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| Weaver Fish |
| A bit about weaver fish. |
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| This is a small fish about
5 -15 cm long. It has venomous spines along its dorsal fin which stick
up some times this is the only part showing as they bury
themselves in the sand. These fish are very well camouflaged so if your
at a sandy beach and the waters warm......
First
contact is a sensation like stepping on a pin or needle!
After a while the poison starts to work and immense agony
begins, (depending how bad it got you) with swelling of the foot and numbness.
The poison can
cause intense pain, and apparently deaths have even been recorded.
Soaking the effected area in hot water helps removes the toxicity of the venom
depending on how bad it is you will want this water as hot as you can
take.
One got me a few years back when I got
in the sea, my foot became itchy and was bothering me in the line up,
after about an hour I found my ability to surf was reduced, this was
because my foot was now numb! Mine wasn't too bad I used some hot
water and all was better although it still wasn't right the next day! |
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| Weaver Fish Stories |
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| Hi Mark,
I got stung on the nipple in
Brighton a few years ago I jumped off my board in the shallows and it
got me, I don't recommend it to any one! Steve from Brighton |
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| I was chuffed yesterday
(saturday
8.9.07) i live in Weymouth Dorset and took my son crabbing with my
husband and a few friends and I caught a weaver fish believe it or not
with my sons crab line. Its the first fish have caught and with a crab
line so I guess the bacon did work. Amanda from Weymouth |
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I took a trip to Santander
(North
coast Spain) to visit my friends in 1998.
They were teaching English as an
excuse for surfing. I was a learner and used to naively
paddle out into the big surf after
them and just get mullered.
One evening the waves were milder
and I thought "Right this is it". I was pushing the board out
through knee deep water when it felt like I'd stepped on a fishhook.
I carried on out but the
pain started up my leg. I had no
idea what had got me and hobbled back to the beach Cafe for advice
or an antidote but it was closed. My mind panicked and the pain was
intensifying so I hopped (literally) 200 yds over to the otherside
of the bay where my friends were way out to sea.
Dusk was falling.
I screamed and waved madly at them
for some time eventually catching their attention.
The Spanish local among them
muttered "Scorpion fish", stuck me in the back of his van
and drove at speed to the local
hospital. By this stage the pain was frighteningly beserk.
At the hospital they stuck me in a
wheelchair still in my wetsuit and pushed me into a curtained room.
I swear they were giggling at me behind the cloth. Eventually a
nurse appeared and produced a needle the size of which produced a
reflex "NO" from me understandable in any language.
I knew where that was about to go.
So second choice was a brown horse
pill but it did the trick.
There was still a residual niggling
pain in my toe about a month later when a letter with a Spanish
postmark plopped on the mat. The girls from the bar? My mates had
learnt to write? No. A bill for a for about a 100 notes from
Santander hospital.
Did I pay it? Did I f**k.
BTW they like sandy shallows so you
should scuff along as you walk. Apparently. Sent in by Charlie |
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I WAS SURFIN AT WITTERING A COUPLE OF YEARS AGO , THE SWELL WAS
SMALL AND AS I RODE A WAVE IN , I STEPPED OF THE BOARD STRAIGHT ON
TO A WEAVER FISH , AT THE TIME I THOUGHT IT WAS A DRUGGIES NEEDLE OR
SOMETHING LIKE THAT HAD BEEN WASHED UP ONTO THE BEACH , THE PAIN WAS
NOT IMMEDIATE, BUT WHEN IT CAME THROUGH IT HURT A LOT , I PUT THE
FOOT IN A BOWL OF HOT WATER AND IT KILLED THE PAIN , I HAD A BLACK
THING IN MY FOOT FOR MONTHS AFTER, I DON'T PADDLE ABOUT IN THE
SHALLOWS NOW , AND HAVEN'T BEEN STUNG SINCE, JUST BAD LUCK I GUESS.
ROB THE TREE SURGEON.
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My son, daughter
and I decided to stop off at the beach at Tullan Strand in Northwest Ireland
after our weekly shopping to surf
for a bit, and just as we decided to get back to shore and head for
home, Lauren, who is seven, said she thought something had bit her
foot. I looked and could see only a small red mark, and so thought she
had been poked by a bit of broken shell. We continued on up the beach
and she began to cry and say it really hurt-by the time we had got to a
rock to sit down on, so I could have another look, she was nearly
screaming and the bottom of her whole foot was red.
I got the attention of a passing surfing class and their instructor,
who told us to see if the coffee guy in the car park
could give us some hot water; as hot as she could stand it. No coffee
guy to be seen, but two other surfers had water and a camp stove, so
they brought a pan over. What a pair of heroes! They stayed long
enough to reheat the water twice!! Within minutes the pain was
subsiding, and the instructor reappeared with some vinegar to add to
he water, which he had been told helped too.
Another girl who passed said she had been stung too, earlier in the
week, so surfers be warned; I'm certainly not going out
again without access to a camp stove! Julie |
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This
Sunday (23.5.10) my two daughters
and I headed off to the Witterings.
Unable to get onto the West Wittering beach we went to East Wittering
and settled down to our picnic. Not long after I saw a Mother and
daughter rush up the beach from the shallows. The Mother looked
concerned and so I asked if everything was alright, she said she thought
her daughter had been stung. The 10 year old daughter was feeling very
woozy and had trouble walking, there was clearly
something in her wrist as it was bleeding. I took out two tiny
transparent spikes while one daughter rushed off to get water and the
other daughter kept the little girl awake by talking to her as she was
clearly in shock. The Mother was amazingly organised and had already
guessed it might be a weaver fish spike. She knew about the hot water
cure and carried her daughter to the first aid area where they bathed her arm in a bowl of hot water
as hot as she could stand. I don’t think the position had taken too much
of a hold because the spike was out and the Mother reacted amazingly
quickly.
If we
hadn’t been so close to hot water
and a first aid centre it would have been much more alarming and much
more painful. It helped too that she had been stung in her arm and not stood on the
fish with her foot.
I had
never in my whole life heard of weaver fish before.
I have swam, paddled, lounged and
sat on the beaches around the UK for the last 43 years and can only
believe myself very fortunate to not have ever been stung.
We now wouldn’t dream of going in the sea
without footwear and if we ever visit a deserted beach I will try and
remember my little burner to heat water.
Emma in
Surrey |
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Many thanks
to your internet site.
I live on a yacht in spain the costa del sol, today a fisherman was
stung by a small fish, by placing the info about the fish into the web
we found you and your stories.
with this info i was able to help quickly.
thanks again and happy surfing..... |
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Hi all,
just stumbled on your site and read with interest the
stinging stories on Weever Fish...
North Cornwall 1976...Long and Hot, and anyone that
didn’t know someone who hadn’t been stung lived a long way
from the sea..Big pain, little fish. But then again...hands
up who’s peed on their feet and other peoples, trying to get
Urchin spines out..(1978 surfing gran canaria ‘San Nicolas
de Tolentino’)Kind regards, Tim the photographer
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| Hi.
just a little story about my weaver
fish experience.
Two weeks ago I got stung by a
weaver fish while out fishing. It caught me on my little finger on
my left hand. Besides three hours of EXCRUCIATING pain while having
my hand submerged in above 40 degrees Celsius water (breaks down the
toxins), my hand grew to about double its size within minutes after
being stung. After about a week the swelling disappeared, but two
days ago much of it it came back. After the first week my finger was
covered with large blisters that turned into deep sores when they
eventually broke. The skin also lifted all over my finger.
According to the doc when my hand
got swollen the first time round some poison got trapped in the
swelling, and as the swelling dropped the poison got released again,
hence the reoccurring symptoms. By now, two weeks later I am quite
fed up with having constant pain, stiffness and itching sensations.
Now I am on antibiotics and had to
get a tetanus booster as well.
Kind Regards
Thean
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Hi, I stepped on a
weaver fish yesterday at Camber Sands… I have been kitesurfing at
Camber for many years and this is the first time I have ever encountered
this fish. I had just finished a great session and jumped off my board
in the shallows when I felt a sharp pain, I thought it was either an
electric eel or a weaver, once I looked down I could see a line of three
red bleeding pin pricks, well, after about 5 minutes the pain was so
serve it was like no other pain I have felt before… I didn’t have a
thermos and the coffee wagon had gone and so I tried to walk the poison
off…the pain just got greater!!! A friend drove me home and after
several bowls of steaming hot water the pain had gone but you couldn’t
touch my foot as it was far to painful, however, I am glad to say that
this morning all the pain had gone other that the small puncture marks
left in my foot which are sore.
If there is a next time I’ll make sure I
have a thermos of hot water!!!
Sean
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| If you have any weaver fish stories
just email them to us and I will add them to the page. |
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