The Ultimate jellyfish thread

[NicoleRussell]

Hot water best for marine stings: expert

Friday Jun 30 17:57 AEST

Use hot water, not cold water or ice, during the immediate treatment of
jellyfish, irukandji or blue bottle stings, a marine stinger expert
implores.

Cairns-based university lecturer Dr Jamie Seymour says an 18 month study of
victims of marine stings he conducted in Newcastle recently found hot water
had more success easing pain than the traditional methods of ice and cold
water.

Dr Seymour said the study ceased a year prematurely because it had been so
successful in proving the hot water method worked better.

"The problem is you've got people like Surf Lifesaving Australia who use ice
packs when we're saying use heat and so are the hospitals," he said.

"There's this conflict that exists and the public gets confused - which is
why we ran the study in the first place.

"We felt that the heat worked better but we needed some hard data to prove
it.

"The biggest problem we encountered was that when people got stung on the
beach, the first couple of people would come up for a randomised trial, but
then word would get down to the beach that if you got the hot water, you got
better.

"People were then coming up, needed to be treated and we tried to put them
in the cold water but they'd say 'No, I want the hot water'."

"It was quite interesting once people worked out what was going on."

Dr Seymour's Newcastle study used water at 45 degrees Celsius as higher
temperatures had the potential to cause severe burns.

But he warned that the hot water method would do little to stop the
onslaught of a box jellyfish sting.

Dr Seymour said victims of box jellyfish stings can die in a matter of
minutes with most suffering from cardiac arrest as a result of the contact.

"With big box jellyfish - the trick is not to be stung in the first place,"
Dr Seymour said.

Three children have died in far north Queensland after coming into contact
with box jellyfish in the past six years.
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=110347

[NicoleRussell]

http://townsvillebulletin.news.com.a...,19644579%255E
14787,00.html

New irukandji found in Northern waters
By RACHELLE CHAPMAN
01jul06

NEW jellyfish species have been found in Australian waters, and the news for
unprotected swimmers is not good.

Surf Life Saving National Marine Stinger adviser Dr Lisa-ann Gershwin said
two newly-discovered species of irukandji were identified in North
Queensland waters recently.

She said these species were yet to be classified but were part of the Malo
maxima irukandji family. And their sting will pack a serious punch if
preliminary research is anything to go by.

Dr Gershwin said early research indicated the Malo maxima jellyfish could
cause high blood pressure, coupled with the other excruciatingly painful
symptoms.

She said her research - which was in the very early stages - indicated the
newly-identified jellyfish was probably very dangerous.

"I think they've been around for a long time, we just didn't have the
expertise to really classify them before," Dr Gershwin said.

Dr Gershwin was a speaker at the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine
conference yesterday.

During her speech she urged doctors to pass on any information collected
from stung patients on to researchers.

Broome Health Services' Dr Conrad Macrokanis (pictured), who also spoke at
the conference, said the carybdeid species of irukandji - found in Western
Australia - was causing Australia's highest rate of envenomation. The
species was recently identified in Broome.

Dr Macrokanis, with Dr Jamie Seymour, from James Cook University, and Dr
Mark Little, from Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital in Perth, analysed marine
stings in the Broome area from January 2001 to March 2006. They identified
130 patients with irukandji syndrome -- symptoms often including severe
lower back pain, muscle cramps, vomiting, restlessness, and anxiety.

In rare cases, more serious and possibly fatal symptoms such as pulmonary
oedema (fluid on the lungs), hypertension, and toxic heart failure
presented.

He said stings were more common when the water temperature was greater than
28.3C, after midday, on an outgoing high tide, and on windy days.

He said some of the jellyfish causing irukandji syndrome in Broome were
slightly different from those causing it in North Queensland.

[cornyballpython]

creapy...

[NicoleRussell]

More Portuguese man-of-war sightings on South Coast
June 30, 2006

WESTPORT, Mass. --A slew of Portuguese man-of-war sightings along the shores
of Buzzards Bay on Thursday were likely brought to the area by eddies broken
off from the Gulf Stream, a marine life expert says.

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The sightings come just days after a Westport man spent the night in the
hospital after being stung repeatedly by the jellyfish-like creatures that
are relatively rare off the coast of Massachusetts because they are usually
found in warmer waters.

"What has probably happened is that a group of them congregated in the Gulf
Stream and an eddy spun off -- they can be 50 miles wide -- and that column
of warm water and the wind carried a whole little cluster in our direction,"
Ed Enos, superintendent of the Aquatic Resources Division at the Marine
Biological Laboratories in Woods Hole, told the Standard-Times of New
Bedford.

Readers called the newspaper on Thursday to report sightings in the waters
off Westport, Dartmouth, New Bedford, Fairhaven and Mattapoisett.

No beach closures have been reported because of a Portuguese man-of-war.

"I haven't seen them here in 10 years," Enos said.

The Portuguese man-of-war, also known as a bluebottle, is a jellyfish-like
organism that is actually a floating colony of polyps. The organism, with a
balloon-like sail propelled by the winds, trails tentacles sometimes up to
30 or 40 feet long that sting when touched. The stings deliver a neurotoxin
that can be extremely painful, Enos said.

Raymond Cabral of Mattapoisett encountered a cluster of them Thursday
morning when he was surfing off Little Compton, R.I. "When you look at them
they are kind of pretty," Cabral said. "It looks like a boat with a
spinnaker up. They are all over ... bobbing and weaving in the surf. All of
us surfers have been stung by them, but you really try to avoid them."

------

[Sleepy_FF]

sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesh. ive always thought jellyfish were so beautiful, esp box's...... this doesnt change it, but YEEEEEESH.

[NicoleRussell]

they really intrigue me but I would not want to swim with one