Even now, recalling what had just happened underwater, Ye Yaodong still felt a lingering fear. Luckily, he had moved aside on a sudden impulse, or he really would have been done for.
Those were needlefish!
Needlefish mostly lived near estuaries or inshore bays. Their bodies were long and cylindrical, usually about twenty to forty-five centimeters long, though some could grow to a meter. They looked sleek and had sharp beaks about three inches long, which were hard enough to pierce human flesh easily.
They also swam at around sixty kilometers an hour. At that speed, anyone or any fish grazed or stabbed by a needlefish stood a very good chance of dying.
While he had been hiding in the crevice among the submerged rocks, he had seen several of the needlefish streaming past with two or three small fish skewered on their beaks, like candied hawthorn on sticks.
Needlefish were also attracted to light. Anything luminous made them even more likely to charge excitedly toward the light.
Sometimes, needlefish were even more frightening than sharks.
In most people's minds, aside from frightening sharks, fish were generally weak, docile food that humans could kill and take as they pleased.
In reality, that was only an illusion. Fish could cause injuries even more readily than land animals. Perhaps injuries were rarely heard of simply because relatively few people came into direct contact with fish.
There were also larger fish with "needles" that were even more formidable, such as sailfish weighing hundreds of kilograms. They could reach speeds of over a hundred kilometers an hour and even punch a huge hole through a boat, earning them the name "living torpedoes."
Swordfish were another example, with long "needles" on their mouths. He had personally seen one pierce a boat's hull before. They were terrifying.