Natures Cottage

Who would have thought..

Killers In Paradise

The tropics are home to the world’s most venomous creatures-jellyfish with 4 brains, 24 eyes and stingers that can kill you in a minute flat

The sky is an immense bowl of blue and the boiling-hot sun speckles the flat green waters gold as our boat edges out of Port Douglas, Australia, just north of the tropical resort town of Cairns. On board, tourists from around the world are heading for the Great Barrier Reef, the world’s largest natural structure—stretching for 1,400 miles along the continent’s northeastern coastline.

After a 90-minute journey, we arrive at Opal Reef, a chunk of the Great Barrier Reef five miles long and three miles wide, where frothy white waves break gently over shadowy outcrops of coral as big as houses. We throw on our snorkeling gear and slip quickly into the water, drifting over the shallow reef facedown, entranced by the multihued coral—some resembling giant brains, others massed like stag horns and mammoth fans—and the neon-colored small fish that dart in and out. Not one of the crew members has bothered to warn us that Opal Reef is where one of the planet’s deadliest creatures killed a visitor three years earlier.

Robert King, 44, from Columbus, Ohio, was snorkeling over the same underwater landscape when he felt a mild sting on his chest and came back onto the boat. Within 25 minutes his face flushed tomato-red as severe pain gripped his stomach, chest and back muscles. The skipper radioed for a medevac chopper, whose crew injected King with a massive dose of pethidine, an opiate-like painkiller, then winched him from the boat and rushed him to Cairns.

By the time he was wheeled into the emergency ward at CairnsBaseHospital, King’s speech was slurred. He was put on a ventilator, as doctors pumped him full of painkillers while racing to save his life. A local zoologist, Jamie Seymour, was called in to take a scraping of the sting site. While he worked, Seymour noticed that King’s blood pressure was spiking dramatically. King lost consciousness; then, Seymour says, “an artery or vein in his brain blew.” Blood flooded King’s brain tissues, and two days later he died.

After analyzing the shape and size of the stinging cells, which were about an inch long, Seymour blamed King’s death on a nearly transparent jellyfish the size of a thumbnail. Covered from the top of its head to the tip of its four tentacles with millions of microscopic spring-loaded harpoons filled with venom, it’s one of at least ten related species of small jellyfish whose sting can plunge victims into what doctors call the Irukandji syndrome. “The symptoms overwhelm you,” says Seymour, 40, who himself was stung by an irukandji on the lip, the only part of his body uncovered as he scuba-dived looking for specimens near an island off Cairns in late 2003. “On a pain scale of 1 to 10, it rated between 15 and 20,” he says, describing the vomiting, the cramps and the feeling of panic. “I was convinced I was going to die.” But he was lucky; not all species of irukandji administer fatal stings, and he recovered within a day.

So far, only King’s death—and perhaps that three months earlier of an Englishman, 58-year-old Richard Jordan, farther south on the Great Barrier Reef—can be attributed to irukandji venom, but Seymour cites research suggesting that because the symptoms may resemble strokes or decompression sickness, and can lead to drowning, countless more swimmers have probably fallen victim to Irukandji syndrome in offshore waters throughout the tropics. Stings from the irukandji species who live in waters closer to shore are rarely fatal but are still excruciatingly painful: for centuries before the tiny jellies were identified as the culprit, the local Aborigines at Cairns, the Irukandji tribe, knew that to swim in the shallows in the rainy season, from November to May, was to risk getting stung, although they didn’t know by what.

More ominously for residents of North America, doctors at the U.S. Army Special Forces Underwater Operations School at Key West, Florida, have treated military divers suffering from symptoms similar to the syndrome; U.S. Navy divers have seen Irukandji-like jellyfish in the waters off Cuba’s GuantánamoBay; swimmers have been badly stung in Hawaii; and the Gulf of Mexico and the adjoining southern U.S. Atlantic coastline have seen an increase in people being sickened by stings that almost certainly come from an irukandji or a related jellyfish.

Most jellyfish are passive; they drift up and down in the water column, or are pulled to and fro by the tides and winds. They float through the oceans devouring tiny fish and microscopic creatures that bumble into their tentacles, and are no threat to humans.

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Heres a little pic taken of the dunes in Whangamata.

Here’s a sweet little picture of the day from Port Waikato, a little town just out of Auckland. It gets real good surf sometimes.

If your looking for nice places to check out in New Zealand ask me any questions of where to go or check out one of the tourism sites.

Autumn pics. I took these last year. Just playing around.

What exactly is this world coming too? I work with about 5 people who have absolutely no life. They work all week so they can spend it all on alcohol and drugs. They don’t even like the work they do. They have absolutely no appreciation at all for nature or  the environment. They  are just totally locked into their little world. So many people are like that that I know. They are totally destroying their bodies with the toxins they throw into it everyday. I can smell the toxins on them everyday they come to work. It’s oozing out of them. I wish I could just slap them and tell them to wake up haha.   A few of them are actually really nice people but they just have no purpose for their life. Work, drugs and fishing is about it haha. I’m not trying to criticize them and put them down. They are free to do whatever they want but I would hate to live my live and then look back on it and think “damn, I lived for nothing”.

I went to Onemana today, a really nice little beach. It’s a perfect temperature out there lately.

I got a few nice pics. I like the artey little pics of nature if you can’t tell already.My favorite time of the day to go for a walk on the beach is when the sun is going down into the ocean. Unless it’s windy then I’ll stay inside.

It’s a very mode of goodness time to be with nature. Makes me feel good

Sam just posted his first post, I’m not sure if he actually read the first one I put up, but he suggested I write about us.

To make the background short, I didn’t think I’d ever get married…. then Sam came along and now I’m engaged. On some occasions I wonder what in the world got into me- or perhaps, what I’ve gotten myself into. Here’s someone from a totally different culture and country, haven’t known for very long – but well, hey- my parents and family really like him and so do I.  While there are many things we both see eye to eye, I’m sure there are countless things we won’t be seeing eye to eye with.  Despite the major cultural and racial differences between us I think and hope we’ll be all right together.

It’ll be at least a few more years before we marry because we’re both basically working students.  And while I feel that there’s so much more to do before actually settling down and marrying – I’m happy and feel lucky knowing that I have him.  I’m involved in many humanitarian projects and am loving it.  I have many other things I’m trying to run but humanitarian work is my biggest priority.

Right now he’s back home in New Zealand and I’m here, home in the Philippines.  It’ll be a long time before I see him again.  Thank God for technology!  I’ll post some pictures of where I’m from sometime soon.

I’ve been sitting here trying to think of something beautiful to post, but I just had too much lunch and can’t think properly, so I’m just going to put a simple introductory message here.

I’ve loved writing and had several journals before but I never kept an online one.. I’m quite excited about this blog.

I’m “Jocks” from the Philippines and I’ll be writing on health, pets/animals, nature, community work, posting about cooking, recipes, health related issues, and probably a few other things.  The other author, Sam, who is from New Zealand, will be posting about sports, pictures, and travel in and around New Zealand and probably other places too.

I hope you will enjoy reading our blog, which is one of our first joint ventures.