Featured Image Credit: Thinkstock
By Eva Gruber
Whether it’s the water quality or the dangerous animals that call the big blue home, swimming and diving in the ocean isn’t always fine and dandy. Here are 5 places on the planet where swimming in the water can hurt… or kill you.
Would you dare to dive?
1. West End, Grand Bahama Islands
Home to the aptly-named Tiger Beach, one of the best places in the world to come into close contact with tiger sharks, the West End of the Grand Bahamas attracts some ocean’s largest, toothiest creatures. That’s great news for tourists who wish to swim with these maligned predators, which congregate in the warm waters around the Bahamas every year to _____ breed? Many tour operators in the Bahamas advertise scuba tours with the tiger sharks. Few people have had aggressive encounters with the animals, but the possibility and risk is still very present. Tiger sharks are also known as the “garbage cans of the sea” as they can and do end up eating almost anything – some items found in the stomachs of tiger sharks have been whole elk, medieval armor, license plates, and even trashcans.
2. Queensland, Australia
Northern tropical Queensland is home to warm, tropical waters and the Great Barrier Reef. It has a huge diversity of marine life, and this laboratory of evolution has evolved some species that are dangerous to humans. The number one worry to most swimmers in Queensland is the box jellyfish, a jelly with strings of tentacles that can reach up to 10 feet in length. If a person is tangled in these tentacles and stung all over multiple times, a person can perish in 3-5 minutes. Sightings of these jellies causes beaches to be shut down for days at a time. Most beaches in Queensland have regulated swimming areas that are netted off to also protect swimmers from other dangerous sea creatures like Irukandji jellies, cone snails, scorpionfish, sharks, and saltwater crocodiles.
3. The Boiling Lake, Dominica
Even though this one isn’t technically in the ocean.. you’d still be in hot water. Literally. Dangerous for a different reason, its not the aquatic life that will hurt you in Boiling Lake. In fact, there is no life that can survive in the Boiling Lake, and that’s because the water is so hot that it can reach temperatures of 197 degrees Fahrenheit around the shore, although the center is likely hotter. The lake is actually a flooded, active fumarole (think mini-volcano) which also happens to be one of the top tourist attractions on the island. It looks quite ominous, the water a constant rolling boil and a greyish murky blue in color, usually with steam crowding the site. It also happens to be the second-largest hot lake in the world.
4. East and North Coasts of Barbados
Many aquatic conditions contribute to dangerous situations – whether they be biological, geological, or physical. In the situation around the north and east coasts of Barbados, the dangers are very much physical. The currents around the island are funneled by the underlying geology of the ocean floor in such a way that swimming in this location can mean fighting for your life with strong riptides, dangerous crashing waves, and drastic tides. While it can be a very relaxing location due to its beautiful beaches and cool winds – there are very few occasions in which it is safe to enter the water to swim, especially out past the surf zone. Be careful if you ever find yourself in this part of the world.
5. Red Triangle, Central Coastal California
The so-called “Red Triangle” is a zone in which the rate of white shark sightings are higher than almost anywhere else in the world. This is due to the presence of large rookeries and haul-out sights of one of the great white’s favorite prey items on the planet – the incredibly fat-rich northern elephant seal. The Farallon Islands, which can be seen from San Francisco on a clear day, sit on the edge of the continental shelf and right in one of the most productive spots in the Pacific Oceans, attracting all kinds of sea life. The white sharks arrive in the fall and course the area searching for easy prey. Surfers often come across great whites, although attacks are rare, and fatalities even rarer.