Check out the story about the puffer fish attack and photos of the missing
finger at http://www.jupiterdivecenter.com/ web site. This is a good lesson
about how things can happen to you. LOL

Man, that hurts !!!

I saw this on CDNN.

Looked like the wrong time to take his finger out of his ass eh!

I wish I hadn't looked. There went breakfast.

Serves him right.... wonder what he would have liked to show his dive buddies if one of those bull sharks had shown up!

To tell you the turth, I actually dove with him at Jupiter last spring. It was my first ocean dive, and it was fun. But yeah, he did touch things, which I guess he found out isn't that great. One dive master told me to come look under a reef so I went and laid in the sand. And under the reef there was a nurse shark, probally 6 feet. Then Randy (victim of the puffer fish) came behind the shark and kinda pulled it's tall. It swam out right in front of me and got within inches of me. At the time I thought it was pretty cool to get that close, but now that I think about it, coulda not been good too.

I have to agree about puffers being quite scary at times. About 6 months ago I was co-leading a night dive (I had my camera so I wasn't in charge) and we came across this massive star puffer (80cm or so). We stayed back about 3m but the lights got to him and he started to charge us down.

I happened to be right in front of him and managed to get a couple of frames off while swimming backwards at a fairly high speed. What really got me was the size of his teeth - he was one of the most intimidating fish I've ever seen...

Dan

Ouchie! That sucks. My dive master in Cozumel is missing his finger for a similar reason. Except at least his was bit off by a Moray!

Sometimes DM's can be a little tough on the wildlife. This paticular DM has shucked his BC, to slide into a crevice and retrieve a gargantuan sea turtle that he knows lives in there.

I've let him know that these things don't impress me, and that I'm not that desperate to see these things at the expense of the critters.

The fact is, is that some people expect this behavoir of the DMs in some of these locations, and tip based on how much stuff the DM is able to serve up to the divers.