Warning to beachgoers after swimmer’s ‘distressing’ injury in shallows

A female’s journey to the coastline caused a six-hour browse through to the emergency clinic after an “excruciatingly painful” sting in the water.

The swimmer originally believed she had actually tipped on a stonefish at Coogee Beach in Western Australia after finding a barb still lodged in her toe. Images from the coastline reveal the things protruding of her bloodied 2nd toe.

But specialists think the offender was not a stonefish, yet something extra generally located in the waters around Perth.

“Stonefish do not leave the barb behind,” Iain Suthers, a teacher of aquatic biology at the University of New South Wales, informed Yahoo News.

“That looks to me to be the barb of a juvenile stingray, or a juvenile stingaree (a related species, different taxonomic family to stingrays),” he claimed. “Their barb is meant to break off and they grow a new one.”

Professor Culum Brown from Macquarie University concurred.

“My guess is it is a stingray barb, probably a stingaree or something similar,” he claimed.

“Unfortunately there is not much you can do to avoid stingarees. They are often in shallow water and hidden just under the sand. Most folks are spiked when they step on them.”

Stingrays and stingarees have poisonous backs on their tail that they propelled right into an individual’s foot or leg after being tipped on. Injuries normally take place in shallower water and if a barb is left in the injury there is a danger of an additional infection.

The discomfort from a sting is typically most serious in the initial hour, which held true with the swimmer at Coogee Beach that defined being “delirious with pain”.

“They are really painful for about two hours,” Prof Suthers claimed. “Best is to relax the patient and distract with ice or very warm water around the wound.”

After an X-ray to ensure it had not been touching the bone, the inch-long barb was taken out under regional anaesthetic.

The case triggered a caution for various other beachgoers to be cautious in the shallows, and to embrace a much safer strategy when relocating with the water.

“Just shuffle your feet a bit when wading,” Prof Suthers claimed. “Don’t run in the shallows.”

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