“Don’t touch the cone”: Egyptian resorts attacked by killer shellfish

We learned the details from Egypt and talked to an expert on how to protect yourself from the treacherous inhabitant of the Red Sea.

The first to report the threat on the Hurghada Riviera was a Russian tourist on social networks, who posed for half an hour for a photo shoot with a patterned shell in her hands and only then learned that she had been carelessly playing with the most poisonous mollusk in the world, Conus textile. The girl attached a photo with a “harmless snail”, which a tourist mistook for a cone while tearing the most cruel killer of the tropical seas from a stone, for the edification of other tourists, and especially children and their parents.

“I splashed her in some water, held her in my hand, stroked her belly, and even asked my husband to hold her for a photo shoot. After the photo shoot, she was released and only then she Googled…” writes the Russian woman.

“This girl was just lucky,” says malacologist (shellfish specialist – author) Svetlana Beketova, “that the conus textile remained in the shell all this time. This mollusk produces the most powerful neurotoxin of its species, which is fatal to humans. It is contained in his proboscis.

That is, if a “harmless snail” in the hands of a tourist far from malacology suddenly woke up and stuck out its proboscis, the girl would now have no time for posts on social networks.

“At someone who disturbs its peace, the textile cone “shoots” conotoxin – this is a type of nerve poison that leads to blocking of neuroprocesses,” Egyptian doctor Ali Abu Abtan answers the question of what will happen to a person bitten by the cone. – In the “mildest” case it is severe pain and shock, and in the most severe case it is paralysis and death. If a person suddenly comes into contact with the sting of a cone, only emergency medical care with experienced personnel will save him.

A survey of those who are currently vacationing on the Hurghada coast shows that almost everyone has seen “patterned elongated shells” in a range from beige to purple along the coastline – and almost everyone has no idea what it is.

“We came for only 5 days and ran to swim, we don’t have time to find out about shells,” shares 57-year-old Valentina from the Moscow region, who received a trip to Hurghada from her husband on March 8 and took two grandchildren, 4 and 6 years old, with her to the Red Sea. – Now, of course, it’s scary. But most tourists, even those with children, assume that since they don’t specifically warn you, it’s nothing to worry about. We were only given “shark-free”. Very detailed, because we live in the same area where there was a predator attack on holidaymakers that summer. And not a word about these cones, we didn’t even think about them!

Of course, Hurghada remembers and will not soon forget the tragedy of last summer, when a shark tore a young Russian to pieces. But rest is a holiday. People who have spent a lot of money on a short vacation by the sea do not want to spend it thinking about bad things.

– Have there already been emergencies involving cones? – I ask Daoud, a Hurgadino guide who speaks Russian, realizing that he is generally not interested in disseminating such information. – We must not keep silent, but simply warn!

“There were cases,” Daud reluctantly admits, “but I won’t tell you the hotel and the date of arrival, okay?” I’ll just say that it was recently. Your not very sober tourist himself stubbornly picked out the cones from his house with a cocktail straw. He tried for a long time, his company watched this. Then the man shouted that “here she comes!” He thought he saw the head of a snail. But it was a dart fired from a cone. And he got it, in the shoulder, it seems.

– Is this tourist alive?

– Yes, he was given first aid correctly, so we managed to take him to the local hospital. The main thing here is to get there in time, the poison acts very quickly.

– And you can’t warn tourists about this?!

– The cone lives in all warm seas, in all tropical and subtropical resorts it is not always present, but it is found. Cones, like jellyfish, are brought by the current. And we don’t always have them. Therefore, it is simply incorrect to warn that the Red Sea is dangerous because of the cones.

– What is there to warn you, don’t touch the cone, it won’t shoot! – technical diver from the Russian Federation Igor, who works in Dahab, Egypt, agrees with the guide. – If we are going to warn tourists about the dangerous inhabitants of the sea depths, then “shark-proof” alone will not do: there are jellyfish of varying degrees of danger, and lionfish, and sea urchins, and you won’t be able to remember them all. You just need to remember and explain to the children: amber shells, like in their own seas, are not collected here.

Experts confirm: the inhabitants of warm waters thrown onto land by waves may be innocent in appearance, but extremely dangerous to humans with any type of tactile contact (touch). The poison of one cone, if he decides to use all his “darts,” can be enough for several hundred people, and no country in the world has yet come up with an antidote. Combining in bizarre bouquets, various toxic substances allow the tiny mollusk to kill a healthy man in seconds.

“You need to know the cone by sight,” advises Dr. Abtan. – This is an elongated cone-shaped shell with an intricate pattern of pastel colors – beige, lilac. It can reach 15-20 cm in length, but there are also small ones. They are found on sandy and rocky bottoms, in depth, in shallow water, and on the beach itself at the water’s edge. Accidentally stepping on them is just as dangerous as picking them up on purpose. The sting of the cone contains such a “cocktail” of poisons that delaying help is like death – in the most literal sense. If a cone is “shot” at someone in front of you, the first thing you need to do is remove its “darts” – stings, of which there can be many – from the wound. More often the bite occurs on an extremity – a leg or an arm. The bitten person must be positioned so that this limb is motionless. The victim must be given painkillers and urgently taken to the nearest hospital, giving plenty of fluids along the way.

– Of course, I know the cone! – five-year-old tourist Artem, who came to Hurghada from Saratov with his grandparents, answers busily. – It looks like an ice cream cone. Local boys tried to sell it to my grandmother as decoration. But grandma drove them away, she saw how they picked it up from the sand, and she doesn’t allow anyone to do this, not even me.