Diving Doc: Preventing and Treating Coral Scrapes

Scuba diving is traditionally a look, don't touch kind of sport. But even careful divers can inadvertently run into trouble. By far the most common diving injury is the common scrape, usually from coral.

Irritations often occur as a result of a brush with coral or sponges. Coral scrapes can be painful and sometimes difficult to heal because the living organisms in the coral can get into the wound and cause infections. Contact with a sponge can leave irritating fibers in the skin, producing an itching rash that can range from mild to severe, possibly with pain and blistering.

Even if you're careful, it's likely you'll come into contact with coral someday. If and when, here's what to do:

1. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Makes sure your body is covered, even if just by a dive skin, and wear gloves where allowed.

2. Regularly irrigate a scrape with copious amounts of vinegar over a period of about 30 minutes.

3. Apply triple-antibiotic to the wound twice a day for a couple of days.

4. Scrapes can become infected even with proper initial care. Watch for hotness to the touch, redness or red streaks around the site, swelling, discharge of pus, or fever. If you see them, contact a doctor.

5. Fragments of coral sometimes become lodged beneath the skin and the body mounts a prolonged allergic reaction to them. In some cases, debridement is required to resolve the reaction.

Even in the absence of embedded coral remnants, it is not unusual for a marked hypersensitivity response to a coral injury to continue for three to four weeks before significantly improving. Sometimes the lesion will resolve, then return.

If a scrape doesn't substantially resolve within a month, or gets worse, you should consult a dermatologist.

Editor's Note: Even innocent injuries can turn deadly if you have an allergic or severe reaction. After any accident, watch for severe swelling, dizziness, blurred vision, breathing difficulties, weakness, muscle pain, cold sweat and a rapid heartbeat. If any occur, call 911 (or DAN's emergency hotline 919-684-4DAN if no emergency services are available) immediately. Injectible epinephrine can help calm allergic reactions. CPR may be necessary until help arrives.

Thanks to Doc Vikingo has been scuba certified for more than 35 years and has dived all over the world. He is a practising doctor in the Baltimore/Washington D.C. area and has held faculty positions at several major hospitals, including Johns Hopkins. With an interest in diving medicine, he serves as administrator at Scuba Clinic Online.

Kathy Dowsett

www.kirkscubagear.com

Sea Urchins- Some Sea Urchins Have Venomous Spines

Thanks Natalie for this story

Sea Urchins- Some Sea Urchins Have Venomous Spines:


Don’t worry, a rabid sea urchin is not going to leap off the reef and fling spines at you. Sea urchins are non-aggressive and relatively slow-moving. Still, sea urchin injuries are not unusual. Divers can easily become distracted and brush against one of these delicate creatures.

Sea Urchins Are Everywhere:


Sea urchin injuries are common because sea urchins are common. Divers encounter sea urchins in almost every body of salt water, including all of the world’s oceans. Rocky shores and shallow, sandy areas are some of the sea urchin’s favorite habitats. Shore divers need to take care to avoid steeping on urchins when wading shallow water.



Sea urchins are also found on coral reefs. Urchins hide in the reef’s crevices during the daytime. At night, they wander out to feed on floating food particles and algae. While divers can occasionally find sea urchins during the day, night divers in particular should be careful not to accidentally touch urchins which are more exposed in the nighttime.

Sea Urchins Have Two Defense Mechanisms:


Like most aquatic life injuries, sea urchin injuries are caused by the animal trying to defend itself. A sea urchin’s spines are its first line of defense. The length and sharpness of an urchin’s spines vary from species to species. Some species have stubby, blunt spines, while other species have long, sharp, venom-filled spines. Razor sharp spines can easily pierce even a thick wetsuit and lodge deep in a diver’s skin.


Many urchin species, such as the purple sea urchin, have an additional defense mechanism called the pedicellarines. The pedicellarines are tiny, jaw-like structures that can clasp onto a diver’s skin and inject a painful poison. The pedicellarines are nestled down between the urchin’s spines, and are difficult for a diver to contact unless he has already impaled himself on the urchin’s spines.

In extreme cases, such as numerous puncture wounds, the relatively small amount of venom from spines and pedicellarines can accumulate to cause severe muscle spasms, faintness, difficulty breathing, and death.

Sea Urchin Stings Are Avoidable

The best way for divers to avoid touching sea urchins is to maintain good awareness of their surroundings. Divers should control their buoyancy to stay at least a few feet from coral, which may conceal urchins in its crevices. Divers should also watch out for protruding spines in the sand, as many sea urchins bury themselves. Sea urchin stings frequently happen when a diver becomes distracted (e.g. chases a turtle for a photo) and inadvertently touches an urchin.

Sometimes, conditions make it hard to see urchins to avoid touching them. One example would be a rough shore entry though waves. Thick-soles diving booties, gloves, and thick wetsuits may provide some level of protection. However, long and sharp spines may still be able to pierce thick neoprene. If a shore entry has many urchins, pick a different dive site.

First Aid for Sea Urchin Stings

Urinating on a sea urchin sting will not help, so save yourself the embarrassment. As there are two sources of injury from sea urchins, the spines and the poisonous pedicellarines, both need to be dealt with.

Spines: A sea urchin’s spines can inject painful venom. Soaking the area in hot water (110-130˚F) for up to an hour and a half can break down the venom and help to alleviate the pain. Spines need to be removed carefully with tweezers. Fragile spines may be crushed or broken while under the skin. If a spine can not be easily removed, is near a joint, or is close to delicate nerves and blood vessels in the hands or feet, it is best to have it surgically removed by a doctor. Dark colored spines dye the skin so that it appears that a spine remains. This coloration should disappear within 2 days, if not, see a doctor to remove the spine.

Pedicellarines: Urchin's pedicellarines (the poisonous clasping mechanisms hidden between some urchin’s spines) can be removed by shaving the area with shaving cream and a razor.

After the removal of spines and pedicellarines, the injured area should be washed with soap and rinsed with fresh water. Topical antibiotic creams may be applied, and analgesics can be taken for the pain.

As with any aquatic life injury, patients should be monitored for signs of infections or allergies, such as chest pain or difficulty breathing. A doctor should be contacted immediately if either is observed.

Kathy Dowsett

www.kirkscubagear.com

Do You Practice Your Scuba Diver's Skills To Keep Them Sharp?

No law requires that scuba divers become skillful at the sport of diving.

Once a diver gets that basic level open water certification nothing says you need any further training for the rest of your life.

No professional dive operation will fill your scuba tank without seeing your certification card. At the same time no dive operation expects to see certification levels beyond the first training stage of scuba.

So why should you bother to get more training, or worry about getting better at your scuba skills, once you have that basic open water certification card? After all, your basic card is good for life. It shows everyone who's interested that you are a certified scuba diver.

That card doesn't make you a skilled scuba diver though.

If you don't practice your observation skills you risk losing sight of your dive buddy. You won't know, and can't help, if that buddy gets into trouble during the dive.

And you can't get help from a buddy that's out of sight, and unable to see when you get into trouble yourself.

I know of one diver whose octopus hose tangled under a training platform as she carved a pumpkin one time. She had no idea of the entrapment. Fortunately a pair of divers happened along, noticed her entangled hose, and set it free. She finished carving her pumpkin, and returned safely to the dock.

Without help, and low on air after carving a pumpkin, she faced a potential life-threatening situation.

If you don't practice your breathing techniques you enjoy the underwater world a lot less. You run out of air so fast that you barely get to diving depth before you must return to the surface, and end your dive.

Here again is a situation that not only negatively affects your diving fun, but also destroys the pleasure, and disappoints, other scuba divers. When you burn through your air like a space shuttle sucking rocket fuel you force your buddy to quit the dive early too. Safety demands that your buddy return to the surface when you do.

Ever experience a short dive because you or your dive buddy ran out of air too fast? How did you feel when your buddy signaled a low air condition, after 20 or so minutes into the dive? How did you feel when you saw the look on your buddy's face after you made him quit diving 30-minutes earlier than he expected?

When you fail to sharpen your skill of buoyancy control you risk destroying the underwater pleasure of all scuba divers.

Poor buoyancy control causes you to bounce all over the place during your dive. That takes away from your buddy when he must keep an eye on you in case of a sudden dangerous ascent. If your buddy is a conscientious diver he also must watch to make sure you don't slam into the reef during uncontrolled plunges.

And of course every time you do plunge into the reef you kill coral. That means it won't be there for future scuba divers to study.

Scuba training courses above the basic open water level give you more information, and help you improve your diving skills by showing you how to practice for improvement. Your basic course is merely a door that opens the way to learning this underwater sport.

Don't just step through that door, and decide you've completed your training. Do us all a favor, including yourself, and keep learning your scuba diver's skills. And practice them to keep yourself at expert skill level.


Joe Jackson is a PADI certified dive master who just enjoys being wet. His eBook, "How To Save Air While Scuba Diving" offers methods for conserving scuba air. Get details at: Sip Your Air.



Kathy Dowsett

www.kirkscubagear.com