Needlefish not
aiming for humans

A couple of weeks ago, this paper ran a brief story about a 16-year-old Florida snorkeler, Stephanie Mittler, who was speared in the neck by a needle-nosed houndfish.

It was a close call, the wire service story said, but the girl would recover.

Since then, I have received several email letters about this incident. One was from a friend of the victim who wrote that Stephanie, on spring break from her Tampa school, was standing in chest-high water when she was hit.

Several aspects of this story intrigued me. First, what the heck is a houndfish?

The newspaper article said that houndfish are related to needlefish. After some searching, however, I learned that houndfish ARE needlefish, just by another name. In Australia, people know these fish as longtoms and here in Hawaii, they are sometimes called stick fish.

Whatever you call them, these fish have the potential to be living lances. Needlefish are able to spring from the water and soar over the surface at more than 30 mph for nearly a quarter-mile. Christopher Columbus was labeled a liar when he described these astonishing leaping fish to the royal court of Spain.

It's no surprise that needlefish get around above water so well; they are close relatives of flying fish or malolo.

A major difference between the two, and the one that concerns humans the most, is the shape of their snouts.

Malolo are blunt-nosed with small mouths. Needlefish, however, have long, narrow snouts. It is their sharply pointed mouths that can cause trouble for them and for people with the bad luck to get in their way.

And that brings me to another interesting part of Stephanie's story. Her accident happened during the day, but needlefish are usually considered a nighttime hazard.

The theory is that lights from boats alarm or attract the fish, causing them to take fateful leaps into anyone or anything in their paths.

This may be true sometimes, but needlefish also puncture people in broad daylight. According to current worldwide records, more needlefish injuries occurred in the daytime than at night.

Two windsurfers, a body surfer, a canoe paddler, a dawn fisherman and now a snorkeler all suffered serious needlefish injuries during the day.

This makes sense since the ability of these fish to fly through the air is a method of avoiding underwater predators. If a needlefish is being pursued, it will take to the air day or night to save its life. And if a human is in the way during such an event, it's just bad luck.

It's the fish's bad luck, too. A needlefish rarely survives a collision with a human.

Despite the attention a needlefish accident gets, piercings are not common and are not a reason to stay out of the ocean.

The number of needlefish clashes with people is minuscule, considering the millions of snorkelers, surfers, swimmers and fishers in the ocean every day.

In the rare event you do come into contact with a needlefish, here's what to do:

Don't try to remove a needlefish beak from the flesh. If the fish is still attached to its embedded beak, cut it off and go to an emergency room.
Don't ignore a needlefish puncture even if it seems trivial. In Israel, doctors found a 1-inch piece of needlefish beak in a woman's neck one month after the incident. They removed it and she recovered.
If you see needlefish while snorkeling, don't panic -- these fish never try to poke people. Give them some space and keep going.