Back in December when I went to Hawai’i, I did something really stupid. I wasn’t paying attention while taking underwater photos, and got stung by a sea urchin.
How it Happened
I was an idiot. One of the most important things to do when scuba diving is to pay attention to your surroundings. And sea urchins don’t jump out and sting people, so this was obviously on me.
But the reason I wasn’t paying attention to my surroundings is kind of funny. I saw a sea urchin crab, which lives exclusively in the anuses of sea urchins. I had seen plenty on this trip, but this particular one was almost all the way out of its sea urchin butthole home. This is pretty unusual – typically they’re tucked pretty deep in the hole! I was so excited at finding this crab that I wanted to photograph it and write an episode of What’s in That Hole? about it. So I settled down in the sand, right on top of another urchin. Ouch!
The urchin and sea urchin crab I was photographing.
The injury was on my right thigh, right above my knee. It wasn’t just one or two spines – it was a pretty big chunk of them. Fortunately I was wearing a wetsuit, and a number of spines didn’t make it through the neoprene to my leg. But a number did.
I don’t have a picture of the spines in my leg, because the first reaction is to try to get the stinging things out of you. My dive guide and I did our best to remove spines, but the problem with sea urchin spines is that they are very brittle. Rather than come out when you pull, they just break off. This leaves the ends of the spines under your skin.
Photos of the Injury
We were only about half an hour into the dive, and though my leg hurt it wasn’t unbearable, so I continued the dive for another 30 minutes or so.
Once we were back on the boat I took off my wetsuit to see the damage. Here’s what it looked like:
Right after finishing the dive. The bruise is a separate injury.
When I looked at my leg, I learned something new. I did not realize that urchin stings leave a blue spot when they pierce your skin. But they can and do, and every blue spot on my leg indicates where a spine got in my leg.
That first photo was at 1:15 pm. At 4:40 pm it looked like this:
The injury after a few hours.
And at 7:00 pm it looked like this:
After 6 hours.
By the next morning at 7:30, most of the ink had dissipated. It still hurt like hell though.
The next morning
Here’s a picture from the evening on the day after the injury.
The next evening
The ink was pretty much gone by then. And finally, one from the morning two days after the injury:
2 days later.
All the ink was gone, but there were still bumps at each injury point – the ends of the spines were still under my skin. It looked like this for 2-3 weeks. And it was still very sore to the touch for about a week after getting stung.
What I Learned
To summarize, here’s what I learned from this experience:
- Pay attention to your surroundings when diving! No matter what cool thing you’re photographing.
- Sea urchin stings hurt for about a week (at least this species). The pain is intense for a few minutes but the searing pain goes away pretty quickly. If you hit the urchin hard enough, the ends of the spines embed in your flesh and you can’t get them out. If they’re in your muscle this can make walking/running/etc. pretty painful for a few days. On top of this, the injury was sore to the touch for a week or so.
- Sea urchin stings are a vivid blue at first, and the color dissipates over time. Cool!
In sum, although it can be a fun experiment to track the ink dissipation over time, the pain (and injury to the animal) is not worth it. Try to avoid laying on urchins!
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