Thailand has issued box jellyfish warnings for tourists visiting beach resorts on its southern coastlines where the killer invertebrates have recently been spotted, media reports said Tuesday.
The Marine and Coastal Resources Department has raised an alert for tourists that the highly venomous box jellyfish, not common in Thai waters, has been discovered off Phi Phi Island and Krabi province in southern Thailand, the Bangkok Post newspaper said.
Over the past six years, two deaths in Thailand have been attributed to box jellyfish, the first in 2002 at Phangan Island in the Gulf of Thailand and the most recent in April this year at Koh Lanta in Krabi on the Andaman Sea coast.
A total of 5,567 deaths have been attributed worldwide to box jellyfish, also called "sea wasps," since 1954.

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