Fighting a 4.5' Green Moray Eel in Grand Cayman

We were doing a shallow sandbar dive to hand-feed stingrays in a dive site known as Stingray City when a huge Green Moray eel (that our dive masters had warned us about) showed up looking to get his jaws on the squid we all had in our hands for the (scary-looking but very gentle) stingrays. One of the dive masters gently nudged him away with a squid container.

A couple people have emailed me admonishing the divemaster's behavior. Please understand the context: this was a free-swimming moray eel circling a bunch of first-time scuba divers with food in their hands. Moray eels have great senses of smell but very poor eyesight.

There's a very well known case where a moray bit off a dive-instructor's thumb by mistake during a feeding. Our dive master was doing his best to chase the eel away to ensure something like this didn't happen again. (WARNING: GRAPHIC PHOTOS AND VIDEO OF SAID EEL BITING OFF HIS THUMB: http://www.scubadivingphuket.net/scubadivingphuket/2010/03/17/moray-eel-attac...)

Category:

Travel & Events

Tags:

• Moray
• eel
• grand
• cayman
• diving
• stingray
• city