Gob-Smacked!

By The Marine Detective on October 22, 2023

Otherworldly. One-worldly!
While on a recent trip to God’s Pocket Resort north of Port Hardy, it happened to be that there was a huge aggregation of jellies. It was truly awe-inspiring to be diving amid this galaxy of jellies.

The collective noun for jellies actually is a “smack”, not a galaxy.

A smack of this magnitude is the result of the jellies’ lifecycle and big tidal exchanges concentrating them. We were certainly gob-smacked by the number and diversity as we watched them cascade past in the current as the plankton they are, pulsing to feed on smaller plankton.

The astounding photo above was taken by dive buddy Melissa Foo. It’s me in the smack, appearing to be in a globe of jellies.

And this photo of me was taken by dive buddy Janice Crook. I am including it anticipating that there will be questions about if we were stung by the jellies. We were not. Only the stinging cells of the large jelly species off our coast lead to human discomfort. Later in this blog, I show photos of those big jelly species.

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The majority of the jellies in the smack were Water Jellies and Cross Jellies.

Cross Jellies, as the name suggests, have a cross on their bell. They are Mitrocoma cellularia to 10.5 cm across.

Water Jellies are a group of jellies that have little lines all around the outside of the bell that look like the spokes of a wheel. The little white part hanging down from the bell is the mouth (manubrium). Aequorea species are up to 17.5 cm across.

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There were also Moon Jellies. Moon Jellies are easy to discern because they have a clover shape on their bell which is their 4 gonads / sex organs. Aurelia labiata are up to 40 cm across. 

The following photo shows a Moon Jelly female with fertilized eggs. The eggs are the less translucent white structures. 

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The biggest jelly species I saw were Lion’s Mane Jellies and Egg Yolk Jellies.

The Lion’s Main Jelly is the biggest jelly species in the world. Cyanea ferruginea can be 2.5 m across with 8 clusters of 70 to 150 tentacles which can be up to 36 m long! Know that the larger individuals of this species tend to be further offshore and that they can retract their tentacles.

The Egg Yolk or Fried Egg Jelly is Phacellophora camtschatica and can be 60 cm across. They have 16 large lobes that alternate with small lobes giving the bell of the jelly as scalloped edge. Each of the 16 lobes has clusters of up to 25 tentacles which can be 6 metres long.

The individuals I saw on these dives happened to be white with light yellow. They part that looks like the yolk of an egg is often darker yellow.

Lion’s Mane Jellies and Egg Yolk Jellies. are the only two common jelly species in our waters that can create a sting that irritates human skin, even when the jellies are dead. The stinging cells (nematocysts) work even when the jelly is dead or you get a severed tentacle drifting by your face. The sting from a Lion’s Mane Jelly is reported to be worst than that of an Egg Yolk Jelly.

I’ve been stung by both and clearly it’s not been enough to deter me from striving to get photos of them. But if you have far more skin exposed or are a fisher grabbing nets with many of the tentacles wrapped in them, it is reported to be very uncomfortable.

The solution to the irritation is vinegar (acid), meat tenderizer (enzyme) and I know that many fishers swear by Pacific canned milk as well. Research puts forward that vinegar is the only real solution and that urine does not work at all.

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There were also various species of sea gooseberry / comb jellies in the smack. These elongate jellies open up at one end and engulf their prey. Comb jellies move by cilia which are arranged like teeth on a comb. These cilia cause light to scatter whereby you can see rainbow-like flashes over the animals. This is not bioluminescence as the light is not created by the jellies.

Comb Jellies belong to the Ctenophora phylum while the other species referenced on this blog are in the Cnidarian phylum.

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Below there are more photos of the smack. All photos were taken between October 15 to October 19, 2023 in Browning Pass north of Port Hardy, Territory of the Kwakwa̱ka̱’wakw (the Kwak̕wala-speaking Peoples) ©Jackie Hildering.