Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
Australian blubber jelly invades harbor
"We seem to have exported a game-changing pest.”
Phyllorhiza punctata, Australian spotted jellyfish
While taking a maritime tour of the San Diego Harbor the afternoon of August 16, Neisa McMillin and her tour guide William Moss (aka “Captain Bill”) spotted a dozen brown jellyfish covered in white spots.
“These guys were swimming around everywhere in San Diego Harbor,” said McMillin. “I've never seen a jellyfish quite like this in San Diego. They were hanging around the maritime museum boats, Star of India, and the Russian submarine.”
McMillin’s jellyfish photo
I sent McMillin’s jellyfish photo to Birch Aquarium at Scripps and SeaWorld to get their opinions. After seeing McMillin’s photo, Birch Aquarium co-curator Leslee Matsushige, who has years of experience with “jellies,” identified it as a Phyllorhiza punctata, or an Australian spotted jellyfish. “They are usually seen in San Diego Bay and Mission Bay during this time of year,” said Matsushige. “Not uncommon and they are an invasive species.”
Kelly Terry from SeaWorld, confirming it was an Australian white-spotted jelly, said, “Because we’re having such elevated water temperatures out there, sometimes species show up that normally hang out in warmer waters. But because our waters are so warm along the coast, it’s hospitable to them. It’s not necessarily a huge deal, but it can be whenever there’s a species that comes into an ecosystem where it normally isn’t found. It can throw off the ecosystem and sort of take over and maybe prey on other jellies and things like that.”
Terry directed me to a photo of a similar sighting in Mission Bay in September 2015 on a website that focuses on jellyfish sightings around the world.
Mike Price, assistant curator of fishes at SeaWorld, said that jellyfish are technically not fish and it’s more accurate to refer to them as "jellies." He said there are 4300 species of jellies under an umbrella of eight different families. The Aussie that McMillin saw belongs to the blubber jelly family and was discovered in Western Australia in 1884.
“Over the last year and a half [this] jelly has been spotted in both San Diego and Mission Bay along with bays up and down the Southern California Bight [curved coastline from Point Conception to San Diego]. [The] first documented sighting in Southern California was 1981, but in the last 16–18 months we have seen an increase in the numbers observed in San Diego and Mission bays.”
Price said that the bell of this jelly can grow to 20 inches in diameter. He said there is data that indicates jellies could live forever if they had no predators. For humans, their sting tends to be mild.
I also contacted a jelly expert in Australia. Originally from the U.S., Dr. Lisa-Ann Gerswhin has been enamored with jellies for decades. In June, her second book on jellies was published.
Gershwin, via email, said, “Oh fantastic find! That looks an awful lot like the Australian Phyllorhiza punctata. In fact, I would be utterly astonished if that were not Phyllorhiza. One-hundred percent confirmation would have to be based on examination of the specimen in this case, but I can tell you from the photo that I'm about 95 percent confident.”
“Phyllorhiza has been reported from San Diego a couple of times in the past, but usually unconfirmed reports not accompanied by photos or specimens. And curiously, the California one is more often blue, which is quite unlike the Australian one, which is brown, which makes me a bit doubtful. This one looks just like the Australian one!”
Gershwin said these Aussie jellies are a threat to the areas they invade. They have been known to crash fisheries by eating the eggs and larvae of fish and their plankton food.
“Usually Australia is only known for exporting great actors and singers, UGG boots, and the occasional over-zealous croc wrestler, but in this case we seem to have exported a game-changing pest.”
Gerswhin has contacted Matsushige, a colleague with whom she has worked closely for decades, to collaborate via Skype to confirm the identity of the jelly that McMillin saw. “I believe that it would be in the best interest of the local region and marine-related industries to know for sure what species it is,” said Gerswhin, “because it helps to know thine enemy!”
Gerswhin asked for permission to use McMillin’s photo in a new safety and identification app ("the Jellyfish App") she’ll be launching before the end of the year. “It will be geared toward hazardous jellies in the medical sense [stinging] and hazardous jellies in the ecological sense [bloom alerts — when millions of jellies swarm together].”
McMillin looks forward to seeing her jellyfish photo in Gerswhin’s app.
Here's something you might be interested in.
Australian blubber jelly invades harbor
"We seem to have exported a game-changing pest.”
Australian blubber jelly invades harbor
"We seem to have exported a game-changing pest.”
Phyllorhiza punctata, Australian spotted jellyfish
While taking a maritime tour of the San Diego Harbor the afternoon of August 16, Neisa McMillin and her tour guide William Moss (aka “Captain Bill”) spotted a dozen brown jellyfish covered in white spots.
“These guys were swimming around everywhere in San Diego Harbor,” said McMillin. “I've never seen a jellyfish quite like this in San Diego. They were hanging around the maritime museum boats, Star of India, and the Russian submarine.”
McMillin’s jellyfish photo
I sent McMillin’s jellyfish photo to Birch Aquarium at Scripps and SeaWorld to get their opinions. After seeing McMillin’s photo, Birch Aquarium co-curator Leslee Matsushige, who has years of experience with “jellies,” identified it as a Phyllorhiza punctata, or an Australian spotted jellyfish. “They are usually seen in San Diego Bay and Mission Bay during this time of year,” said Matsushige. “Not uncommon and they are an invasive species.”
Kelly Terry from SeaWorld, confirming it was an Australian white-spotted jelly, said, “Because we’re having such elevated water temperatures out there, sometimes species show up that normally hang out in warmer waters. But because our waters are so warm along the coast, it’s hospitable to them. It’s not necessarily a huge deal, but it can be whenever there’s a species that comes into an ecosystem where it normally isn’t found. It can throw off the ecosystem and sort of take over and maybe prey on other jellies and things like that.”
Terry directed me to a photo of a similar sighting in Mission Bay in September 2015 on a website that focuses on jellyfish sightings around the world.
Mike Price, assistant curator of fishes at SeaWorld, said that jellyfish are technically not fish and it’s more accurate to refer to them as "jellies." He said there are 4300 species of jellies under an umbrella of eight different families. The Aussie that McMillin saw belongs to the blubber jelly family and was discovered in Western Australia in 1884.
“Over the last year and a half [this] jelly has been spotted in both San Diego and Mission Bay along with bays up and down the Southern California Bight [curved coastline from Point Conception to San Diego]. [The] first documented sighting in Southern California was 1981, but in the last 16–18 months we have seen an increase in the numbers observed in San Diego and Mission bays.”
Price said that the bell of this jelly can grow to 20 inches in diameter. He said there is data that indicates jellies could live forever if they had no predators. For humans, their sting tends to be mild.
I also contacted a jelly expert in Australia. Originally from the U.S., Dr. Lisa-Ann Gerswhin has been enamored with jellies for decades. In June, her second book on jellies was published.
Gershwin, via email, said, “Oh fantastic find! That looks an awful lot like the Australian Phyllorhiza punctata. In fact, I would be utterly astonished if that were not Phyllorhiza. One-hundred percent confirmation would have to be based on examination of the specimen in this case, but I can tell you from the photo that I'm about 95 percent confident.”
“Phyllorhiza has been reported from San Diego a couple of times in the past, but usually unconfirmed reports not accompanied by photos or specimens. And curiously, the California one is more often blue, which is quite unlike the Australian one, which is brown, which makes me a bit doubtful. This one looks just like the Australian one!”
Gershwin said these Aussie jellies are a threat to the areas they invade. They have been known to crash fisheries by eating the eggs and larvae of fish and their plankton food.
“Usually Australia is only known for exporting great actors and singers, UGG boots, and the occasional over-zealous croc wrestler, but in this case we seem to have exported a game-changing pest.”
Gerswhin has contacted Matsushige, a colleague with whom she has worked closely for decades, to collaborate via Skype to confirm the identity of the jelly that McMillin saw. “I believe that it would be in the best interest of the local region and marine-related industries to know for sure what species it is,” said Gerswhin, “because it helps to know thine enemy!”
Gerswhin asked for permission to use McMillin’s photo in a new safety and identification app ("the Jellyfish App") she’ll be launching before the end of the year. “It will be geared toward hazardous jellies in the medical sense [stinging] and hazardous jellies in the ecological sense [bloom alerts — when millions of jellies swarm together].”
McMillin looks forward to seeing her jellyfish photo in Gerswhin’s app.
Comments