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.
Good piece, Jeff, and a excellent lesson for all divers to learn. I include these triggerfish in my list of animals to avoid in Scuba Fundamental - Start Diving the Right Way. I reckoned it would be better to warn new divers in advance than have them find out by themselves. You are much more likely to be attacked by these guys than any other fish and their bite is powerful!
ReplyDeleteThat is pretty good information to have, this is not just something you want to learn by doing.
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