An 81-year-old boater was in critical condition Thursday after a stingray flopped onto his boat and stabbed him, leaving a foot-long barb in his chest, authorities said.
"It was a freak accident," said Lighthouse Point acting fire Chief David Donzella. "It's very odd that the thing jumped out of the water and stung him. We still can't believe it."
Fatal stingray attacks like the one that killed "Crocodile Hunter" Steve Irwin last month are rare, marine experts say. Rays reflexively deploy a sharp spine in their tails when frightened, but the venom coating the barb usually causes just a painful sting for humans.
James Bertakis of Lighthouse Point was on the water with his granddaughter and a friend Wednesday when the stingray flopped onto the boat and stung Bertakis. The women steered the boat to shore and called 911.
Surgeons were able to remove some of the barb, and Bertakis, who also suffered a collapsed lung, underwent surgery late Wednesday and early Thursday, the Miami Herald reported on its web site.
Ellen Pikitch, a professor of marine biology and fisheries at the University of Miami, who has been studying stingrays for decades, said they are generally docile.
"Something like this is really, really extraordinarily rare," she said. "Even when they are under duress, they don't usually attack."
Posted by Lurker Emeritus (Member # 1888) on :
"Flopped onto the boat" my arse. He was hauling it over the side on a line. A Stingray doesn't have the correct musculature to achieve such a thing. It's not a shark or a dolphin!
The tosser was baiting it, had trapped it or was otherwise interfering with the animal and was in the process of lifting it out of the water when it retaliated.
Set sympathy = 0
I have similar feelings regarding Irwin. My degree is in Biology so I have some insight into the study of wildlife and I always thought he'd end messily, and not before he stressed and probably seriously damaged a great many wild individuals in the process. He may have had the best motives but his methods left a great deal to be desired.
/end todays polemic
Posted by B.J. (Member # 858) on :
I don't know. I went to the Tennessee Aquarium recently, and they have an exhibit where you can touch some stingrays and sharks. The stingrays quite often start trying to swim up the side of the tank, getting a good bit of their body out of the water. Depending on what kind of boat it was (maybe it had a low deck?), I think it's within the realm of possibility.
Posted by Lurker Emeritus (Member # 1888) on :
Right, I have been corrected by a colleague, so instead of editing my earlier post, I will issue a partial retraction and correction.
Manta Rays do indeed "jump" out of the water on occassion. However, the word jump can be extremely misleading. "Heave" is probably more appropriate. In such cases, very large individuals (of the order of 1.5 to 2 tons) are seeking to elevate themselves, sometimes whilst giving birth. Sometimes as a distress response. To such large creatures a small boat with low gunwales, especially one carrying two or three people and so is low in the water, is just as easy to scale as an inclined shoreline.
Having said that, Manta's do not emerge from the depths like rockets and start flailing about with their barbs trying to skewer some human meat... as parts of the media would like us to believe in between buying more tabloids with stories about this crap.
It is still very likely that the occupants of the boat in some way antagonised the manta, although whether that was before or after the manta scaled the side of the boat is open for question. If I stuck my head over the rail and was promptly assaulted by a bunch of hairless primates, probably using a conveniently available oar or freezer box of Budweiser, I might be inclined to skewer first and ask questions later.
Hopefully this was a terrible misunderstanding, but my cynicism still favours foul play by those on the fishing boat.
Posted by Lurker Emeritus (Member # 1888) on :
quote:Originally posted by B.J.: The stingrays quite often start trying to swim up the side of the tank, getting a good bit of their body out of the water.
Indeed. Not exactly a jump. More of a climb, if one can be said to be climbing using fins. Either way, you would surely have much more time to see it coming than if it emerged from the deep like a kerosene fueled Jaws!
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
"Manta Rays do indeed 'jump' out of the water on occassion. However, the word jump can be extremely misleading. 'Heave' is probably more appropriate. In such cases, very large individuals (of the order of 1.5 to 2 tons) are seeking to elevate themselves, sometimes whilst giving birth."
I don't know a great deal about marine life, but aren't manta rays huge and sting-less? I don't think a two-ton ray flopped its way onto the boat and stung the guy. For one thing, I doubt the boat would still have been in one piece.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
The whole thing reminds me of the Simpsons episode where Lisa dooms the human race by saving that one dolphin...
First, this was not a Manta- it was a Stingray- stingrays are much smaller and can not leap out of the water like a Manta.
Second, if true, this would be the very first time in recorded history that this has happened- consider that.
Third, the rays at aquariums are swimming upwards towards people's hands- it's how they're fed at the aquarium- a conditioned response- it's not how they act in the wild. At Monterray Bay aquarium, I played with stingrays for hours- there's kids everywhere petting the rays and being kids and I've still never ever heard of anyone getting stung. If you had a bnch of kids with that many dogs every day for years, certainly there would be incidents of aggressivness- not so with the rays.
Living in south Florida we see a huge variaty of "fish stories" whenever someone does something insanely stupid while fishing. I once saw a guy on the news say a Marlin leapt from the water and impaled his shoulder- in fact it turned out him and his asshole pals were trying to hit (with a baseball bat, no less) a marlin trapped in their illeagal lobster net.
My guess- dickweed was messing with a stingray and got poked for his stupidity.
I still think that's exactly how Irwin got it as well- fucking with it to make "exciting TV". Sad fact- there are many of stingrays turned up mutilated on Austrailian beaches "in retaliation" for Irwin's death- as though it was a stingray conspiracy. Andrew- you hear anything about this? It was a footnote in my newspaper.
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
quote:Originally posted by Jason Abbadon: The whole thing reminds me of the Simpsons episode where Lisa dooms the human race by saving that one dolphin...
Me, too. So to make the world even scarier, we can add the idea that Jason and I think alike.