KEY POINTS:
A diver last night told of the blinding pain he felt after being speared in the stomach by a poisonous stingray barb.
Max Wakefield, 46, was slashed as he dived for crayfish at Blackhead Point in southern Hawkes Bay yesterday morning.
He thought of his three young sons, aged 5, 6 and 10, as the pain of the sting surged through his body.
"I was afraid. I started to black out. I thought, this is it," he told the Herald.
The 1m stingray struck so quickly he did not see the attack coming.
The barbs cut through the fabric of his weight belt and his wetsuit and went about 5 and a half centimetres into the flesh below his navel.
"I could feel my legs slowly just die and my arms," he said."I was really going out of consciousness."
He was 5m underwater, diving with two cousins, when the ray - hidden in sand - lashed out.
"Usually they're quite easy to see. The one I didn't see got me.
"I think I just swam down on top of it. I might've actually landed on top of him."
Initially, he did not know what had happened other than feeling a sharp pain.
"It was a really bad pain, like somebody had put a knife in my belly."
The initial sensation was of a burning pain - "like acid stomach" - but by the time he rose the 5m to the surface, he was losing feeling in his limbs.
He managed to lift his hands above his head - the international signal of a diver in trouble - and was preparing to remove his weight belt when two friends who were waiting for the divers on a boat above spotted his distress signal.
They hauled him on board, tearing off his wetsuit and booties, both of which had filled with blood.
The feeling returned to his arms and legs, to be replaced by an excruciating pain which he endured for the boat ride back to shore, a car ride and then the helicopter flight to Hawkes Bay Hospital.
Doctors at the hospital told him he was lucky the barb went in at an angle, piercing fatty tissue and avoiding vital organs.
Lowe Corporation Rescue Helicopter pilot Dean Herrick said:
"It was very painful for him. To see a grown man in such agony, it's terrible."
Mr Wakefield's stepmother, Pat Wakefield - a cook at the Duke of Edinburgh pub - said the incident was the talk of the town.
"It gave us all a fright. He was told there were a lot of stingray around, but Max being Max just said 'oh yeah, whatever'.
"He's been diving a while. He's a big fellow, a rugby man. You think big guys like that are not going to topple over."
She described her stepson, who has five sisters and six brothers, as a "placid, lovely man. Nothing worries him too much. Everybody loves Max." Mr Wakefield was visiting Blackhead Pt and Porangahau for three days to lay carpet at the pub.
Publican Selina Cook said whenever he came to the area, Mr Wakefield went fishing with his friends.
"He stayed here until 11 last night to get the job done. He told his wife he had a three-day job but he did it in two and went fishing on the third."
He was hospitalised for the day but discharged last night.
Mr Wakefield's late father was also struck by a stingray, in the upper thigh, several years ago.
"A couple of months later they found the barb in his foot," said Pat Wakefield.
"He was hit high in the leg and kept saying he could hardly walk and wanted someone to have a look at his foot. When they x-rayed it and opened it up, it was all infected."
Last year, Australian television personality Steve Irwin died after a stingray barb punctured his chest.
Irwin was stabbed through the heart while snorkelling with stingrays during filming of a wildlife television programme on Australia's Great Barrier Reef.
Last night, Mr Wakefield had already fielded several calls from friends and relatives asking: "Is Steve Irwin home?"
Mr Wakefield said the experience had not deterred him from diving, which he had been doing since he was 15.
"Getting my leg taken off by a shark might cut it [his passion] in half, but not at all. I love it."
