Moon Jelly in the water off Dania Beach, Florida.
Jellyfish look a lot different in the water than they do when washed up on the beach. Their bodies don’t have a skeleton or shell for support, so they are totally reliant on the water. Air just isn’t a “thick”enough medium for them too look their best.
Last week there were thousands of moon jellies (Aurelia aurita) like the one above washing up on southeast Florida beaches. Over the weekend we visited Ft. Lauderdale Beach and Hollywood Beach but didn’t see any on the beach.
A walk out onto Dania pier revealed that the water was still full of moon jellies. Most of them were just far enough out not to affect the swimmers.
But by Monday morning reports of jellies on the beach were already coming in. I guess they took the weekend off.
Below is a photo from the Ft. Lauderdale Sun taken on the beach this morning and Tweeted via Twitpic. Click the photo to go to Twitpic and see the larger image. Beautiful colors.
Below is a 28 second video clip I shot of moon jellyfish around the Dania Pier.
