Ref.10300JUST hours after Pat Stagg read of the perils of weever fish attracted to British shores by the tropical weather, his eight-year-old daughter, Kitty, was stung by one.

The Stagg family from The Crescent in Pewsey, had gone to Branksome Chine near Bournemouth for the day on Sunday.

That morning, Mr Stagg, a building labourer, had read in the Sunday Times about the dangers of stepping on the spiked-back fish, whose spines contain a venom which causes an extremely painful sting.

The family were sitting on the beach but Kitty ran gleefully down to the water's edge. Her excitement, however, turned to agony as she scooped her hands into the sand and was stung on a finger by one of the poisonous barbs.

Fortunately Mr Stagg remembered reading that the only way of reducing the pain was to plunge the affected part into very hot water.

Family friend Rachel Hutchinson ran to fetch hot water and Mr and Mrs Stagg attempted to console their sobbing daughter.

Mr Stagg said: "She was screaming because it was very painful. The hot water did the trick almost immediately but it took about an hour for the pain to subside."

Mr Stagg said they took Kitty to a first aid station which had been set up specially to deal with weever fish stings, and she was able to carry on playing an hour or so after receiving the painful sting.

Biologists at the Weymouth Sea Life Centre said there was a much bigger risk of people getting hurt because the abnormally hot weather had attracted far more weever fish than normally experienced on the south coast.

A Dorset fisherman David Copp said: "There are definitely more around than usual and they are moving inshore much earlier than in previous years."

The advice from the Bournemouth beach guards is that all holidaymakers should wear beach shoes when going into the sea.