Main reason I stopped diving or entering water is skin eating bacteria

Please register or login

Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.

Benefits of registering include

  • Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
  • A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
  • You can make this box go away

Joining is quick and easy. Log in or Register now!

STB must be one tasty guy

Irresistible to shark, germ or fly

Subway guys won’t stick him,

Worse! They’d all lick him!

Like THC-Cocoa-Cherry-wine pie.
 
I totally agree with you on that. I am, still to this day, deathly afraid of heights.
Some fears are atavistic and help us to survive. A fear of heights is normal since we don't have wings. A phobia is a controlling fear. It used to be if a spider were to light on me, I would do the crazy dance. Not so much anymore. I swat them as I would a mosquito, but they don't freak me out near as much. Every time I try to overcome my fear of heights, I find that I can push through it, but the next time I'm confronted with my own mortality as I approach a ledge, I'm just as frightened. I see it not as just a "Pete" fear, but more a species fear.

But unreasonable is as unreasonable does. There's a lot of sensational crap going around. Hate and fear can increase ratings, so newsies often report on these kinds of things, greatly exaggerating their relevance. Look at the emphasis given to shark attacks in 2001 (Summer of the Shark). People believed that crap and stayed out of the water in droves. Look at the fear incited by the coverage of the Deep Horizon oil spill. Florida hardly saw any of the oil promised by the various media covering ad nauseum, but tourists stayed away in droves. It's my opinion that the media caused the economic damage with their incessant and inaccurate reporting, but they let BP pay for it all. So, it's no wonder that we have people worried about a flesh eating bacteria that has little to no chance of affecting them. It's an unreasonable phobia based on reports by an immoral media trying to increase their ratings. [/rant]
 
Well i have to argue that the black and white banded sea snake does live in florida, at least one does. I came head on face to face with one in the Rainbow River a few years back (yes, a fresh water river). I just moved to the side and swished it away with water using my hands.
There are no sea snakes in Florida, the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, or the Caribbean Sea. It's extremely unlikely that a sea snake was anyone's escaped pet. Outside of a few zoos pretty much no one keeps sea snakes. There are a number of colorful snakes in the Rainbow River area of Florida that enter the water. A banded snake swimming openly on the surface in that area might be one of the King Snake morphs. Sea snakes are unmistakable, with their tiny heads and flattened tails. If you carefully avoid leaving the United States you can forget about encountering a sea snake.
 
what's a purpose of what, I thought the assuies where well educated especially in the english language.
agilis is presumptuous to know where I dive, I have dove Ft.Lauderdale a few times but mainly
in the gulf of mexico I have observed many black sea snakes they seam oblivious to anything around them.

don't know much about the snake except I believe there not aggressive wanting to bite everything that come's near them.
yes but the possibility still exists the dreaded staff infection of the sea.
handling a fish that insists on poking me is another concern of infection.

it appears that I will always have a cut in my skin due to fly bites then scratching the skin.


maybe I'll be OK in fresh water but Mr.C says no I assume he's referring to some other sort of infection.

flyboy: I have done a few jobs at 60 hudson st. I normally would stay in Jersey and enter city from Holland tunnel to justify the rental car and associated parking. some of the installation people liked staying in NYC w/out rentals and ride the subway.
are those NYC lunatics still pricking each other on the subway w/ AIDs infected needles?of course they are.

I'd rather poke myself in the eye w/ a sharp stick than be in NYC subway.

Agilis is not presumptuous about where you dive. He relied on what you wrote. You did not observe "many black sea snakes" in the Gulf of Mexico. There are none there. There are lots of long slender fish that swim in a sinuous serpentine manner. For the most part these are eels. I've seen little kids react to large worms crawling on the ground after a heavy rain by calling them snakes, but so far no adults.
 
There are no sea snakes in Florida, the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, or the Caribbean Sea. It's extremely unlikely that a sea snake was anyone's escaped pet. Outside of a few zoos pretty much no one keeps sea snakes. There are a number of colorful snakes in the Rainbow River area of Florida that enter the water. A banded snake swimming openly on the surface in that area might be one of the King Snake morphs. Sea snakes are unmistakable, with their tiny heads and flattened tails. If you carefully avoid leaving the United States you can forget about encountering a sea snake.
Hey, sorry to ruin your insistence about no black and White Sea snakes in Florida but yes is had the flattened tail and was not on the surface swimming, it was mid water and was not a worm or an eel or a land snake. I agree they are not supposta be here but I can not change what I encountered. No big deal. Off topic anyway.
 
Hey, sorry to ruin your insistence about no black and White Sea snakes in Florida but yes is had the flattened tail and was not on the surface swimming, it was mid water and was not a worm or an eel or a land snake. I agree they are not supposta be here but I can not change what I encountered. No big deal. Off topic anyway.
Hmmm. Since you are promoting the highly unlikely, it would certainly help if you had a picture, which of course you don't. I'm afraid your eyewitness account is not compelling, which is about par for eyewitness accounts. I'm 100% sure you think you saw a sea snake (krait); I'm 99.99% sure you saw something that looked somewhat like one. Sorry to be so skeptical.
 
I'm not quite understanding this thread. Is it about hypochondria? I'm not being sarcastic.
Is the thread just a general statement or someone looking for advice?

I think it started out about vibrio. Fishermen have lost limbs from hook punctures and shrimp jabs that got infected with vibrio. It's usually in brackish water but has occurred offshore
 
Hey, sorry to ruin your insistence about no black and White Sea snakes in Florida but yes is had the flattened tail and was not on the surface swimming, it was mid water and was not a worm or an eel or a land snake. I agree they are not supposta be here but I can not change what I encountered. No big deal. Off topic anyway.

the ONLY way that could be true is a remote possibility and im spitballing here....of ballast water from a ship that was in say the philippines and it emptied its water off florida? Otherwise id say completely impossible.
 
Hey, sorry to ruin your insistence about no black and White Sea snakes in Florida but yes is had the flattened tail and was not on the surface swimming, it was mid water and was not a worm or an eel or a land snake. I agree they are not supposta be here but I can not change what I encountered. No big deal. Off topic anyway.
No need to apologize. You have not ruined my insistence that there are no sea snakes of any color pattern in or anywhere near Florida. I guess anything is possible, though. Many people have encountered Bigfoot (Bigfeet?) all over the country. Here in NJ there have been reports of the Jersey Devil going back several hundred years. It has consistently been described as a goat-like creature with large bat wings, cloven hooves (so it's not Kosher) and a tail. According to supermarket newspapers an astonishing number of women in rural Florida have been impregnated by space aliens. What's a sea snake compared to those phenomena?
 

Back
Top Bottom