Jellyfish Can Be Admired for Their Fragile Beauty : Nature: Although widely respected for their sting, only 70 of the 2,000 varieties are able to attack in that way. But they are among Earth’s most common predators.

There’s not much dignity in being a jellyfish.

But the spineless, brainless and nearly tasteless sea creatures make up for their deficiencies in the fragile beauty department. If that doesn’t work, a sting will sometimes do to gain respect, and a meal.

“Enjoy them from a distance,” warns a sign at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, explaining the deadly hazards of the Australian sea wasp’s sting. While the sea wasp can kill within three minutes, most of the 2,000 types of gelatinous drifters are more delightful than dangerous. Only 70 sting.

“They’re beautiful for the sake of being beautiful,” said Freya Sommer, the senior aquarist who put together the new “Planet of the Jellies” exhibit, the largest in the world, on display through September, 1993.

Jellyfish varieties are endless, ranging in size from microscopic to more than 100 feet long, and species are discovered all the time. Not a true fish, the translucent jellies are related to coral and sea anemones.

Purple-striped, spotted and upside-down jellies don’t need explanation, but some defy description. Some look like Tiffany lamps, others like lacy lingerie. One looks like an egg yolk poured into water. Some glow when bumped, the bell jelly has red eye spots and others can’t be seen without special lighting.

“I love them all, for one reason or another,” Sommer said. “They’re spineless, slimy creatures, but they’re nice ones, too.”

Sommer, 33, grew up in England before coming to California’s jellyfish-rich coast. She once tasted a moon jelly while exploring near Santa Cruz. The slippery blobs aren’t usually served outside of Japan.

“I just popped a piece in my mouth out of curiosity, although I’m not sure I want to admit that,” she said, scrunching up her nose. “It was kind of gross, like salty Jello with no real flavoring.”

The main jellyfish eaters are sunfish and sea turtles, which gorge on stinging varieties until intoxicated on nature’s elixir. Mostly, however, jellyfish do the eating as one of the most common predators on Earth, numbering in the millions, scientists suppose without knowing for sure.

Many of the color-tinged jellies sting prey with outstretched tentacles, and then shuttle food into their main “bell” bodies with the help of “mouth arms” that hang in lacy strands.

Comb jellies use tiny beating tentacles to engulf food, and the effect of the rapid fluttering creates a rainbow of color moving over their bodies.

Some saltwater jellies grow their own food--algae--while others congregate into huge colonies called siphonophores that can stretch 120 feet long, acting as natural drift nets.

The most infamous jellyfish is the Portuguese man-of-war, which can cause great pain with 2,000-plus stinging cells per inch of tentacle.

Non-stinging types, like the most abundant moon jellies, use gluey mucus to capture food, which ranges from tiny brine shrimp to small fish.

The bluish moon jellies, which can grow from the size of a pinhead to six feet wide, shot to fame last May when 2,500 orbited Earth as part of a Space Shuttle experiment on their delicate balancing organs.

“They’re cute,” Columbia astronaut Tamara Jernigan said of the critter crew. “It’s fun to watch them. You find yourself sort of mesmerized.”

Jellies are cute, and probably dumb. The creatures, which have been around in one form or another for about 650 million years, can tell up from down thanks to “nerve clumps” at the ends of their bodies. They can’t see and can barely smell, yet they instinctively avoid hazards, say scientists who call jellies a mystery.

“Every new thing we find out about them leads to more questions,” Sommer said. “They haven’t evolved much, but that’s about all we know.”

Most jellies begin as a polyp attached to rocks or the ocean floor. Polyps shunt off disk-shaped creatures that grow into adult jellies called medusae, for the mythological Medusa who had snakes for hair and turned men to stone when they looked at her. Jellies, which live from months to a couple of years, can make polyps. But some polyps produce only polyps, and some medusae produce only medusae.

“Their sex life? There’s an interesting question,” Sommer quipped.

Many jellies lead hidden lives for self-protection, lurking deep in the ocean to avoid predators and rising toward the surface only at night in search of food.

Jellies move themselves by a sort of jet propulsion from body contractions, but mostly go with the current. The jellies are 96% water, and have only two cell layers that can collapse if touched.

“They have no boundaries,” Sommer said. “It’s like something floating along in the atmosphere, never landing or resting, but just going along.”