"Shelly & the Grouper"
Scuba Larry, from Blue Mesa Scuba tells us that, "This really happened on a trip to Cayman Brac." One of our instructors is also an accomplished video photographer. On the last day of our trip, he managed to talk his girlf friend into posing for some "glamour shots." They found a secluded reef and she took off the top of her bikini, but because of the slight current she left it tied around her neck. Again due to the slight current it was waving behind her. A fairly large grouper was observing all this and decided the waving bikini top was simply too appealing to pass up. In one rapid motion he darted in and swallowed her top which was still tied around her neck. The photographer was laughing so hard that he could hardly hold the camera still. I didn't know a fish could swim backward, but this grouper certainly tried. In the meantime the poor model was about to choke. Finally the photographer put his camera down and swam over and yanked the bikini out of the grouper's mouth. The grouper, not to be outdone, swallowed it a second time. Again it was yanked out. At that point the grouper gave up, swam off and left the startled model and her boyfriend to re-assemble everything and get back to the boat. So help me, this actually happened. We have it on video tape and it has provided many hours of laughs at our scuba get-to-gethers.