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جوري
07-17-2010, 01:48 AM
Jellyfish and Stingrays and Great Whites, Oh My!




his could go down as the Summer of the Sea Creatures.

Over the past few days in Southern California, boaters have encountered rare black sea nettles, or black jellyfish, in San Diego Bay, and some two dozen people were stung by a cluster of stingrays at La Jolla Shores beach, several miles away. On the East Coast, officials have reported several sightings of great white sharks off Massachusetts in recent weeks.

While the encounters are unusual, they are part of the ebb and flow of life in the sea, experts say -- though the black jellyfish sightings are relatively rare.

Ken Cedeno, Corbis
Black sea nettles are shown at Monterey Bay Aquarium, in Monterey, Calif. Boaters recently encountered the rare jellyfish in San Diego Bay.


"Most of their biology and bio-geography remains a mystery, but they seem to show up in Southern California during warm water episodes" such as El Nino seasons," said Michael Schaadt of the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium in Los Angeles.

He said black sea nettles were reported only four times in the 1900s. They also were spotted in small numbers in 2001 and 2007. The most reported was in 2005, between Santa Barbara, Calif., and the Mexican border, he said.

The creatures weren't even identified until 1997, when Joel W. Martin and four colleagues published a paper detailing chrysaora achlyos, among the largest jellyfish in nature. The creatures measure 3 feet across, and their stinging tentacles can dangle 18 feet in the water.

"The fact that they remained unidentified for so long is not that surprising," Martin said. "There are many species still not identified or named, especially among the marine invertebrates. ... My guess is that, in the past, if it did wash up, those people who saw it probably thought it was something already known and did not make a big deal out of it. Happens all the time."

Neither the sea nettles nor the stingrays are fatal to humans, but they can leave a nasty welt and discomfort.

Nigella Hillgarth, executive director of the Birch Aquarium at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif., suspects beach-goers were hit by stingrays because they wandered through either a mating ground or the beach's version of an all-you-can-eat stingray buffet.

"This is the time of year -- lots of sand crabs and mollusks in the shallows, and the rays may feed in aggregations where food is plentiful," she said. "Also, if a beach becomes a mating/breeding area, there can be large aggregations and therefore many stings."

The best solution: Beach-goers should shuffle their feet as they walk in shallow water to warn the rays they're coming and make them move.

On the East Coast, great white shark sightings are not that unusual during the summer months, though they still elicit a bit of a thrill, and a warning to swimmers to be careful, particularly if seals are nearby.

The sharks' range covers most of the Northeast as well as the California coasts, though finding them where swimmers are within grasp is rare. Most often, the sharks are looking for dinner in the form of seals, which swimmers -- especially those in wetsuits -- can resemble.

Filed under: Nation, Science, Top Stories

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Tyrion
07-17-2010, 05:15 AM
I've always thought jellyfish were interesting... A couple months ago, I spotted a jellyfish floating near the surface of the San Francisco Bay... Me and my friends just stared at it for close to an hour. =P I was also really into sharks and other marine life as a young kid... The more I read about them, the more my respect for them grew... But now I refuse to swim in the ocean. =P

Anyway, thanks for posting the article =)
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