Man's shocking injuries after jellyfish sting at the beach
A Queensland man has shard a painful experience after a swim at the beach left him with a horrific jellyfish sting all over his back.
On Sunday afternoon, Brendan Osborn was swimming at Twin Waters beach on the Sunshine Coast when he dove under the water and immediately noticed something was wrong.
He said as he surfaced, the jellyfish was on his head and “slid down his back”.
“It felt like my back was on fire, a burning sting across my back and shoulders, some on my face and neck too,” he told the Sunshine Coast Daily.
“It was literally all over me.”
Mr Osborn shared photos to his Facebook page of the huge welts he was left with after the sting, saying they could stay for weeks.
He said there were no lifeguards on duty when he was stung and is unsure what species of jellyfish was responsible for the injury.
“It was white coloured, fairly big,” he wrote on Facebook.
Queensland beaches have been hit by a number of stingers in the past few weeks, with experts saying a “perfect storm” of conditions has caused a bumper bluebottle season.
Bluebottle stings have more than tripled across Queensland this season, with 22,282 people seeking treatment between December 1 and January 7, compared to 6831 in the same period last year.
Another 55 people were stung on Tuesday morning; more than half at Mooloolaba on the Sunshine Coast.
Twenty-three people have suffered severe stings since January 1, with eight people requiring hospitalisation.
