DJPoLo Posted November 19, 2007 Share Posted November 19, 2007 Yikes! -Chet Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hank Ellis Posted November 19, 2007 Share Posted November 19, 2007 Late last month the wife and I went to Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas. Toured the Civil War fort and did some snorkeling. Scuba is only allowed in certain areas of the Dry Tortugas and this wasn't one of them. The dive briefing consisted of "aim for that island over there and just over the grass flats is the reef". Never made it past the grass flats. I've never seen the number and size of jelly fish. Tried a different direction. No joy. Aborted the attempt to the main reef and had a ball working the area just outside the moat wall on the west side. Ms. Rangerette said that the jelly population is the largest for this time of year anyone can remember. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EZ Bagger Posted November 19, 2007 Share Posted November 19, 2007 Just talk nice to 'em.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slowhand Posted November 19, 2007 Share Posted November 19, 2007 Looks like the infamous Portugese Man O' War. They have been thick here for the past couple of years. They are so potent that we get mild stings without getting in the water. When we are fishing offshore the line rubs across them on the retrieve. You don't see it happen and the next thing you know your forearms are on fire from the minute spray particles coming off the reel. A good offshore wind may move enough of them off the beach for swimming. If you happen to get stung hot water will denature the toxins. Ice is also a good remedy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steel1212 Posted November 19, 2007 Share Posted November 19, 2007 MMMM just add peanut butter Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SiG Lady Posted November 19, 2007 Share Posted November 19, 2007 I've seen a number of documentaries in the last year about jellyfish... my god, some of them are deadly and have really maimed some people badly. They're incredibly toxic. Imagine being their small prey! OUCH!!! Jelly-tasers! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Keen Posted November 19, 2007 Share Posted November 19, 2007 OUCH!!! Jelly-tasers! Don't TASER me bro! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kingman Posted November 20, 2007 Share Posted November 20, 2007 that looks painful Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joe4d Posted November 20, 2007 Share Posted November 20, 2007 Look on the bright side, maybe they scare off the sharks ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Merlin Orr Posted November 20, 2007 Share Posted November 20, 2007 Monsodium glutamate - MSG. Used to carry it in the tackle box when wade fishing for stings. It helps a lot. Getting into Man O War tentacles is like getting hot lead poured on you. Fist time it happened to me I actually thought I had been hit by a shark. Excruciating. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scribble Posted November 20, 2007 Share Posted November 20, 2007 meat tenderizer works for soothing afterwards, Don't ask how I know!!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eager Posted November 20, 2007 Share Posted November 20, 2007 I got a good sting on my arm in Costa Rica. Big yellow orange swollen blotch. I didn't know what it was. I thought maybe I was gonna die, stung by some sea creature. I was alone and 10 miles walk back to the village. Cool thing was, by the next morning there was no sign of the blotch. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hank Ellis Posted November 20, 2007 Share Posted November 20, 2007 On another scuba dive, I don't even remember where now, a few of us were hanging on the anchor line at 15' doing our 2 minute safety deco stop. Now the safety stop is normally boring but its something we do to give us an edge against decompression sickness (DCS, aka the bends). Were hanging out, minds drifting and processing what we had seen on the bottom when I heard an 'oh sjet' through another divers regulator. Looked up and a school of jellies was heading toward us. Great. Don't want to go back down as we would be ingassing nitrogen and have to deco all over again. And besides were on the last few hundred PSI in our tanks. Don't want to go up and cut the safety stop short. Don't want to hang out here and get stung. Decisions. Decisions. As it happened we scattered in all directions. Some surfaced. Some dove. Some free swam at 15' toward the boat and others away from the boat. Once out of the way the school passed by and once we were sure there weren't any stragglers we surfaced. Every one of us got some of the effects of those jellies. Nemocysts are the stingers of jellies. In a school tiny bits of the nemocysts break or fall off and drift in the current. These tiny bits lead the pack and got us before we knew the school was coming. The effect was a slight itching and a shower on the boat took care of most of it. Found out later that the schooling behavior with the nemocyst particles leading the pack is a method they use for hunting. The leading nemocysts sting and slows down unsuspecting prey and when the pack comes across the prey they finish it off. Sharks and barracuda. No problem. Jellyfish I give a wide berth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nemo Posted November 20, 2007 Share Posted November 20, 2007 The good ole' Physalia physalis. To know how it feels, light a match, put it out on your flesh then multiply the feeling for the length of the tentacle that got stuck to you. On another note, they have a very cool little fish that only lives between their tentacles. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Micah Posted November 20, 2007 Share Posted November 20, 2007 That reminds me of the last time I was in Flagler Beach, Flordia. Whilst taking a nude midnight swim with a newly acquired gal-pal, I got gangbanged my one of these little devils. Looking like Kunta Kinte from Roots, the remains of the evening and the entire next day were shot. Ironically enough, I moved a year later onto a well known road in Lexington Kentucky called Man O' War Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shred Posted November 21, 2007 Share Posted November 21, 2007 Several years ago a group of us came in from a night shore dive in Bonaire. I went up the ladder and just as I cleared it my buddy that was lighting the ladder for me lets out a huge yelp and says "Something just stung the <expletive deleted> out of me!". I turned around with my dive light and started scanning the water, hoping the bulb wouldn't pop from being out in the air. Within about 10 seconds I saw what looked exactly like the picture in the book-- a transparent stick of butter with four pink tentacles coming off the corners at one end.. It felt like it took my brain a hour to get into gear and croak out 'Box Jelly.... SEA WASP!!!". Right then everybody else immediately back pedals as best they could while bobbing along in full BC's and gear... they swam all the way down around a pier to the next ladder to get out.. then looked in the water and saw about 3 or 4 more all along where they just swam We pulled my buddy up the ladder and not long after he want into anaphylactic shock, shivering uncontrollably, so we had to haul him down to what passed for a hospital at the time-- I think it was a convent. Anyway, the nurse slaps him on the table in the mini-ER, sticks an IV in his arm and wanders off for an hour, leaving 3 guys in damp wetsuits to wander around the ER at 10 o'clock at night leaving puddles on the floor... "hey look, a defibrillator.. " It took many months before the sting marks on his bicep just below the sleeve of his shortie wetsuit went away. I was real glad to have a Polartec full suit on that day. Supposedly they only come near shore a few times a year and we hit the first day just right.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Micah Posted November 21, 2007 Share Posted November 21, 2007 Glad to hear that your friend made it shred. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shawn Knight Posted November 21, 2007 Share Posted November 21, 2007 I still have a scar on my leg from a MOW. Caught a 2in bit of tentacle on the calf when I was 12. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shred Posted November 22, 2007 Share Posted November 22, 2007 Glad to hear that your friend made it shred. Carribean Sea Wasps aren't normally fatal.. now off the wrong bits of Australia... I think I'll do my diving in a submarine. Edit to add picture of the critter (note: there's no freeking way I'd even consider picking one of these up. No how , no way, this isn't my picture or anybody I know): Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bulm540 Posted November 22, 2007 Share Posted November 22, 2007 Ditto, teh irukanjis are nasty little creatures. They are deadly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shadetree Posted November 23, 2007 Share Posted November 23, 2007 Nasty looking little fellas Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Derek45 Posted November 23, 2007 Share Posted November 23, 2007 I remember growing up in Florida, my Mom alway brought a bottle of Adolph's meat tenderizer along. In my little kid head, I wondered "why would they name it after Hitler?" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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