Like ‘a live high voltage wire,’ man says after stepping on stingray off Texas coast
A man fishing off the Texas coast says he stepped on a stingray this week and the creature’s response was akin to “a high voltage” shock that left him bleeding and temporarily unable to walk.
Lowell Shapley of the Galveston area posted photos of the wound on Facebook, showing the stingray got him just behind the ankle, leaving an area that was still oozing blood days later.
“Well... bound to happen sooner or later. Stingray don’t play,” Shapley wrote Friday. “The moment I got popped, thought I had stepped on a live high voltage wire. ... It was the worst pain I’ve ever had. Hands down.”
Atlantic stingrays live and feed on the bottom of the seafloor and typically sting humans only when stepped on, according to Texas Parks & Wildlife.
Shapley says it happened while he was fishing Wednesday at Jamaica Beach near Galveston, according to an interview with TV station KTRK. He says he accidentally stepped on the stingray in murky water, and it instantly “doubled over” and stung him, the station reported.
“It (the stinger) went through the canvas on my reef boot and the neoprene liner. Then went through my neoprene foot on my waders,” Shapley wrote on Facebook, adding that he didn’t know what hit him at first.
“I was in the marsh and had an excruciating walk back to the boat. Got to shore and called a friend ... I was sweating and nauseous and did everything I could not to vomit: Debilitating,” he wrote.
Shapley says he spent the past few days washing, decontaminating and irrigating the wound, while offering Memorial Day weekend advice to friends headed to the beach. That includes wearing thicker, sturdier footwear in the water, he said on Facebook.
“You don’t want this, brother,” he posted. “Went through the ForEverlast Reef Boots like warm butter.”
Texas Saltwater Fishing Magazine reports stingrays are common off Texas and “getting whipped with a poison stinger up to six inches long is one of the worst things you can expect from Nature along the coast.”
“Their stingers are made of Vasodentin, a very strong cartilage,” the magazine reported. “Twin grooves on the stinger’s underside contain venom-secreting cells. When spines break off inside the wound, they often continue to secrete venom.”
The sting is rarely fatal, LiveScience.com says.
Among the rare exceptions is the famous case of wildlife expert and TV personality Steve Irwin of Australia, who was famously killed in a stingray attack in 2006, according to Biography.com. That case is considered unusual because the “jagged barb punctured Irwin’s chest dozens of times, causing a massive injury to his heart,“ TheGuardian.com reported.
This story was originally published May 23, 2020 at 12:47 PM with the headline "Like ‘a live high voltage wire,’ man says after stepping on stingray off Texas coast."