I've heard of hooked game fish leaping into boats, and recall a few incredibly rare instances where free-jumping wahoo have landed inside boats and struck passengers. But I have never heard of a great barracuda flying through the air and planting its long, sharp teeth into the arm of an unsuspecting angler.
Koral Wira, 14, required 51 stitches to close wounds inflicted upon her by a 45-inch barracuda that transformed a Sunday family outing off Venice, Fla., into a scene of chaos and mayhem.
The fish left Wira's arm looking like raw hamburger, according to a story by Chris Anderson in the Herald Tribune."It was like a scene out of 'Jaws,' it was that scary," said Dina Parker, Wira's mother. "We'll never go back out there again. It was the most terrifying thing I've ever been through. I've never been so scared in my life."
Wira, who was named after the sea and its tranquility, suffered lacerations and puncture wounds from her elbow to her wrist. "At first I didn't notice because it happened so fast," she told the Florida newspaper. "Then I looked down and there was blood everywhere."
Rob
Parker, Wira's father, said the fish leaped four feet clear of the
water and onto the boat immediately after taking his bait, although it
had not been hooked."It looked like the scariest fish I've ever seen; it looked evil, just a mean-looking fish, all business," Dina Parker said.
The barracuda quickly let go of Wira's arm, which Rob Parker wrapped with his Boston Red Sox T-shirt before grabbing a fillet knife and stabbing it between the eyes.
He then looked up to see there was blood everywhere on the boat. "Put it this way, it looked like a crime scene," he said.
Photos of Koral Wira and father Rob Parker courtesy of Rob Parker, via the Herald Tribune
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