Wet warmth stirs up Aussie stingers and biters

CANBERRA - It's getting to be that time of year again, when everything seems to be out to get you in Australia.

Spurred by a warm, wet spring the continent is blossoming in creatures stinging, biting, and just plain scary.

Monster sharks in large numbers off beaches and up northern rivers, box jellyfish and other marine stingers, an expected eruption of fire ants and the annual emergence of snakes are combining to send shivers up the nation's collective spine.

In the Northern Territory, a saltwater crocodile this week circled then attacked a man who jumped into the sea for a bodysurf off Gove.

The Northern Territory News reported the unnamed swimmer hit the croc's tail as he played in the waves.

The croc spun around and bit his finger, but the man escaped with scratches.

In far north Queensland, beaches have closed early with the discovery of box jellyfish before their normal appearance, with lifesavers setting protective nets and advising swimmers to cover up in the water. Other species - from the also-venomous irukandji to other less dangerous but still painful stinging jellyfish - have also appeared early.

The sting of the irukandji jellyfish is extremely painful and causes a syndrome named after it that includes cramps, burning sensations and rises in blood pressure and heart rate.

Victims usually need to be treated at hospital, but few deaths have been recorded.

Australian Marine stinger advisory service researcher Lisa-Ann Gershwin told ABC radio this was shaping up to be an unusual stinger season, with a different jellyfish species discovered in the thousands further south than normal off the Queensland coast.

After months of wet weather and with warming temperatures, she said more lethal species could appear further north.

Sharks, meanwhile, are adding to summer paranoia.

They have been seen in unusual numbers off the coast of New South Wales, following large schools of baitfish inshore to beaches running up from the south coast and Sydney.

In Queensland, a huge shark - believe to be a great white - late last month almost straightened one of the biggest steel hooks used by Fisheries Queensland on protective drum lines off Stradbroke Island, on the Gold Coast.

Sharks are also moving into the state's rivers.

Last summer a 2.4m bull shark, one of the most aggressive and dangerous of the species, was caught in a creek about 15km from the mouth of the Noosa River, and several attacks have been reported in canals on the Gold Coast.

This week a bull shark was reported in the Brisbane River, and shark warning signs have been erected near popular river swimming holes at Ipswich, 90km from the sea.

In Perth, 19-year-old Elyse Frankcom was attacked last month while swimming at Rockingham, but escaped with bites to the hip and buttocks.

The warm, wet spring is also expected to add to the impact of the fire ant, an imported pest first found at Brisbane 10 years ago and spreading rapidly in a plague that could reach as far as Sydney and Melbourne in the next few decades.

The ant has a painful sting and attacks both humans and animals.

Expectations of a rapid expansion of their territory in what is predicted to be a wet summer has already prompted aerial spraying of more than 80,000ha of southeast Queensland.

And this week a retired Toowoomba, Queensland, man became the first snake victim of the season.

Robin Sheehan, 61, died after being bitten several times by a brown snake, one of the most dangerous in the world and common across the eastern states.