SIMON REAMES SENT THIS GIANT JELLYFISH VIDEO

While Graham and I were in Puerto Rico back in 1997, we received an email from an Exeter Schoolboy caled Simon, who had been following our exploits. He has been a friend of the CFZ (and mine in particular) ever since, and yesterday he sent us this giant jellyfish video, knowing that such things are grist to our mill..

RICHARD FREEMAN: Giant deep-sea jellyfish filmed

Karl Shuker related the story of a massive jellyfish that almost sank a ship. Giant jellyfish are among the least known of all sea monsters. Now a massive jellyfish (though not quite as big as Karl’s monster) has been filmed with a deep-sea camera. Read on

SOMETHING I HAVE ALWAYS WANTED TO SEE

Ever since I first read about these fantastic animals in The Hong Kong Countryside by G. A. C. Herklots, which as anyone who follows my inky-fingered scribblings or indeed my video equivelants, will know has been one of the most important books in my life, I have wanted to see one. They turn up in the UK on occasion and one day I shall see and maybe even keep some.

What are they? Oh, didn't I say? As far as I know they are the world's only species of freshwater jellyfish.

LINDSAY SELBY: The Kon Tiki monster

I have always been fascinated by the stories from the Kon-Tiki expedition about their encounters on the sea. I especially loved this one about the strange phosphorescent creatures that appeared at night (see extracts; you can click on them to make them bigger)

I wondered whether they were giant jelly fish or some strange unknown creature that would only be encountered by sea-going craft that didn’t have engines; in other words, sailed fairly silently. Maybe the creatures no longer exist, extinct like so many others without even being named. Whatever the answer, it is a great imagination mover, reading the book, and well worth a revisit. I had forgotten so much about it until I reread it recently but the strange night creatures had always stuck in my head.

Extracts from The Kon-Tiki Expedition Thor Heyerdahl 1974 ed. George Allen & Unwin pub London.

GIANT JELLYFISH PLAGUE

From last year's Japanese jellyfish population explosion. Matthew Williams sent us this because it is so far out. We post it for the same reason.

GIANT JELLYFISH NEWS STORY

JELLYFISH JAPES

A couple of days ago this photograph was splashed across the British media. The accompanying story read: "A 4ft jellyfish - one of the biggest to be found in Britain - washed up on a popular beauty spot on the coast of north Devon" and went on to claim that "The jellyfish was caught on camera by photographer Peter Stapleton who is keeping the exact location secret to avoid panic. "

It is indeed a fairly large specimen, but of a well known and reasonably common species, and one would have thought that even in these degenerate days the advent of a large, dead, coelentrate on a North Devon beach when its not even holiday season would be unlikely to cause a `panic`. May I suggest that the fact that the location was being kept `secret` has more to do with the fact that after the ridiculous furore surrounding the dead seal back in January, Her Majesty's Press wanted to ensure that we wouldn't get a piece of the action this time.

Who cares? Its only a bloody jellyfish.

GUEST BLOGGER GLEN VAUDREY: Jellyfish japes

Glen is a very new recruit to Planet CFZ. Indeed, we had never heard from him until a few months ago when he wrote - slightly diffidently - to us, asking whether he could write a volume in our ongoing series The Mystery Animals of The British Isles. We asked him for a proposed synopsis and a sample of his writing, and were overawed by what we received. Here was a man who loved both words and the countryside, and could use one to describe the other in poetic but always down to earth terms. We were beginning to come to the conclusion that here was someone that Bob Marley would have described as a `Natural Mystic`, when the final manuscript arrived, and we knew that we were right. So we asked him to be a guest blogger..

But I’m not really thinking of swarms of little jellyfish, I’m not even considering big jellyfish, I’m thinking about those giant jellyfish that have occasionally been sighted.

There is, let’s face it, something so alien about the jellyfish that makes it hard to empathise or to make a connection with. Just consider, the fearsome mysterious big cat the Mngwa which hails from Tanzania might reach the size of a donkey but it did actually start its life as a rather cuddly kitten, and even the monster phantom black hell hounds that are rumoured still to plod along lonely country lanes at some stage would have been lovely little puppies, even if in their case they would posses cute blazing red eyes.

But jellyfish don’t go through that cute and cuddly phase, no big eyes staring up at you lovingly just a tentacle-waving lump. While they might start off small miniatures of their adult selves some have a fair bit of growing to do especially if they are destined to be a dirty great big man-eating leviathan.

In 1865 a lion’s mane jellyfish (Cyanea capillata) was recorded in Massachusetts bay as having a bell of seven feet in diameter with a fine set of tentacles measuring up to 120 feet in length, now I don’t know about you but I wouldn’t want to be in the sea when that one went by, and thinking about it it might take a while for it to actually go by.

But there are tales of even bigger jellyfish out there, a sighting made by two skin divers off the coast of Bermuda, Pat Boatwright and Richard Winer claimed to have observed a giant jellyfish swimming beneath them. They would later give a description of a very large jellyfish having a pink and purple bell that they estimated to be between 50 and 100 foot in diameter.

On other occasions the jellyfish isn’t below you, sometimes it lands on you! Such was the case in 1973 when a jellyfish landed on the deck of the 1,483 ton ship the Kuranda during a storm as it was sailing between Australia and Fiji. The Kuranda’s Captain, Langley Smith, described how after crashing through a large wave the receding water left behind an unwelcome present, a giant jellyfish.

He estimated it to have a weight of around 20 tons and it had ended up spread across the deck to a depth of two feet, if that wasn’t bad enough it also possessed a fine set of tentacles that the good captain believed would have stretch in excess of 200 feet. It would in the end take a water jet from a salvage tug to shift this great lump off the Kuranda.

If all these sighting weren’t bad enough what are we to make of the tale told of a French fisherman going by the name of Henri Baiselle who claimed that a giant jellyfish the size of a car ate not only his wife but his two children in the Bay of Biscay.