As a young child, my favorite movie was The Little Mermaid. I loved swimming and spent my childhood on the beaches of California and the Great Lakes of Michigan pretending to be a mermaid. On my first trip to St. John USVI, it was my first time snorkeling in years and I was excited to try out my new equipment and underwater camera. I swam out to a rocky outcropping near Little Maho Bay Beach and got a little snap happy as I hadn’t expected the water to be so clear or to see so many fish so close to the beach! As I moved around I noticed some fish darting down beneath a ledge. Curious I started taking huge breaths and free diving as far down as I could get to take pictures of the sea life. On one dive down I was finally able to swim further to see what was under the ledge.
BIG MISTAKE!
What I saw still haunts me. It was a massive man length giant Goliath Grouper! And this fish was angry with me and so came out of the ledge swimming at me. I was frightened so much that I swam back and have stayed away from dark ledges after that.
Now I’ve swam with sharks, and would love to swim with whales, but for some reason a massive man sized fish freaks me out. I even saw a massive grouper in Belize right next to our anchor in Belize. I made sure to steer clear of it.
Giant Grouper in Belize. Yeah I’m leaving that guy alone!
And to share my terror, here is a video of a giant grouper attacking a diver!
Travel Missteps is an every-other week series on how sometimes part of the journey is making mistakes and getting lost.
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