Tuesday, June 09, 2009

Fish Aggro

About the most exciting thing that happens diving off Koh Tao is the occasional attack by a Trigger fish. Triggers are territorial fish that can grow up to about 3 feet long and can be very aggressive. Everyone tries to give them a wide berth but sometimes you can't get out of their area quickly enough. The picture below shows a Trigger attacking my dive master during a dive at 'The Twins' from about a week ago.



Anyway, if you dive around here enough there's a pretty good chance of getting 'triggered' and it I finally happened to me yesterday. Ironically enough it was during the emergency scenarios certification dive for my rescue diver course. Although it's kind of a tense situation, once things were under control (i.e. backing away with my fins between me and the obnoxious fish) I was cautiously amused by the whole thing.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

What is the fish doing? Do they have sharp teeth? Do they bite?
What is the black stuff?
Justin and Kylie

Tuesday, June 23, 2009 8:07:00 AM  
Blogger Brian said...

The fish is protecting its home and, maybe, its eggs. They are meaner when they have eggs to protect (like now) but will also try to keep people away from the places where they live and eat.

Their teeth are very sharp and they do try to bite you and sometimes try to cut you with the sharp fins on the sides of their body. If you get your fins between your body and the angry fish (like the diver in the picture is doing) it's usually OK. It's mostly only when the fish surprises you that they might be able to hurt you.

I'm not sure what the black stuff is - I think it is just part of their body that looks dark because the picture is not very good (here are some much better pictures of trigger fish and more information about them).

P.S. Hi. Hope you're having as much fun in Vermont as Hydraxis is fighting trigger fish in Thailand.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009 11:41:00 AM  

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All photographs copyright Brian A. Wilcox unless otherwise noted.

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