A Trigger Fish??


At 07:15 PM 9/10/01 -0500, you wrote:
>.       You won't read about it in DAN's edition of Skin Diver, but in the
>regular edition DeLoach and Humann have exposed the identity of the most
>vicious, blood-spilling horror that they have discovered in 30 years of
>exploration of tropical reefs.  It's not the great white or the killer
>whale.  Neither is it the tiger shark nor the oceanic whitetip that took
>the lives of so many sailors from the Indianapolis.  No, it's nothing
>cautious like a shark that a diver can combat.  It gives fear; but it
>doesn't have fear.  In fact, before the blood clouds the water, the last
>thing that most victims remember in their flailing efforts to escape are
>the twin, vampire-like fangs driving at them in attack after attack.  Like
>the toothed steel jaws of a bear trap crushing the leg of a grizzly, these
>jaws were meant to bite.
>
>         And they don't just attack the careless or naive newbie.  The
>attack on DeLoach verifies  what most NEDs know, that even ultra-cautious
>dive gods can easily become victims of this hulking demon that's ten times
>the length of the most ferocious damselfish.  This living nightmare can't
>be fended off with a push from a camera as many sharks can, no, the attacks
>come fast and furious and survivors count themselves lucky to just swim
>away with lost fins and a handful of bone gouging scars.  It's not pretty;
>the attacks are unprovoked and stop as mysteriously as they start so if you
>ever find yourself on open sand with scattered coral patches in the
>Indo-Pacific, keep your eyes open for the living nightmare, Balistoides
>viridescens.
>
>
>DPTNST,
>
>
>John
>