Triple Triggerfish fun

I was midway through a dive at Eva's Point at Sipalay in the Philippines just hovering on the sloping wall and just about to head over to the vertical drop-off, I was pretty relaxed. The dive guide's frantic rapping of his stainless steel spike against his tank drew me from my hypnotic state to look up and over in his direction when it dawned on me why he was trying to get my attention.

Three triggerfish had made their move towards me with the closest about a metre from my head. Had I been aware, I would have seen them all charge me at once and I would have had time to get in the defensive position using my fins as a decoy. As they tend to attack your fins especially when mounting a rear attack, the first you know of their presence is them biting your fins.

A frontal assault is a different battle when your head is exposed, the powerful jaws of the triggerfish allows them to bite chunks of coral off with ease - this is not what I want biting into my head. My first experience with a triggerfish was in Papua New Guinea about 20 years ago when one attacked the head of a Japanese diver, he lost huge chunks from his head - it was not a pretty sight.

I have been involved in a dual triggerfish duel about 3 or 4 years back, having to fend off two at once whilst maintaining my decompression ceiling. This was an experience I was not keen to repeat; now three of them in a group was looking a real task.

My first movement was to throw a right hook, this missed wildly but bought me a little time. As I was within reasonable distance from the group, I was able to make my way over to the others and with weight of numbers the triggerfish weren't going to take this any further.

The little triggerfish didn't concern me too much, it was the medium sized triggerfish that was the first one to lunge at me and get things rolling. I have successfully fought off triggerfish of that size before, it takes a battle but you can get out of their territory reasonably unscathed. It was the large triggerfish that scared me the most, this thing was massive and powerfully built. This was going to take some work to defeat, I wouldn't want to endure an attack from this big fella as a one-on-one let alone working together with the other two.

Much to my delight they didn't pursue me into the group, all of a sudden they were outnumbered and just hung back and watched for a while before leaving the group alone. Later on the boat, the old German lady was laughing and saying I normally look so calm underwater, this wasn't the case, yet I wasn't worried - I know the damage these bastards can inflict.