More than 40 people, including children, suffered injuries from stingrays that invaded several beaches in San Diego, California, on Wednesday.
According to lifeguard Lieutenant John Everhart, the number of stings is higher than normal, but not unheard of, as the marine animals are common in the area this time of year.
At least one person was taken to the hospital with a not life-threatening injury, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported. In total, 41 beach-goers were stung along La Jolla Shores and Torrey Pines.
Trinity Green, 13, of Sacramento, was stung at La Jolla beach. She said it felt as if someone jabbed her in the leg with a screwdriver.
‘Her foot was bleeding a lot and I was trying to make her keep her mind off of it,’ Green’s brother, Chris, told KGTV.
The 13-year-old made it to a makeshift triage area, where she was surrounded by dozens of other people who suffered injuries.
Marco Pickler, aged nine, seemed to be in the most pain, with his head perched on his mother’s lap while medics tended to his bloody wound.
Marc Montini, of Arizona, was vacationing in La Jolla when he was stung by a stingray. Speaking to MyFox Phoenix over the phone, Montini said the intensity of the pain reminded him of the day he had a kidney stone.
The unlucky beach-goers soaked their injured limbs in buckets of hot water that were set up in the triage area.
Hot water helps break up the protein toxin injected by the stingray and alleviate the intense pain.
Officials urge beach-goers to be cautious and do the ‘stingray shuffle’: When you enter the water, shuffle your feet along the bottom to announce your presence.
Everhart said the method is not fool-proof, but it usually helps scare away stingrays.
While the animals are generally not aggressive, when someone steps on them, they defend themselves by flinging their barbed tails, which excrete venom.
Experts believe that a large school of stingrays may be in the water off San Diego, which has been known to attract the animals with warm water temperatures and lots of organisms to feed on.
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