With spring break fast approaching, now is a good time to evaluate the dangers you face during vacation. Like most of my friends, I plan to travel somewhere warm and balmy, run around in the sand, snorkel around some coral, pet a barracuda or two and collect a few starfish. Two of these things are a bad idea. Guess which.
As a land mammal, I have adapted to most land dangers. I dodge swiftly moving cars, I avoid squirrel bites and only once have I kicked a scuttling crab in the West Indies.
However, my spring break plans include a lot of water activities, and I am much less agile in the realm of aquatic predators.
First, toothy fishies. If you're splashing happily in the ocean and see a sharkish-looking dorsal fin headed your way, get out of the water. If you see any large ferocious toothy fish, get out of the water. They are not friendly.
If you get chomped by a shark, get medical attention immediately. Tie off the stump or apply pressure to the wound to prevent bleeding. A Band-Aid is not going to do it. If you are in the Amazon taking a dip and are starting to notice large-toothed fish approaching you, stay away from them. Those are piranhas, and they are nasty (but not usually seriously harmful).
Second, jellyfish. They look beautiful and ethereal, but there are over 100 species of jellyfish toxic to humans, and they can cause painful to fatal stings.
Although Finding Nemo illustrated that the tops of jellyfish are harmless, the tentacles of jellyfish are covered with stinging cells called nematocytes.
When a person brushes a nematocyte, the sensitive hairs around it immediately activate a chemical mechanism that causes the ejection of a nematocyst (the sting) at high pressure into the offending brusher.
The nematocyte then releases a toxin that tries to enter the bloodstream. Jellyfish sting symptoms include an obvious stinging sensation, itching and raised red welts.
If left untreated, this can progress into nausea, muscle twitches and numbness, and some jellyfish can even cause cardiac failure and death.
Most jellyfish stings are mild, but stings by the box jellyfish or the Portuguese man-of-war (generally found in the South Pacific) can cause death within minutes due to respiratory and muscular paralysis, which can lead to drowning if you don't die of suffocation or heart failure first.
It's a common misconception that peeing on a jellyfish sting will kick the pain. The best home remedies for a sting are acetic acid (vinegar) or isopropyl alcohol. These will stop the nematocysts from releasing the stinging toxin.
If you're stung, don't rub the stings, because mechanical stimulation activates the nematocysts - just lay a soaked towel on the sting or pour vinegar straight on it.
If you haven't got vinegar or alcohol, stick your wound back into the seawater if there's no other jellyfish lurking about. Don't use freshwater, which will activate the nematocysts even more.
Remove any clinging tentacles with a stick, not your hands. Next, apply a paste of baking soda or shaving cream to the sting and use a razor or nearby seashell to scrape off the remaining nematocysts, or they'll keep releasing venom.
If the stinging stops or just doesn't bother you, swim on. But if the stinging persists and affects more than the stung area, find a doc.
Avoid jellyfish in general, and don't let your little cousins touch the dead ones on the beach - if they're newly beached, the tentacles could still be poisonous.
There are many other stinging pointy objects that populate bodies of water. When snorkeling or scuba diving, watch your feet to avoid spiny sea urchins and stingrays.
The longer spines of a sea urchin and the barbed tail of a stingray can cause deep puncture wounds that can cause infection, and sometimes these spines contain venom.
Some species of sea urchins have tiny clamper structures set between their spines that can latch onto a snorkeler with little fangs and inject poison.
Sea urchin and stingray venom can have the same effects as jellyfish venom, causing redness, pain, infection and muscle paralysis, and may lead to death.
If you are stung, remove any remaining spines with tweezers and soak the puncture in hot water to treat the pain. The venom released by a stingray is a heat-sensitive protein, so hot water is thought to denature the protein and thus kill the venom and pain.
Wash the wound carefully with soap, but if the stinging spreads or worsens, find the lifeguard station fast.
The beach is a tantalizing place for us sequestered Hopkins students, but it is in fact full of skulking, stinging, hungry little (and large) creatures either looking for a meal or minding their own business with their security shields up.
A jellyfish sting or a sea urchin puncture can end a vacation on the spot, and recent events have proven that even wraithlike stingrays can be deadly.
The best thing to do is check your vacay-spot for warnings of ravenous fishes or jellies, and stick to the most human-friendly area you can find.
Watch your toes, poke foreign creatures only with long sticks and don't pee in the water in the Amazon.
