#sorry for the terrible photo quality tho. it was the best i could find haha...

[donuts4evry1]

Okay, tell us about your fave jellies specifically! I'd love to learn more!

:D!!

If I'm going to be honest, most of my jellyfish knowledge sorta floats around aimlessly unless I'm looking for something specific, but I am all for telling a few of my favourite jellyfish facts! (For the record, my favourite jellyfish is the Upside-down jellyfish- specifically the Cassiopea andromeda :>)

Anyway I'm done with the beginning ramble now, I'll just get started :)

Scientists have only begun to tag jellyfish rather recently, beginning near the start of the century (if memory serves me right). Lots have been discovered through this, such as their daily migration patterns and whatnot

Though, what does interest me the most is the fact that scientists have discovered that the box jellyfish (likely the C. fleckeri, or the poster child of venemous jellyfish) "sleep" (or at least, lie motionless on the sea floor at nighttime). It's very funny, and a behaviour I believe to be shared with all box jellies of the Chironex genus (though... who knows? Maybe it might be typical box jellyfish behaviour)

What is proven is that Upside Down jellyfish do, in fact, sleep! This particular study also showed that melatonin works on Upside Down jellyfish as well... which is pretty neat I think.

If you'd like to preserve a jellyfish in liquid, a 5-10% formalin solution will do (or a 70% alcohol solution). The first reply in this thread is very helpful, actually! (though I doubt anyone here is interested in liquid preservation)

Another thread suggested using Magnesium Chloride to kill (oof) and fix jellyfish for pictures and then transfer(?) to a solution of alcohol or formalin.

The Compass Jellyfish is a sequential hermaphrodite, being born functionally male and then developing into a female upon maturity!

The Black Sea Nettle (C. achylos) and Purple Striped Sea Nettle (C. colorata) happen to be very close genetically :D! I suppose they are found roaming similar areas (around the mid to southern coast of California and Upper Mexico), so it makes sense.

They are also my favourite sea nettles and after realizing that the Monterey Bay Aquarium had wallpapers of them, they have swiftly replaced the subway bosses as my lockscreen :)

Jellyfish in the wild have slow metabolisms, so they can actually tolerate the numerous "dead zones" in the ocean for quite a while (dead zones being areas that algae and the like have completely sucked the oxygen out of).

One of these jellies is the Egg Yolk jelly, which often frequents these areas during the day (when competition is high)

The black sea nettle has "internal anchoring structures" that make it suited to swim through high currents without damage, though when I tried to look for that "internal anchoring structure" online I found nothing. Consequently, the author of my first jellyfish book, Lisa-Ann Gershwin, happened to be one of the biologists that described the species in 1996(?), so good for her :)

Ok, last bullet point before I run everyone ragged with jellyfish facts... Moon jellyfish are generally difficult to differentiate between species but here are a few distinguishing characteristics:

The A. labiata, sometimes referred to the Pacific Moon Jellyfish, may have 16 scallops (curves at the edge of their bell), while the A. aurita (or the posterchild of all moon jellies) tend to have 8. (This method may be imperfect, though. Or I might just be bad at counting).

The A. limbata has beautiful distinguishing brown bands at the edge of its bell, and generally resides in Arctic waters. Some of its polyps attached to pieces of trash were believed to be found at the coast of Northern Japan in the Spring and Summer of 2014, which is really interesting....

Anyway! That ramble ran for a while, ehehe... It's almost been an hour since I sat down and wrote all of this, hopefully you've learned something!

┏ (゜ω゜)=☞(:◎)≡

Ah! As for the candy... Here's some caramels made with some ground Jellyfish Powder, courtesy of the students at Obama Fisheries High School :)