I have also had several tense interactions with rogue barracuda!! They will strike your coil, and 1 in a thousand are very aggressive and territorial....i tried to fend one off me for 10 minutes once....he kept charging me, and when I tried to hit him with my lesch tool he would not let me retrieve it from the bottom for several minutes....everytime I went to retrieve my tool he would not allow me to approach.
LOL, BB, I know that exact feeling. Long time ago, ex-wife and I took a cruise to Mexico, hitting Cozumel (my favorite to dive), Cancun, Belize, and another island. So, we took a snorkel trip, the boat drops us off at the far-right hand side of an island and tells us he'll pick us up at the other end. I thought we'd have to swim kinda far to get to the other end, but the current was insane & water moved briskly. So, all we had to do was to float and the current would carry us down to end of the island, where boat would be waiting to pick us up. Ex-wife was wearing a black, 1-piece bathing suit covered with brightly colored tropical flowers.
After we got in the water, a school of small harmless fish came up to her and started nibbling at the flowers on her bathing suit, it was hilarious, lol. But as she's fending them off, she kept bumping into me which kept moving me further right. So, current is moving us pretty fast, small fish nibbling the wife's suit, so I stuck my head in the water to look around. And holy chit, maybe 50 or so feet ahead just to our right is about 8 or 10 barracuda hanging motionless in the water, looking like they were the coolest fish in the water. For some reason, barracuda always remind me of the old-time jazz & blues players who wore suits and wide-brimmed hats tilted to the side to give them that cool gangster look. So current is moving us towards the barracuda, ex-wife keeps bumping me more to the right, and I'm gonna run right into that school. I yelled at her to swim to the left and got in front of her so she wouldn't keep bumping me. As we passed by the barracuda about 20 or so feet away, I kept my eyes on them, they kept looking at me. I wasn't scared or stressed, but more like aware & concerned. If I hadn't seen them, I wouldn't have known we needed to move further left, and I would have floated right over or into them. Code Brown averted, lol.
Last big scare was last year and involved a large scalloped hammerhead that snuck up on me in 5 feet of water....a full blown code brown moment that I could not recover from....had to abort mission due to being severely startled!!
And there ya go, definitely a Code Brown moment for sure. You're in 5' of water, so probably top of your chest, but most of your body is underwater so you weigh less & bob up & down like a fishing bobber with not much, if any, mobility. But Mr. Hammerhead has full mobility & advantage in 5' of water. That's a perfect example of why I limit my ocean water hunting to knee deep, maybe just a tad deeper (in our dark/murky waters, after knee deep, can't see my feet, coil, scoop bucket). Knee deep is 2ft for me, so in 2ft of water, the top of that hammerhead would be above water, and he'd probably beach his belly on the sand before he got to me. He might even decide he doesn't want to venture into water that shallow. But since I have much more mobility in knee deep water, I'd be able to move quickly to get out to avert a potential Code Brown, lol. 🦈
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