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| Yellow-headed Moray Eel |
I've never had much fear sticking my camera in the face of moray eels, although lately there have been a couple of things that have given me pause to reconsider this. We saw a massive 7ft green moray in the Atlantic that was so wide and girthy that I didn't know what I was looking at at first. Then there are the stories.
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| a rare Dragon Moray Eel |
So in all my time underwater I've never been bitten, attacked, or even feinted at by a moray eel. But our friends over at Kona Diving Co. gave us a few stories of friends getting bitten, usually after pointing at the eel or something nearby with an extended finger. I don't take too much stock in stories about friends friends though so it took a little more, and a little more I got.
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| Portrait of a White Mouth Moray Eel |
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| A Tiny Dwarf Moray Eel |
One of the divers at the shop pointed to two small scars on her neck that looked like a vampire bit. Then she turned and showed us other scars on the other side of her neck up under her hairline. What happened was the eel opened its jaws so wide that it grabbed both sides of her neck. The craziest part of the story was she had just been swimming along, never seeing the eel, when she felt something grab her neck. She thought it was her dive buddy missing her so she waited until he let go then turned, but instead of seeing her buddy, who was 50 ft away, she saw a massive viper moray eel swimming off. She shook her underwater noise maker until getting her dive buddies attention. As he came close enough to see the wounds she noticed his eyes goes wide, at the same time a curtain of blood started to rise up past her face. Amazing she was fine as the eel hit no major arteries or vessels.
The diver did realize later that diving with a stuffed octopus on her hood might not be the best idea, as octopi are eels favorite food. Once the eel realized it had something a little bigger than an octopus it probably just let go and swam back to its hiding place. A near miss if I've ever heard one.
I've never had much fear sticking my camera in the face of moray eels, although lately there have been a couple of things that have given me pause to reconsider this. We saw a massive 7ft green moray in the Atlantic that was so wide and girthy that I didn't know what I was looking at at first. Then there are the stories.
One of the divers at the shop pointed to two small scars on her neck that looked like a vampire bit. Then she turned and showed us other scars on the other side of her neck up under her hairline. What happened was the eel opened its jaws so wide that it grabbed both sides of her neck. The craziest part of the story was she had just been swimming along, never seeing the eel, when she felt something grab her neck. She thought it was her dive buddy missing her so she waited until he let go then turned, but instead of seeing her buddy, who was 50 ft away, she saw a massive viper moray eel swimming off. She shook her underwater noise maker until getting her dive buddies attention. As he came close enough to see the wounds she noticed his eyes goes wide, at the same time a curtain of blood started to rise up past her face. Amazing she was fine as the eel hit no major arteries or vessels.
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