AArGh! Jelly stings and a bit o' science.

[gls]

There's a story that's been floating around on the interwebs for quite a while. It basically goes that "Rob", a saturation diver gets a jellyfish sucked into his hot water suit and his bunghole gets stung shut. I think this is a b/s story, and was hoping some of the marine science types could help me out.

My take is that the hot water machine would have effectively denatured the toxins by the time they reached Rob. Here's a bit of info for you to consider.

1. Rob is a saturation diver - he's working deep - maybe only a couple hundred feet these days - but with probably at least 600ft of umbilical. (longer umbilical = more surface area for water to cool as it is pumped to the diver = higher temp at the heater)

2. In my limited experience with hot water systems (on about 300ft of umbilical) the output water temp at the heater was 140 Fahrenheit. (probably colder diving though)

3. The jelly has been nicely pureed as it is sucked through the intake.

I guess my question is how hot to denature jelly toxins? I was diving with a fellow who got poked by a lionfish, and proceeded to flush the sting with water from a coffee urn (the resulting scald burn was pretty bad - but no noticeable effects from the envenomation). These toxins are generally protiens right? and aren't most only effective in a limited temperature range?

any help debunking this/ or correcting me would be appreciated.

 

[gls]

Here's the most recent incarnation of the story.



Bad day at work???
>
> This is even funnier when you realize it's real! Next time you have a bad day at work think of this guy -
> Rob is a commercial saturation diver for Global Divers in Louisiana, USA. He performs underwater repairs on offshore drilling rigs.
> Below is an E-mail he sent to his sister.
> She then sent it to a radio station in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, who was sponsoring a worst job experience contest. Needless to say, she won:
>
> Hi Sue, Just another note from your bottom-dwelling brother. Last week I had a bad day at the office. I know you've been feeling down lately at work, so I thought I would share my dilemma with you to make you realize it's not so bad after all.
> Before I can tell you what happened to me, I first must bore you with a few technicalities of my job.
> As you know, my office lies at the bottom of the sea. I wear a suit to the office. It's a wetsuit.
> This time of year the water is quite cool. So what we do to keep warm is this: We have a diesel-powered industrial
> water heater. This $20,000 piece of equipment sucks the water out of the sea, heats it to a delightful temperature, then pumps it down to the diver through a garden hose which is taped to the air hose.
> Now this sounds like a darn good plan, and I've used it several times with no complaints.
> What I do, when I get to the bottom and start working, is take the hose and stuff it down the back of my wetsuit.
> This floods my whole suit with warm water. It's like working in a Jacuzzi. Everything was going well until all of a sudden, my bum started to itch.
> So, of course, I scratched it. This only made things worse. Within a few seconds my bum started to burn!
> I pulled the hose out from my back, but the damage was done.
> In agony I realized what had happened. The hot water machine had sucked up a jellyfish and pumped it into my suit.
> Now, since I don't have any hair on my back, the jellyfish couldn't stick to it.
> However, the crack of my bum was not as fortunate.
> When I scratched what I thought was an itch, I was actually grinding the jellyfish into the crack of my bum.
> I informed the dive supervisor of my dilemma over the communicator.
> His instructions were unclear due to the fact that he, along with five other divers, were all laughing hysterically. Needless to say I aborted the dive.
> I was instructed to make three agonizing in-water decompression stops totalling thirty-five minutes before I could reach the surface to begin my chamber dry decompression.
> When I arrived at the surface, I was wearing nothing but my brass helmet.
> As I climbed out of the water, the medic, with tears of laughter running down his face, handed me a tube of cream and told me to rub it on my bum as soon as I got in the chamber.
> The cream put the
> fire out, but I couldn't poo for two days because my bum was swollen shut.
> So, next time you're having a bad day at work, think about how much worse it would be if you had a jellyfish shoved up your AR*e.
> Now repeat to yourself, I love my job, I love my job, I love my job.
> Remember whenever you have a bad day, ask yourself, is this a jellyfish bad day? May you NEVER have a jellyfish bad day!!!!!
>

 

[bleeb]

Since no one else has thought of anything, I'll throw in my $0.02 to keep the discussion going. I don't know much about marine biology, but here a couple of issues that may affect things.

Protein denaturing follows a temperature-vs.-time relationship. The hotter things get, the shorter the time to kill things by denaturing their proteins. Drinking water potentially contaminated with bacteria needs a rolling boil (212F/100C throughout) for several minutes. IIRC 140F/60C is about the point where human skin won't be burnt within a few seconds, i.e. the heat soaks through the dead layer of skin and starts denaturing proteins in the live ones. If people can take it, maybe 140F isn't enough to break down the jellyfish cells in the time available. Any marine biologists out there with guesses as to what's needed?

Another question for the experts is whether jellyfish toxins are proteins or something simpler and harder to break down.

 

[Thalassamania]

The toxins are not the question, it is the delivery system that would be destroyed by both the physical perturbation and the heat. The story is total BS. While pneumatocysts could conceivable survive the entrainment (it is unlikely, chances are they'd discharge) they would not survive the trip through the heater.