Location Taken: North Sydney, Nova Scotia
Time Taken: July 2012
The ferry was turning the sea pale green as I stood there watching the boat work on debarking. I looked down. There, far below the deck I was standing on, was a small school of red jellyfish, tossed around by the churning waters.
It was challenging to get a photo of them. It was a long ways down, at the limit of my camera’s zoom, and both the water and the jellies were moving. Still, I got a few good shots.
The teal-green of the water and the brown-red of the jellyfish are a beautiful pairing.
This particular jellyfish is a Lion’s Mane Jellyfish. Well, at least that’s the more common name for them. The first name I heard was Arctic Red Jellyfish, the name they use on Prince Edward Island, and based on all the specimens I saw, this is a more accurate name. Every one was this lovely dark red-brown, which looks pretty different from most pictures of Lion’s Mane jellies I can find online. Now, all of the ones I saw were pretty small, ranging between two or three inches across to a foot or so across, and Lion’s Mane jellyfish change color as they age, but every single one was the same red color… I prefer the Arctic Red name, it’s more descriptive of what I saw.
And I did see a lot of them. One of my favorite moments in the past year was while I was visiting Prince Edward Island. It’s the smallest Canadian province, by far, and very domesticated. Farms and small towns were everywhere. The soil is a nice rust red, and is full of iron. It produces excellent tasting crops, especially potatoes. They’re also home to the best ice cream in the world, Cows. Seriously, if you ever run across a Cows store, buy some ice cream. It’s marvelous.
We spent the night at the national park on the island, the not very originally named Prince Edward Island National Park, camping right near the beach. They actually have decently warm ocean water here, despite being so far north, thanks to warm water coming from the St. Lawrence River, so I biked over to the beach and went swimming. And quickly spotted that I wasn’t the only one in the water. There was a whole school of Arctic Red jellyfish, the largest one only about six inches across, floating in the waves. My swimming outfit includes pants, so I wasn’t afraid of them bumping into my legs as I would have been in a normal swimsuit. This turned swimming with jellyfish from a potentially scary situation to pure awesomeness. I even went back to shore to grab my glasses so I could get a good look at them. I was still careful not to let them bump into me, but it was more for their sake than mine. It was fascinating watching them float, gently swimming to keep from being washed ashore.
This is why I now include Arctic Red jellyfish in my favorite animals list.
