Are Barracudas dangerous?

The Barracuda is a large predatory fish that eats fish of all sizes. Unlike other predatory fish the Barracuda is unique in the fact that it does not have the capabilities to open its mouth wide to eat its prey whole. When the Barracuda encounters a fish of a large size that it knows it will have difficulty swallowing it uses its teeth like razor blades and with swift movements it slashes at its prey to make them in to more managable sized pieces.

Barracudas have a mystique about them that puts them in the same group of feared sea animals as the shark. Many people believe that Barracudas are deadly to humans and will attack them at every opportunity but this could not be further from the truth. It is a well documented fact that many scuba divers swim in the vacinity of Barracuda every day.

There are twenty two different species of Barracuda in the world, twenty one of which rarely, if ever attack humans. It is only the Great Barracuda, the largest of all Barracuda that has been known to attack humans, and this is only if it feels threatened or provoked.

To put this in perspective we need to look at reported attacks on humans, and to do this we will look at the records found within the United States of America. Between the years of 1873 and 1963 there were only 29 reported attacks from Barracuda on humans in the waters around the United States, of which only 19 were confirmed as true….thats 19 attacks in 90 years. These statistics alone prove that unless you are intimidating the fish in any way then you should be okay.

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