Child 'Lucky To Be Alive' After Sting From Extremely Venomous Jellyfish

A five-year-old boy stung by a deadly box jellyfish at a beach in Australia is lucky to be alive and prompt treatment with vinegar helped save him.

The boy was swimming at Casuarina Beach near Darwin, a city in the Northern Territory, when he was stung across his legs and stomach, causing him to be rushed to Royal Darwin Hospital.

Box jellyfish, so-named for their cuboid body shape, are extremely venomous, with tentacles up to 10 feet long studded with tiny poisonous darts called nematocysts.

There are around 50 or so species of box jellyfish, but the most dangerous include the Australian box jellyfish, Chironex fleckeri. They are considered by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to be the most venomous marine animals in the world, and can cause paralysis and cardiac arrest within minutes, and even death.

Vinegar is recommended for sting victims, as the acetic acid deactivates nematocysts that have not yet affected the victim, preventing them from opening and releasing venom.

"When someone is stung by a box jellyfish…the longer the tentacles are on the person's skin, the more venom they get delivered into the body," Surf Life Saving Northern Territory education manager Sam Edwards told ABC News Australia.

"So applying that vinegar as soon as possible, and getting off those tentacles quickly is really important," he said. "The longer the tentacles are left on there, the more venom that can enter the body."

Multiple people have died from box jellyfish stings, including a 14-year-old who passed away after being stung off the coast of Queensland in 2022, and a 17-year-old boy who was stung in 2021 near the town of Bamaga. However, most stings from these jellyfish result in only mild envenomation. Of 225 C. fleckeri stings recorded off the Northern Territory between 1991 to 2004, only 8 percent required hospital treatment.

The boy was helped by two lifeguards, who applied vinegar to the sting and called for an ambulance.

"It is a rare incident and unfortunately he did get stung. But because we had some off-duty lifesavers available and some vinegar to treat the box jellyfish tentacles…that's probably one of the better outcomes, that they were there," Edwards said. "If they don't have access to vinegar, it could have been a bit of a different story."

NT Health has confirmed that the boy has since recovered and been discharged from hospital. Edwards told ABC News that the boy was lucky to be alive.

These jellyfish are commonly seen in the waters off the northern coast of Australia during the wet season, from November to April, but are less common during the dry season between May and October.

"It is pretty rare for us to get box jellyfish stings inside the dry season. They do not like the cooler weather and the cooler water," Edwards said. "We do, however, experience normally a couple [of reports] every dry season."

"There are still box jellyfish that are present in the water—they're just in very low numbers," he said.

Beachgoers can protect themselves against box jellyfish stings by wearing full-body lycra suits, dive skins, or wetsuits when swimming in areas frequented by the jellies, as well as watching for warnings of sightings, and swimming only where there are lifeguards on duty.

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