On April 23, Mr. Hua, a veteran swimmer, was in the waters of Beizaijiao in Yantian District, Shenzhen, with friends when he suddenly felt a stinging pain coming from his left armpit. Looking down, he saw that a large eel had latched onto him.
Experience helped prevent a panic attack. Concerned that trying to pull the creature away might aggravate the bite, Hua swam towards the shore with the eel still attached to his armpit. About three to five meters out from the beach the eel finally let go, leaving behind a shallow surface wound.
Hua is only one of more than a few swimmers who have recently reported attacks from sea creatures in the Beizaijiao area, just three kilometers to the east of the city's popular Xiaomeisha Beach. Beizaijiao usually attracts swimmers with its clean sand and clear waters, but on the day Hua showed up, there was a "sewer stench" coming from the ocean. He and his friends, who regularly swim there, decided to take their chances anyway.
Hua after being bitten in the armpit
A Shenzhen resident by the last name of Liao told Daily Sunshine reporters that in a swimming group he's a part of, multiple people have posted pictures of where they've been bitten by sea creatures. Hua was one of them. Besides the armpit shot, another photo shows a bloody bite on the ear, reportedly perpetrated by a grouper.
A swimmer whose last name is Jiao told the Daily Sunshine he suspects the recent animal attacks are due to the common Buddhist practice of releasing captive animals due to be slaughtered.
According to Jiao, the well-meaning practitioners regularly go to seafood markets, spending more than RMB10,000 on marine animals, then go out in small boats and release their loads of critters into the ocean.
The 'act of kindness' can have unintended consequences. According to residents, sometimes after a load of fish or eels has been released, people take boats or even wade into the water to harvest free seafood.
Other times, swimmers get bitten.
The recent attacks are unusual, though, according to Jiao: “[I] don’t know what the matter is this time, the released fish aren’t leaving, also not swimming out to deep sea, many have been swept into water near the shore.”
An eel caught off the shore of Beizaijiao
One reason might be low oxygen levels in the water. On April 23, Shenzhen's Marine Monitoring and Forecasting Center reported that an area not quite one square kilometer large off the Beizaijiao coast had suffered from a dip in oxygen.
Some swimmers speculate that this, combined with release of extra fish, may have driven some sea creatures to unusual behaviors, like biting people.
Although swimmers like Hua have suffered because of it, they've gotten off pretty lightly compared to past incidents. In 2015, for instance, after Buddhists released a large number of eels into nearby Beizai Bay waters, two people were injured. One of them, a child, required 100 stitches on both legs afterwards.
The year before that, news media reported an attack off the coast of Florida by a grouper estimated to be between 300 and 400 pounds. A diver, who managed to escape, had been spearfishing smaller prey when he caught the attention of the giant fish.
Compared with that, the aggressive fish of Beizaijiao beach are small fry.
[Images via Daily Sunshine]
0 User Comments