E is back from a holiday in England (cold and wet, I imagine) so we made a plan for an early morning swim and breakfast at South Beach. I took my own packed breakfast: if I eat any more of their delicious pancakes I’ll be enormous!
The water was lovely- at first! Then C felt something on her arm. All around us, other people were stopping in their tracks and examining their limbs. Oh no, there was a plague of stingers! These are small underwater creatures whose defence mechanism is long stinging tails that brush against you, leaving nasty welts. For some people, a bad attack can be fatal.
I noticed two women catching them in a red washing up bowl so I went to talk to them. They were walking up and down in the shallows and taking any captured stingers to be buried alive in the sand. They had already eliminated 35 and counting. They told me that the recent hot weather had brought them all into the bay. I have never seen them here before, though I have been attacked on Rottnest. It seems an impossible task to try to get rid of them, one by one.
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| This one has beached itself. |
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| Stinger in the bowl. Another on Instagram. |
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| Do I look fat in that? |
Later on the TV news, we heard that the warm water had caused a toxic algal bloom at Mullaloo Beach and the beach has been closed. Summer in Perth is not without its dangers.
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