blue ring alert for lake illawarra

I have been informed by my fishermen friends on Lake illawarra who are reliable sources of information about the lake to be aware that the numbers of the deadly blue ringed octopus have increased dramatically in recent weeks. Normally only found occasionally near windang, they are now being found in great numbers at the illawarra yacht Club with six being found there in one hour. Some report that many more are being seen at windang. Please keep an eye out for the little buggers when you walk into the lake as I know from experience that they are very aggressive and can chase you out of the water and follow you up the beach like they know how deadly they are. Please be careful.

There normal size but with big attitudes.

Some kids were playing with an octopus at the entrance a few weeks ago when I was there for a BBQ. They were throwing it at each other and one kid got it put on his head.

From a distance i saw and it looked little and i thoigh nooo waay and it was what I thought, a blue ring, luckily none of the kids got bitten, could have been 3 dead kids.

They did almost die when I noticed and told them what it was!

The one positive is that the little buggers have to actually bite you so you would have to be very unlucky, consequences are dire though.

I saw plenty of wildlife there on Sunday - right up to a stingray 12-18 inches across.

from wikipedia:
First aid treatment is pressure on the wound and artificial respiration once the paralysis has disabled the victim's respiratory muscles, which often occurs within minutes of being bitten. Tetrodotoxin causes severe and often total body paralysis; the victim remains conscious and alert in a manner similar to curare or pancuronium bromide. This effect, however, is temporary and will fade over a period of hours as the tetrodotoxin is metabolized and excreted by the body. It is thus essential that rescue breathing be continued without pause until the paralysis subsides and the victim regains the ability to breathe on their own. This is a daunting physical prospect for a single individual, but use of a bag valve mask respirator reduces fatigue to sustainable levels until help can arrive.

According to Wikipeadia "The blue-ringed octopus spends much of its life hiding in crevices." Plenty of crevices in the concrete foreshore at the Illawarra Yacht club, and I'm guessing at the entrance around Windang. You'd think the chances of meeting one on the sandy bottom around Primbee have got to be pretty low. I'm not going to worry about them, maybe won't launch from the yacht club.

To put how low the risk is into perspective. I haven't heard of 1 person being bitten in my 36 years of existence. I've spent my whole childhood and adult years in the lake. Prawning at night along with the 1000 other people out there. I think the risk is similar to being eaten by a Tasmanian tiger.

There are a lot in the reefy area I sail at Ricketts Point on Port Phillip Bay. I walk through sea grass and over some small reefs when launching and it has got me thinking I should wear booties. Can they bite you if you stand on one????

I just wanted to make lake users aware of their presence not to scare people away. The statistics for death by blue ring are only three in the last century which is far less than death by stingray which is in the hundreds. I have also spent over thirty years playing in the lake and have only seen one blue ring but many many rays and trod on them regularly without being hit. They usually do the bolt and maybe I'm just lucky. I hope that the recent increase in blue ring population doesn't mean lead to more people being bitten. The only one I met years ago may have only been curious and not aggressive but it did follow me unprovoked for 8meters in knee deep water and then came about a meter out of the water and up the sand towards me as I watched it. Then an old man who thought I was playing with it comes over and stabs it with a knife which upset me coz I happen to like octopus.

My experience with Blue Ringed Octopus is in Northern Australia when I was a kid. These are a bigger species and are very shy. On rocky reefs at low tide, these things would out run me when I would try to approach. I thought it would be impossible to get stung unless you picked up a sick/old individual and put it on your skin. I learnt of aggressive Blue Rings on this site a few years ago and decided to do a bit of reading. There are four species in total. Two of them being the larger species of the north and a smaller southern species. The smaller one, which I've never seen, is aggressive.