Environment |

Woman stung by stingray in Nags Head calls pain ‘indescribable’

At first, Nawal Baker thought she’d been bitten by a shark.

The 30-year-old Henrico resident and a friend were swimming in the ocean Sunday by Jennette’s Pier in Nags Head when she felt a severe pain on her foot. Knee deep in the Atlantic, she feared she was about to be pulled under, and yelled for her friend to get out of the water while heading for shore herself.

“I was looking down initially, because the water is so clear, and just as I looked up, I felt something. I was 100% sure it was a shark,” she said.

When she got out of the water, there was a “good amount of blood,” and it looked like someone had stabbed the top of her foot with a pencil. It didn’t take long to figure out the culprit was a stingray, not a shark.

“It looked like nothing, but the pain was indescribable,” she said.

Baker credits Debbie Wilson, a paramedic from Virginia, for keeping her calm as she was treated on the beach before being taken to the hospital.

“Debbie held my hand from start to finish, my eyes were on her the whole time,” Baker said.

Ray stings are relatively uncommon on the Outer Banks, local experts say, but do happen — we just don’t always hear about them.

“When our staff gets stung while teaching surf lessons, we simply have them soak their foot in a bucket of hot water, which helps immensely,” said Daryl Law, spokesman for Jennette’s Pier.

There are several types of stingrays in the waters around the Outer Banks and coastal North Carolina, with the Atlantic stingray the most common, according to the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality. A video from Jennette’s Pier on Sept. 1 showed several butterfly rays in the water around the time Baker was stung.

Rays are bottom-feeders with flattened, oval bodies and a long, venomous spine for self-defense. They can reach up to 6 feet long, but most are roughly 2 feet when encountered, the DEQ website said.

Law said people often confuse stingrays and harmless skates, noting rays “have whip-like tails that possess a sharp barb shaped like a long fingernail. Skates have sticker-like bumps on their tails but no stinging barb.”

Treating Baker’s sting began on the beach with hot packs, then continued in the hospital with immersing her foot in nearly scalding water, which helps neutralize stingray venom. Baker said she went into the ocean “knowing full well” she was sharing the water with plenty of sea creatures, but she didn’t expect an encounter with a stingray.

“The most traumatizing thing was thinking there was a shark and trying to shove my friend out of the water,” Baker said. “I genuinely thought that was the last moment of my life.”

Now, Baker’s thinking about getting a stingray tattoo on her foot when the wound heals.

Wildlife experts say ocean swimmers and waders can avoid rays by doing the “stingray shuffle.”

“Just shuffle your feet across the bottom and stingrays will feel the vibration and swim away, decreasing chances of being stung,” Law said.