FLORIDA (23 May 2001) -- "I'm telling you, I wish I knew over the weekend, what I know now," said Ce Ce Schumacher. Schumacher and her family spent Mother's Day on Jensen Beach here on Sunday, enjoying a family picnic, while her grandchildren Elise and Nicole Walsh splashed in the waves. "We spent all afternoon there. They were in and out of the water, having a great time," Schumacher said. But three hours later, what had been an idyllic afternoon turned sour, when the children began to exhibit patches of itchy red rashes. Several hours after that, their parents, Andrea and Harry Walsh, rushed them to the hospital with high fevers and still more of the blotchy red marks. The cause of their uncomfortable, sleep-disrupting condition, the girls' parents were told, was "sea lice," and it turns out, their experience, wasn't an isolated case. "It seems to have become something of a problem just in the past week," said Bob Washam, environmental health director for the Martin County Health Department. "But we have begun to get calls about it, and these rashes are appearing on bathers at all of our beaches." "Without exaggeration, I believe this is the worst outbreak I've seen in my 20 years with the Martin County Health Department," Washam said. The term "sea lice" is actually something of a misnomer. The term apparently originated during the 1950s and has been used by coastal residents ever since, Washam said. What are being called "lice" are actually the tiny, free-floating larvae of the Linuche unquiculata, more commonly known as the "thimble jellyfish." "Funnily enough, despite records on these periodic outbreaks stretching back to the early 1900s, the discovery of what was causing them occurred only very recently," Washam said. | | It was in 1992 that marine biologists at the University of Miami first analyzed water samples collected during the periods when swimmers' complaints increased. Those samples contained large numbers of cnidarian larvae. Cnidarians are a group of marine animals that contain stinging structures known as nematocysts, and include jellyfish, corals, sea anemones, hydroids, Portuguese man-of-wars and thimble jellyfish. Somewhat strangely, becoming a victim is a hit or is proposition. Some people, like Washam, can spend numerous hours swimming at the beach and never get the rash. "People I'll go with though, will get quite a bit of it," he said. Washam said the larvae are about the size of a speck of finely ground black pepper, and the rashes are caused by the jellyfish injecting a mild toxin into the victim's skin. "Most of the time, you can't even feel the sting, although some people do report a mild tingling in the area where a rash later appears," he said. The larvae typically attach themselves to people's swimwear and rashes show up in the areas they covered within about four hours. Other symptoms, including fever, headache, and nausea appear within 24 hours, Washam said. "In most cases, these are things that can be and are frequently treated at home," he said. "Some people, however, do experience an allergic reaction to the sting and experience difficulty breathing or swallowing. Those people definitely should seek medical attention," Washam said. SOURCE - Scripps News Service |
