Diver saved after ray sting - New Zealand

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DandyDon

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Friends save diver's life after stingray attack | Stuff.co.nz
A Marlborough man who was stung by a stingray says it felt like being hit with a baseball bat.
Craig Marfell, 52, decided to go fishing on Tuesday morning after working at his Wairau Valley farm all weekend.
He and his cousin, Phil Marfell, arrived at Marfells Beach, 40 kilometres south of Blenheim, just before 11am.
The water was the cleanest he'd seen it in a long time, so he put on his wetsuit and dive gear in the hope of catching a few crayfish on the way to their fishing spot.
He and his cousin motored out in his 3.6 metre Kiwikraft pontoon boat to some rocks about 100m from shore.
The water was about 4m deep but the visibility was good enough for Marfell to see the bottom.
He caught a crayfish within a few minutes.
Phil Marfell was still in the boat, checking out nearby spots for any crayfish and keeping an eye on his cousin in the water.
He searched a few holes for crayfish.
Using his hand to push off from a rock, he stretched out his body, hovering just above the sand, when he felt a sudden pain in his chest.
"If you gave someone a baseball bat, and told them to take a swing as hard as they could, that'd be the same force of the impact," Marfell said."It was violent."
He didn't see anything in the water, no cloud of sand as the stingray grazed the bottom of the ocean floor; no dark shape swimming away from him.
"All I felt was a lot of pain in the chest. The impact, it took the breath out of me."
Panicked, he swam to the surface. His cousin helped him onto the boat and he frantically got one sleeve of his wetsuit off.
He looked down at his chest and thought "Oh bugger", he said.
Marfell had a cut about 1 centimetre in width in his lower chest, about 2cm below his sternum. The puncture wound bled a little, but there wasn't a lot of blood.
"I thought, 'This is bad', because it had penetrated," he said.
"I was hoping it had just knocked the wind out of me and not gone through the wetsuit."
He couldn't breathe sitting upright so he flopped over the side of the boat, his body twisted as he struggled to get air into his lungs.
"It was like my muscles had knotted right up," he said.
His cousin carefully drove the boat back to the wharf, about five minutes away. When they reached the shore, Marfell slid off the boat and into the sea.
People camping on the beach rushed to help him, cradling his head to stop the waves washing over him.
Emergency services and a helicopter were called, and for about 50 minutes he lay in the water, struggling to breathe as he waited for help to arrive.
The pain was "off the scale" and he thought he might pass out from it if he tried to crawl onto the beach.
"I just lay in the water, trying to relax. My breathing was laboured, I think I was going a bit grey at that stage," he said.
Seddon volunteer firefighters arrived, shortly before a St John ambulance crew, who took him to the ambulance, cut off the rest of his wetsuit, hooked him up to two intravenous drips, and gave him morphine for the pain.
The Nelson Marlborough Rescue Helicopter landed near the beach and flew him to Wellington Hospital, where he was kept overnight for observation.
A CT scan revealed no barb or foreign object had been left in his chest. He was discharged on Wednesday afternoon and he and his partner arrived home that night.
He blames himself for what happened. "I've seen heaps of them [stingray], and you normally glide over the top of them, or back-pedal," he said.
"They only lift their tail up if they're threatened. It's like standing on top of him and him not liking it. If I'd seen him, this wouldn't have happened."
He didn't think it was a big stingray, but he reckons he would have been right on top of it to have been delivered such a blow.
He is grateful to Phil Marfell, who he credits for saving his life. "If Phil hadn't been there, I'd be dead," he said.
He was also thankful to the team of people who helped him at the beach as he waited for emergency services to arrive, and to the emergency service crews who helped him. "I'm still here because of them," he said.
The experience hasn't put him off diving, and he plans to get back in the water as soon as he can.
 
I am glad he survived and has a good attitude about his experience.
 
Wow - glad he made it through and have to third the fantastic attitude.

Asking for future reference: Is there a benefit to staying in the water in a situation like this?
 
Wow! Unreal story!!!! Excellent ending!
 

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