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| Journal of the New Zealand Medical Association, 08-September-2006, Vol 119 No 1241 |
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[full text] [PDF] Death due to a stingray barb piercing the heart: a New Zealand case from 1939
AbstractThe tragic recent death of TV personality and wildlife conservationist Steve Irwin (who died after being struck in the chest by the barb of a stingray on the Great Barrier Reef) has focussed our attention on his wonderful achievements and legacy as well as the potential (though rare) danger posed by stingrays. It appears that while injuries (usually to the arms or legs of fishermen and bathers) happen occasionally in New Zealand and worldwide, fatalities are extremely rare and unfortunate. There has been some speculation (including "none" and "possibly around 1900") about whether anyone has been killed by a stingray before in New Zealand. To the best of our knowledge there has only been one recorded fatality in New Zealand waters. It is described here in a case report written by Dr JB Liggins entitled An Unusual Bathing Fatality from the NZMJ library archives. It was recently brought to our attention by a journalist researching human deaths due to living creatures in New Zealand. The case report describes how a young woman wading at a beach near Thames in the summer of 1938/39 stepped on a large stingray lying in relatively shallow water. The stingray's barb gashed her thigh which caused her to fall on the stingray and receive another barb wound in her chest, which unfortunately led to her death soon afterwards as the post mortem later revealed that the barb had transfixed the heart causing haemorrhage. In his closing comments, Dr Liggins warns, "in common with most fish, a stingray will always swim away if disturbed. It has never been known to attack a person as does a shark, but will defend itself very ably if it cannot escape. This case shows that there is need for care in bathing on our northern beaches, which are infested with stingrays. In such cases as do occur of injury by stingray barbs, the wounds are intensely painful and particularly prone to become infected."
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