Wild Moon Jellies

[urbpan]

Yes, visitors to the Boston waterfront need only look down into the Harbor to see marine wildlife. When we recently visted, not only did we see many moon jellies, but also a three foot long fish of some kind (dunno what kind). I don't have a picture of the fish (which made the mallards up on the Harbor surface quite nervous) but I do have these shots of our urban jellies.







The harbor has been cleaned up quite a bit in recent years (in the late 80's, no less an authority on filth than John Lydon [formerly Johnny Rotten] called it "an open sewer"), but not as much as those pictures seem to indicate. I cleaned up the harbor in photoshop so that you could see the animal better. Here's the un-retouched version of the first picture:



cross-posted to invertebrates, why not?

Comments

Re: Giant fish and other oddities

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Hey there! Do you prefer to be called Diane, or Thor? It sounds like you have a real nice place up there, with your sheep and llamas and cats and children's book illustrator and whatnot.

Not sure about the fish. I thought that tarpon was a tropical beast that Hemingway wannabees fought on rented boats. Fish are my biggest blind spot when it comes to New England fauna.

I was vaguely aware of there being freshwater jellies, but I've definitely never seen them! Now at least I've seen a picture: http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/artnov99/fwjelly.html

My email address is pretty public hereabouts. Check out my profile, or just email me at jefctaylor@hotmail.com

p.s. I'm still a little guy, but I'm not skinny anymore.
For evidence, scan through my wife's journal: cottonmanifesto