Sea nettles
are what I see in the Bay early season. I am not sure what the bigger pinkish ones are. If you are careful, you can scoop up the smaller ones with your hand - bell upside down - and threaten your friends with them.
I have not been stung - YET - even when wading amongst them. Probably due to the thick fur covering my legs.
Jim
Ah-Ha! Thick fur? Neanderthal or
just lived up north too long.
Only about a million times
I’ve been stung by sea nettles so many times, it doesn’t even hurt anymore, I just feel a tingle.
Moon jelly stings still hurt.
Cabbagehead or cannonball jellies more itch than sting.
Portuguese man-o-war (not technically a jelly) hurt like holy hell. I still have a faint scar on my foot from where one stung me on the foot when I was 10.
I have a strict regimen for dealing with stings. Rinse with saltwater (freshwater activates the nematocyst in the cnidocyte), scrape with a safety razor or credit card, sprinkle with meat tenderizer, take a benadryl, a motrin, and a mixed rum drink.
I’ve heard that urine inactivates it, but just can’t bring myself to piss on myself or ask anyone else to piss on me.
Been stung by moon jellies
They aren’t very painful, more irritating, but I wouldn’t call them completely harmless.
A bit
of both. I believe my body is compensating for my cranial solar panel.
Jim
Can Kentucky Bourbon
be substituted for the mixed rum drink? This is important info.
Jim
Only Knob Creek
I used to get stung by my
grandmother’s gefilte fish (internally) while it was being digested.
Jellyfish
I spent many years diving off the beaches in Mexico and have run into the beasties many times. Old Mexican cure- pee. Sanitary cure, carry a bottle of ammonia and pour it on.
John
My Mother Used Baking Soda
My mother got the idea to use Baking Soda. It didn’t really seem to help much.
By the time I was old enough to surf, I think I had developed a tolerance, because I never seemed to get stung.
OH YEAH…
– Last Updated: Oct-07-05 8:25 AM EST –
Got one tentacle of a Man'O War on my foot as a teen -yikes! Talk about a quick wake-up call! Stinging nettles are a real pain -not a REAL PAIN pain, but just a bit of a stinging itch repeated and repeated and repeated... Cassipoeias lie by the hundreds, sometimes thousands, down here in the shallows, covering acres, resting upside down, sort of inside out, and look loke a flowering cabbage. They're not TOO bad, but do give a mild sting.
Papain, a proteolytic enzyme commercially derived from the papaya, digests the toxinx and some of the cellular apparatus that Physalia (Man'O Wars) use to inject you with, and as that's a main ingredient of Adolf's, it's why old timers down here bring a bottle along during Man O'War season.
Gotta watch the poor touristas on the beaches, though, as they oooh and ahhh over the beautiful lavender sail (the balloon) and the cobalt and rose tentacles -and bend down to pick them up, and half the time, hand them to their kids.
Brits & Germans are the worst -blissfully unaware, in the tropical air, they don't have a care, until they get a scare, when I yell at them to beware, to not succumb and ensnare, but instead to tear their eyes from the visual feast and walk away... STEP AWAY FROM THE PHYSALIA...!
Then there's fire coral -same sorts of nematocycts, give you and incredible stick your hand on a hot electric burner feeling when in cintact. If skin doesn't break, and you can withdraw your skin from contact -the pain vanaishes! Weird...!
Gotta be carefull out there when paddling -if you're out among jellies or especially Man O'Wars, to not get drifting tentacles on paddle shafts, and if you're landing or launching, to watch where you step as you
PADDLE ON!
-Frank in Miami
Call me lucky
I can’t say that I have truly been stung by a man-o-war or jellyfish as a 43 year native to Fort Lauderdale. KNOCKING ON WOOD. Sure every once in while you get a stinging sensation from what seems to be a stray bit of tentacle but fortunetly never been wrapped up.
Then again never got sea lice, said to be thimball jellyfish larvae, a rash from poison ivey, mosquitos don’t bother me as much as they do others, I did get chiggers once, now thats not something you want all over your privates and no I didn’t get them at a cheap hotel or from a cheap woman.
Brian
SoFlo