Stingers

Sunday, August 29, 2004

It's tiny, almost invisible and one of the most dangerous creatures on earth. Just wait until you see the havoc it causes. And this little monster is one of ours. It's a jellyfish called irukandji that spends the summer months in the warm tropical waters up north. If that word irukandji means nothing to you, you're not alone. Not only is this the most venomous Aussie of them all — it's one of those great scientific mysteries. It's also one of our best-kept secrets. Hardly a tourist attraction, and certainly not the kind the tourist industry wants to see on national television.

INTRO — PETER OVERTON: It's tiny, almost invisible, one of the most dangerous creatures on earth. Just wait till you see the havoc it causes. And this little monster is one of ours, a jellyfish called Irukandji that spends the summer months in the warm, tropical waters up north. Now if that word Irukandji means nothing to you, you're not alone. Not only is this the most venomous Aussie of them all, it's one of those great scientific mysteries. It's also one of our best-kept secrets. Hardly a tourist attraction and certainly not the kind that the tourist industry wants to see on national television.

STORY

TERESA CARRETTE, SCIENTIST: My skin, I want to rip all my skin off. Um, pains to my stomach and my back's really hurting. My arms are killing me, both my arms.

PETER OVERTON: Teresa Carrette is going through unbelievable pain, pain beyond the reach of any drug. She's been poisoned by Australia's least-known, but most venomous creature.

TERESA CARRETTE: My face, I just want to rip all my skin off, it's driving me nuts.

PETER OVERTON: It's the Irukandji jellyfish — so small it's almost invisible, but within its tail a toxin that can kill.

LISA GERSHWIN, MARINE BIOLOGIST: It's incredibly powerful. What it does to the human body is unbelievable. To somebody watching it, you just can't imagine that the body can survive going through that.

PETER OVERTON: Irukandji were first discovered in Australia's tropical north more than 50 years ago. But remarkably, it's only now that their deadly potential is being understood. They're tiny, about the size of a fingernail, and they're equipped with a lethal sting.

MACHAEL CARLSON: I don't think that he even saw what hit him. I mean, they're so small and they're almost invisible in the water.

PETER OVERTON: It was Easter Sunday two years ago and American businessman Robert King was fulfilling a lifelong dream — snorkelling on the Great Barrier Reef. But within minutes of jumping into the waters off Opal Reef, he was strung by an Irukandji. In incredible pain, Robert was rushed to Townsville Hospital, his blood pressure so high that he suffered a brain haemorrhage. By the time his partner Machael Carlson arrived in Australia, Robert was in a coma. Machael spent the next two weeks by his side, but Robert never regained consciousness.

MACHAEL CARLSON: By 1.30 they had done the last CAT scan they did and MRI and his brain had stopped functioning. I didn't want that death to go in vain. I wanted ... I wanted it to stand for something. I didn't think that more people should die from a jellyfish that nobody knew about.

PETER OVERTON: Robert King was the second confirmed death from Irukandji poisoning in Australia, but scientists believe the real figure is higher. This, after all, is one of the world's most toxic species.

LISA GERSHWIN: You've got your range of nasties. You've got your spiders and snakes and your death adders and your taipans and your funnel webs and all these nasties and the box jelly is at the top of the heap of the nasties. It's incredibly, incredibly venomous. The Irukandji, it's way up there. It's so far up above. It kicks the box jelly's butt.

PETER OVERTON: Marine biologist Lisa Gershwin has been studying the Irukandji for the past six years.

LISA GERSHWIN: They have well developed eyes with lenses and retinas and corneas and we know experimentally that they can see but they have no brain and that just blows my mind. I don't understand how they do that, but I'm fascinated by it.

PETER OVERTON: Because we know so little about the Irukandji, Lisa fears cases of death or injury are going undiagnosed.

LISA GERSHWIN: It mimics a heart attack, it mimics maybe a stroke, it mimics all kinds of things and it doesn't leave a mark on the body. So the chances of diagnosing an Irukandji related death are very slim. I think we all do recognise that it's very likely that there have been more deaths.

PETER OVERTON: That have been put down to heart attack, strokes...

LISA GERSHWIN: Absolutely, absolutely.

PETER OVERTON: ...or drowning.

LISA GERSHWIN: Or drowning, yeah, absolutely.

DR PAUL CULLEN, TRAUMA SPECIALIST: The problem that we've got with Irukandji syndrome is that there's probably at least half a dozen species of animal that can cause it. We don't even know what they are yet and we don't know how similar their venoms are. So the question is what do you actually create your anti-venom to?

PETER OVERTON: Dr Paul Cullen is a trauma specialist based in Cairns. He says just as scientists struggle to understand the Irukandji, doctors find it very difficult to treat its victims.

DR PAUL CULLEN: I have many memories of people coming in in severe pain and greatly distressed and I think that's the image that sticks in your mind and it's pain that's very difficult to control.

PETER OVERTON: How many victims do you treat a year?

DR PAUL CULLEN: That's one of the very interesting things about it — it varies a lot and it ranges from about 30 up to a peak of 120, or almost 120 which is what we saw a couple of years ago which is the worst ever season we've ever seen.

PETER OVERTON: From Broome to Bundaberg, they inhabit the seductive waters of our tropical north. Australia's tourist playground brings in big money and that makes the Irukandji a very sensitive issue. With netting offering little protection, lifeguards regularly sweep some of our most popular beaches, closing them in the middle of summer, sometimes for weeks at a time. In the few days that I've been up here, so many people have told me that I have more chance of being killed in a car crash heading to the beach than I do by an Irukandji. Now that's absolutely true. But this is more than a debate about public health, it's about money, big money. Authorities estimate that after the two confirmed deaths, tourism in Far North Queensland lost $65 million. Little wonder then that stingers are such a touchy subject.

RICHARD FITZPATRICK, SCIENTIST: We've been down here working on the beaches filming and also doing research on them and they had local tourist operators, owners of apartments and stuff like that come down and physically abuse us. "You guys are scaring tourists away from here. Get out of here", you know, "go somewhere else."

PETER OVERTON: Richard Fitzpatrick has faced more than the hostility of local tourist operators. He's a scientist and, while researching the jellyfish, Richard has felt the pain of an Irukandji sting.

RICHARD FITZPATRICK: To me, the symptoms I had, it was like a cricket bat bashing against your back, against your kidneys constantly and then having a hot knife randomly jab throughout your body.

PETER OVERTON: Richard Fitzpatrick was lucky — he recovered quickly — but not so his colleagues Jamie Seymour and Teresa Carrette.

JAMIE SEYMOUR, SCIENTIST: The only place in my body that was uncovered was just around my lips up the side just here, duck dive from the surface and caught one right across the top, right across the face through here.

PETER OVERTON: They, too, were scientists at the forefront of Irukandji research in Australia.

TERESA CARRETTE: My face is just driving me nuts.

JAMIE SEYMOUR: Pain's starting to come back again. Overall pain.

PETER OVERTON: They know all the dangers, they take all the precautions, but even the professionals get stung. Richard was there to film them as they struggled to cope with the Irukandji toxin.

RICHARD FITZPATRICK: You know, watching Jamie and Teresa in hospital that night was just absolutely frightening. I mean, Jamie was bad but Teresa was really bad and, you know, they had pumped her full of morphine as much as she could possibly handle and, um, like the pain just wasn't dropping, it just wasn't taking the edge off the pain. And that was almost … that was over 24 hours, almost 48 hours she was like that. It was really frightening, because you've got the doctors there and no-one knew what to do with her.

PETER OVERTON: And the politics surrounding Irukandji can be just as poisonous as its sting. Jamie Seymour agreed to speak to 60 Minutes, but at the last minute he pulled out, saying the issue was so sensitive that talking could cost him scarce research dollars and possibly his job.

PETER OVERTON: Are you frightened of these little creatures?

LISA GERSHWIN: I am. I respect them very much.

PETER OVERTON: Lisa Gershwin has offered to take me on one of her research trips and show me where the Irukandji jellyfish live.

LISA GERSHWIN: We just have to make sure that every possible place that an Irukandji can possibly get in contact with your skin is sealed up. All it takes is just a touch of venom and it makes you bloody sick and, as we know, it can kill.

PETER OVERTON: This pest is at its worst when the weather is at its best — clear skies, smooth seas, a light northerly breeze, conditions that scientists say draw the Irukandji closer to the coast.

PETER OVERTON: How many Irukandjis do you think are out there?

LISA GERSHWIN: There's at least seven that I'm confident are Irukandji-producing species. Of those, this one, Carukia barnesi, is the only one that's currently named and classified. These other six, we know nothing about them. They don't even have names yet.

PETER OVERTON: Back in her Townsville lab, Lisa is now building a collection of Irukandji, slowly piecing together vital information. It's expensive work that attracts little funding, but she's being helped by an unlikely donor, Machael Carlson, the partner of Robert King.

MACHAEL CARLSON: I wanted to raise money so that I could support that research, so that more people wouldn't be killed, you know, that more people wouldn't die.

PETER OVERTON: Lisa Gershwin believes she's discovered the particular species of Irukandji that killed Robert.

LISA GERSHWIN: The way that we came to that conclusion was in matching up the stinging cells that were retrieved from Bob's clothing.

PETER OVERTON: But more important for Machael is the knowledge that his death helped save others.

MACHAEL CARLSON: Bob was an organ donor and so he actually saved four lives here in Australia and ... you know, to me, he's a hero. To me, even in his death he was still caring about people.

PETER OVERTON: In his memory, Machael Carlson has given more than $15,000 to researching the Irukandji — a not insignificant amount considering that Australia's total research funding for this deadly jellyfish is just $500,000 and that, say the people who know best, is simply not good enough.

LISA GERSHWIN: It's not about banging drums for more money. It's about protecting people from dying. It's about protecting people from suffering the pain and the illness that comes with it. It's really terrible. We don't know anything about their ecology, we don't know anything about their venoms, we don't know how they reproduce, we don't know anything about them.

PETER OVERTON: Do you prescribe to this argument that yes, there's only been two documented deaths from Irukandji syndrome, but have there been more that have been put down to other causes?

LISA GERSHWIN: I believe there have been more. I think most of us working with Irukandjis do believe there have been more. Denying it isn't going to change the fact. Irukandji is real, Irukandji can kill people. We've got to get it right and we've got to get it right soon.

Reporter: Peter Overton
Producer: Nick Greenaway