Swordfish attack leaves man critically hurt

By Michael Tsai
Advertiser Staff Writer

While most encounters between fish and man are harmless and unspectacular, there are the occasional collisions that defy belief.

For every 10,000 or 20,000 heels punctured by a spiny wana (sea urchin), that is, there are incidents like what happened last April to Mark Ferrari.

Ferrari, a researcher with the Center for Whale Studies, was conducting a routine survey off the West Maui coast with fellow researchers Debbie Ferrari (his wife) and Capt. Jim Peckarsky aboard a 26-foot catamaran.

Three miles offshore, Mark Ferrari spotted a pod of false killer whales and entered the water for a look.

"I saw a swordfish in the area, but I couldn't quite make it out because I had never seen one in person before," he said. "It came within five feet of me and then veered off."

If fate and his own scientific curiosity would have allowed, that would have been as close as two ever got.

Mark got back on the boat but soon spotted the false killer whales leaping into the air, a sure indication of attack behavior. Again Mark entered the water, hoping to capture the rarely seen event on video.

"I saw the swordfish again, but I thought it was there to feed off the scraps that the pseudorcas left behind," Ferrari said.

In fact, it was the swordfish — later estimated by experts to be 15 feet long and as much as 1,000 pounds — that was being attacked. Panicked, it lunged in Mark's direction. Before he knew it, the swordfish had plowed its five-foot, harpoon-like bill into his right shoulder. "It just missed my carotid artery by a half inch," Mark said.

The impact sent him flying, muscles torn and bones splintered, blood everywhere.

Peckarsky reversed the boat and he and Debbie Ferrari helped the injured researcher back on board. The injured man suffered significant nerve and tissue damage. Through intense rehabilitation efforts, he has regained full range of motion in his arm, but still suffers some weakness and numbness.

The injury hasn't kept Ferrari from continuing his work. In between eight-hour rehab days back home in Louisiana, (he spends three months a year on Maui during whale season) Ferrari continued to analyze whale data.

"I'm not mad at the swordfish," he said. " ... You never know what you will see when you jump into Big Blue. There's a lot of stuff in there — a lot of stuff."