A travel influencer captured the intense moment she encountered ‘one of the world’s most dangerous animals’ on camera.
While creating content in the shallow waters of the Philippines, travel blogger Julie was unexpectedly stung by an unseen creature.
Unaware of what had latched onto her, Julie was immediately aware of the ‘excruciating’ pain that surged through her body.
She was unaware at the time that she was fortunate to survive the experience.
Julie was in the midst of filming for a brand collaboration when she felt an intense pain on her thigh, unlike anything she’d ever experienced.
The Irish influencer recounted: “I think I was screaming for like an hour, my voice was gone nearly because I was screaming so much, that’s how bad the pain was.”
She described the sensation as a burning, akin to having an iron pressed against her skin, realizing something was seriously wrong.
As the pain intensified, she felt the venom spreading to her stomach, arms, and eventually her head.
It became so severe that Julie feared she might be experiencing a heart attack.
However, it turned out to be a sting from the deadly box jellyfish.
Box jellyfish are considered among the most venomous creatures globally, capable of killing a person within minutes, as their tentacles are equipped with nematocysts – tiny darts loaded with poison.
Their sting can cause paralysis, cardiac arrest, and even death within a short span of time.
“It was scary because we were on a remote island two hours away from any land, there’s no signal,” explained Julie.
At the time, the TikToker and YouTuber, who co-runs the @julieanddaniel_ channel with her partner Daniel, was taking a tourist trip from Coron to El Nido.
Despite the remote setting, she was fortunate to have an Australian doctor and nurse on board, familiar with box jellyfish stings, who monitored her condition before she could be transported to a hospital three hours away.
According to the New York Post, jellyfish expert and marine biologist Dr. Lisa-ann Gershwin stated that box jellyfish are responsible for up to 50 fatalities annually in regions similar to where Julie was.
“It can take as little as three metres worth of stings on the body to kill a healthy adult, and it happens in less than two minutes,” Dr Gershwin told Yahoo News. “Not everybody who is stung by a box jellyfish will die… but if you’ve been stung more than that lethal threshold, then, yeah, statistically you are probably going to die. It’s really quite mathematical.”
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Julie later shared a reflective video on her TikTok, speaking to her past self, mentioning that she didn’t know it yet (while she was in the water), but she would survive the encounter with a box jellyfish.
Fortunately, Julie is now recovering well and continues to share updates on her channels, even showcasing the significant scar left by the incident.
“Some people were like, if you weren’t on your phone maybe you would’ve seen it,” Julia noted. “Maybe I would’ve seen it, but it was completely see-through, so I think even if I wasn’t on my phone, I wouldn’t have been able to see it.”