Jellyfish

As a kid growing up on Long Island (New York), and my father having a boat, I saw vast amounts of jellyfish in both the ocean and the Long Island Sound while sailing. The largest ones were perhaps the size of a Frisbee, but at the time when I saw the larger variety, I was not in the water!!


I have been in the water with smaller variety of jellyfish-about the same size as your favorite Dunkin Donut-but I was never stung luckily enough!
Here are the kind I swam with or use to see on the boat.

However my girlfriend was not as lucky as me! Chris and her hubby Kenny were out sailing on the LI Sound one day and she dove into the water to cool off. Little did she know that right below the surface was a jellyfish out for his "daily food run" and he was not happy about sharing his space with her. So doing what jellyfish sometimes do, he stung her very badly on her torso and leg. When she swam back to the boat and climbed out of the water she thought the pain would ease, but she said, just the opposite happened, the pain intensified. After several minutes of extreme pain and a little trouble breathing, and not being near shore, she asked her husband to help ease the sting .... and .... pee on her!! YES folks, the acid in urine helps release the venom that was injected into the skin through the sting!! (OK any visuals yet????). So being the good husband he was, he obliged. Luckily he had a fair amount of beer that day!! We laughed so hard when they told us the story!! SOOOO the reason for this Blog you ask ....

Today in New Hampshire (Rye Beach) over 100 people were stung by what they think was ONE jellyfish! The lifeguards saw what they thought was a log in the water and went out to retrieve it. "IT" (the log) turned out to be a HUGE jellyfish! I am just happy I never ran into one this big during my swimming days!

If they didn't get ride of the darn thing they could have sold it to the local seafood restaurant which could have made jellyfish strips in soy sauce, sesame oil and chili sauce!!