A woman was flown to Miami from the lower Keys over the weekend after she was wounded by a jumping fish while kayaking off Big Pine Key.
Karri Larson, 46, and a friend were kayaking Sunday evening when the fished jumped out of the water and bit her in the chest.
A Coast Guard rescue crew used a small boat to ferry a paramedic into the shallow water to reach Larson. She was then transferred to the boat and taken to a nearby marina. Once on shore Larson was airlifted to Jackson Memorial Hospital where she’s listed as stable in the ICU.
The Coast Guard initially said Larson, who suffered several broken ribs and a punctured lung, was bitten by a barracuda. But Bobby Dube with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission doubts that. He told The Miami Herald that Larson had a puncture would and that barracuda have sharp teeth that cut like a knife. He said the type of wound was inconsistent with barracuda teeth.
Stingrays have stung about 130 people since Wednesday and most of them were at La Jolla Shores, lifeguards said.
Three people were hospitalized Wednesday. Lifeguards said that at one point, they were treating 11 or 12 people at the same time.
The stingrays are still stinging people around Southern California. The rays are blamed for injuring an estimated 120 to 130 people over the past three days, with 21 of those cases occurring Friday. Most of the stings occurred at La Jolla Shores and three people have been hospitalized so far.
A 14-YEAR-old girl shows needed 51 stitches after a 4ft-long barracuda leapt out of the ocean and clamped on to her arm.
According to the report in The Sun, Koral Wira was sitting on her family’s yacht near Venice, Florida when the fish “flew across the boat like a bullet” and fastened its teeth onto her arm.
Koral’s dad Rob had been fishing and the barracuda was attracted by the bait. He said: “The fish took my shark bait but then jumped out of the water, right at my daughter. It’s the craziest thing that’s ever happened in my life.”
After letting go of Koral’s arm, the fish fell on its side to the floor, where Rob killed it by stabbing it with a fillet knife.
18-year-old Timothy Delano was hospitalized in southwest Florida after an alligator bit off his left hand.
Delano was swimming with three friends in a Collier County canal around 9:30 p.m. Sunday when the alligator attacked. Delano was on a rock in the middle of the canal, but fell into the water. While he tried to get back on the rock, the 10-foot, 2-inch alligator grabbed his hand.
Delano and his friends managed to swim to shore and get into a car, where he called 911. A helicopter transported Delano to Lee Memorial Hospital.
Doctors were unable to reattach Delano’s hand, which was retrieved from the alligator’s stomach. However, Delano is in stable condition.
An 11-foot alligator attacked a man at a Marion County nature park Tuesday. Pete Butt, 55, was diving in the Silver Springs Nature Park when he was attacked just before 6:00pm.
The alligator bit down on the victim’s head while he was testing water for the St. John’s River Management District.
“When we arrived on scene, we found the patient with lacerations to the neck and he also had a broken jaw,” said Miranda Iglesias of the Marion County Fire Department.
Butt was diving with a co-worker at the time, who heard the attack and came running to help. Butt was rushed to Shands Hospital in Gainesville in critical condition.
A SeaWorld employee died this afternoon during an incident at SeaWorld’s Shamu Stadium.
SeaWorld, rescue personnel and the Sheriff’s Office are not revealing the identity of the victim, although a local TV station is reporting that it was a female employee who was killed after she was grabbed by one of the theme park’s whales at the start of a public show.
Park guest Victoria Biniak said that the trainer was a veteran of SeaWorld and had just finished explaining to the audience what they would see during the performance when the whale came up from the water and grabbed the woman and started thrashing her around.
She said sirens went off and everyone was forced to leave the stadium. Guests were evacuated from the area, and the whale show was cancelled. The park is not shut down.
Orange County Fire Rescue personnel arrived on scene within five minutes of receiving a 911 call for an unknown medical condition just prior to 2 p.m. The woman was dead when rescue officials arrived.
The whale involved in the incident is named Tillikum, and apparently “Tilly” has a controversial past…
Ben Southall, who won ‘the best job in the world’, had a brush with death after being stung by a poisonous jellyfish.
Southall, 34, beat out nearly 35,000 applicants from around the world earlier this year to be awarded the $100k six-month job as ‘caretaker’ of a string of islands on the famous Great Barrier Reef.
After enjoying a post-Christmas jet ski session with some friends he climbed off the back of the ski and onto the beach and felt a small bee-like sting on his forearm. What he didn’t realize at the time was that he had been stung by an Irukandji jellyfish, which is no bigger than a fingernail but can be deadly.
Luckily, Ben says he’s now feeling 100 per cent again.
Authorities say a monk seal attacked a swimmer off Kauai Monday afternoon. The 28-year-old woman from Washington state was snorkeling at Mahaulepu Beach when she drifted into an area where several monk seals were swimming.
A full-grown female seal who was with her pup apparently felt threatened by the snorkeler and attacked. The woman was bitten on her face, head, hand and elbow. She made it back to shore and was later taken to Wilcox Memorial Hospital.
