Ever get stung?

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ScubaMike14

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Location
Saint Robert, MO (yeah, it's terrible!)
So I'm out diving this morning...Grand Bahama Island, 100 foot vis, 88F water temp....nice day. I'm at about 40 foot hovering over the top of a coral head, picking off big lettuce size leafs of algae that have been covering our reefs and killing the coral. All of a sudden it feels like someone took a handfull of lit cigarettes and jammed them into my belly. Oh yeah...major pain!!

So I try to look down to see what the hell just happend and I can't really see my belly, but there appears to be no green ooze anywhere so I assume I am not bleeding. I go back to the line, do an abreviated safety stop and get on the boat.

I have my friend take a look at it and she tells me I have a red mark that looks like a puncture (needle sized) with a 2 inch long welt next to it. The welt also has a dark line down the middle that looks like someone tried to slice it open with a razor blade. No blood, LOTS and LOTS of burning pain.

30 minutes later we get back to the dock, I run to the bathroom and put scalding hot water all over it (heck, boiling water wouldn't hurt compared to this). It somewhat releives the pain and about an hour later the welt has gone down a bit and the pain is better.

It's now about 6 hours later and it still hurts, but now it's more like a bad rash type itch, rather than pain.

After looking and talking to people I think it was a sea wasp or a man-o-war.

NO, I did not, nor do I need to call DAN or go to a hospital....I just thought I'd provide an informative narrative on what it felt like so those who have never encountered it would know. I also wanted to see if others have had similar experiences, what it felt like, and what happened so I can better educate myself and others.

Mike Rushton
 
I got striped by a MoW a long time ago and the pain and symptoms are very much like you describe. I have heard Sea Wasps are worse. A mixture of Vinegar, Ammonia, and meat tenderizer are a good thing to put on jellyfish stings.
 
Got stung by something in Feb - still have leftover bumps on the inside of my arm. Barely hurt when it happened - got worse over the next few days and took a long time to heal. Suspect it was something different.
 
During my Rescue Diver course I was surface swimming to the site talking with my friend when he said "Hey Scott! Careful, there's a jelly near you!"

So, what do I do? Put my face in the water to look and blam! Right into the tentacles of a small jelly. Let's just say the right side of my face hurt for hours and made the rest of the class rather unpleasant.
 
I haven't gotten stung diving (but then again, there's only about 3 square centimeters of skin exposed when I'm underwater) but I got into a jellyfish in Molokini while snorkelling years ago. Ever seen the cartoons where the character levitates and the legs spin like a vortex fan before he shoots off somewhere? That's what I looked like -- two feet above the water all the way back to the boat. It hurt like stink, and the vinegar they gave me didn't help much at all.

One of the hardest things about learning to dive was letting go of the breath-catching anxiety of seeing a jellyfish!
 
man of war won't punture you. Maybe you ran into a scorpion fish?
 
Oh oh, I got stung just last week when I was diving in Cozumel! The DM looked at it and he said it looked like a sting from some sort of worm, but he couldn't remember the name of it. Anybody know the names of any stinging worms in Cozumel? It hurt for a day, but it was fine the next day.
 
I got stung by a jelly in Honduras last summer. It wasn't anyhting like you describe. It was more like a big bee sting. A few hours after it felt like an annnoying mosquito bite. Maybe the jellies in the Bahamas are a bit more potent.
 
Any chance it was a cone snail? Dont know how close you were.
 
I got stung by a sea wasp once. I would not recommend it to anyone. One of the worst pains in my life.
 

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