Sea Waps (Box Jellyfish)

Beauty Of Animal | Sea Waps (Box Jellyfish) | Sea wasp or Box Jellyfish or Box Fish is the most poisonous sea creature than stone fish, sharks or sea snakes. Even it is a beautiful jelly, it has killed more people than other marine. Sea wasps are usually found in shallow waters. If you see sea waps at the sea, you are not allowed to do any water activites. They live in coastal waters from northern Australia and New Guinea north to the Philippines and Vietnam.

The sea wasp has a large transparent bell or cube like body and is divided into segments. They have a transparent body with a pale blue color. It has stinging tentacles. Each tentacle on a box jellyfish can have up to 5000 of these nematocysts. The box jellyfish uses these tentacles to catch its prey, example small fish and crustaceans. Box jellyfish is, unlike many other jellyfish, equipped with four eyes. Eyes are connected to a nerve ring and the creature can take evasive action or move towards its prey. Two of the eyes in the set detect only light. It has no brain, no heart and no blood.

Sea wasps feed on small crustaceans and small fish. These animals have strategy to catch their prey. They will wait for the prey to bump into their tentacles. Then, they will killed then by stinging them with their stong poison in tentacles. But, sea turtles are not affected by their sting. Sea turtle are their predator.  In most cases, the sting of the sea waps does not cause death, but it always has the potential to do so. In fact, the jellyfish, even the most venomous, releases such a small amount of venom that it rarely causes death. However, each sting can be extremely painful and requires immediate medical attention. In the cases of the worst stings, anti-venom may be applied. You can do first aid when you stinged by sea waps. First, washing the sting area with vinegar, and in no circumstance should alcohol, alcohol-based lotions, or methylated spirits be applied. Then, CPR may be required. Last, medical help should be sought as soon as possible after considering these needs.

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Blue Button Jellyfish

Beauty Of Animal | Blue Button Jellyfish  | This sea creature is similar with Bluebottle Jellyfish/Portuguese Man of War and By-the-wind-sailor (velella velella). Actually, they are not true jellyfish, but they are colonies of polyps, or we know as Chondrophores. Blue button jellyfish live by floating on the surface of the sea. They range in Atlantic, Australia and Indo-Pasific.

Blue button jellyfish consists of two main parts, the float and the hydroid colony. The float is golden to brown. It is round and almost flat. The size  is only about one inch wide. The hydroid colony is bright blue turquoise to yellow in color. The hydroid is the tentacles  which make them like jellyfish. Each strand has numerous branchlets, each of which ends in knobs of stinging cells called nematocysts. The blue button sting is not powerful but may cause irritation if it comes in contact with human skin.

Blue button jellyfish feed on dead or living organisms. manily eat fish eggs, small fish, larvea, or zooplankton. Blue button jellyfish are hermaphrodites (i.e. both male and female). They release both eggs and sperm into the water. When the eggs have been fertilised by the sperm, they develop into larvae that subsequently metamorphose into individual polyps. A Blue Button colony forms when one polyp divides to form new types of polyps which become specialised for different functions.

Blue button jellyfish play an important role in food web.  They are prey for several organisms. Blue button jellyfish feed on both living and dead organisms. The blue button has a single mouth located beneath the float which is used for both the intake of nutrients as well as the expulsion of wastes. Unlike most jellyfish, blue button jellyfish do not sting. However, they can irritate human skin when touched. They typically float through the ocean using both ocean currents and wind to help them move. They usually travel in large groups, and you can sometimes find large groups of beached blue button jellyfish.

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By The Wind Sailor/Velella Velella

Beauty Of Animal | By The Wind Sailor/Velella Velella | This sea creature includes in Chondrophores. They are not true jellyfish, but the colony of polyps. By The Wind Sailor is similar like Bluebottle Jellyfish/Portuguese Man of War and Blue Button Jellyfish. They live in warm and temperate waters in all the world's oceans. They live with the float above the water, and polyps hanging down about a centimeter below. By-the-wind sailors often move across the ocean’s surface in large numbers. In late spring or early summer, they are often seen in coastal beaches.

By-the-wind sailor is a pelagic colonial hydroid. The float forms oval disc. It is deep blue and can be up to 10 cm in length. The tentacles are into the water from the float. A thin semicircular fin is set diagonally along the float acting as a sail. That's why it gets its  coomon name 'by-the-wind-sailor'. The sail along the float shows which way Velella velella will  move

 

By-the-wind sailors are carnivorous animals. They catch their prey, generally plankton, by their tentacles that hang down in the water. The toxins in their tentacles are effective against their prey. The toxin may cause pain when you touch them. So, it is better for you  not to touch your face or eyes if you have been handling By-the-wind sailors.  Most of By-the-wind sailors are less than about 7 cm long. Their most obvious feature is a small stiff sail that catches the wind and propels them over the surface of the sea. Under certain wind conditions, they can become stranded on beaches in the thousands.

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Nomura's Jellyfish

Beauty Of Animal | Nomura's Jellyfish | Nomura's jellyfish is an enormous jellyfish like Lion's Mane jellyfish. Nomura's Jellyfish also known as the Echizen kurage in Japan, is a large Japanese Jellyfish whose width is slightly larger than a height of a fully grown man. Nomura's jellyfish are more commonly found in the oceans near Korea and China. Scientists think they originate in the Yellow Sea and in Chinese waters. They live in waters near Japan as well. The major areas where they can be found are East China Sea and Yellow Sea.

This massive sea creatures can grow 6 feet (1.83 meters) in diameter and weigh more than 450 pounds (204 kilos).  This creature is one of the largest of the jellyfish species.  Some look like they have eyes, but they don't. They also have no brain. Their bodies are at least 94% water. They also have no respiratory system. The jellyfish's mouth is also their anus. Their color is gray with pinkish brown tentacles.  Their predators are swordfish, tuna, sunfish, leatherback turtles, and humans. Nomura's jellyfish eat plankton that they catch with their tentacles. This jellyfish can eat large crustaceans.

An interesting fact about the jellyfish is the way man eats them. Chinese eat them with sesame oil and onions. Vietnamese eat them with red chili peppers, in Korea with mustard, and in Thailand as a noodle. We Americans think they taste like "snot".  Their population is on the rise in the fishing waters and is a serious problem to the fishermen because a large number of the Nomura's Jellyfish gets caught in their nets. The cause for greater concern is that they poison their catch with their toxic stingers or crush them to death. And often break the nets due to their weight. It's a serious crisis which has started to affect their livelihood.

There are even reports where they destroy the local fisheries with their taste for fish eggs and larvae. In some areas the density is reported to be hundred times more than normal. There are many theories that is said to be the cause of this explosion. One is global warming where the seas have been warmed and are better suited for their breeding. And scientists blame the over-fishing of the natural predators of the Jellyfish and the pollution along the coast. The high levels of nutrients in the water are also linked to this sudden jellyfish bloom.

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Immortal Jellyfish

Beauty Of Animal | Immortal Jellyfish  | Immortal jellyfish is one of the most unique animals in the entire animal kingdom. It may be the only animal in the world to have truly discovered the fountain of youth. It is able to revert back to a juvenile form once it mates after becoming sexually mature. This jelly is technically known as a hydrozoan and is the only known animal that is capable of reverting completely to its younger self. Immortal jellyfish comes from the Caribbean. But, they have spread throughour the world. Immortal jellyfish are found in temperate to tropical regions in all of the world's oceans. It is believed to be spreading across the world as ships are discharging ballast water in ports. Since the species is immortal, the number of individuals is extremely increasing. Dr. Maria Miglietta from Smithsonian Tropical Marine Institute scientist  assumes that we are looking at a worldwide silent invasion.

The size of Immortal jellyfish is about 5 mm. It has an equally high and bell-shaped figure. The walls are uniformly thin. The bright red, big stomach has a cruciform shape in its cross section. Young specimens have only 8 tentacles along the edge, while adult specimens have 80-90 tentacles. Immortal jellyfish is the first case in which a metazoan is capable of reverting completely to a sexually immature, colonial stage after having reached sexual maturity as a solitary stage. Jellyfish usually die after propagating. But Immortal jellyfish is different. It reverts to a sexually immature stage after reaching adulthood and is capable of rejuvenating itself. The jellyfish and its reversal of the ageing process is now the focus of research by marine biologists and geneticists. It is thought to achieve the feat through the cell development process of transdifferentiation, in which cells transform from one type to another.

The switching of cell roles is usually seen only when parts of an organ regenerate. However, it appears to occur normally in the Immortal jellyfish life cycle. Immortal jellyfish, a type of jellyfish, is gaining notoriety for its uncanny and unprecedented capacity to de-evolve instead of dying. These jellyfish are the first evidenced metazoan, or multi-celled creature, to demonstrate the ability to revert back to a colonial stage after reaching sexual maturity. After sexually reproducing, most animals inevitably die. Immortal jellyfish, however, undergo a transformation in which they return to a stage of sexual immaturity after reproducing, only to mature and reproduce again, then return to sexual immaturity, and so on. It means that Immortal jellyfish do not die, by nature. They are believed to have an infinity potential lifespan.

Immortal jellyfish are about 5 mm in diameter in sexually mature stage. They have 8-24 tentacles when they are young and up to 90 tentacles as mature adults. Shaped like a bell, their external walls are transparent and their stomachs are large and have a distinctive red color. Immortal jellyfish rejuvenate from sexually mature to colonial through two  processes: cell transformation and cell transdifferentiation. Transdifferentiation is one cell transform into a completely different type of cell. By transdifferentiating, these cells are able to change their entire make-up, much like the much-publicized stem cells. After sexually reproducing, the jellyfish reabsorbs all of its external parts and turns into a cyst. The cyst then attaches to the ground and grows into a stalk-shaped polyp colony. These polyps begin a new cycle, where they form into mature jellyfish - all genetically identical. This specimen of Immortal jellyfish shows its majestic being, with its deep red stomach clearly showing. 

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