feet wide by 15 feet tall. Suddenly I caught movement on my left side. I looked and it was a 6-8 foot long Green Moray, free-swimming like a scary dive buddy, its mouth a foot away from my shoulder. Mouth wide open and doing what I considered a threat-display and looking a bit perturbed (but don't they always?) I looked at it and looked away; but didn't change my movements at all and kept moving slowly. There was no way I could have avoided it or escaped it if it had become more threatening. After just a few seconds it disappeared. Whew.

After we left the crack, we swam along the reef. There are a lot of eels in Roatan so the next one we spotted was in its hole and the dive guide wrote on her board "Aggressive!" At which point my dive buddy went to her chalkboard and wrote "Eel in hole was biting her fins!" and pointed to me. Apparently they had watched from above the hole as the eel followed me, biting my fins.

Back on the boat, hearing the fish story from my buddy:

He said, "We didn't want to go down there after that!" But they did follow after the eel disappeared.

I asked my buddy with the fancy-schmancy camera array, "Did you get a picture?"

He replied, "No I was using the camera as a shield!!"

We continued to warn other divers about the "Guard Eel" in Calvin's Crack....(and no bite marks on the fins.....)

 

[ScubaFeenD]

"Did you get a picture?"

He replied, "No I was using the camera as a shield!!"

Awesome!