Milking venom from Australia's deadly marine animals
Toxicologist Jamie Seymour runs a facility studying Australia's deadliest marine animals in a bid to understand them and keep people safe. His team milks sea creatures of their venom to create life-saving antivenoms.
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00:00 About the size of a sesame seed, these tiny Irukandji jellyfish pack a vicious punch.
00:07 And the immediate sting of one of those is, "Oh yeah, something stung me, I'll be fine."
00:13 And there's this 20 minute delay of what goes on and then all of a sudden, 15 to 20 minutes
00:18 down the track it's like, "Oh hell." Having been down that path 11 times, it feels like
00:24 someone takes a big elephant and sticks it on your chest so you can't breathe. I get
00:27 severe pins and needles like someone's got a red hot poker and they're sticking it in
00:31 the joints. Over the top of that is this feeling of impending doom. Zero being no pain, 10
00:37 the worst you can imagine. My last trip I had it around about a 13 or 14. If someone
00:43 had given me a gun, I'd have gone, "I'm off the planet."
00:46 Welcome to the so-called Stinger Shed, where James Cook University toxicologist Jamie Seymour
00:51 researches the dangerous aquatic creatures found in Australia's northern waters.
00:56 Australia is without a doubt the most venomous continent in the world. There's little doubt
01:00 of that. If you want a venomous marine animal, it's either in the facility where we presently
01:05 are or we've had it in the facility at some stage.
01:08 As part of their research, Seymour and his team also produce the world's only supply
01:13 of anti-venom for box jellyfish and stonefish by milking them for their toxins. The stonefish
01:19 is the world's most venomous fish, while the box jellyfish can kill a person within 10 minutes,
01:24 though deaths from both are extremely rare.
01:28 The animal's got a series of 13 spines all the way along its back, and each of those
01:31 spines has got a venom gland at the base of the spine. So the spine's like a hypodermic
01:36 needle, so if you stand on it, the spine goes into your foot, and then as it goes deeper
01:40 then those two glands get compressed and venom squirts out the end of the spine.
01:46 Anti-venoms are shipped to hospitals around Australia and some Pacific islands, where
01:49 they can be administered if someone is stung or bitten by an animal.
01:53 If I injected that into your foot, you're going to be in a lot of pain. From that size
01:57 animal, yeah, you're going to be in pain for most of the day and you're probably going
01:59 to end up with some sort of necrotic tissue death where the venom's been injected into
02:03 you out of that quantity.
02:05 We have on average about five to six deaths per year in Australia from venomous animals,
02:12 and most of those are from snakes. So the chances of you being stung by an animal in
02:19 Australia or bitten is reasonable. The chances of dying, very, very, very small. We have
02:25 some of the best anti-venoms in the world.
02:28 Seymour has also noticed a change in where the creatures are showing up, with warming
02:32 ocean temperatures pushing these deadly jellyfish and other marine animals further south along
02:37 the Australian coast.
02:39 Again, when you plot when these things are occurring versus increasing water temperature,
02:44 there's this beautiful correlation, but it's just that, a correlation, but it makes sense.
02:50 We have a reasonable understanding of what goes on up here and what drives the season.
02:54 We have no idea what happens when you go to places like Maloolaba or Fraser Island. It
02:59 is only a matter of time before these animals turn up in large enough numbers and the only
03:04 option we have down there at the moment is to shut the beach. Now can you imagine the
03:09 day they have to shut the beach at the Sunshine Coast? All hell will break loose.
03:13 Behind the painful sting, scientists suggest the venoms could be used for good. Seymour
03:19 says more research is needed, but there's evidence that jellyfish venom could be used
03:23 to treat a myriad of other health conditions.
03:25 So if you look at box jellyfish venom, there's 150, 200 different components in that venom.
03:31 We're playing around with one. We actually seem to have found a compound that, for us,
03:36 is curing rheumatoid arthritis in mice in under two to three weeks. This is huge.
03:43 Can we find the next cure to cancer, arthritis, things of that nature? It's sort of an open
03:49 slather to do whatever you really want to.
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