February 1997

Vol. 12, No. 2   What's this?

Danger: Wild Eels

from the February, 1997 issue of Undercurrent  

All those slick pictures of fearless divemasters feeding eels and sharks and morays leads a lot of divers to treat these animals as so many pussycats. Tigers might be a better analogy.

Australia's Cod Hole, on the Great Barrier Reef, is a major animal feeding zoo, but a few months ago a woman diver became the fodder. New Zealander Gillian White, 21, was bit on both arms by a six-foot moray. The damage to her right arm was so severe that it had to be amputated by surgeons after she was airlifted to a Queensland hospital. England's Diver magazine says she was lucky: an artery was severed, but a medically qualifed companion on the dive boat was able to treat it, most likely saving her life.

B. D.