Aggressive, sharp-toothed pufferfish will cut off your finger, fishermen say in scary, new warning: They dont leave anything behind

These fish are biting — and not in the good way.Officials warn that invasive, poisonous pufferfish are menacing tourist hotspots in the Mediterranean, attacking swimmers and snatching catches from anglers’ nets.“If one of them bites you, it will simply cut off your finger,” Alexis Charalampakis, 43-year-old fisherman, told AFP while handling one of the toothy balloons during a fishing excursion off Crete in Greece, Ynetnews reported.“They don’t leave anything behind.”Dubbed the silver-cheeked toadfish, the opportunistic critter can grow up to three feet long and pack supersized aggression to match.

The animal is known for inflating its body in response to danger, earning it the moniker blowfish or pufferfish.Originally hailing from the Indian and Pacific oceans, the inflatable invader has infiltrated the Mediterranean via the Suez Canal and is now posing a serious threat to native fish and swimmers alike.The bulbous bycatch has been known to shred nets and long lines to get at entangled octopuses, cuttlefish and other commercially important species — a habit that has proven devastating to fisheries in Crete and elsewhere, according to the Greek Reporter.“If it weren’t my boat, I would have left this profession a long time ago,” said Cretan angler Alexis Charalampakis, who spent five days fixing nets that had been pillaged by pufferfish.And other fish aren’t the only ones that are being targeted by the toadfish, which boasts four fused teeth that it uses to chomp and tear prey like a sentient cigar cutter.Earlier this week, an elderly Greek woman required stitches after she was bitten while swimming off Varkiza, a coastal hub near Athens.Meanwhile, previous studies have amassed bite reports encompassing multiple Mediterranean nations, including Turkey, Greece, Cyprus, Libya and Syria.One of the most frightening cases concerned an 8-year-old girl in southern Turkey who had her finger amputated while swimming.Unlike other invasive fish, it’s...