May 2012    Download the Entire Issue (PDF)

Vol. 27, No. 5   What's this?

When You Least Expect It

minor and potentially lethal dive injuries, all in a few days

from the May, 2012 issue of Undercurrent  

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When I look back over my 42-year diving career and more than 10,000 dives, I realize how few diverelated injuries I have sustained. A few infections from coral scratches, a nasty sting from a bunch of Corallimorpharians. Nothing besides a little care has cured me from repeating these injuries. Perhaps I have some deterioration in my hearing, but that is a function of old age, as is "selective" hearing, where we males recognize words such as "sex" and "dinner," but not "garbage" or "washing up."Certainly minor compared to injuries inflicted on my friends who partake in the supposedly healthy lifestyle choice of bicycling. They always end up in the hospital with broken bones, missing teeth and the gift of life-long scars.

So it was a bit of a shock when, out of the blue, a fish bit me and I started bleeding. Strangely, exactly the same thing had happened to my dive buddy, Rodney Pearce, when we were diving a Zero wreck in Papua New Guinea's Rabaul Harbour just a month prior. Rodney's bite was the result of a coral cod mistaking his fingers for food in the billowing silt stirred up while investigating Japanese markings on the aircraft, while mine was the noble efforts of a large Titan triggerfish protecting freshly deposited eggs in its nearby nest....