What is the most dangerous sea animal? A moray eel? Giant octopus? Most kayakers would say sharks, and judging from attack reports on kayakers, surfers, and swimmers, I might agree. But I have had several encounters with other dangerous marine animals and have read or heard stories of dozens more. Let’s look at some ocean critters, other than sharks, who might do you in.
Sea Snakes
I was free diving in Guam one day, when a sea snake swam straight toward me at a good clip. I dodged him, headed for the surface and got out of the water as fast as I could. He didn’t bite me, but if he had, I would likely have bit the big one. Apparently, sea snake venom is worse than a cobra’s. I have seen undersea TV documentaries which make sea snakes look sweet, but I ain’t taking no chances. Sea snakes seem to be dispersed throughout the world’s warm coastlines and oceans, so don’t think you’ll never encounter one. You could. I can see the movie marquee now: SNAKES ON A BOAT.
Sting Rays
I have always feared sting rays, though I had never seen one while diving or paddling until Jim Kakuk, Misha Dynnikov and I were kayaking in the Sea of Cortez. We paddled over a shallow lagoon, and there they were—thousands of them, settled on the bottom. We gingerly dipped our paddles in the water. Our motto: Let sleeping rays lie.
I have been told that sting rays are docile creatures, and can even be petted. Apparently, that’s exactly what TV croc hunter Steve Irwin was trying to do when the ray jabbed his stinger into Steve’s aorta. RIP.
Barracudas
Known as the “tiger of the sea,” barracudas have long, sleek bodies and big sharp teeth. I encountered one while skin diving in Hawaii. He was about three-feet long and seemed very curious. I was also curious and for some reason unafraid of the fish. We circled each other for a while and checked each other out, then he swam off. I have heard that barracudas go after shiny things that wriggle, so don’t wear costume jewelry when swimming or dangle your shiny wrist watch at them while paddling. You might lose a hand.
Orcas
Ask any marine biologist and you’ll be told orcas are not killer whales—not killers of humans, anyway. But if you are a salmon, seal, or heck, anything that moves, really, you could be an orca’s snack. I have heard that the favorite dish of some killer whales is blue whale tongue. And white sharks get out of Dodge pronto when a killer whale comes to town.
But what about Shamu, the captive orca who killed his trainer during a show at Sea World last year? He had no qualms about drowning her, and she trusted him. Ah, but he was not in his natural environment, and was mad as hell about being held captive. Note to self: Don’t put killer whales in pens.
Since 12,000-pound orcas are the top marine predators and very intelligent, I plan to keep a respectful distance from them at sea. In fact, I try my best to avoid all close whale contact, as they can surface under you or whack you with their flukes, as a grey whale did to Steve Sinclair when he was out for a paddle. Jim Kakuk and I had to jink out of the way of a trolling grey whale once to avoid collision. Whales are wonderful and mean humans no harm, but my advice is to paddle away from them, not toward them.
Marine Crocodiles
Tsunami Ranger and outdoor adventure filmmaker Gordon Brown had to hit a crocodile on the nose with his paddle to keep it from attacking him while he kayaked down the Nile. Last December, three kayakers in the Lukuga River in the Congo were less fortunate. Even after doing everything right, their guide, South African paddler Hendrik Coetzee, was taken in an instant by a crocodile that sprang up from the river depths and snatched him right out of his kayak.
My wife and kids and I decided not to swim in the Rio Dulce in Guatemala after seeing caimans and crocodiles there. As we motored down the river in a panga, a line from APOCALYPSE NOW flashed in my mind: Never get out of the boat. And if you’re in Australia, even if you’re in your boat, look out for the giant marine “salties” which hang out on the beaches and swim the seas at will. Aussie paddler Dave Winkworth has a marine croc tale worth hearing before you decide to throw away all logic and venture out to the Gulf of Carpinteria.
Sea Lions
Everyone loves sea lions. They’re so cuddly! I have seen thousands of them on the California coast. One time a humongous male Stellar sea lion sat majestically atop a rock on the Sonoma coast. We oohed and ahhed from what we thought was a safe distance. Then he dropped into the water, swam underwater right up to us, surfaced, and bellowed from one meter away. Now I know why they call them sea lions. We were out of there.
Another time we rounded Point Reyes and headed for the beach just north of the point to eat some lunch. Bad idea. As we started surfing in, 50 big “rocks” on the sand headed toward the water. Male elephant seals! We decided we didn’t want to encounter them on land or sea and beat a hasty retreat. They are probably not too dangerous, but who wants to argue with a jealous 15-foot seal that weighs over two tons? And then there are leopard seals and walruses, so cuddly….
Jellyfish
I believe the most dangerous sea creature is the lowly jellyfish, just floating around, singing Jimi Hendrix songs, “Flotation is groovy….” Then zzzzappp! You touch it and are paralyzed. This happened to my brother Marc while we were teens bodysurfing at Huntington Beach in Los Angeles. A jellyfish stung him in the stomach and he could hardly move and barely breathe. Had he not been close to shore, it could have been a grave situation. As it was, he was not a happy camper. We doused his stings with vinegar to fix him up and he recovered a day later.
While at sea in the Indian Ocean, I observed colonies of Portuguese Man-o-wars, thousands and thousands of them. These are big jellyfish-like critters with long, hanging tentacles that could kill you if you get enveloped in them. If you kayak through a colony, be careful where you put your hand.
But the most dangerous may be the box jellyfish, which frequent the waters off Australia. Millions of them float around here and there (actually, a box jellyfish can propel itself, which makes it not a true jellyfish). If they touch your chest, you can go into immediate cardiac arrest. Who would imagine that such a beautiful animal, which moves so slowly, could be so deadly?
In conclusion, you can see that there are many dangerous sea creatures out there to worry about in addition to sharks (to link to my shark essay, go to https://tsunamirangers.com/2010/10/27/how-to-deal-with-sharks/. ) So be careful!
Please share your dangerous marine life encounters, especially while kayaking. Just click on the comments button below and go for it. Also, I’m not a professional ocean wildlife expert, so feel free to correct me or add more titillating facts.
A lot of info on sea and river creatures to stay away from and or be careful to look for! I wanted to add that in parts of Amazon basin that stepping on a ray buried under the sand can produce, or so I am told, an almost unbearable pain that can be followed by a nasty infection! This can happen in very shallow, calm almost inviting river banks.
Somehow local people tended to know what time of year and which in which rivers one need to put a paddle or stick down in front of you when you needed to cross a river with a sandy bottom!
So one more note of caution for slower moving rivers in the new world tropics!
Cool post, Eric! I look forward to the premiere of Snakes on a Boat, haha! I notice the book you’re reading in the first photo has an eel on the cover–have you ever had any scary experiences with eels? I don’t even know how dangerous they are (or aren’t), but they really freak me out (I think because they sit around with their eyes looking very wide and their mouths open, like zombies. Eww).
Nancy, like the song says, “Stick your hand in a crack, you won’t get it back – that’s a moray!”
Hey Eric, a great post. Horrifying tales. Very creepy. Only problem is that most aquatic types like me are such idiots. We fall for every cute playful critter we encounter down there in the deep salty. I still reflect with a big smile about the time 2 girl-friends and I were sitting on a sea mount in the Catalina Islands, about 50 ft. down, with huge sea lions practicing their diving as they zoomed down, nipped the toes of our fins, and zoomed back up. We were enchanted. Maybe we had too much nitrogen in our brains. Jeez, but it was such fun I’d probably do it again.
And don’t forget fire coral! Speaking of things that might seem benign, all corals can cut you and cause infection, plus they are fragile and easily damaged. Stay off, or wear booties or other protection on your feet. Eric has a great story about blithely body surfing barefoot and the 3 days of rehab on Molokai that followed when he touched the subsurface waterscape. He didn’t even know he had been injured until I noticed bloody footprints on the grass as I followed him back to our condo. And then there are stonefish and such. My rule is never touch the bottom with bare feet, although there are some exceptions. I also have been stung by a jellyfish – in Jamaica. I spent about 8 hrs in my hotel room shivering as with ague and sweating fountains. I was pale and shaky for about 2 days afterward. It stung me right on my chest, but I didn’t see it as it was night. Another rule: don’t swim (especially in tropical environments) when you can’t see! I guess I have to agree – it’s the little things that get you most often.
Now I’m scared to go back in the water! Hey Eric, I stepped on a stingray in Baja once, it was excruciating. Their barb is essentially a serrated knife (double edged) with venemous sacs in the serrations. I have one that I cut out of a dead stingray as a talisman. If you get jabbed in a vein by a stingray and the toxin reaches your heart – well, you know the rest. The worst injury I’ve ever seen on a kayak trip, (not including things that Michael Powers has done to himself) was a stingray wound that a client on one of our Baja trips got on his foot. It bled profusely, and he almost passed out from the pain. The treatment involves pouring hotwater into the wound to neutralize the toxin – not a pretty picture. A Lidocaine spray is sometimes recommended to kill the pain, but hot water ulimately will do the job, too.
One more nasty guy to add to your list: the stone scorpion fish. These are abundant in the Sea of Cortez, and my fellow guide in Baja stepped on one while helping cactch kayaks as they surfed into a rocky shore. He was a big dude, and we had to pump him with pain killers; again, hot water is the best antecdote. He was essentially incapacitated for 12 hours from the venom.
Moral of the story: bring a good first-aid kit into the wilderness with you.
Thanks for the stories and advice. In regard to Steve’s stingrays on the riverbed–I agree, “Walk softly and carry a big stick (which you poke in front of you).” Yeah, Kenny, Baja (Sea of Cortez) is beautiful, but there are dangers in them thar waters.
And Dionne, I’m ashamed to say I shot at a big moray once with a Hawaiian sling. I missed, but it came after me. I dropped my sling in 15 feet of water, and it took a lot of guts to go back down and get it. I vowed never to bug eels ever again.
Joan, I’m glad your foray with the sea lions was fun. I wish I were there with you, enjoying the playful mammals.
Yeah Nancy, I forgot about that coral cutting incident. Always good to wear foot protection when touching the bottom–there are also sea urchins and barnacles to worry about if you step on them. Ouch!
You forgot mermaids. Very dangerous. Sexy scales on their tails but will drag you out to sea and under. I know from experience.
How shocking. I hope you reported her to the authorities.
Hrrumpf.
You’re all funny! Kevlar-armoured kayaks, wetsuits, booties, helmets – and you’re worried about stingrays and jellyfish?? I’m not even going to bother writing a list of what we have Down Under. Suffice to say if it moves, it can kill you. 😉
Of course we can’t forget the mermaids, sirens, nixies, all waiting to drag you …”down and down and down and down, not to die but to be reborn….” A nickel to the first person who identifies the song and writer.
And Fat Paddler, I have heard that Down Under, in addition to several sea snake species, box jellyfish, white sharks, & estuarine crocs, that Oz also has a shipload of very poisonous land snakes (brown snakes come to mind) and spiders and who knows what else. No wonder the Brits made it a place to send convicts! Still, it’s a very beautiful place….
We found a Red-Bellied Black Snake in our front yard last week as a matter of fact. They’re supposed to be good luck, because they are very toxic to the more dangerous Brown Snakes we get around here! Still, it does give you the willies knowing there’s still a snake living around the house somewhere! Then of course there’s the Sydney Funnel Web spiders…..
Great topic, as if I didn’t have enough to worry about!
In answer to you question: The Jimi Hendrix Experience, “1983” (A Merman I Should Turn to Be) from Electric Ladyland.
Geez, I remember snorkeling in Hawaii. I was watching a huge Green Sea turtle swim around. It got close to me and I was kind of hypnotized thinking it was really cool, then I saw how big its beak was. I figured it could easily lop off a finger or two. At this time, I put more distance between myself and the amazing turtle, feeling rather naked in my swim trunks and snorkel gear.
Rainer, You win the nickel as you got the song quiz correct. You could have also used “Moon, Gently Turn the Tides”, on the same album (the next song), because I got the lyrics mixed together. That’s my favorite Hendrix album.
I thought about putting sea turtles in the dangerous critters essay, but didn’t becauses I love them so much. They do have a big nasty beak, don’t they. My motto: “Look but don’t touch.”
Holy Shit Eric!…I’m getting sweaty palms just reading through your post! Terrific post by the way!
Most definitely I’d put big saltwater crocs at the top of my list of animals that want to eat you. They are genetically engineered to observe, stalk, attack, drown and eat us …unlike sharks which often bite us by mistake.
I met my first big croc just south of the tip of Cape York on the tropical Queensland coast in ’99. Three of us had stopped on an offshore coral island for lunch during a 4 week sea kayaking trip. The water was crystal clear, the sun was shining, it was a beautiful sandy beach….what could go wrong? We’d been there all of 5 minutes…my friend Arunas waded out to thigh depth for a 30 sec. swim to wash of encrusted salt. A big croc was watching though and zeroed in on him underwater from an offshore reef. Arunas screamed as it grabbed him on his right leg and groin and shook him like a rag doll, trying to roll him off his feet to drown him. At this time I was sitting 15 metres away on the water’s edge chatting with him. I jumped up and ran out to him – we were all totally nude by the way – and could just make out this big black shape in the boiling water amid all the foam and churned up sand. I took a guess and grabbed the croc around the fattest part of its body and hung on. After what seemed like ages …but was probably only 10 seconds or so…it let Arunas go and spat me off…then it was gone. So powerful and just so fast! We were nothing to this guy! Hanging on to it was like trying to flag down an express train with a candle!
Arunas was still on his feet and shouting “Get out of the water Dave.” I stood up next to him and then big fear hit me: now there were four legs in the water for the croc to choose from!
The croc didn’t come back then and we made it to shore, where Mike, our other companion and I dressed Arunas’ wounds as best we could, wrote “CROC ATTACK EVAC ONE” in the sand and switched on Mike’s EPIRB. Five hours later a rescue chopper picked him up and took him to hospital on Thursday Island.
Let me give a plug for EPIRBs and PLBs here. That device plainly saved Arunas’ life – crocs have dirty teeth and infection would’ve set in pretty quickly for him. Anyway, a couple of hours after the chopper left with him, two rubber ducks full of sailors came in to “our” beach on the island. They were from a Navy ship out in the shipping channel.
“Where’s the patient?” said the paramedic.
“You’re too late” I said. “He’s in hospital by now”
“Do you know what that EPIRB has done?”
“It’s saved his life.” I said.
The paramedic replied “Yes, AND there are three warships in the Coral Sea waiting to assist!”
The croc re-surfaced off the beach while the sailors were there….all you could hear were automatic rifles being cocked! We didn’t let them shoot it though!
Let me recount two more croc encounters. This first one will show that they are just not afraid of humans:
In the remote Sir Edward Pellew Islands in the Gulf of Carpentaria, I emerged from the tent at dawn one morning to see a big croc head 20 metres off the beach. I walked up the beach to go to the toilet…the croc kept abreast of me all the way. I walked back to my tent….it swam back too! I had a long cup of tea that morning…and it was nervous time slipping into the kayak, you know, that brief period of incapacity when you can’t run back up the beach…nor paddle away quickly!
Lastly, a bloody scary sprint away from a big crocodile: They are so very fast over short distances:
Only the croc’s snout was visible on the surface 40 metres away on my starboard side.
It was another beautiful August sunrise in the Wessel Islands but Ron and I were about to paddle the race of our lives.
“Another turtle,” I murmured to myself as I watched it.
Suddenly the croc’s long jagged back arched on the surface in a full-blown display of aggression. We were in big trouble here!
“OH SHIT,” I yelled to Ron, as I pointed at the animal with my paddle. “BIG CROC …PADDLE STRAIGHT AND FAST AND DO NOT STOP.”
This huge saltie immediately zeroed in on Ron who was paddling hard, off to my left. Water streamed off the croc’s nose as it raced across my bow only metres in front of me.
I was close enough to run my kayak up on its’ wide back.
“YARGGGH!” I screamed at the croc as I paddled at it…but its’ course did not deviate. Ron was breakfast if it caught him. The croc’s speed in closing the distance to Ron was just unbelievable.
I sprinted up beside Ron as the croc closed the gap to 3 metres behind us. My heart pounded in an adrenalin-fuelled surge as we kept our heavy kayaks at top speed.
“Is it still there?” panted Ron.
“Oh yes mate, it’s still there,” I gasped. “Keep it up.”
It was a REALLY scary experience having such a big angry croc so close behind us. We could do nothing but try to outrun it. Our only weapon was our stamina.
After what seemed minutes I stole another look behind. That big black back was still there but another few metres behind.
“It’s a little further back. ‘Not time to stop yet though,” I puffed.
We kept the speed up and the big croc fell further and further behind us. 10 metres, 20 metres, 50 metres. Were we safe yet? We didn’t know, so we kept going hard for another few kilometres. The croc was nowhere to be seen as we eased the paddling. Relief was evident in Ron’s face:
“How big do you reckon it was?”
“About five, I don’t know” I replied. “Certainly big enough to eat us! That was close!”
We’d gotten an early start that morning to cross Stretton Strait to Elcho Island on the change of the tide. When we reached the island, we landed on a small mangrove-fringed beach for a debrief and a cuppa. In front of us was the biggest croc slide I have ever seen!
Holy Mother of God! Those were some croc stories. My heart was pounding as I read them. Not sure I’ll be paddling to Elcho Island or anywhere within 500 kilometers of any place you mentioned above. G-g-g-gulp.
I’ve got a new saying: “CROCS! You can’t live with em’, but you CAN live without em’.”
David, you and your expeditions are legendary. I’m exploring the Qld coast, but am girl enough to admit I have no desire to enter croc country in a kayak. Your statement “They are genetically engineered to observe, stalk, attack, drown and eat us …unlike sharks which often bite us by mistake” is true. The closest I want to get to one is through your stories or as a steak on my dinner plate!
Tess
Now enjoy this video of our local “fish in the grey suit” swimming in our paddling backyard, home to the breaching great white shark. Mostly harmless generally.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3MHJqh-Ef4
Just when I thought it was safe to get back in the water. I suppose the grey suits are “nicer” than salties, but I’m crossing my fingers.
Eric, I haven’t encountered the scariest of the creatures here, which I reckon is the marine crocodile, but I did see my fair share of many of the others during my many snorkeling adventures while living on Kauai for three years, including stingrays, barracuda, jellyfish, and sea snakes.
Great post!
Interesting post here Eric, thankfully I’m not an ‘ocean lover’ so I don’t often encounter sea creatures. Call me what you want, but I’ve never been attracted to the ocean :-/ Great post anyays!
My cousin was swimming just off the shore in Maui @ Papakaya (sp?) resort about 3 years ago, encountered a shark that ventured over to him in less than 3 ft of water. My uncle, witnessing this large dark object closing in on his son scrambled towards the beach while yelling to get him out of the water, an indeed he did. One of my other cousins happened to have her camera and took a picture of the shark from shore, i’ll try to have them scan it for me so I can send to you… pretty scary.
This just in! In the first comment by Steven King, he mentioned that there are sting rays buried in the sand and mud along the shallow of rivers in the Amazon basin. I just watched an episode of RIVER MONSTERS on TV, and learned that these Amazonian sting rays are also armored along their spines!
But wait, there’s more. In Amazon rivers there are also caimans (another crocodilian!), anacondas (really really big snakes!), bull sharks (which account for most attacks on humans!), and razor-toothed piranha fish, who swarm victims and leave nothing but a pool of blood. And the topper: an electric eel with 600 volts that will stop your heart instantly if touched. Oh boy, sign me up.
The danger is not only in being bitten, stung or eaten alive. Fishing for supper in North Qld is a challenge if you dont know your fish species. There are absolutley beautiful fish that look ‘safe’ but are highly poisonous if eaten.
Fortunately, we dont have pirahna fish in Australia, but we do have bull sharks. They account for a lot of shark bites here ( In 2009, Navy diver Paul Degelder lost a hand and a leg to a bull shark in Sydney Harbour http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/indepth/navy-diver-paul-degelder-loses-hand-in-shark-attack/story-e6frewr9-1111118816167 )
Recently, my friends and I witnessed a bull shark jumping out of the water while we kayaked nearby http://funtessea.blogspot.com/2011/05/special-dolphin-sighting.html
Enjoying the topic Eric. Its a bit like sitting around a campfire telling ghost stories!
Tess
I’m surprised that Steven King nor anyone else has yet mentioned the Candiru fish from the Amazon River. This is a horrible creature. The Candiru invades and parasitizes the human urethra. In the case of infection in human males, the local remedy is typically castration.
Moral of the story: don’t pee in the river!
Ah yes the Candiru fish of the Amazon, I was about to go there Kenny, but you beat me to it! Actually keep your shorts on is the moral of that story. Indeed if we move to Amazon Basin for scary stuff entire books are devoted to the insects, reptiles, fish, mammals and diseases that await the unwary gringo, explorers and unfortunate tourists.
I always wondered how the local and indigenous people have thrived and survived there for generations before this region was “discovered”. Turns out that many of the horrors have been, believe it or not, inflated by gringos seeking to sell books and their great exploits. I have for instance swam with local kids in small rivers while their parents cleaned wild pig intestines just down stream which attracted the dreaded piranha with no “cleaned to bone effects” on us bathers. There are rivers and areas where that does occur but it not as common as we are led to believe. Same with electric eels, I have been “fishing” with mild plant poisons in dammed up streams as local people laughed and pulled out electric eels from the same pools we were wading in to collect stunned fish.
Having said that I have also seen people come running back from the forest after having been pursued by a large highly toxic bush master snake that apparently was just really pissed off and want to chase the person 20 yards down a trail, so there is scary stuff for sure. Did a number of night time paddling journey’s in dug outs as well, which as it turns out is a pretty common way to travel in small tributaries of Amazon.
Good post Eric, makes you think about the dangers we take to have fun…. I remember Nancy’s midnight jellyfish encounter, that was scary, stung on the chest by a large jelly fish, sort of direct connection. Of course the Jamaicans had the “No Problem Mon” attitude and only gave use some Benadryl or something. The part she did not mention was that the reason she went in was to get her wingnut friend out of the water safely.
I had an encounter with an electric eel on about my fifth dive before certification. Our group was getting in a circle on the bottom at about 30 feet when my knee landed on the eel. Wow it was shocking! Just glad it was not my first dive because I would have probably popped to the top like a cork.
Shiver Me Timbers, Eric! No more endorsements or sponsorships from sea kayak manufacturers for you! One of the BBC nature films (Blue Planet?) has some amazing footage of hundreds of large yellow sea snakes hunting en masse on a reef somewhere that I don’t ever want to kayak. And FP didn’t mention the cute little purple octopus you really don’t want to pick up and put on your shoulder for that special photo op Down Under – or you’ll be 6 feet down under.
Still, my vote for No. 1 reason for steering clear of the water is the “Saltie” (or Giant Predatory Man-Eating Salt Water Crocodile – as they’re known to science). Those crocks are HUGE! I mean, Great Whites are big-time scary, OK, but unlike Salties they don’t make it their personal mission in life to stalk and eat you. Nothing personal, mate, it’s just lunchtime! Hell, I damn near soil my knickers just thinking about them.
It’s worth noting that sensible Aussie paddlers don’t foolishly let their guard down just because a Saltie flashes a big toothsome grin and seems to be in a playful mood. I mean, forget about the teeth – they don’t even need them! Just look at the tails on those monsters! As they so often say Down Under: “one smack, Kevlar crack, two smack, you be snack” …
OMG! Steve and Kenny, just how many sea or river monsters are out there, anyway? Don’t turn on the lights; I don’t wanna see.
Mike, thanks for the “rest of the story” on Nancy’s jellyfish encounter; I should have known she was a heroine! You are the first person I know who was shocked by an eel. So it can happen. And you lived.
And Moulton, I’m glad someone is bringing us back to the topic of SNAKES ON A BOAT. I read recently about a school of millions of sea snakes in the open ocean that was 3 meters wide, and get this, 50 MILES long. How would you like to be surrounded by these slytherins? (Can anyone verify this story?)
Oops, no wonder I’m alive it was an electric ray not an eel. I was reading all the eel stories and got my sea creatures mixed up. Evidently they put out 50-200 volts verse 600 from an eel, so you get to live.
Electric ray, electric eel. Close enough for government work, mate. Glad you were okay and still have enthusiasm for the sea.
I’m still trying to wrap my head around the idea of a one- or two-thousand pound, eighteen foot long murderous reptile with a brain similar in size to the Brewer’s Blackbirds outside my window (should I be afraid of THEM too?). Don’t know if I’ll ever be able to come to terms with that. . .
In the mean time I feel I must mention a dangerous marine critter that no one has mentioned yet: Naked Sea Apes. My encounters with these dangerous animals have–so far–been limited to the vicinity of Yellow Bluff, on the San Francisco Bay. My first encounter was with a mated pair of these ugly creatures, and two of their spawn, who were puttering along in a dinghy wearing cotton shorts and shirts and no PFDs (dumb ’cause I’m pretty sure these things don’t swim so well). They saw us–a group of kayakers playing in the tidal currents–and decided that we were their new form of amusement. The male (at the tiller) proceeded to drive directly up-current of us, throttled back and took his paw of the tiller, then turned around and they all started taking pictures of us. Meanwhile the dinghy–with it’s propeller churning at the stern–began to drift down closer and closer to us. At some point the male took personal affront with me because I got in front of some of the other kayakers (my students) and started waving my paddle at him and his family in a threatening manner. He did finally put his paw back on the tiller and throttled back up, but not before displaying what I now think was some sort of non-verbal attempt at communication with his other paw. He may have been wishing me peace, love, and farewell, but I was just glad he left me (us) with our lives!
My other close-encounter with Naked Sea Apes at Yellow Bluff happened when, just after the end of the Blue Angels aerial demonstration during fleet week one year, a mass gaggle of Naked Sea Apes who had been drinking heavily and baking in the sun all day on their sail boats all decided to head home at the same time, which of course took them all through the tide rips at Yellow Bluff. I’ll spare the gory details, but that may have been one of the more dangerous and scary events I’ve ever seen!
Don’t even get me started on the Naked Plaines Apes who try to kill you on your way to and from the put-in. And didn’t John Lull have a close-encounter with a Naked Sky Ape which tried to kill him while he was paddling under the Golden Gate Bridge?
We live in a dangerous world!
Thanks Matt, for your comments from a marine biologist’s point of view. I was going to say that it seems that most commenters think the croc is the most dangerous critter, then you come up with new scientific evidence that this so-called Naked Sea Ape is the main culprit, and that they’re none too bright.
I will keep a sharp lookout for these creatures!
Eric, love your work, and as always the comments are at least as informative and entertaining as the original post !
I made the mistake of treading on an electric ray here in Australia while wading in the shallows with my kids. It was a fairly unpleasant feeling. The closest I can describe it is like electric kneecaps, the uncontrolled twitching that beginner climbers sometimes get when standing too long on a fine edge. I couldn’t control my leg to lift my foot off it and eventually just fell over causing much hilarity to my offspring. The little ray was only about a foot across and swam in a circle before coming back, sticking it’s head out of the water and giving me a look that spoke volumes about it’s opinion of me. (It may have mumbled something about naked land apes too). It took a couple of hours before my leg felt close to normal again.
Also thought, while on the subject of dangerous critters, that the Cone Shell is worth mentioning. Yes, another one that’s found Down Under 🙂 Very pretty but some species can be lethal.
I remember free diving in Guam years ago and being told to watch out for the beautiful little cone shells with the stinger that will kill you. I dutifully did as I was told. I’ve never heard of anyone getting stung by one.
Your cute little electric ray sure didn’t like you. Ah well, you can’t make everyone happy.