Fish takes bite from hand of swimmer

A WOMAN whose hand was mauled by a coral reef fish while swimming off Port Douglas was injured so severely she required a skin graft.

Port Douglas resident Julie Pochet decided to go for a dip in the water off Anzac Park Beach on November 26 to cool down.

Ms Pochet, 39, said she was aware of the danger of marine stingers and crocodiles, so stayed within 2m of the shore.

However, within 10 seconds of being in the water, she said she was poked in the ribs by a fish that “looked like a wrasse”, no bigger than an average parrotfish.

She said when the dark- coloured fish approached her slowly, she went to pat it, and it then took a chunk of flesh out of her left hand. She said the bite was so deep, taking away her nerve endings, that she did not feel much pain.

“I jumped out of the water and went to the tap to rinse it,” she said. “I asked a tourist who offered to ring the ambulance, to run to the restaurant to get pepper – an old cook’s trick – to stop the blood from flowing out.

“Then, I managed to wrap it with rags and drove myself to Mossman Hospital.”

She said that the bite was so severe her hand required a skin graft at Cairns Hospital.

James Cook University coral reef fish expert Professor David Bellwood believed Ms Pochet may have been bitten by a triggerfish or a puffer fish, both of which are known to attack people.

“Triggerfishes and pufferfishes are quite common in the shallows,” he said. “I have had a puffer fish chase me for several metres across a reef flat in waist- deep water.”