Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - That's a Moray - Eels and the Damage They Can Do

Episode Date: August 17, 2026

Turns out its not just sharks that have a set of chompers that can d-eel some serious damage underwater. Watch us on YouTube here: ~ ~ To advertise on the show, contact us! Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/c/toothandclawpodcast ~~ Tooth & Claw is brought to you by QCODE. Support the show and get access to an extensive library of exclusive episodes like this by supporting the show on Patreon or joining the Grizzly Club on Apple Podcasts. For the latest updates on the show and all things wildlife, follow us at toothandclawpod.com and social:  Instagram: @ToothandClawPodcast Twitter: @ToothandClawPod Wes: @GrizKid Jeff: @jefe_larson Mike: @mikey3ds Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello everyone and welcome to Tooth and Claw podcast. We are a wildlife podcast and we stick up for animals. We have a bear biologist who knows everything that's ever been known about animals. I'm his brother, Jeff Larson, and then we have our producer, Mike Smith. You saying it that way makes me feel like we're protecting animals from bullies. Oh, yeah. I went to Salem the other day. You guys ever been out there?

Did you burn any witches? You know, even the Salem witch trials kind of like, you know, gets overshadowed by a man to me. Why's that? Because the worst death was the guy that stuck up for all the witches and they slowly crushed him to death with the rocks. Whoa. That is a bad way to go. Yeah. And then all the witches got like hung.

or that the way they'd be like if she's a witch she won't sink and then they just sink up yeah we stayed in the hotel where like the sheriff who would strangle people and want to kill all the witches lived uh yeah was he there did you see him i heard a bunch of stuff going on in there i don't understand burning witches if i met a witch i would want to ingratiate myself to her so she cast good spells for me, right? Yeah, it seems like a great ally, not necessarily a good enemy. Any witches out there, hit me up. Yeah, hit us up.

Pray for us. Do some of those spells for us. There's a lot of witches walking around in Salem. They could have just been, like, pretending, but a lot of witches. From the outside, it looked like there's a lot of witches. Yeah. Okay. Anyone out there wants to play sheriff.

Danielle has this new thing where she'll be like, we're going on this one historic tour. And I'll be like, all right, that sounds cool. And it's like a pirate tour in Salem, you know? So we went on a pirate tour. And she'll always be like, don't worry, it's not very long. And it just is never ending. This one went for like three and a half hours. I was just like, this isn't.

Like we ended at a pirate museum. And then this guy who was on the tour with us was like, oh I actually work for the museum let me give you a tour of it and we had a whole another tour no right after luckily you've got such a robust attention span I know it's really fun for the first hour and then I'm just like oh my god I feel that way about those kind of tours too like like over an hour it's kind of like and it's like the one thing I'm most interested in and it's like the only thing they don't know anything about. Like there's these old pirate grenades that is just like a lead ball with a piece of wood in it.

I was like, oh, so what? Did they just fill these with gunpowder? And it's like an original grenade. And the guy's like, oh, yeah, I don't really know. And they told us about every other thing in the museum. Today we're going to talk about something long and slippery. Yeah. Here's a little song lyric I came up with.

When the diving is grand, but an eel bites your hand, that's a moray. So I'd say... You came up with that? I got a second one. When the jaws open wide and there's more jaws inside, that's a moray. That's a xenomorph, more like. Well, you'll see that's also a moray. Okay, so we're all pretty into diving, right?

it's pretty safe to say that all three of us have gotten pretty into diving. Isn't that true? Hard to push back on that. Yeah, we just couldn't let Mike have something for himself, could we, Jeff? We just had to do it too. Yeah. We're all advanced divers now, too, dive masters. We're not dive masters, master divers.

Anyway, Mike, you do still have the most experience out of the three of us, and I wanted to ask you a question. What would you consider the top three dangers associated with divemen? diving. Ooh, underwater mines. Okay. Unexploded underwater mines. Tsunamis. Sunami way. Actually, that might be the best place to do. Yeah, you're not even going to really feel it.

Yeah. Oh, I doubt that. A tsunami, I think you're getting carried away. Yeah, best place would probably be like on top. No way, dude. It'll take you right back on the land, which is like put you on top of a mountain or whatever. All right, so mine's tsunamis. What's number three? Puffer fish. Puffer fish.

All right. You want an old poison you to death. It just goes down your throat like a bug. Yeah. So the actual answer to that is more like conditions. So when you learn how to dive, the things that they teach you about that are the biggest dangers are like gas levels, nitrogen, all these different things that you're doing to your body. Currants. It's mostly what you're doing to your body just by diving in the first place and then ocean conditions that you have to watch out for.

For me, it's damaging the coral reef. That's also something you definitely don't want to do. Because I just can't live with myself. So it is dangerous actually for me. So usually it's like diver air pressure things. But really they don't often say that it's like, you know, animal life. You do go on certain dives where they talk about potentially dangerous animal life, but it always kind of feels like a footnote. You know, they'll bring up potentially sharks or scorpion fish or

whatever else you could maybe run into. And there is one animal that they often say on dives when you're, especially if you're going to be like holding onto the reef like we had to do in Galapagos, that they do tell you to watch out for. And you guys probably know what that animal is since you've read the title of this episode. But Jeff, go ahead and tell our listeners what that is. So like those bombs that sink down the depth charges? Yeah. Were you thinking of those, Mike, or not? That's, no, that's four. That's just outside the top three. Moray eels. Yep. That's a moray. That's a moray. Exactly. You're catching on. You're catching on, Jeff. So yeah, I think when it comes to dangerous undersea life, the things that we generally think about are

things like sharks, these big macro predators like tiger sharks, bull sharks, especially around reefs, those are the sharks you might think about. And then you also could potentially run into things like box jellies, there's stonefish, there are a number of potentially dangerous critters down there. But the one that can pose a risk to humans that's really common in coral reefs is the moray eel. And there are certain places that we go diving where these eels are something you really just expect to see on just about every dive. And I'm kind of curious to hear from you too, like, what is the danger level you feel when you see a large more eel when you're diving or snorkeling? Uh, zero. Zero. Very low. Yeah, I honestly think it might change after this

episode because I didn't even really clock them as a threat. Yeah, I think mine was a little bit higher. I think I see them a little bit differently and it might be due to my first encounter I ever had with a large green Morayil and this was in Belize in 2009. I was snorkeling with our friend Rob and we saw a big green Moray eel that actually left the reef and it was traveling on the bottom of the ocean, you know, swimming. It was really beautiful. It was my first big Morayil I'd seen in the wild. So I got really excited. I dove down. I was snorkeling. I dove down to get a better look. And I was really surprised to see that eel stop swimming, turn toward me, and then shoot up through the water toward me with its mouth open. And it stopped a few feet away from my face.

I backed away quickly in the water. And I think for me, that being my first experience with the big more eel, I've kind of had a healthy respect for just how fast they can be and how intimidating they can be. And I don't ever push the free swimming ones, especially when I'm in the water. How did you back away? Uh, just like this. A couple. Yeah, a couple backstrokes. Okay.

So I do, you know, on some of our dives, our dive masters have said, you know, be careful where you put your hand, don't harass them. But today I do have a couple stories of divers that found out the hard way that Mori Yills can be pretty intense, that their bites can be pretty gnarly, and that they definitely deserve our respect. Hmm. First story comes from a country that we're going to be visiting soon. And it's also from a storyteller that we have featured.

several times on this podcast, Mr. Jeremy Wade of River Monsters fame. In season eight of River Monsters, Jeremy must have ran out a dangerous river critters to talk about because he was looking into myths around sea serpents and what real-life critters might be behind those myths. We would never. No, no, we just quit. If we run out of teeth and claws, we're done. We never do like a Lorena Bobbitt episode or anything.

like that. Oh, man. All right. So one of the animals, as he's looking into sea serpent myths, of course, he decides to talk about Mori Yales. And as he's looking into Mori Yales, it doesn't take him long to find this guy named Matt Butcher, who is a British diving instructor living in Phuket, Thailand, who knew firsthand how dangerous Mori Yels can be. That's funny. Because butchers use their hands. Yeah, and divers use their hands.

And Matt, you'll see why it's funny. And eels don't have hands. All right. In 2005, Matt is working as a dive master in the nearby Simuland Islands. So these are some islands right off the coast of Phuket, Thailand. He's on a live aboard. He spent about 18 months in this area. And during that time, he'd gotten to know where some of the undersea creatures could reliably be found.

I think, you know, dive masters that spend the same, the amount, like a lot of time in the same area over and over and over again, they tend to learn like, oh, that reef has a Morayil. This reef often has reef sharks, you know, and that's kind of how he had gotten to know his reef. And one of the most reliable attractions for the divers that he would take out was a roughly six foot long giant Moray eel that lived under some table coral about 60 feet below the surface. So this is the actual species name. moorail. This is the big morays that you often see in like the Indo-Pacific. All right, so when divers would approach this table coral, which is just a coral that has a big flat top on it, this giant moray would swim out and would approach the divers, and that's because it was looking for scraps of food that these divers often offered up to this morayil. And she became so well known that they'd named this moraille,

Emma and a lot of the local boats knew her and would feed her and it was kind of like a routine stop for them on their diving trips. So on April 18th, 2005, Matt is diving with some friends and he decides he's going to take them to see Emma. And as they approach this table coral, again about 60 feet below the surface, sure enough, this big Morial swims out and immediately begins to swim all around Matt and his friends. And he actually has a GoPro. This is two Or it wasn't a GoPro, some other kind of underwater camera. So it was very early stage underwater camera in 2005. And they start recording.

And you can see this video, this eel is just kind of swimming all over. And he's running his hand down its body. He's scratching its head. You can tell it's very food condition, very used to having divers around. Yeah. Swimming in and out of their legs. And it's searching for food. You can see it kind of probing and looking for food.

And Matt had brought a bag that had some people. pieces of sausage in it. So he pulls this bag of sausage out of a pocket on his BCD, which is the inflatable vest that you wear when you're diving, and Emma swims behind him and shoots Ford trying to bite this sausage. But he hadn't untied the bag yet, this bag. So he's like fumbling, trying to pull out the sausage, trying to get it away from this Moray eel as it's snapping at the bag.

And in the process, his left thumb gets in the way. and Emma bites into his thumb, her long needle-like teeth, just sliding into the flesh and through the joint of his thumb where it meets his hand. And Mori Eels kind of have teeth that are somewhat similar to what you'd see in like a python or a large constrictor snake, where they're really thin, but they're kind of backwards pointing too. So that lets them, you know, really get a hold of you and it's hard to pull away because they're pointing backwards. Yeah. So Matt immediately begins to try and get his hand free, but she just shakes back and forth. He can't get his hand free from this eel. And then he reaches out with his other hand to try and pry her mouth open.

But this causes her to shake even harder. And then Matt hears a pop underwater. And he watches his Emma swims away. And then a cloud of dark greenish-gray water starts forming around him, and he looks down at his hand. And he can see the white of his knuckle where his thumb. had previously been attached to his hand. Holy mackerel. Mike, why was this cloud?

Because we're a hundred lotter, Jeff. That's actually the answer to my question, too. What would you say if this happened to you? I would say, holy mackerel. And I would know this cloud of blood is greenish-gray, because what can't you see at 60 feet below the surface? The color red. The color red all but disappears.

It's one of the first colors. in the visible spectrum that you don't see when you start descending that deep. So Matt knows that he's seeing a cloud of his own blood. His thumb is gone. He makes his way to the surface. And when the boat that he was on sees that he's in distress and surrounded by a cloud of blood, they immediately call the Thai Navy. The Navy personnel bandages up his hand.

They got the Navy involved. The Navy comes, yeah. They bandage him up and they evacuate him to a hospital on mainland Thailand. So you'd think in this interview with Jeremy Wade, Matt would show him his hand, and it would be thumbless. Right, Jeff? He probably doesn't have a thumb because a Moriel bit it off. He would have half a thumb, maybe. Well, I bit it off at the knuckle, right, at his hand.

So you'd think, oh, this guy doesn't have a thumb. Well, and the Morayil kept it, right? Yeah. You're wrong again, Jeff. How? Because he did have a left thumb. Oh, it's his right hand. No.

Trick question. But in the video I noticed like, oh, that's a weird looking thumb. It's really long and skinny and it has this kind of strange square ending to it. It kind of looked like a bush baby, you know, like those bush babies that have that kind of weird long thumb. That's because he went to a doctor in Bangkok that cut off his second toe on his left foot and grafted it onto his hand. and that's why he has like a thumb a toe thumb now on his left hand. Wow. Yeah.

Wait a minute. You can do that. Is that a fair trade, do you think? Would you do that? I think so. Because your thumb is very important and your second toe isn't an important. Digit. Yeah.

Yeah. I just watched this movie, Chocolate. It's like a 2008 martial arts film. And they make losing a big toe just seem like one of the most debilitating things that can happen. I think you're big toe. I think your big toe and your little toe provide a lot more balance, but I think your second toe isn't as important, but I'm not sure about it.

Oh, second toe. Okay. Yeah, I miss that. Okay, I do that in a heartbeat then, for sure. But, I mean, if you look at your second toe, like, it's long and skinny, you know, that's like Mine's longer than my big toes. Yeah. So it kind of looks like a weird thumb, but he was really happy he did it.

I do have to say it's incredibly brave. If someone were like, hey, I know a guy in Bangkok that can cut off your toe and grafted to your thumb. I'd be like, no, dude, I'm good, you know. Right. Yeah. Well, and the hangover, too, they're in Bangkok, and one of them cuts off his finger for fun. Oh, yeah.

I forgot all about that movie. And they didn't put their toe on there. I like it. Okay. All right. We're going to do a little biology, and to start, let's play a game. That's it. I don't think our doctors would offer that here, right?

I think they would. You do. I think in 2005 it was like kind of cutting edge, but I'm not sure. Yeah. Remember that guy that got his, I think it was his nose ripped off by a bear and they put his nose on his forearm and like re-goed on his forearm. Doctors are doing all sorts of. That's so crazy. You guys know I love Element, but something that you might not know is that the lemonade iced tea flavor is my new favorite flavor.

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You can find your favorite flavor or you can share with a friend. All right, let's play a little game. I've called this game pizza pie or a moray. All right. Okay. Jeff should be good at this one. Dean Martin's song. If the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's a moray.

Why am I going to be better than you at this? Because you know a lot about pizza. And love. Yeah. I'm going to tell you guys some facts. And you need to tell me if I'm talking about a pizza pie or a moray eel. Because I know it's really hard to get those two straight. Okay.

All right. First fact. There are over 200 recognized varieties. Well, there's pizza. For sure, pizza, too. Both? Desert pizzas? There's so many vegetables and meat combinations.

I didn't think that through. It's pizza. That's a moray. There are over 200 species of Moray eel. You are right, Jeff. There are definitely over 200 types of pizza as well. I should have thought of that one. Okay.

There are over 200 different described species of Moray eel worldwide. They're typically found in tropical and temperate waters. Okay. The Spago variety is often a pinkish red. Pizza pie. Oh, that's a thing? That's the question. That's a Morae.

That's a pizza pie. Spago is a pizza restaurant in California, created by Wolfgang Puck, and it's famous for its pizza. that's topped with smoke salmon, making it a pinkish red hue. The Romans considered it a delicacy. That's a moray? Yeah, that's a moray. That's a moray.

Wealthy Roman dignitaries sometimes would build complex grottoes with pools and tunnels and channels and channels that connected to the ocean to house captive morailles, which they then ate as a delicacy, which is kind of surprising because they actually can be quite toxic if you don't prepare them right in some parts of the roman empire caring for mori eels became so popular that it almost became cult like and there's this island named ponsa and there they had like big moray eel captive areas and there's this thought and i don't think this is confirmed that sometimes the locals would feed morayeel different things and then they kind of used whether or not the Morales accepted or rejected the food as a way to predict the future.

Oh. Yeah, I couldn't find a lot on this. We're going to take that with a grain of salt. It's also thought that Pontius Pilate went to that island and kind of got really into Morales after he killed Jesus. That'd be a good road trip snack. Morial? Yeah, it's just kind of like a huge fruit by the foot.

All right. That was a very long time ago. And in slightly more recent times, this is the next one, specifically 18th century Naples, it was often considered a cheap street food given to peasants. A pizza pie. That sounds like pizza to me. That's a pizza pie. You guys are good.

You're nailing this. In 18th century Naples, pizza was sold by street vendors and considered a cheap, humble meal for the working class. It wasn't until Queen Margarita visited in 1889. that pizza began gaining popularity among the upper class, and there was a chef that made a pie with her red tomatoes, white mozzarella, and green basil, and named it after the queen, Margarita. Ooh, what was it called?

In 2001, one went to space. A pizza went to space is what I'm going to say. I'm going to say, that's a more. That's a pizza pie. They took a pizza in space? What? 2001 Pizza Hut paid about a million dollars to send a vacuum-sealed pizza to the International Space Station on a Russian resupply rocket. Hey.

It's the first pizza delivered in space. For the dogs? No, for the humans. Are we still sending dogs up there? Probably. I'm going to do an episode on the first bear they put in a rocket at some point. It's a very sad story. All right.

The dragon variety is mostly white and orange. Amora. The dragon variety is, yeah, that's Amore. That's Amoree. Turns out this game isn't that hard. I went on a stretch for the rocket one. I was like, that's a trick question. Pizza seems obvious.

Yeah, I was going to put the moon in it too as an option, but it just got a little too complicated. All right, Dragon Mori-Eels I came up with for you too. Okay, once I'm done, you can do yours. Dragon Morales are found throughout the Indo-Pacific. They're also known as leopard or tiger morays. They're mostly white, orange, and brown.

The biggest one ever recorded was 6,333 feet long. That's one big pizza. That's a pizza pie. made over a period of 54 hours by a team of more than 100 people in Fontana, California. The 6,333 foot long pizza weighed over seven tons. How did they bake that? I don't believe this. I don't know.

I don't think it was... Did they assume it? It had a floppy bottom. It probably had a soggy bottom. Yeah. What's yours, Jeff? Oh, my thing that came up with? Yeah.

Okay, sometimes this comes with little sausages. That can be either. We just learned it. All right, that's a good one. Okay, here's some more facts. Almost all more eels are found in marine environments, although there are a few species that prefer brackish or fresh water. Most of them are found in tropical or subtropical water,

but there are a few that are found in temperate waters as well. You most often find more eels in either coral reefs or jumbles of undersea rocks. What eat them? There are a few different fish that eat them, but they're kind of considered almost like an apex predator. There's really not a lot that eats them. It just feels like a shark or an orca be satisfying to eat it. Yeah.

You just slurp it up. It seems like they'd be really tasty. There's like a lot of meat there. groupers barracuda's sea snakes are there a few known predators but i'm sure there are other things that occasionally eat up some some more eels can be quite small we'll talk about that in a second they have this long dorsal fin that extends the length of their body but they generally don't have any pectoral or pelvic fins so there's no fins coming off the side and that's how you can often tell them apart from other eels is most other eels will have will have some sort of other fins

They don't have scales like other fish, but rather they're coated in mucus for their own protection. They come in a huge array of colors and sizes, everything from pale brown to neon blue and yellow. That ribonyle that Ian saw in Komoda, that really beautiful ribanil, that's a type of morayil. That's a moray. Holy cow. While many more... Mike, you love undersea animals. be excited about this.

Yeah, I am. Holy macro. That's, yeah, all right, anyway. While many Moray eel species are relatively small and are going to be like, there's some that are about a foot or less than a foot long even, the longest species is the slender giant Moray eel, and it can grow to almost 13 feet long. Like wemby. Slender giant?

Yeah, it is. Yeah, they should have called it the wendy eel. The eel is kind of a good nickname. Oh yeah That is the good one Yeah I like it better than What do we call them like the alien

Anyway Let's not derail ourselves too much here It's not rail ourselves at all They have gill openings behind their heads And they have to actively pump water Through those openings So with more eels It's kind of just like a hole

Rather than a big bony plate Like most fish have And because that hole is so small And they have to actively move water You often see Mori Eels with their mouths open, and that's because they are actively moving water through their gills,

and that's how they're breathing. Mm. Oh, it's up there trying to bite me. No, sometimes. If you have sausages, it does look like they do always have their mouths open. Yeah. They have slender mouths with jaws that are lined

with needle-like teeth that point slightly backward. But maybe the coolest thing about them, in my opinion, is that a lot of Moray eel species also have a, second set of jaws in their throats. So the reason for that is most fish that you see underwater have rounded heads. And the way that their heads and their mouths are shaped, allow them to suck in a bunch of water when they open their mouths to bite something. And that creates negative pressure and it essentially sucks their prey right into their mouths and makes it so the prey can't swim away. It's Kirby. Yeah, it's like Kirby, exactly. And that holds the prey in their mouth too.

That negative pressure keeps it in their mouth long enough for them to bite down and kill the prey. But with the slender head that Mori-eals have, they can't create that negative pressure. It's actually the opposite that if they didn't have their specific kind of adaptations, they would make pressure as they went for things and it would scare things away. So when they bite something, those jaws in their throat, which are called a pharyngeal jaws, spring forward into their mouths and latch on to the prey and they serve as a secondary anchor so it can't get away. And they're really the only known vertebrate

that has pharyngeal jaws like this besides xenomorph. Xenomorph, which is that's extra scary because you'd need two oxygen tanks to lodge in their mouths before you can blow them up. Yeah, like if it should be called Jaws, Yeah, with an extra ass on the end. I think it's scary, but honestly, like, your second mouth is smaller.

It's like, you know, the first mouth is kind of scary. Yeah, I agree. You know? But, like, an alien, that second mouth, like, could explode your head. It's got a lot of power behind it. That's not the case with more eels. It's kind of just a second anchor for them. They eat a lot of different animals.

Their main prey includes fish, crabs, several pods like octopus. What happens when Kirby gets sucked in? What power do you get from that? If you suck in Kirby. Yeah. In Smash Brothers, you get his rock and stuff. Oh, yeah, you would already be Kirby, huh? Right.

I think you do, yeah, you don't get any special. I think he get his items. Yeah. That's too bad. That's my guy. Yeah. It is your guy. All right.

You're always one for sucking. Speaking of sucking, when it comes to reproduction, they're mostly kind of a spray it, don't lay it, which means like the males and the females are both just spraying their eggs and sperm in the same spot and letting fertilization happen in the water so let's make a hat that says spray it don't lay it and sell it the best is to suck in samson sammas samis because they have that charge-up gun and then you can just do that they just sit on the other side of the arena and just do that over and over and over again of your Brent.

All right. These eggs, once they're fertilized, they develop into these tiny ribbon-like transparent larva. And those larvae are generally pelagic. Do you guys remember what the word pelagic means? Deep, like just ocean. Open ocean. Yep. Open ocean.

So they're out in the open ocean, these tiny eel larva. They're feeding on plankton in this larval stage. And because they're out in the open ocean, this really helps them distribute far and wide, and when they turn into juveniles, they start taking on the physical characteristics that we associate with Morayil's, and they find reefs and rocks and whatnot to hide in. Here's the cool fact. I really like this one. You don't see a lot of cooperative hunting in the animal world between different species. A really famous example are coyotes and badgers, or coyotes and badgers will go out and hunt together because they kind of benefit each other while

they're hunting, but Morayil's actually do cooperative hunting with another species. Coral groupers, which is a big fish, will sometimes actively recruit Morioles to hunt with them. And what they do is they swim up to where a Morayil is, and the coral grouper will shake its head back and forth at the moray to kind of signal it that it wants to go hunting. And then the moray leaves its hiding spot to patrol the reef. And what happens is that Moray eel, as it's going through the reef and all these little holes and stuff, it's scaring fish up into the water. And that's where the coral grouper eats those fish. Oh, wow. And meanwhile, the coral grouper is going like above the reef and

it's scaring fish down into the holes. And that's where the more eel can catch them. Wow. That's yeah. So they do this cooperative hunting with each other, which I think is just like an incredible fact. I just think that's so cool to think about. I don't think this happens often, but it has been documented happening. I like that because it's not just a thing that is a byproduct of like natural. I mean, it is a natural behavior, but it's not just like two species taking advantage of what the others are doing independent of each other. They go and like they shake their head at each other and like signal a hunt. That's so crazy. Yeah. That's amazing. Like it's actual cooperation. Yeah. It's not just like, yeah, them taking advantage of something. All right. I found a pretty crazy medical paper that details a really

extreme Moray eel bite in Cuba in the early 2000s. There's a photo, and it's worse than what you're imagining. And I am going to show it to you. But basically, what happened was there's a group of divers. They're exploring the reefs near the island of Varadaro, and among them is a 37-year-old school teacher who's wearing a shorthy wetsuit. Mike, can you explain to our listeners what a shorthy is? Yeah, so regular wetsuits, you're going to have all of your appendages fully covered.

wrist down to ankle. With shorties, it's more kind of like the capri version where it's cut off at the knees and elbows. Exactly. So your forearms and your calves are exposed. Yep. Yeah. You should have asked Jeff.

No, not a motorcycle. Okay. The spice is. In front of my window right now. All right. I wonder if they make Shorty motorcycle. Leathers. They should.

All right. So they're about to jump in the water, and as they're about to get in, the instructor briefs them on the site and mentions that there's a well-known, five-foot green Moray eel that was almost always present. It's very friendly and very inquisitive,

likely because it was often fed. And I mentioned the giant Morayil in the Indo-Pacific. The green Morayil is probably the most iconic Morayil. It's just a big, bright green one. It's kind of what people picture when they picture a more eel. Looks like a dragon if they're big enough.

Yeah, it's found throughout the tropical parts of the Atlantic. Sure enough, when they descend about 30 meters or 90 feet, the eel swims out and starts inspecting the group. And it's hard to say exactly what attracted it to the school teacher, but it's likely that it could have been the pale color of his exposed forearms in the shorty wetsuit. The eel starts swimming around him excitedly. I think it's probably looking for some sort of handout.

And when it doesn't get it, it bites down hard into his forearm and refuses to let go. It's thrashing back and forth and he's panicking trying to get the attention of the rest of his group. But no one notices them. I think he's kind of at the back of the group. So he's panicking. He has this big more ill latched onto his forearm. That's such a weird situation. He's 90 feet down.

So it's pretty far down. And so no one notices them. What he decides to do is fully. inflate his BCD and make a rushed uncontrolled ascent to the surface. Oh, man. Along the way, the Eel does decide to disengage and swim away. And as far as I know, I don't think he got any nitrogen sickness or whatever, the bends, anything like that.

But when he gets to the surface, the boat picks him up. They do their best to stem the bleeding and get him to the hospital, where doctors have to perform hours of surgery on his forearm. and he was really lucky that the veins and arteries stayed intact, but it's kind of crazy what this eel did to his forearm. It looks like he was bit by a shark, and I'm going to show you guys. It's pretty nuts.

Pretty nuts? Yeah. I think the prettiest nut is Brazil nut personally. I think I would agree with that. Whoa. Wow. Holy moly. That's his forearm.

Bad. It's real bad. Oh. Wow. So I think that picture alone really made me think, oh, when I'm diving, I need to be a little bit more careful with more eels. You know, they're not a nothing to me anymore. Well, they were, I mean, I told you my story. I've always had a certain respect, but I think I have even more now.

Stop diving with sausages probably from now on. I got one more stories. Don't tie the bag shut. Yeah. Just have those sausages ready to go. But actually, our last story is going to kind of poke some holes in that as well. When we're kids, summer meant freedom. No homework, no teachers, no school.

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Availability, speed, and coverage varies. See mint bobovo.com. So honestly, almost all of the stories I could find about serious more eel bites, like bites that sent people to the hospital and were really intense, involved eels that had been fed and got confused. There was a story about a woman who was on a floatie in Oahu, and an eel just swam up in bitter foot, and she had to get some stitches and a few other kind of unprovoked bites that I could find.

but almost all of the serious ones were food-conditioned eels. Mike, your deepest episode, that one was pretty unprovoked when it like big a guy's face. Yeah, yeah. There was very little information about it, but it didn't seem like he was doing anything to provoke that attack. Yeah, and there are videos that I found of people having them kind of do what the one in Belize did to me, where it's just aggravated and it swims out of them really fast. And even a couple of those videos where the people did end up getting good. bit, but most of the stories I found did revolve around eels that were food conditioned, including

this last one, which is one of the better known stories I found. It was on the Dan website, which is the Diver Alert Network. It's like a dive insurance company. And it involves a well-known figure in the diving world who's down in the Florida Keys. It's this guy named Spencer Slate. And Spencer had been diving in this area for the better part of his life. He leads groups down there. He would do fish feeds where each day they would go to a day. different part of the reef and they would feed different fish, everything from sharks to groupers to more eels. And I'm not really going to get into the ethics of underwater feeding in this episode. I do think we tend to really, especially in North America, we tend to have this

visceral reaction, visceral reaction to animals being fed. And it's because we hear about like bears and all these other animals that causes serious problems. But, but, But underwater, it does tend to be a bit murkier. I didn't mean this. Oh, boy. But it is, it's kind of a little bit more of a gray area where there's not always a ton of research to support or reject the fact that it creates, you know, problems. But I do think when it comes to more animals. Feeding, like, land animals to fish.

Feeding land animals. animals to fish. Yeah, it's just like a moray eel should never know what a pig tastes like, in my opinion. You think? Yeah. Hmm. Well, then we probably should never know what all the fish that we eat tastes like. Well, we're adaptable.

More a eel can get its own pig. I'm fine with it. That's fair. I actually do think that's a good rule of thought. Yeah, I get that. Sure. What, you know, we did a Bible episode recently. Shout out Patreon.

Remember when Legion, or someone got chased. stoff in a bunch of pigs. They like chafed stoff a cliff into the water. Oh yeah? You think some mores probably got those pigs. Yeah, probably. I take it all back. There you go.

The Romans had all those pools full of Moriilles. Maybe it fell in one of those. Pig fell in one of those. Legion's so dumb to go into those pigs and just get scared. It's not much of a demon, is it? Demons. Yeah. Yeah, because there are many.

Oh, we are. Check out our Bible episode, by the way. I think it was fun. We talked about attacks, animal attacks from the Bible. We finally got her Bible wiggles out. Yeah, it's great. All right. In May of 2022, Spencer had a new helper on his boat,

and this helper didn't have a ton of experience working with Spencer, and on that day, she had grabbed the bucket that they used to feed nurse sharks, rather than the bucket that they used for the Mori Eels, which was their target that day, the Mori Eels. The normal Mori eel bucket was, was spring-loaded, and it helped Spencer control the pace of the feeding. I don't totally understand how that works, but the main point is that this helper had grabbed the wrong bucket, and it was a pretty big mistake.

Spencer only noticed when they got to where they were diving, which is a reef called Pleasure Reef, and was the Eel dive site. They had 21 guests with them, so he just decided he was going to keep going and make it work, but it wasn't going to be a very pleasurable experience. for him. I practiced that. I still got it wrong. Yeah, I was wondering if that pleasure of beel.

I think you got it. All right. Is there a reason you're saying it like that? Eel. I put eel in there, Mike. I'm such a moron. Can I leave? There's too many eel puns.

I really just struggled this episode. Not trying to think of them. All right. So they dive down to the reef and the large green Moray eels are already gathered in the sand. They're waiting for their feeding. And pretty much the second Spencer gets down to the sand, the lid on this bucket pops off, and a bunch of the food scraps float out and the eels rush this bucket.

Oh, that's not good. Simultaneously, this bucket was full of like fish chum. And the cloud of blood from the chum bucket blocks his vision and he can't really see that one of the eels was now fully inside of the bucket. and he reaches down to try and clear out all the fish scraps and just kind of give the eels what they want and kind of control the chaos. And rather than clear out these fish chunks,

he puts his hand right in front of a feeding eel and it bites down hard right on his wrist and starts shaking. These teeth are cutting effortlessly through his flesh, his tendons, his veins, his arteries, and he says it almost severed his hand completely. But then the eel releases his friend grabs him and takes him to the surface Where he makes a makeshift tourniquet out of a GoPro strap That'd be sweet to make the tourniquet out of the eel

Oh dude that'd be quick thinking friend just dies eel That's a good point Yeah eels could be their own tourniquet if a human ever bit one back Ooh that's already turniquet knots, aren't you? All right. On board the ship, another diver who was a medic,

used the first aid kit to further stabilize and dress his wounds. But one of his arteries was ruptured and he's losing blood really fast. So they call the Coast Guard. They mobilize a boat to come and get him. And the boat's going 65 miles per hour back to the shore. Wow. And like weaving in and out of boats in the marina. They get to the marina and then a life flight helicopter takes him to a hospital.

takes them to a hospital in Miami. That reminds me of the movie Miami Vice. 400 miles on a first date and they're like, let's go to Cuba. And they just speedboat to get my ties in Cuba. They were going like 250 miles for hours, for hours on a first date. That would be insane. It's a great movie. All right.

No, it's from that. This, I, like, it's not an exaggeration to say this was an eel bite that came close to killing this guy. Yeah. He goes to Kendall Regional Hospital and they reattach his hand. Like, it wasn't fully disconnected, but it was almost gone. They put his foot on his hand. Yeah, they put his foot on his hand. They attach, they reattach all the veins, all the arteries.

The operation lasts more than 10 hours. He stays in an intensive care unit for 31 days. and every other day he said he had either a skin graft or another surgery to try and restore blood flow to a couple of his fingers. But ultimately he wasn't able to save his little finger and his index finger and both of them had to be amputated. Those are bad ones. Those are bad ones. Can't go to rock concerts anymore. Yeah, unless you got his toes on there.

He needs to go to Bangkok. It took seven months of physical therapy before he was able to dive again, but he is out diving. He doesn't blame the eel. he knows that it was just a bad situation. Yeah. All right. I'm curious if either of you have any, like, experiences with Mori Yills you want to share before we move on to our... No, I feel like I need to start feeding them or something because I never can get that close.

Get them out? I just remember when me and Mike did a night dive in Cozumel and I didn't realize Morayeos could get that big. I was just like... There's some big ones in Cosm. This is crazy. They're so sweet. I love seeing them under the water. Me too.

I think they're one of those animals that I don't get tired of. Like in Galapagos, we saw a ton of more eels, and every time I was pretty excited to see them. Do you know what would be really satisfying? Yales don't lay down when they sleep, I assume, but it seems like they'd be perfect for side sleeping. Seems to be really satisfying just to have like... Yeah, that does seem nice, doesn't it? Probably not back sleepers. No, because they got that dorsal fin.

Do underwater animals snore? Do you think? Does anyone have like a chunky little like, what do you call? Shanks will like sleep on his tail. Shanks will sleep on his tail. I wonder if they do like a circle, sleep on their tails. Sleeps on. Yeah, you like rest his head on his tail.

Oh, that's kind of nice. Yeah. You don't, oh, whatever. I don't even care anymore. Okay. What don't you care about it anymore? Well, it just seems like probably some fish out there have like not the best respiratory gill system going on. Maybe there's like a little bit of a snore.

Snoring. Yeah. I mean, if I'm picking what under the ocean snores, that's not a mammal, eel would be pretty high up there. Right. Like something I think snores. Maybe one got like punched in the face and it has a deviated septum and now it snores. You know what it is is exactly. Their mouth is always open.

Right. That's where you snores when you get your mouth open. That's a good point. Sleeping on your back with your mouth open. All right. Well, I guess we'll never know. There we have it. They snore.

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Join at RocketMoney.com slash claw. That's rocketmoney.com slash claw. Rocketmoney.com slash claw. All right, let's move on to our categories. I want to hear your favorite eel from pop culture and you get extra points if it is a more eel. Whatever. I just like all the crusty crab customers that are eels. They're always funny in SpongeBob. There's the one that always says like, ow, my leg. The leg.

I think his name is Frank. Are flotsam and jetsam, moray eels? There. Murray. Murray. Murray. So that's double plus double points. So I got four points, I think. Right. Yeah, they are, they're good ones. I think they're kind of the perfect Disney henchmen, and that they're kind of scary, but also just great characters.

When was the last time you guys watched Little Mermaid, the original? I can't even. Yeah. Yeah. 30 years? That was one that me and Jesse maybe watched like four or five years ago. and we're kind of blown away by how good it was and like how great the animation is and like the voice acting. It's just both of us afterward, we're like, man, we really lost something with like this style of animation and voice acting going away. Well, you boycotted the live action because of who they cast. I did not. I did not do that.

It's actually not true at all. I boycott it because it's reductive bullshit. it like those, those remakes. The underwater. Yeah. It has like the whole Aquaman underwater look. Yeah. I did not need to see those.

Their hair is just, yeah. There's cash grabs. Do Flotsam and Jetsam speak? Do they have speaking roles? Yeah. They do. Yeah, they do. It's kind of like hissy and like they're, they have like really good fun voices.

I'm going to watch the. You've convinced me. I said all the Krusty Crab customers. So I think I get more bow. bonus points still, then you. You might be at like 30 points, yeah. I was a pretty, I was a pretty morbid kid, and I remember at one point, like, being in a bookstore with my mom, and I found a copy of the book Hannibal, like the

Richard Harris book, the sequel to Silence to the Lambs. And there's this, I just happened to like open it to this chapter and started reading it when I was probably eight or nine years old. That's probably like 10 or 11. And there's a part in that book where you guys remember Gary Oldman's. character in the movie. He's like all disfigured and he wants to kill Hannibal Lecter. That character in the book is killed by someone stuffing a Mori eel down his throat and it bites his tongue off and he like drowns in his own blood. And I read that as a kid and I was like, whoa.

Like how do they do that? He has a pet Mori eel and he loves it. And I think it's his daughter. Someone grabs it and stuffs it down his throat and then it bites his tongue and kills him. Wow. And like suffocates him. Yeah. Huh. That wasn't in the movie. No, in the movie gets eaten my pigs.

Yeah, that's right. Which more eels also eat comes full circle. Only if they have demons in them. Right. All right. Your favorite scene from the alien franchise. Oh, boy. You know an alien versus predator?

Predator grabs him by the foot and like swings them around and throws them them down the hallway. Yeah. That's mine. So stupid. In reality, though, maybe Dallas in the air ducts. Okay. Hunting.

Yeah. It's just a very tense. Amazing movie. Man, that movie. Holy cow. Yeah, I like when she gets in that robot suit thing because you're always like, that'd be cool. But then I also said from Alien 3, where she makes the over the head.

head basketball shot when she's like showing the guys like who's boss because but the behind the scenes is she made that on the first take really ripley yeah the actor or sigourney weaver just like drained a half court shot first try with everyone watching it's so sweet that was right around the time escape from l.A. happened too and kurt russell also hit the crazy basketball shot I don't think that was first take though, but it's just kind of crazy that that's like a thing that's happened multiple times. Yeah. I have to pick the chess buster scene in the first movie. How would you method act that though?

Like a behind the head basketball. Like what is the method you're employing outside of the camera? The Chicago Bulls mask up? Yeah, exactly. Oh, that's so good. The second I said that, it was like, that makes no sense. Yeah, I'm picking the chess buster scene in the first alien movie. It's just like, I don't know if there's ever been a scene that ratchets up the tension and horror in a movie quicker than that one.

And it's just like such a pleasant, nice kind of, you feel like it's just this scene where they're kind of, you're building camaraderie with the crew. And then all of a sudden it just turns into. like full-blown horror and I think the way they all react to it is how people would actually react to it's just really well done good job riddley good job ridley man sometimes you really got this sauce my guy sometimes you don't yeah all right house of Gucci had the sauce what's his most recent movie didn't he have one this year yeah it was gladiator two that was not a great movie in my opinion the worst dude some people We're kind of riding for that these days I've seen.

I don't get it. Huh. Yeah, I don't. You know what? I think Gladiator 2 is his last, like, big movie. He's done a bunch of TV since then. Oh, that's what I was thinking. Yeah.

And then he has some upcoming stuff, the dog stars, that one that's about to come out. That's right. That is him. That is him. That's our guy. Hey, go watch the last duel, everyone. That movie rocks. That's a great movie.

All right. Let's do a quick cage match with the Morial. because this is a new animal I think when it comes to our undersea animals they can probably eat anything that's smaller than them so Mike just did like a scorpion fish episode I think they could probably eat a scorpion fish we've done some like jellyfish episodes

I'm pretty sure they can eat jellyfish squid I think I don't know like the Humboldt squid the Humboldt squid I think would be maybe a pretty interesting fight But I think I'd probably put my money on the squid. Yeah, I'd rather fight a eel than the squid. But yeah, I think overall, all of our sharks that we've talked about can probably kill more eels in a cage match. So this is a mid-tier underwater animal for a game match. Seems like they have a really good bite, though.

Like their bite would be up there with their bites a little bigger than their bark. That's their only thing, though. You know, that's all they can do. That's funny. I don't care who you are. Okay, here's another question for you. Since they have a second set of jaws, if you could have a second body part or double of any body parts that you already have,

so you can pick like arms, you can double your arms, or you could just have a second of any other body part. What would it be and why? I don't care who you are. I'm taking another brain. Okay. Double brains. Where you housing it?

smart intelligence You know a big old head Huge head I don't want two heads Just one giant head Two heads Two brains Well maybe two heads

Like the Bill and Ted song Two heads are better than one I don't think you can pick head As your second body part So just brain then Brain Okay I said hands

And double in my hands So now I have 20 fingers And I can just type so fast Play the piano Like a rock monin off piece Yeah Yeah

I think I picked arms. I want to be like Goro in Mortal Kombat. Do you get 20 fingers now? Do I get 20 fingers if I have arms? I think so. Yeah. Oh, shoot, that's better on my process. I also think having more fingers would make me worse at typing. Well, I can't get too much. I was always the worst at school. So I just, I'll take any help by doing stuff at the wall. You'd be like that one's CSI scene where they're hacking

on the same keyboard. There's like 26 letters, right? So I can almost put a finger on each letter. Oh, that's a good point, actually. Maybe you would be really good. Oh, two, four thumbs. Thumbs aren't like, basically you just use your thumb for the space bar. Yeah, that's true.

I feel like I learned to type poorly because I don't do it the way I'm supposed to. My downfall is I look at the keyboard sometimes still. I can't just go like no look. Yeah, I'll feel, I'll be like, feeling myself and typing with your extra fingers is that way you want to and I'll just be like I'm not gonna look I'm just going to type and I'll be like oh I just nailed that paragraph and then I'll read it and it's just maybe four out of five words or just not words oh if you had 20 fingers you could type with one hand and speaking of feeling yourself oh your other hand

It could be doing whatever you want it to be doing. Yeah. Smoking 20 cigarettes. Two. Or 10. You probably need two fingers for each one. All right. Let's do a let's argue with a question mark because I don't know if this is going to make an argument or not.

Dipping dots again, right? What's sexier? Eels or snakes? Hmm. I'm going snakes still. Jeff, do you want to argue with Mike about that? Yeah. I think it's.

I do think it's eels. I think you just got to think of like the more colorful eels, though. I'm snakes too. Like the dry feeling of a snake slithering through your hand, I think is a lot sexier than like a mucacy eel. But some people think that like mucusy slippery eel is going to be sexier. Sure. But like if eels were sexier, that Britney Spears would have had one of those. That's what I was going to say.

I think it would have been more iconic with a eel. I think it would have just been gross. Just like mucus dripping down her body. I do think there's a lot of people out there that expect snakes to feel like what an eel feels like. They think snakes are going to be like goopy and mucusy. But yeah, I'm all, I'm team snake on sexiness, in my opinion. To me, sexy is like you can't, you can't touch it. It's like sexy that it's something unattainable, you know?

Oh, okay, that's a pretty good counterpoint. Yeah. Eels don't really choke you the way snakes do, though. Yeah. Which is a little sexy. That's a good point. They can shock you, though. Oh, that's sexy.

I'm coming around. I still think I'm team snakes, but I would not say no if my partner was like, hey, I've got something I'd like to experiment with tonight. Let's get into conservation. So it's kind of a hard one because there are so many different speech. of Mauryuil, but I do, from what I could find overall, I think they're doing pretty well. I think their biggest threats are habitat loss, and that is directly from coral reefs, from us losing coral reefs at a really fast rate. So I think this is an animal that there are a lot

of still, but it's kind of like a polar bear situation where polar bear numbers are okay right now but they are rapidly losing their habitat and there's going to be a huge drop off at some point and I could see something similar happening with more eels as they lose more and more coral reef but I think it'll take a lot longer than it would like what we're going to see with polar bears we need like a jason statham but instead of a beekeeper an eel keeper yeah yeah I kind of feel like the worst polar bears do the better eels will do uh that's not necessarily true the ocean there'll be more ocean. There will be more ocean, but it'll be dead ocean.

It's not going to be coral reefs. So coral reef is notoriously hard to kind of recreate, even though there's all these projects where people are trying to kind of do like reef seating and whatnot. It's not easy. One thing, though, that I did want to talk about is bleaching, coral reef bleaching often gets a lot of press. And it is possible for some bleach reefs to come back. that's like a defense strategy of those reefs is they are surrounding themselves with like I think it's calcium I can't remember exactly but that's actually a defense strategy of the reef to try and

protect itself and if conditions do get better for those reefs they can come back so it's not a lost cause is what I'm trying to say but sometimes this climate stuff does feel pretty insurmountable it didn't work out for Michael Jackson bleaching yeah I don't think that was really the thing that got him. It's hard to point to one thing. Yeah. Maybe it's not. Yeah, I don't know.

I'm just going to stay away from that one. Let's go ahead and go into our claw ranking. I should put global warming on the list of things that make me say bruh. That's three items long now. All right, claw ranking. Let's give more Eels a claw ranking on one to ten claws or zero. I'm going big time here. I'm going to give them eight claws, I think.

Again, not the most uncommon thing. Like if you go diving down in Mexico, a really, really good chance you're going to see one. But it doesn't stop me from being just jacked. You know, I'm hype. Yeah. What's the sign again for them? I don't care, dude.

I'm just looking at them. I yeah, hyped. Anyone making signs of me? I'm not going to look at the people mate. I'm looking at the eel, Wes. Eight. When the guy at the back of the group was getting bit, the second story, he was just doing this with the same.

Yeah, probably. If you have four wins, they probably would have noticed. I think I'm going to go with a six. I like them a little more than your average animal for sure. And I think it has room to grow because I haven't seen that many. types yet i want to see like some more colorful i want to see that ribbon one that's the number one one i want to see but yeah maybe like a six seven category oh dude let's do it yeah i'm gonna i'm gonna take that sweet spot right in between you guys and go a seven i i really think they're really

cool the first ones i saw were like you know the coolest thing i saw that day i do think i've seen so many now that they've lost a little bit of their luster. But I agree with Jeff. There's some really incredible species out there that I still really want to see. So I'm going to go at the seven. Six, seven. I just bump my desk. So whoever's editing this one, I'm sorry. That's me. That's fine. Don't worry about it. All right. Well, that's all I got. That's two sea creatures in a row. So our next one won't be a sea creature. But thanks, thanks for being here. Yeah, you're welcome. That was great. Man, I learned some things I am happy to have learned today. Yeah.

And that's on you, Wes. That's all you, bud. Ten claws for Wes. That second photo was very extreme. And then what was that one thing we learned that was real cool, Mike? The symbiotic hunting relationship. Yeah, that was cool. Yeah.

I'm hyped. Wes, hype. All right, Mike. Go try and calm down. All right. We'll see you guys later. Love you. Love you.

See ya.