By Charlie Crespo
Portrait by Jose A. Fernandez
You are chest-deep in brackish water the color of day-old coffee. You stretch your feet out to try to stand, but you can’t touch the bottom. Something quickly brushes past you, and you shudder.
All around, you hear strange, unnerving sounds you’ve never heard before. Odd birds squawk, leaves crunch on the banks under unknown feet, and there’s a clattering off in the distance, as if something had just quickly fled the scene.
The trees and fauna—in any other scenario perfectly innocuous—suddenly seem menacing as the brown and green colors clash against a sky that is rapidly changing from dusk to darkness.
As your vision adjusts to your surroundings, you notice a pair of gleaming yellow eyes staring at you from just a few feet away. It’s an alligator, somewhere between 12 and 14 feet long, weighing around 900 pounds. You try to slowly back away, but you quickly realize something else: It’s arching its back, a clear indication that this prehistoric species is preparing to attack.
All you can do is pinch yourself, hoping to wake up, because for any of us, this would be a nightmare, fit for a horror movie that would run your blood cold. For Manny Puig, however, this is just another day at the office.
For as long as he can remember, the Cuban-born Puig has had a passion for animals. In fact, many of his earliest memories involve them. At 4 years old, he recalls chasing lizards and snakes through the grass. As he got older, he would occasionally play hooky from school in Miami to spend time outdoors.
“A friend would drop me off in the woods, and I’d stay out there for three days by myself,” Puig recalls.
“I’d go hunting, grab snakes, whatever was out there. I’ve walked 10 miles from town to go looking for snakes. It was all in a night of fun.”
It didn’t take long before Puig realized he could make a career out of his fascination with animals and the outdoors. He began spearfishing a variety of fish—like grouper, snapper, amberjack and hogfish—and selling them at local markets. While he was a talented and adept fisherman, his time out on the ocean soon put him into contact with the creatures he’d become famous for interacting with: sharks.
As Puig spent more time studying the ocean’s most feared predator, he realized that he could relate with them unlike anyone ever had before. He began to feed sharks by hand, drawing them in by shaving pieces of fish toward them, until they felt unthreatened enough to simply take the bait directly from his hand. In an effort to push the limits further, Puig says he became the first person known to ride a hammerhead shark.
“When I told everyone I was going to ride a hammerhead, they said, ‘No that will never happen. The hammerhead won’t let you get near it,’” he says. “But I studied it, and it did happen.”
It’s an astounding sight to see. Puig calmly grabs a dorsal fin, and lets the shark pull him effortlessly through the water, as if he were skateboarding behind a pickup truck.
But neither his daring interactions nor his groundbreaking techniques would end with sharks. Puig is also recognized as the first person to “levitate” an alligator. To do so, he approaches the animal from below, grabs it underneath its enormous jaw, and gently lifts it to the surface. “I’d rather levitate an alligator than hand-catch it, because you don’t have to fight with it,” he explains. “I’ve taken a 13-plus-foot alligator from about 25 feet in the water to the surface with one hand, swimming him all the way up. It was the biggest alligator levitation ever.” Puig’s talent and audacious stunts didn’t go unnoticed for long. He went on to star in shows such as “Jackass,” “Wildboyz” and “Savage Wild,” and was featured on Discovery Channel’s Shark Week.
INTO THE DEPTHS: No wild animal is safe from Puig, whose mind-boggling stunts have been featured on T.V. shows “Jackass,” “Wildboyz” and “Savage Wild,” and during Discovery Channel’s Shark Week.
Of course, there’s been a price to pay for this line of work. Puig’s been bitten by four different types of sharks, gored in the arm by a wild boar, bitten by an alligator and lost a finger from a snake bite.
These days, the 62-year-old Puig spends far less time in front of a camera and less time performing the daring stunts he once did. Instead, he spends his time working on his art—creating sculptures of animals in bronze or stainless steel and handcrafting ancient weapons—and giving guided tours and hunting trips with Gator Quest. He also is a frequent speaker and educator at events such as the Blue Wild Ocean Adventure Expo at the Broward County Convention Center.
When Puig reflects on his earlier work, he’s quick to do away with any misconceptions about why he chose his career path. “People always ask me, ‘How?’ and ‘Why?’ But it’s like asking somebody, ‘Why do you like to go sailing?’ or ‘Why do you like to play football?’ It’s just something I’m interested in, and I enjoy it,” he explains. “Certain shows I’ve been on want to make it look scientific. They used to tell me, ‘There’s got to be a reason. You have to put a tag on it for research.’ But it’s all entertainment.”
And just as he takes a matter-of-fact approach to his career, he applies the same line of thinking to his future. “I don’t like to look ahead. I just live day by day, and I do whatever the good Lord allows me to do,” Puig says.
But there’s one thing he knows for sure: “I can’t keep losing body parts,” he says with a laugh. “I’m an artist, and I need to preserve my hands. I’m glad God has given me the gift of making a living doing something I like. That’s probably the biggest gift of all.”
Originally appeared in the Summer 2016 Issue.
