A man has been bitten by a barracuda while spearfishing in north Queensland, Australia.
The 40-year-old was swimming in waters off Bowen early on Saturday morning when he was bitten on the leg by the fish.
He was taken to the hospital for treatment for a serious bite.
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A 77-year-old man lost his arm below the elbow on Thursday when he was attacked by an alligator while playing golf on Fripp Island in South Carolina.
The man, who was playing the 11th hole of the island’s Ocean Creek Golf Course, leaned down to pick up his ball when a 10-foot gator grabbed his arm and then dragged him into a nearby pond. The gator then went into a series of “death rolls,” a technique it uses to tear apart its food. That was when the man lost his arm.
The man’s golf buddies were able to free him from the alligator’s grasp and called 911.
Workers killed the gator and performed a necropsy on it to remove the man’s arm from the animal’s digestive track.
The arm was stored in a cooler in the hopes of re-attaching it. The man’s condition was still unknown late Thursday night.
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Two swimmers in the Baltic Sea sought medical treatment over the weekend after being bitten by sea lampreys, an uncomfortable incident that has the state fisheries department aflutter about the return of the parasitic marine animal.
The two people were bitten near the town of Damp, 31 miles north of Kiel on the east coast of Schleswig-Holstein. A lamprey had to be removed after it attached itself to the leg of a 14-year-old boy. The other lamprey victim told German tabloid Bild that he was swimming and bitten by “a metre-long snake-like creature.”
Martin Franz, manager of the Schleswig-Holstein fisheries department said the culprit was most likely a sea lamprey, which can grow to be as long as 2.5 ft, trying to catch a ride.
“They aren’t very good swimmers so they latch on to a passing fish – or in this case a person – to get around,” said Franz.
The sea lamprey had been considered to be increasingly rare in the southern Baltic Sea. Franz sees the two incidents as a positive sign for the population.
“Not so long ago, the lamprey was a delicacy here and they were completely overfished. This is actually a good sign and means the population is improving.”
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Triathletes Sanford and Mary-Jane Schmid put on their wetsuits on August 22 and set off to swim a 1,500m lap around Lake Lillian in Invermere, British Colombia when Sanford felt something pulling on his foot. Schmid figured he’d just swum into a log, and resumed swimming.
Then he felt it again. Turns out he was being attacked by an otter. Sanford sought refuge on a nearby wooden dock as the otter continued to attack him. Finally, after fighting the beast all the way to the safety of the dock, he reached shallow water.
Schmid was able to pull his war-torn body up on the dock while the otter swam underneath. Once out of the water, he saw the chewed-up legs of his wetsuit and blood gushing from his foot. His wife took him to the hospital where Schmid was given oral and intravenous antibiotics, and a hearty tetanus shot and sent home on crutches.
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A teenager is recovering after receiving a puncture wound from a stingray at Panama City Beach, FL yesterday.
The victim, a 17-year-old North Carolina teen, was stabbed in the torso (yeouch) while he was swimming just 30 feet off shore.
He was rushed to the hospital but the puncture wound does not appear to be life threatening.
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Cal Fire officials said Monday that no beach advisories will be posted after a surfer was hurt off Shell Beach in what is suspected to have been a bite by a small shark or other marine animal because the cause of his injury can’t be confirmed.
About 8 p.m. Sunday, a 26-year-old man reported that his foot was hurt while he was surfing in the waters off of Silver Shoals Drive.
San Luis Ambulance medics took the man to Arroyo Grande Hospital to be treated for what they described in radio dispatches as “numerous puncture wounds” from “an unknown marine animal.”
But fire officials said Monday that they could not confirm the injuries came from a “dangerous marine animal” attack.
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Stung by a stingray last month on April 13 at Galveston Island, TX. Yeoch!
Thanks Staci! Get well soon!
Police found the remains of a 20-year-old man taken by a crocodile while swimming at night in the Daly River just south of Darwin, Australia.
The man disappeared while swimming with his brother across the crocodile-infested river at about 2am (AEST) on Friday. His wife was watching from the riverbank and told police she had seen a crocodile nearby.
Apparently the three had been drinking and the two men decided they would try to swim across the river.
The remains of the man were found upstream from where he was attacked.
Despite news of the attack, tourists were still drinking and swimming in the river today.
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A Florida man is recovering today after being bitten by an alligator.
James Gaff was on the back porch of his home along Lake Eustis, when the gator wandered inside. When Gaff tried to get the 2 to 3 foot gator out of the home, it bit him on his right arm.
Gaff’s wife was used a broom handle to get the gator off of Gaff, and they then threw it back into the water.
It’ll be back.
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According to ABC News, Human remains have been found near a creek where an 11-year-old girl was snatched up by a crocodile yesterday.
The girl was attacked in the creek, near the Black Jungle Swamp about 40 kilometres south-east of Darwin, Australia, as she was swimming with her seven-year-old sister and two young friends.
The girl’s boardshorts were found 60 ft downstream from where she disappeared.
DNA testing will be conducted to confirm the identification but no specifics will be given in relation to the injuries or the type of evidence out of respect for the girl’s family.
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