Tag: Jellyfish

Rare pink meanies, with 70-foot tentacles, invade Emerald Coast

Beachgoers on Florida’s Emerald Coast are being warned not to enter the water because of an influx of jellyfish—and rare pink meanies.

Beachgoers on Florida’s Emerald Coast are being warned not to enter the water because of an influx of jellyfish, which in turn has attracted an abundance of rare pink meanies.

Purple flags, which inform the public that dangerous marine life has been spotted, have flown for 46 straight days, and more than 100 jellyfish stings have been reported in the past 40 days, though many more likely have gone unreported, according to WEAR-TV.

The giant pink jellyfish, with some tentacles as long as 70 feet, first turned up in the Gulf of Mexico in 2000, and scientists then believed it was native to the Mediterranean. But in 2011, scientists determined the Gulf version was an entirely new species, as reported by AL.com.

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The species is so named because it truly is a meanie, attacking and feeding on other jellyfish, like the moon jellyfish, sometimes eating 34 at a time. Narcity.com reported they are “pretty scarce to come by in the Gulf waters.”

“The jellyfish species is considered generally not dangerous to humans, but if you get stung it will likely be painful,” WEAR-TV stated.

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Pink meanies are one of the most rare jellyfish species and are usually found when blooms of jellyfish are abundant, wrote Dimensions.com, adding that they weigh between 30 to 50 pounds, with a bell width of 30-36 inches and a bell height of 22-27.2 inches.

Photos courtesy of South Walton Fire District.

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Orcas slurp sea jellies in rare behavior caught on video

For the second time this year an orca family group has been documented playing with sea jellies in California’s Monterey Bay.

For the second time this year an orca family group has been documented playing with sea jellies in California’s Monterey Bay.

This rarely observed behavior – transient orcas, or killer whales, prey almost exclusively on marine mammals – involved the same four orcas.

On Tuesday, on a trip run by Capt. Slater Moore, the orcas were encountered outside of Moss Landing.

“We watched them eat a couple of sea lions. Then as they traveled out of the bay one of the younger ones [tossed] a jellyfish in her mouth,” Moore wrote on Instagram.

Moore also joked: “I guess sea nettles taste like Jolly Ranchers?!?!”

Kate Cummings, owner of Blue Ocean Whale Watch, was aboard Moore’s boat and described the family group as “grabbing sea nettle jellies as they went,” after the sea lion predation.

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Sea nettles are jellies (jellyfish) whose tentacles can span 10-plus feet. Stinging cells paralyze small prey items, which are carried by “mouthy-arms” to the jellies’ mouths, according to the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Orca slurps sea nettle. Photo: ©Kate Cummings

Moore and Cummings told FTW Outdoors that the orcas seemed to be playing with and not preying upon the sea nettles.

“I don’t think they swallowed any of the jellies,” Moore said.

The four orcas are cataloged as the CA202s by the California Killer Whale Project. They include a mom and her three offspring.

The same rarely encountered group – the mother is nicknamed Smiley because of a distinct marking in her saddle – was documented playing with sea nettles on Feb. 6.

Orca carries sea nettle. Photo: ©Tory Kallman

Passengers and crew aboard a Monterey Bay Whale Watch vessel watched as two of the orca siblings carried what might have been the same sea nettle at different times in the bay.

Tory Kallman captured footage of the oldest sibling (a male) swimming behind a GoPro camera with the sea nettle dangling from his chin.

Capt. Nancy Black, owner of Monterey Bay Whale Watch and co-founder of the California Killer Whale Project, told FTW Outdoors that the orcas seemed to be playing with the jelly “like a dog plays with a ball.”

Black also said that these particular orcas might simply enjoy the stinging sensation generated by tentacles touching their tongues.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. ‘saved’ his wife Amy after a jellyfish sting exactly how you think he did

“It worked!”

Dale Earnhardt Jr. is a hero in the eyes of his wife, Amy, after he recently rescued her from “bad” pain as the result of a jellyfish sting, according to a story the NASCAR driver turned broadcaster told on his podcast this week.

On the latest episode of the Dale Jr. Download, Earnhardt shared this story — which ended exactly how you think it did — after repeatedly explaining he had Amy’s permission to do so.

Dale Jr., Amy and their eldest daughter, Isla, were at the beach one day, and, as he tells it, Amy accidentally stepped on a jellyfish and was stung. And a popular theory for alleviating the pain of jellyfish stings — likely with some help from a famous episode of Friends — is to have someone pee on it.

“She was in bad pain, and she said, ‘Do you think that’ll work?'” Dale Jr. explained.

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But of course, the Earnhardts weren’t alone on the beach. So they rearranged their stuff to shield themselves from the other beachgoers, dug a hole for some privacy, and after Amy put her foot in the hole, Dale Jr. did his thing. And according to him, Amy said he “saved her life.”

“She was in so much pain, and she said it worked immediately,” Dale Jr. said. “She was hurting! No, no, no. You can’t understate the pain of a jellyfish sting. You can’t understate this.”

He continued to explain:

“We have these chairs that are flat on the ground, all right? And so I dug a hole in the sand in front of me, and she stuck her foot down in it. I didn’t even have to move. I peed on her foot, and then I filled the hole in. …

“No one saw anything. We maneuvered all of our things around to where there was not anybody in our line of sight. I’m literally sitting almost ass on the beach; we’re low to the ground. Our chair bottoms sit on the dirt. … We’re laughing like hell, yes. I was probably laughing a little more. Amy was hurting but laughing and crying. She was hurting and laughing. It worked! I’d never done it, never tried it. You hear about it.”

While Dale Jr. urinating on Amy’s jellyfish sting helped her, that course of treatment isn’t recommended, according to the Cleveland Clinic, which notes that peeing on a sting could actually release more venom and cause more pain.

Here’s what the medical center actually recommends for jellyfish stings:

So how do you manage a jellyfish sting, then? If do you get stung by a jellyfish, remove the tentacles right away. You can use seawater to wash off the tentacles, but avoid any vigorous rubbing because this can cause the jellyfish’s nematocysts to fire, which means the barbed part of the tentacles would release more toxin into your skin. …

If you see any barbs still in your skin, use tweezers to carefully remove them. If you don’t have tweezers on-hand, you can gently scrape the area with a credit card or similarly-shaped plastic object.

Once you remove the tentacle, treat the pain by applying apple vinegar or rubbing alcohol to the affected area. This can also help release the toxin.

The good news is that the Earnhardts’ solution didn’t cause any more pain for Amy. But the story is awfully reminiscent of this scene from Friends.

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Orcas play with stinging sea jellies, the question is why?

Transient killer whales sometimes play with their food, but they’ve rarely been documented toting jellyfish, or sea jellies, in their mouths

Transient killer whales sometimes play with their food, but they’ve rarely been documented toting jellyfish, or sea jellies, in their mouths.

The accompanying images, captured Saturday by Monterey Bay Whale Watch, show two killer whales, or orcas, carrying what might be the same sea nettle at different times in California’s Monterey Bay.

The extraordinary sightings, from aboard the Point Sur Clipper, marked only the second time in the company’s long history that orcas have been  documented exhibiting this type of behavior. (Bigg’s transient orcas prey almost exclusively on marine mammals.)

The sightings occurred after a mother orca and her three offspring had killed sea lions and at one point seemed to deliver a skinned carcass alongside the boat.

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“The CA202s, nicknamed the Smileys, hunted a couple of California Sea Lions and then celebrated afterwards!” Monterey Bay Whale Watch boasted on Facebook. “They came over to the boat several times, were bow riding, and one was even playing with this sea nettle! What an incredible experience for our passengers!”

The underwater images are screen shots from video footage captured by Tory Kallman (the video has not yet been made public). They show the youngest orca swimming behind a GoPro camera somewhat comically, with the sea nettle dangling from its chin.

“Right now the sea nettle is questioning every life choice that led it to think a selfie with an orca was a good idea,” a woman joked in the Facebook comments.

The third image, captured by Jodi Frediani, shows an older sibling with the sea nettle looking more like an orange ball.

It’s not known why the orcas carried the jelly or whether it was consumed. But it’s worth nothing that sea nettles’ tentacles contain stinging cells that paralyze their prey – mostly zooplankton, small fishes, larval fishes, and other jellies.

Capt. Nancy Black, owner of Monterey Bay Whale Watch and co-founder of the California Killer Whale Project, told For The Win Outdoors that the orcas most likely were playing with the jelly “like a dog plays with a ball.”

Black added that the young killer whales possibly enjoyed the “tingling” sensation, generated by the tentacles, on their tongues.

The previous such sighting, an event also photographed by Kallman, was in 2009.