KEY POINTS:
A fisherman cheated death yesterday when he was speared in the thigh by a stingray barb that severed an artery and caused him to lose almost a quarter of his blood.
Gavin Scoles, 43, was last night undergoing emergency surgery after the incident off Mercury Island at 4pm.
He was fishing for snapper with two others in his boat Triena when a stingray became tangled in his net.
Mr Scoles spotted the stingray but didn't notice its spike had broken off. As he tried to free the stingray from the net its razor-sharp spike sliced into his left leg.
Speaking to the Herald from his bed in Auckland City Hospital, Mr Scoles told how he was holding the net between his legs, shaking it out, when the incident occurred.
He was then hit by excruciating pain and knew instantly what had happened.
"I've been fishing for 20 years and have been spiked heaps of times before, only this time it hit an artery," he said.
Mr Scoles pulled out the spike, which was embedded in his thigh, and called his crew mates to grab a belt to make a tourniquet. "I panicked a bit and it was sore ... very painful. I pulled it out and that's when the blood started squirting out. My boat started looking like a slaughterhouse."
The amount of blood shocked the crew but they were able to follow instructions, turn the boat around and call emergency services.
Mr Scoles said stingrays were a common sight and he had been spiked in the wrist and foot before.
"They're a common creature," he said. "There's lots of them out there. They're not close to extinction, that's for sure."
His family and friends had teased him about the injury but he was in good spirits before his surgery to check and clean the wound.
"It could have been a cheap vasectomy, mate."
Mr Scoles said his crew and the Westpac rescue helicopter team were "very professional".
"I was impressed. It's good to know they're there when you need them," he said.
Helicopter paramedic Marcel Driessen said doctors had said the injury could easily have been fatal.
"When we winched down there he told us he didn't know if he'd over-called it. But he mentioned [Crocodile Hunter] Steve Irwin, so there's a lot of awareness out there now," Mr Driessen said.
"When we got to him he'd lost around 25 per cent of his blood volume through an arterial bleed.
"But he was still chirpy and did all the right things with first aid."
But Mr Driessen said fishermen should not pull the barb out.
"In a situation where the skin has been penetrated with an object it's best to leave it in place to prevent heavy bleeding from the wound," he said.
In March, Max Wakefield, 46, was speared in the stomach as he dived for crayfish at Blackhead Pt in southern Hawkes Bay.
The barbs cut through the fabric of his weight belt and his wetsuit and went about 5.5cm into the flesh below his navel.
Last year, Irwin, the world-famous Australian TV personality, died after a stingray barb punctured his heart.
He was snorkelling with rays during filming of a wildlife television programme on Australia's Great Barrier Reef.