At least 5,000 people have been stung by a “wall” of jellyfish along the coast of Queensland over the weekend, in what has been described as an unprecedented incident.
Popular beaches along the Sunshine Coast and the Gold Coast have been closed off after unusually strong swells drove thousands of small but potent bluebottle jellyfish - also known as the Indo-Pacific Portuguese man-of-war - onto the shoreline.
On Sunday alone, close to 1,000 people required medical treatment for bluebottle stings, in what Surf Life Saving duty officer Jeremy Sturges described as an “epidemic”.
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“I have never seen anything like this - ever,” he told SBS, adding that many of the jellyfish had ended up beached on the shore, meaning swimmers were not the only ones at risk.
“People have been hurt as they just walk along the shoreline,” he said. “Don’t pick it up, don’t walk on it or you will be stung.”
Bluebottle stings cause intense pain for up to an hour, and can leave behind an itchy or tender red mark, says Australian medical advice website My Dr.
They are not usually dangerous, but several bathers have been treated for anaphylactic shock after suffering an allergic reaction to the stings.
The “wall” of jellyfish has begun to disperse, but paramedics and lifeguards still treated more than 200 sting victims today, mostly on the Sunshine Coast.
Since the beginning of December, “22,282 people sought treatment for bluebottle stings”, the Australian Associated Press reports, more than three times the rate in the same period last year.
The estimate was greeted with surprise by Lisa-ann Gershwin, director of the Australian Marine Stinger Advisory Service.
“Wow, that is unusual,” she told the Australian AP. “The numbers I have seen published are 25,000 to 45,000 per year for the whole of Australia.
“Those figures, the 22,282, are for about five weeks and that’s just one teeny tiny smidgen of Australia, so that is a lot.”
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