You’re at the beach, about to step in the water when you see someone hopping out of the water on one foot, clearly in pain. You help them to the lifeguard stand for assistance. Later, you see them join a line of people sitting to the side of the stand with a foot in a bucket of hot water.

Stingray Injury Treated with Foot in a Bucket of Hot Water – Photo Credit Brian Chernicky, How to Treat a Stingray Injury Reduce the Pain

This experience is unfortunately so common that it has a name – 'The Stingray Hop', named after the painful hop people do after getting stung by a stingray.

Warning sign about stingrays to avoid the stingray hop

Not all stingray stings (and stingray hops) are the same though! In this article, we delve into the different levels of sting severity and what it feels like getting stung.

If you are reading this with a foot in a bucket yourself, we encourage you to check out What to do Immediately After Getting Stung by a Stingray.

Severe Stingray Stings

Severe stingray stings are the most intense, rarest, and, to put it bluntly…very bad. Excruciating pain is common at this level of severity, often described as an agonizing, burning sensation. Additionally, the venom injected by the stingray's barb can sometimes cause extensive tissue damage, nerve injury, and even affect vital organs. If someone is allergic or sensitive to the venom, they may experience difficulty breathing, chest pain, dizziness, or fainting. Stings can also cause severe effects like infections or skin necrosis (skin dying), requiring it to be removed by doctors in a process called ‘debridement’.

Nerves in the foot a stingray can damage

Sharing his experiences of a severe sting, physician Eric Stern shared with NPR: “I began to notice that I didn't have any sensation in the dorsum — the top — of my foot around the base of my fourth and fifth toes.” It turns out he had nerve damage from the sting and ended up needing surgery – unfortunately, a common outcome of severe stings.

Moderate Stingray Stings

Stingray stings can also lead to moderate or minor injury.

When someone experiences a moderate stingray sting, they typically encounter intense pain at and around the site of the sting, often described as a stabbing sensation. In this post, one victim described the experience of getting stung by sharing “I have labored two children without pain relief and I'm an avid skateboarder who slams concrete often. So, I know pain. This was unbearable. Morphine didn't help. Local anesthetic didn't help. Pain medication does not help.” Another person who got stung twice responded to our stingray injury survey sharing: “Extreme pain both times…. Lingering pain/swelling/itching both times for over a week. Returned to surfing in 10 days.”

With a moderate stingray injury you’ll most likely have some part of a stingray’s barb stuck under your skin that will have to be removed. In cases like these it is essential to seek medical assistance to reduce the chances of infection and other more serious complications.

Minor Stingray Stings

Even a minor stingray sting will be a memorable event, but thankfully not serious in the long run. With a minor stingray sting, you'll know you've been stung when you feel a sharp and sudden pain, typically somewhere on your foot or ankle. You may think that you stepped on a needle, or a piece of glass. Get out of the water and seek help right away, because the venom is about to kick in, and your pain is about to get much worse. In our stingray injury survey one beachgoer shared that “the initial sting wasn't that painful (felt like a pinch) but after getting out of the water the pain was quite intense for a few hours.” In cases like these, the pain can radiate out from the sting, and is often described as a throbbing sensation not unlike being hit repeatedly on the foot with a hammer! The only known way to reduce the pain is to soak your foot in a bucket of very hot water. The lifeguards will know the drill.

Minor stingray sting

The pain stems from toxins in venom injected by the stingray's barb. In an interview on stingrays with NPR, Dr. Chris Lowe from CSU Long Beach shares that “[the] toxin causes blood vessels to constrict, reducing blood flow," and that "it causes this intense pain sensation — a throbbing, kind of aching pain sensation. And it literally takes hours to go away."

Apart from pain, a minor stingray sting can cause swelling, redness, bruising, and sometimes bleeding from the wound. Afterwards, the area may feel tender and sensitive to touch. Thankfully, with a minor sting, you usually won’t have barb fragments stuck in the wound, and will be less likely to get an infection. Merck Manuals shares that “in most [stingray sting] cases, pain gradually diminishes over 6 to 48 hours, but occasionally lasts days or weeks.”

Final Verdict

Although there’s a wide range of experiences with stingray stings, it's essential to always practice safe stingray habits. You can read more in our blog on How to Avoid Getting Stung by Stingrays, and/or contribute your stingray stings experiences via our Stingray History Survey.

Ultimately, we started DragonSkin to help keep beachgoers from having to go through this painful and dangerous experience. You can get a pair of stingray-resistant booties on our site, or on amazon! Backed by our Money Back Guarantee, they're perfect for any beach-goer looking to concentrate more on the waves, and less on what's below.