Beware the Man-of-War

The sunny Miami Beach morning seemed perfect for a swim. But from his lookout perch, Lifeguard Al Moore spotted some purplish blobs--Portuguese men-of-war were drifting shoreward. Moore chalked up a warning on a big blackboard at the Biltmore Terrace Hotel: "Danger--No Ocean Bathing Today."

Joseph C. Goodman, 73, a retired businessman from Stamford, Conn., either did not read or did not heed the warning. "He came out of the water staggering and falling," says Moore, "and he had tentacles all over his chest and his arms and legs." The third time he fell, Goodman was unconscious. Moore tried mouth-to-mouth breathing while a fellow guest, Dr. Frank Valone of Rome, N.Y., kept up closed-chest massage. Nothing worked.

Barbed Beads. Thus Joseph Goodman became the first American known to have died from man-of-war stings. Though he had had coronary artery disease, there was no sign that he had suddenly had a heart attack. Dr. Valone thinks that Goodman died of shock brought on by the man-of-war's poison.

The wonder is that there are not many more such deaths, for thousands of people are stung every year, some of them severely. In recent weeks, the sting rate got up to 400 or more a day in southeast Florida. Bulldozers buried a mass of man-of-war bodies daily, but so many more came in that some of the most popular beaches had to be closed.

Many other jellyfish have stings, but those of the Physalia group secrete a nerve poison almost as virulent as the king cobra's venom. The abundant Caribbean form, physalia, is rarely more than eight inches across its mauve, iridescent, jellylike body, but it has scores of tentacles up to 50 ft. or even 100 ft. long. These tentacles are like strings of microscopic beads, containing tiny poison cells consisting of a hollow, coiled thread with a barb on the end.

Instant Poison. "When it is irritated," says the University of Miami's Zoologist Charles E. Lane, "the cell extends the hollow thread, and when the barb has penetrated the skin, it squeezes a tiny drop of poison the length of the tube." The instant a tentacle touches a bather, hundreds of cells go into action in a fraction of a second.

Most victims step on the tentacles of a dying man-of-war washed up on the beach, and they get what feels like a scorpion sting. Several tentacles drawn across the legs feel like a lashing with red-hot wires, and may throw a healthy adult into shock by suddenly dropping his blood pressure. The extreme pain may last an hour, and dull pain for a couple of hours more. The welts persist for up to three months.

The only treatment is to ease the pain, usually with external applications of alcohol. The only protection against Portuguese men-of-war is to keep away from them. In March and early April, when myriads of the purplish jellyfish are blown ashore by easterly winds, avoiding them is not always easy for Florida swimmers.

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