Watch your hands and fingers.
On my very first LR trip, I got stuck by a mackeral at Alijos, and by 3 days later, it was turning black and swelling up on finger and thumb. By the time I got to the dock, I had a fever and chills. One of the deckhands ran me up the hospical, and they did some work on it and gave me antibiotics. By that night I was running a 103.5 fever and was in the hospital. They took off parts of one finger and a bit off the thumb. Gave me intravenous antibiotics. Was in there two days. It was no fun.
I learned. On every trip we check our hands every morning and every evening. We use Neosporin triple antibiotic creme as a "hand creme" every night. We rinse out every cut with peroxide, and then cover it Neosporin. We also bring a needle and alcohol. Whenever we get something stuck in, THAT night (not later) we sterilze the needle, dig it out, use the peroxide, use the Neosporin, and if necessary, but a bandage on it to hold in the Neosporin. Note that some of the worst infections are anerobic, and if the skin closes over them, you are in trouble. Like Brad says, we also now wear gloves.
It seems like such a stupid little cut, or simple little stick. However, fish AND seawater are both filled with nasty bacteria. DO NOT FOOL AROUND.
Like someone said, our doc also gives us a scrip for a broad spectrum antibiotic. Because we now take really good care of our hands, we haven't had to use them, but we are glad we have them.
I will mention in passing that a very well known angler here at AC had a friend who actually died from an infection acquired on a LR trip. It's something that must be taken seriously....especially if one is older and has (therefore) a somewhat less active immune system.
Finally, here is an article I found many years ago on the web. It may be of interest to LR anglers.
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LINK
Bacteria thrive in
warm sea water
by Susan Scott
Here's a good question from a longtime reader: "I wish you would write about staph in the ocean. We are ocean swimmers, and my old skin frequently has raw scrapes. I coat my wounds with antibiotic salve when I swim, but is this necessary? I swim for about an hour at a time, so I sure wish I knew if the ocean is good or bad for sores."
It's bad. At least in Hawaii it's bad, because bacteria thrive in warm sea water. The most infamous of these bugs are staph and strep (which are abbreviations of their long scientific names), but there are others.
Just how many others, a group of scientists decided to find out. In 1990 they sailed 185 miles off Baja California to a group of isolated rocks called Rocos Alijos. This remnant of an ancient volcano, around the same latitude as Hawaii, is untouched by humans.
There, the scientists collected samples of 11 marine items. Besides sea water, these included rock, seaweed, snails, sponges, sea urchins and the teeth of three kinds of fish they caught. The workers stored the samples on the boat in sterilized sea water, brought them back to the laboratory and set about checking which, if any, of these specimens carried disease -- or infection-causing bacteria.
Well, we can stop blaming pollution for all our ocean ailments.
Those pristine plants, animals and rocks carried germs from hell, many of which are well known to physicians: Vibrio, Pseudomonas and Klebsiella, to name just a few.
And the sea water? The researchers found practically everything except yogurt culture growing in that water. An astonishing 36 species of bacteria showed up in the samples, including staph and strep, the germs most commonly implicated in infections.
This is worth remembering when your coral or other marine cut gets infected. It's never coral growing in there, it's bacteria.
So now that we know we're swimming in Mother Nature's microbial soup, how do we keep it from infecting our open sores?
The best way is to stay out of the ocean, but that's hard for many of us. The next best thing may be my reader's remedy: Coat a sore with antibiotic ointment before going in the water.
A 1995 study published in the journal of the Academy of Emergency Medicine wasn't about sores and sea water, but it was in the ballpark. Doctors scrubbed and sutured people's cuts in the E.R., then gave them packets of antibiotic ointment to apply to the wounds as they healed. Some packets, however, contained plain petroleum jelly.
The people using the antibiotics had significantly fewer infections that the people using petroleum jelly.
Smearing antibiotic ointments on old scrapes and cuts and then swimming in the ocean is different, of course. But if you're prone to infection, there's a chance it may help.
Preventing infection in a new marine cut or scrape is another story. The best treatment is to scrub it thoroughly as soon as you get out of the water.
And I mean thoroughly. I once watched a doctor friend tend a 2-inch-long mussel cut on her foot. She spread the wound open with her fingers, scrubbed the tissue inside with a soapy washcloth for about five minutes and then taped it shut. It didn't get infected.
Those of us with less grit can go to the E.R., get the cut numbed and let someone else do the scrubbing.
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Marine biologist Susan Scott writes the newspaper column, "Ocean Watch", for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, www.starbulletin.com