RobL said...
Saw a few guys out at St Georges beach yesterday but this only hit my inbox this morning.
COMMUNITY SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Warning on Blue-ringed Octopus
August 12, 2011
The City of Greater Geraldton would like to warn the public that Blue-ringed Octopus
have been sighted coming ashore at St Georges Beach, Bluff Point, Geraldton.
The octopus are rarely more than 12 centimetres long and are well camouflaged with
yellow, brown and grey bodies, with dark brown blotches and bands on their
tentacles. They should not be touched and viewed from a distance only.
The Blue-ringed Octopus is extremely venomous with a painless bite that can cause
paralysis and in rare cases death. The octopus give a warning before they bite by
developing brilliant blue rings.
Symptoms include nausea, hazy vision and the loss of touch, speech and the ability
to swallow. There is no anti-venin available in Australia.
If bitten apply a pressure immobilisation bandage and urgently call an ambulance.
Actually, the whole Ozzie coast is awash in Blue Ringed Occys, and has been since time immemorial.
Very common all the way around, and much more lethal than that blurb above suggests. If you get bitten by one and there's no-one there to call for paramedics
and do continuous CPR on you, you almost certainly
will die.
The good news is that you have to be
really unlucky to corner one and annoy it enough to get bitten. They're very shy and secretive as a rule, and they'll scarpa if they can.
When I was a deckie on a cray boat, out of Freo, we'd get a dozen or more every morning in the pots, and they were just the few that didn't slip out whilst we hauled the pots up.
