Well, with the turtle attack and the shark attack making news, I thought I would add my jack attack story. Not an attack really, just a misunderstanding, but I thought I would share it to save someone a sore hand.

On our first trip to Hol Chan the guide secured the boat and started throwing out chum. He said we could get in the water, so I was first in. Don't have to tell me twice. There were a lot of horse eye jacks, rays and sharks coming to the chum and nobody got out the boat except me. They were all waiting to see if I got ate, I guess.

The fish were incredible and I came up and asked my wife to throw me the camera from our dive bag. Guide wasn't paying attention. She tossed the camera about 10 ft. to me in the water. I reached up to catch it, and in the same instant a large jack jumped out the water to eat it, thinking it was chum. I caught the camera and the jack caught my hand all at the same time. I thought he was going to jerk my arm out of the socket he hit so hard. The fish was toothless so it only bruised my hand, but my arm joints are still sore two weeks later. Glad it wasn't a cuda or you'd be calling me lefty.

Everybody on the boat freaked. I just laughed and went back to snorkeling. Had it all to myself, too. Never let em know yer scared.

Lesson here, don't throw anything out of the boat you don't want eaten, and don't try to catch anything being thrown out of the boat. The fish are conditioned to eat anything that hits the water and they don't mind meeting it half way.

Nobody's fault but mine. This is not an aquarium and the creatures are not tame. I've been around the water long enough to know this, but got caught up in the excitement of the moment. No big drama here, no killer fish, just creatures doing what they are conditioned to do and I happened to get in the way. It didn't cause me to miss a minute of water time, but it did make spectators out of a few of the boat passengers.

Good point! Had a nice laugh at the scared spectators & them not getting in the water. Like you, I don't have to be told twice.

Interesting story. I shutter to think what a large cuda could have done to you. Ouch!!
Glad you lucked out.

That reminds me of a story. I happened to get it all on video, which makes it more fun. We were on a family vaca to Cozumel and were out with our favorite divemaster (when you have a bunch of people, you get the whole boat) and completed a dive on the reef and stopped for the snorkelers. As they were bailing out of the boat, my wife (first out) noticed some fish coming up to check her out. They were chubs, about a foot long, and always seemed to be around the boat when we were getting in or out. As luck would have it, we had picked up a 20 pound bag of animal crackers for fish feeding (never saw a bag like that anywhere else) and I started tossing double handfuls into the water next to the wife. A feeding frenzy broke out, with these good sized fish boiling the water and jumping out of it. My wife was angry, but everyone else jumped in on top of them and it made a good video. Nobody got bitten, or my name would have been mud.

Our family of 4 dove there last month and had 2 encounters with a Ramora. These are the fish about 3 feet long that hang upside down on larger sea life. They are creepy looking because their heads look upside down and they have a large mouth and then a flat head to suction on. It chased us and tried to suction on to us repeatedly. It really was pretty freaky. It actually bit a guy on our dive and he still had the marks a couple days later when we saw him on the beach. We have a lot of fun making Ramora jokes and are going to make enlarged photo of it for our daughter!