Barracuda

Barracuda

Ray McAllister

Of all the critters in the ocean, barracuda have the worst worldwide reputation. It is grossly overestimated as danger to man, so lets look at barracuda and see whether we can dispel the nonsense.

The great barracuda, Sphyrena barracuda, rarely grows over 5 feet. The record in 1963 was 66 inches long. Reports of barracuda to 8 and even 15 feet long are probably exaggerations of frightened observers. My world record was one that hung under a doubler member on Argus Island, probably the one that was bumping me in the shoulder, reported below. The doubler was 15 inches in diameter and 6 feet long. I saw a huge barracuda lying under this doubler and it was protruding several inches on each end and was larger than 15 inches as seen from directly above.

Barracuda can inflict a nasty bite and occasionally do, usually because of carelessness or stupidity on the part of the person bitten. I know of two good cases of barracuda bites and you be the judge of whether it was the barracuda’s fault or the peoples fault. The two bites both occurred in the Bahamas. The first happened as a couple of local Bahamians were seining for fish along the beach. They trapped a barracuda in the seine and as they got closer and closer to the beach, the fish got more agitated. While in waist deep water it made a dash around one end of the net and as it went by the man holding the pole, it caught his stomach with the sharp front tooth and split his stomach far enough to drop several feet of entrails into the water.

He was loaded into a sailing smack and in the hot summer sun, he was sailed to Harbour Island where there was a doctor. The doctor sewed him up and according to my relatives on Spanish Wells, he lived. They made them hardy in the old days!! This story was told to me but I never met the old man or got any further verification.

The next case was a man who was a great diver and spearfisherman. He had speared a nice fish when a barracuda showed up to claim it. Frank Pinder pulled the fish on his spear close to his body to discourage the barracuda. Frank told me and showed me that the berry flashed across his body and hit the left upper arm with that same prominent front tooth. It cut a half inch deep clean gash across the arm, which healed as a keloid scar. It looked like someone had welded the gash shut with a raised mound of meat. Frank said it was his own fault.

I speared a large hogfish off Pompano Beach, and when one of two barracuda turned toward the struggling fish and turned from silver to black, I put the fish inside my wet jacket and zipped it up (There barracuda, you can’t get it now!). I then locked both arms over the struggling fish and damped out its thrashing. At that point the slowly approaching barracuda turned back to silver and rejoined it’s buddies on the ledge nearby. Thinking back on it, I was a damn fool, and VERY LUCKY!

In another case one of our Bermuda divers was stripping growth off the cross members of the Argus Island Tower by scraping with his bright stainless steel dive knife. As he swung it out for another swipe, a barracuda took the knife out of his hand, grabbing it by the blade, and took it out into the center of the four legged tower. It mouthed it a couple of times, decided that it was not good to eat and dropped it to the bottom almost 200 feet down. The diver said he did not think he would go get it!

So respect berries but don’t fear them unless you do something stupid!


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