Nine Family Members Poisoned By Fish

[mrmoshe]

Mother in Law fish to blame.

Pete.

___________________________________

NINE family members, including three children, from a remote Territory community are being treated for food poisoning after eating a locally caught fish.

The family group from Angurugu on Groote Eylandt were diagnosed with potentially fatal ciguatera poisoning from a gifted reef fish, known as a mother-in-law fish.

Four seriously ill adults were flown to the Royal Darwin Hospital yesterday.

A 40-year-old woman is in the High Dependency ward.

Two women, aged 54 and 52, and a 45-year-old man are in a stable condition.

They are likely to be monitored for two to three days.

There was no fish left for authorities to analyse.

Director of the Centre for Disease Control in Darwin, Vicki Krause said the poison can be very serious when it accumulates in the body.

"Initially people will normally get nausea, vomiting, stomach cramps and diarrhoea," she said.

"They can then go on to have a tingling feeling around their lips, a tingling around their hands and their feet, they can get intense itching, headaches and muscle aches. They can also get a slow heart beat and low blood pressure."

Symptoms arise between 1 hour and 30 hours after eating. Ciguatera is a poison found in coral beds.

[Flattieman]

People (Escpecially in Northern States) run the gauntlet with ciguatera every time they decide to keep a fish - very sad to see. Fortunately, the risks can be decreased by staying away from the fish at higher risk of infection (chinamen, mackerel etc).

Flattieman.

[lethargist]

This reminds me... And i am sure that this topic has been well covered somewhere on these forums, but I cant find it at the moment, so my apologies.

There has been so much press about poisonous fish around sydney. As someone new to the area who is hoping to do a bit of beach fishing and hopefully take home a bit of a feed aswell, is there anything that I need to be worried about?

Cheers

Jarrod

[Flattieman]

There has been so much press about poisonous fish around sydney. As someone new to the area who is hoping to do a bit of beach fishing and hopefully take home a bit of a feed aswell, is there anything that I need to be worried about?

As a rule of thumb, don't touch anything you can't identify. Take long-nosed pliers and a thick glove to remove the hooks from any nasty-looking things. Take a photo of the fish before you release it, so I or someone else can identify it here on Fishraider. You shouldn't have too many problems, though. The weirdest commonly-encountered marine life on beaches are rays, sharks and crabs. Just stick to the well-known species if you want to handle or keep 'em. Hope this helps,

Flattieman.

Edited September 9, 2006 by Flattieman

[pjbink]

I hadn't heard thats its problem in the Territory. I thought it was just a Great barrier Reef problem, but obviously this is not the case.