Sounds fantastic. Sadly, I have an irrational fear of jellyfish myself, but! if one did not, wonderful. I guess if you can't notice them it would be okay. As long as no one told me.
You'd really never notice them in the daytime, unless you knew to look. (There are also, occasionally, pink stinging jellyfish that look like the ones in cartoons -- domed top, trailing tentacles -- but those are much rarer and are visible.)
At night, of course, you notice them.
There are bioluminescent thingies in the ocean up in coastal Maine in some spots, but I'm not sure if they're jellyfish or something else. They leave white sparkly trails behind things if you go out at the right time of year.
Lots more than there used to be, and it's not a good sign.
Oh goddam, this was trying to be a feelgood post. Don't sea turtles eat them? I seem to remember that's why they choke to death on plastic bags.
They choke to death on plastic bags to avoid being eaten by sea turtles.
4: But I love jellyfish! How can this be?
Seriously, the jelly fish tanks at the Monterey Bay Aquarium - particularly the floor-to-ceiling ones - are the most transfixing, calming art installations that I have ever seen. Were I billionaire, I'd have a bedroom with walls and ceilings of jelly fish.
They have something like this in Palau. There's a lake that got cut off from the sea many millenia ago, and the jellyfish lost their ability to sting due to a lack of natural predators. My brother and I went swimming with them back in 2006
7: I'm now picturing the billionaire you as the kind to say, "No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die."
Jellyfish are indeed very beautiful, as long as one doesn't have to swim among them.
Large-scale aquariums are awesome in general: I like the gigantic 360-degree circular tanks housing all the sharks and rays. I rather like rays.
Sharks with lasers or rays, doesn't really matter.
When I first got here, I saw fireflies almost every evening while walking home. But I haven't seen them for a couple of weeks now.
love, love, love swimming at night time. skinny dipping preferably, but in a suit is fine too.
9: It's probably a result of an unhealthy fascination with the Bond cannon, leading me to have read all the books by age 12.
14: I love swimming at night too -- I think all of my most memorable swims (not in pools) have been at night, with the exception of some alpine ones that were remarkable for the scenery. However, none of them were particularly safe, in retrospect.
I swam in Puerto Mosquito, which lights up something fierce. I also got stung by a jellyfish, mildly, but enough to make me want to get back in the canoe and be done with it. Still: neat.
15:
Swimming at night is definitely not safe.
But SO much fun. I spent many nights out on and in the James. Good swimming ability, knowledge of the water, and lots of people around helps, but definitely doesnt make it any less foolish.
17: Yeah, I was just thinking, wait - I used to think it was fun to swim in the not-particularly warm ocean at night in low temps, in an area with known great white sharks? Other stupid moments in my night-swimming* life: the rapids-filled Merced outside of Yosemite, drunkenly in the Marseilles harbor - and in Miami, come to think of it, and possibly the best - the ice-cold American fairly high in the Sierras, which I jumped straight into and nearly went into shock. Maybe I should have my swimming license revoked.
*Predictably, my favorite REM song.
Peconic Bay is about as safe as night swimming could possibly be. Calm as a bathtub, and gently enough sloping that you'd get tired before you were out over your head.
18:
All of those sound awesome! And crazy. And I love Nightswimming. I did some night swimming in Nice also. If you cant grab those amazing and crazy moments, life isnt worth living.
We had those last Thursday in the ocean at Wellfleet. We went back the next night and found none. We decided it was magic we couldn't repeat.
Well I'll be damned, there is an "American River".
Never doubt what might be found in California, Ned.
20: I'm not sure you should have added that last phrase given the lyrical content of automatic for the people,, though i think i'm currently in the 'preferring new adventures in hifi', so i won't be put over the edge.
upon relistening to electrolite and nightswimming, it confirms the idea that euthymia is bias. but i prefer it.
From the description, these aren't normal jellyfish but comb jellies - ctenophora. Very fragile and fascinating animals. They don't squeeze themselves through the water like medusae, they row themselves along with lines of ciliate plates. Have a look at one in bright light and you'll see the lines iridescing as the plates beat backwards and forwards.
I don't know if it's jelly fish that cause it, but I've seen pictures of a place in Puerto Rico where the water is practically neon green.
We had to climb the fence, but I don't think Thoreau would have minded....
He liked old clothes, not no clothes. Now, Bronson Alcott probably got his kit off at the drop of a Transcendentalist.
There was actually a large jellyfish population in Walden Pond this year and no one really knows how they got in there. Didn't see them when I was there a couple weeks ago, though.
Seeing them light up when you touch them sounds amazing. Imagine if you were watching the bay from above and could follow the paths of any nightswimmers by that flickering!
Were I billionaire, I'd have a bedroom with walls and ceilings of jelly fish.
I've always wanted to have a coffee table full of starfish.
Do sea anemone need fish? Or can you have an aquarium of just anemone?
A real billionaire would have an aquarium full of New York Times reporter Anemona Hartocollis.
With fish like that, who needs anemone?
The synesthete in me wants the tiny non-stinging jellyfish to ring like wee bells, as well as to luminesce.
Doctor, I have anemone in me.
I found her down on the strand.
By the sea, We
Get along decently, and
She doesn't mind my family,
But on dry land she's mean to me.
Proper capitalization is bourgeois.
35: Well at least the others float like a butterfly and sting like a bee.
Except my bourgie s manservant /s smartphone caps things for me
I was once stung near my eye by a jellyfish in the ocean at Virginia Beach. It was quite traumatic and painful.
Do sea anemone need fish? Or can you have an aquarium of just anemone?
Yes, you can have an aquarium of just anemones as long as you feed them with fish food or brine shrimp or something.
It may help you to know that a sea anemone (or indeed a coral polyp) is basically just a jellyfish turned upside down and glued to a rock. A lot of jellyfish have alternating generations; the medusa stage mates and the offspring settle on rocks and turn into, basically, anemones, and bud off little medusae that go and swim around and mate. (Real anemones don't do this.)
Fascinating creatures.
Real anemones don't do this
They prefer to remain anemonous.
I swam around in the presences of bioluminescent something or others in Cherry Cove on Catalina Island last Spring.
I love nightswimming and have done many a stupid fun night swim, including the atlantic off connecticut in october. that must have been so fucking cold, I don't know what I was thinking. basically telling boys I could drink wild turkey out of the bottle and do more crazy shit than them any day. I spent too much of my life trying to pwn boys at being boys. I'm over it now, except for arguments on the internet, of course...
Seriously, the jelly fish tanks at the Monterey Bay Aquarium - particularly the floor-to-ceiling ones - are the most transfixing, calming art installations that I have ever seen.
The last time I was at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, it was full of obnoxious children, which completely reversed the calming effect of the jelly exhibit.
46: did you try hitting the children to see if they glowed?
A wonderful friend from college makes blown-glass, neon tubing, jelly fish art-objects. They are completely wonderful. Unfortunately--as I have lusted after them for almost a decade now--they are in extremely small quantity, require complicated electronics, and tend to zap passersby. Still: so awesome.
42: It may help you to know that a sea anemone (or indeed a coral polyp) is basically just a jellyfish turned upside down and glued to a rock.
Excellent; I think I knew that. I treat jellyfish and sea anemones with the same respect and caution, anyway. Anemones can hurt badly if you step on them; be very careful, also around jellyfish! (I'm fooling around, but this goes toward my comment 1 upthread: beautiful wonderful creatures, look but don't touch!)
A friend stepped on an anemone in Puerto Rico many moons ago, and by all accounts it wasn't pretty. I was treated to careful lessons from the same friend a few years later before we went to PR -- we actually went to the Boston Aquarium, where he pointed and explained about anemones and barracuda.
explained about anemones and barracuda
"If you come across an anemone in a Barracuda, give it a wide berth. They travel erratically and always go for the rock-bottom insurance."
I spent too much of my life trying to pwn boys at being boys.
I can pinpoint this as a definite cause of many of my nightswims. Then again, when I was as drunk as I've ever been on my 21st birthday in October, it took several boys to wrestle me down when I suddenly decided a swim in the North Sea was a great idea. So maybe it's just some sort of impulse, like the lemmings and the cliff.
51: Watch it, I'll post that "Wet Dream" link again... I will!
53: Not tonight, I have a haddock.
I'm a loser, baby, so why don't you kill me?
No, seriously.
