Fresh Water jellyfish

[carlislere]

The fresh water jellyfish are back. While diving with a DM candidate yesterday afternoon at Windy Point Park on Lake Travis, we encountered some fresh water jellyfish off the platform down from the stairs with the wooden rails in about 30 feet of water. I only saw one over by the platform below the first set of stairs. I will have to get back there next week and get some macro pics.
Everyone have a safe Memorial Day weekend.

 

[archman]

Are these "actual" freshwater jellies, or those silly gelatinous bryozoans? Craspedacusta sowerbi are the freshwater jellies, and they're teeny things the size of thimble jellies (or smaller). The gelatinous bryozoan (usually Pectinatella magnifica) can get colonies as big as a basketball, but they attach themselves to stuff (docks, rocks, etc.). When people knock them loose they're often called "freshwater jellies".
Get us some macro's!

 

[Toecutter]

I have a friend who related a story of another friend diving in either Canyon Lake or Tenkiller in OK who found himself in a swarm of what he referred to as fresh water jellyfish. This man has dove the same location many times afterwards and has never seen them since then. Galveston/Clear Lake is the only coastal area where I have lived long enough to come to loathe the run of the mill salty jelly (called "cabbage heads" here). One of them got me while I was skiing last summer and now I just find them a nuisance. I wonder if these fresh water cousins are armed and dangerous?

 

[archman]

One of them got me while I was skiing last summer and now I just find them a nuisance. I wonder if these fresh water cousins are armed and dangerous?

Craspedacusta is harmless to big things like people, unless you start eating 'em! As for cabbageheads, they're harmless too! Something else must've stung 'ya Toecutter, as cabbageheads eat by trapping plankton in sheets of copious mucus. There's even a fishery for them in Florida. The bell is cut into strips and pickled for exportation into Japan. Yum.