Thank you!  It does look prehistoric doesn't it..hehe

Great snapper pic. I hadn't seen one napping in the sun till this spring on Queer Lake. I never noticed before that they like to climb up on rocks in the lake. This was taken on May 9. The spikes on the back and tail do give them  a dinosaur look. It kind of puts you off swimming though. 

So this brings up a question I had last weekend as a a snapper about this big swam up to our landing/swimming area.

Are they a risk for swimming? Never heard of a snapper taking a chuck out of someone. But having my daughter swimming in that area got me thinking.

I would guess they are going to take off with any humans splashing around . Anyone have any info to the contrary?    

exactly.. even though deep lake waters are very clean, they don't have great (or no) visibility.  
Haven't heard of 'aggressive turtle behaviour' (yet).  Last year during the same trip, as a daytrip we had a quick lunch on an empty campsite and there was a smaller snapper playing around near the shore.  My boyfriend was defiant and took a dip anyway and the turtle swam away

On land they are vulnerable and act defensively when approached or threatened. They have no natural predators in water. The biggest threat to Snappers (other than peorple) are Otters who will sometimes eat them alive while they hibernate. 

In water they are very docile, not at all aggressive, maybe even a bit curious. I've caught a couple of them while wading in shallow water. They don't even really fight, they just sort of sigh and take it. I think this is becaue they don't feel threatened while in the water.

Nothing as big as the one in KFrances pic. Not so sure I would chasing that dinosaur!

While backpacking the highland trail in uly with my family we had a turtle about this size show up at the waters edge for a while. We had a campsite with a large waterfront so we went swimming over at the opposite end of the campsite. With 4 of us in the water playing around and splashing it still swam over to investigate us. We hadn't noticed it swimming over but my older son had his goggles on and when he went under he came face to face with it. It was shallow water so he stood up; it turned quickly and swam away but scratched him in the process. Really freaked him out for a while but he was back in the water not too long after.

ShawnD wrote:

So this brings up a question I had last weekend as a a snapper about this big swam up to our landing/swimming area.

Are they a risk for swimming? Never heard of a snapper taking a chuck out of someone. But having my daughter swimming in that area got me thinking.

I would guess they are going to take off with any humans splashing around . Anyone have any info to the contrary?    

I've never heard of anyone having a chunk taken out of them... but I do have first-hand experience.

A few years back I was up on Kashe Lake at a friend's cottage. He has a nice big dock that sticks out into the deep water about 25 ft. The water there is about 12 ft deep and slopes upwards to shore from the edge of the dock. I was hanging off the dock on the ladder, and I was the only one in the water. Really nice day, just enjoying summer.

10 minutes passed by of me hanging when I felt what I think was a claw scraping across my chest. I immediately and quickly pushed backwards off the ladder, and on my way backwards I felt another scrape. I freaked out, yelled and splashed, and then immediately bolted out of the water. When I got out of the water, I still wasn't sure what had happened - fish, turtle, stick?? - but my chest was bleeding. Well, to be more specific, my left nipple was bleeding. And really not very much. Whatever got me was enough to break the skin on my nipple.

Within about 2 minutes or less, the group of us were standing on the dock and we watched a big snapping turtle swim out from under the dock towards the shore line. It was large - I think one of the reasons I wasn't hit harder than I was is the turtle literally couldn't fit through the ladder. When I backed away from the ladder, I assume it got stuck and wasn't able to make it through. Either that, or I scared it with movements. Or both. Not really sure.

So I got away lucky. Had it actually snapped and hit me full force, I'd have been in the hospital, I'm sure with a wound deep enough that my chest bones would be exposed. Would have been a life-changing wound as I'm sure I'd have lost a large chunk of my left chest muscle. Crazy to think about!

Snappers have a nasty temperament on land.  As mentioned before they will go defensive ( sometimes offence ) when approached which includes hissing, snapping and make themselves look bigger, kinda cute actually - steer clear, the buggers have reach and bite.  While I have never heard of an offensive attack in water I do remember hearing a couple stories of people being bit in the foot.  Two things come to mind - the snapper was in ambush position waiting for food to come by and acidentally got its head stepped on resulting in a bite.  Secondly, they are quite curious and wouldn't surprise me if once in a while a little curious kiss ends up being a bite.  A marina in Penetang tells people not to swim in it because of the heavy presence of snapper, perhaps there has been an incident or two?  One thing for sure is if you have no experience with them do not attempt to handle them - you can seriously injure the turtle or it can seriously injure you!

By the way, wicked shots