Aussie swimmer's close brush with death after stingray narrowly misses her artery in rare attack
A volunteer marine researcher has narrowly escaped with her life after an stingray barb missed her artery in a rare attack.
Pam Bennett, 68, was part of a team recently snorkelling 50metres offshore at Treasure Cove on South Australia 's Southern Yorke Peninsula.
Ms Bennett, a local, had been studying the effects of an algae bloom on the water's wildlife and the unusual number of fish found dead along the coastline.
She noticed she was above an eagle ray and even though she 'quickly swam out of the way', a 16cm-long barb pierced her arm.
'I actually didn't see that stingray - he had come from behind, I think. He had actually attacked,' she told the ABC.
'That's not their normal behaviour.'
A second eagle ray attempted to lash out at another member of the group, Dr Mike Bossley, but it missed its target.
Ms Bennett recalled feeling as though she'd been attacked by a dog as her teammates floated her to shore.
'I kind of expected them to take the wetsuit off and see teeth marks,' she said.
The 68-year-old managed to scale a cliff back to the roadside and she was taken to Yorketown Hospital for an x-ray.
Doctors discovered the full barb had been lodged in Ms Bennett's arm, missing her brachial artery.
A severed brachial artery can cause a person to fall unconscious is just 15 seconds and death in 90 seconds.
Both she and Dr Bossley believe the unusually aggressive stingrays attacked them due to the ongoing algae bloom.
In the past two months several sharks, stingrays, octopuses and fish have washed onto South Australian beaches.
It's believed the spike in deaths has been caused by the algae sticking to the marine life and limiting their oxygen intake.
Ms Bennett was later flown to Adelaide to undergo surgery to remove the large barb.
She told Nine News on Tuesday she is recovering well.
'I've got a sore arm, that's all,' she said.
Dr Bossley warned that while the attack was uncharacteristic of stingrays, similar incidents could occur if the algae continues to spread.
'The only thing that will help is if we get a decent storm coming in from the south-west, which will break up the bloom and disperse it,' he said.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Sun
30 minutes ago
- The Sun
Brit backpacker, 24, faces 20 years in jail after ‘mowing down dad-of-two on e-scooter following six-hour pub session'
A BRITISH backpacker is facing 20 years behind bars after allegedly ploughing into a dad-of-two with a hired e-scooter while more than three times the drink-drive limit. Alicia Kemp, 24, was denied bail in an Australian court after being charged over the horror smash that left 51-year-old Thanh Phan with fatal head injuries. 2 2 The holidaymaker is accused of striking Phan from behind while speeding down a footpath in Perth with a friend on board as a passenger. The Brit had also been drinking for six hours before the crash, reports The Sydney Morning Herald. Prosecutors said Kemp had a blood alcohol content of 0.158 when she 'careered into his back' at up to 25km/h as the dad stood at a crossing on Saturday night. The court heard walkers had to 'take evasive action' to avoid Kemp's 'inexplicably dangerous' riding, which was captured on CCTV. Her 26-year-old passenger also suffered a fractured skull and broken nose. Kemp, who was in Australia on a four-month tourist visa with her partner, had been working at Durty Nelly's Irish Pub in Perth. She had been drinking with a friend from 2.30pm before they hired the e-scooter just before 8.30pm. Her bail bid was rejected after a magistrate ruled she posed too great a flight risk. 'It's a very difficult decision for the court to make,' the magistrate said. 'The temptation might be that [she] won't return… I can't manage that risk.' Brit facing death penalty in coke smuggling plot all smiles after court rant Phan's devastated family described him as a 'beloved husband, father of two, brother, and dear friend', and are now calling for a crackdown on e-scooter safety laws. 'We also call for a review of the governance and safety regulations surrounding hired e-scooters to help prevent further serious incidents that put lives at risk,' they said in a statement. In a statement released through police, Phan's grieving family pleaded for privacy and called on authorities to tighten e-scooter hire regulations. 'We also call for a review of the governance and safety regulations surrounding hired e-scooters to help prevent further serious incidents that put lives at risk,' they said. Phan's loved ones described him as a 'beloved husband, father of two, brother, and dear friend,' and have urged policymakers to curb the growing number of e-scooter incidents in Perth's Central Business District. Local Councillor Anita Fong, who has been campaigning for stricter e-scooter rules, said yesterday that the accident underlined the urgent need for comprehensive safety measures. 'We have seen too many near-misses and hospitalisations in recent months,' Fong stated. 'This tragedy should serve as a wake-up call.' Kemp remains in custody on remand and is due back in court on July 15. Police prosecutors argued that Kemp's status as a foreign tourist working in Perth made her a flight risk, and highlighted the severity of her charges. Western Australian police have confirmed they will continue to investigate whether any additional offences, including possible public nuisance charges, could be laid against Kemp. Meanwhile, e-scooter hire companies in the city are already feeling pressure to introduce speed limiters and more rigorous ID checks after dark.
The Independent
42 minutes ago
- The Independent
Major breakthrough in battle for HIV cure ‘previously thought impossible'
Scientists have found a breakthrough in the search for a cure for HIV, after research uncovered a development 'previously thought impossible'. HIV can 'hide' itself in white blood cells, meaning the immune system and treatment drugs are unable to find and tackle them. However, researchers at the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity in Melbourne have now found a way to force the virus out of some human cells it was hiding within. This could potentially allow the immune system or drugs to identify the virus and clear it, meaning researchers are one step closer to a cure. Dr Paula Cevaal, research fellow at the Doherty Institute and co-first author of the study published in Nature Communications, told The Guardian that delivering mRNA to the cells was 'previously thought impossible', as they did not take up the LNPs used to carry it. But the team then developed a new type of lipid nanoparticles (LNP), which allowed mRNA technology to be delivered to the blood cells. The mRNA then instructs the cells to reveal the virus. She told the paper that the team initially thought the results were 'too good to be true', adding that they hoped the new nanoparticle design could be a 'new pathway to an HIV cure'. 'We sent her back into the lab to repeat it, and she came back the next week with results that were equally good,' she said. 'So we had to believe it. And of course, since then, we've repeated it many, many, many more times. 'We were overwhelmed by how [much of a] night and day difference it was – from not working before, and then all of a sudden it was working. And all of us were just sitting gasping like, 'wow'.' She added: 'In the field of biomedicine, many things eventually don't make it into the clinic – that is the unfortunate truth; I don't want to paint a prettier picture than what is the reality, 'But in terms of specifically the field of HIV cure, we have never seen anything close to as good as what we are seeing, in terms of how well we are able to reveal this virus. 'So from that point of view, we're very hopeful that we are also able to see this type of response in an animal, and that we could eventually do this in humans.' The study was done using cells donated by HIV patients. More research will now have to be done to see if the steps taken to reveal the virus will result in the body's immune system will be able to tackle it. It will likely take years of further safety testing before the new discovery could be used in human trials.
The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
Erin Patterson denies knowingly preparing death cap mushrooms in dehydrator she later dumped
Erin Patterson, the 50-year-old Australian woman accused of killing her relatives with death cap mushrooms, told the court on Thursday that she did not knowingly dehydrate deadly death cap mushrooms or attempt to destroy evidence following the fatal lunch she served to her former in-laws. Ms Patterson is charged with deliberately serving death cap mushrooms to her estranged husband's parents Don and Gail Patterson, Gail's sister, Heather Wilkinson, and Heather's husband Ian during a lunch at her home in Leongatha, Victoria. Ian Wilkinson was the only guest to survive after spending days in hospital. Ms Patterson has pleaded not guilty to murder. During Thursday's trial proceedings, Ms Patterson was shown a photograph of a food dehydrator found at a rubbish tip, which she acknowledged was likely hers. The court heard that fingerprint analysis confirmed her prints were on the device. Earlier, she told the court that she disposed of the food dehydrator after learning her lunch might have fatally poisoned her former in-laws. 'I was scared that they would blame me for it, for making everyone sick. And I was scared they would remove the children,' she said on Wednesday, referring to child welfare department workers. She had disposed of the dehydrator, she said, because she thought there might be 'evidence of foraged mushrooms in there'. On Thursday, the prosecution showed her the picture of the food dehydrator and asked her if it was hers. She said: 'Unless somebody else put in a dehydrator as well as me, I presume this is the one I put in.' The chief prosecutor, Nanette Rogers SC suggested to Ms Patterson that she had been 'keen' to dispose of the dehydrator because it had been used to dry death cap mushrooms. 'No, I didn't know they'd been in it,' she replied. She had earlier testified that she became interested in wild mushroom foraging during the Covid lockdown. Ms Patterson maintained that she did not know the mushrooms were toxic. She also denied that a photo of sliced mushrooms on a dehydrator tray was death cap mushrooms she had picked. Shown a series of images retrieved from a Samsung tablet's Google Photos cache, Ms Patterson said they were 'likely' taken by her but added that 'I only phrase it that way [because] I don't have a specific memory of taking the photo'. The crown prosecutor, Dr Rogers, pointed to expert testimony from mycologist Dr Tom May, who said one image was 'consistent with Amanita Phalloides (death cap mushrooms)'. Dr Rogers claimed the photo, last modified on 4 May 2023, showed mushrooms Ms Patterson collected in Loch after spotting them on the iNaturalist app. 'That is not correct,' Ms Patterson replied. When Rogers suggested she was weighing the mushrooms to 'calculate the lethal dose', Ms Patterson responded: 'Disagree.' On Tuesday, she had told the court she had added dried mushrooms from her pantry to the beef wellington that she served her in-laws, which might have included foraged wild mushrooms. 'I tasted it a few times and it seemed bland to me, so I decided to put the dried mushrooms in the pantry,' she said earlier. 'At the time, I believed it was just the mushrooms I got from the grocer in Melbourne. Now I think there was the possibility there were foraged ones in there as well.' Prosecutors allege Ms Patterson fabricated a cancer diagnosis to lure her four lunch guests to her home for the lunch. Messages she sent to her in-laws, Don and Gail Patterson, suggested she had undergone tests for a lump and hinted at serious news she would share in person. However, police reviewed her 2023 medical records and found no evidence of an MRI, biopsy, or cancer diagnosis. She told the court earlier: 'I had come to the conclusion that I wanted to do something, for once and for all about my weight and my poor eating habits. So I was planning to have gastric bypass surgery and so I remember thinking I didn't want to tell anybody what I was going to have done,' she said. 'I was really embarrassed about it, so I thought perhaps letting them believe I had some serious issue that needed treatment might mean they'd be able to help me with the logistics around the kids and I wouldn't have to tell them the real reason.' On Thursday, Dr Rogers told the accused: 'I suggest that you never thought you would have to account for this lie of having cancer, because you thought that the lunch guests would die and your lie would never be found out.' Ms Patterson replied: 'That's not true.'
