Jellyfish in a New Light

It began like a bad dream from my childhood.

Entering the Long Beach aquarium’s newest exhibit, “Jellies: Phantoms of the Deep,” I moved into a darkened room with ripples of light undulating on the floor as if I were under water, at the bottom of the pool.

Before my eyes could adjust, there it was: My nemesis. A big gelatinous blob with stinging tentacles and way too much attitude. It froze me in my tracks.

My aversion to jellyfish began when I was a small boy, splashing around in the surf off Newport Beach. I dove under a breaking wave, only to have an unseen mop of tentacles rake across my back.

Ever since, I’ve done my damnedest to dodge these nettlesome critters.

But here I was, surrounded by them in the Aquarium of the Pacific. There were the purple-striped jellies that seemingly attacked me as a child. And a swarm of East Coast sea nettles--the menacing little critters with a painful sting that haunted me while windsurfing on the Chesapeake Bay.

And moon jellies, scores of them. They’re the ones I often poke with my toe while smirking at their fate when I see them washed up on shore. Then later, I think better of it when I fall off my surfboard and get mixed up with a few stray tentacles in the swirling whitewater.

The exhibit helped me understand the source of my pain. A diagram of a stinging cell, blown up 11,000 times larger than life, reveals how the balloon-shaped cells burst open and shoot a venom-laced barb into a victim. It looks like a harpoon on the end of a string.

The good news is that once a cell fires, it cannot fire again. The bad news is that jelly tentacles are lined with millions of the cells--and the tentacles are constantly growing.

Matt Ankley, chief aquarist and sea jelly expert, was at the aquarium to clear up a few misconceptions.

“A lot of people think jellies sting to be mean and nasty to swimmers,” Ankley said. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Tentacles don’t really attack. Instead, their stinging cells automatically react when something--like my foot--brushes up against them. Their function is to paralyze small fish or other prey that jellies eat.

To hear Ankley tell it, jellyfish really aren’t so tough. In fact, they’re spineless. Literally.

They aren’t smart enough to cop a bad attitude. They don’t even have a brain.

They do not have eyes to see their victims. And they cannot really swim either, at least not fast enough to make any headway against a current.

Instead, Ankley explained, these slippery drifters suffer mostly from a huge image problem. Jellyfish are so misunderstood, he said, that most people don’t realize they aren’t fish. They’re invertebrates-- closer cousins to sea anemones and coral--than to anything with a backbone and a bite.

Being dumb and blind doesn’t seem to be a major hardship. Scientists believe sea jellies have been around for about 650 million years.

Yet, at the same time, these animals are so fragile that they are easily ripped apart by waves, nets or most attempts to handle them.

The aquarium has solved this problem by placing the jellies in special tanks that re-create an environment with no corners or air bubbles that can damage the delicate creatures.

A current of water pushes jellies away from the walls and the drainage valve so water can be recirculated and filtered without sucking out the jellies, which are 95% water themselves.

At first I felt nothing but malicious pleasure watching jellies turned upside down in the gentle spin cycle. With their bodies, or bells, pumping rhythmically, they struggled helplessly to propel themselves outside of the unrelenting current.

Yet I soon began to see jellies in a different way. Dramatically backlighted in each tank, these gossamer creatures pulsed and danced to New Age background music with the orchestrated grace of ballerinas.

I was mesmerized by their fragile beauty. The aquarium has 14 species in 14 tanks. They come in a rainbow of colors, shapes, sizes--from tiny, transparent creatures, a quarter of an inch in diameter, to the lion’s mane jellyfish. Its mane of tentacles can grow longer than a 100-foot blue whale.

Some look like Tiffany lamps, others like lacy lingerie. The fried egg Jelly resembles an egg--but one poured into water about to be poached, not fried. There are the familiar parachute shapes, others that look like drawstring purses.

One of the most fascinating is the comb jelly. These translucent sheathes are not a true jelly, in that they have no stinging tentacles. Instead, they open their mouths to envelop their prey.

Like Alien Creatures in a Liquid World

Tiny hairs, or cilia, propel the comb jelly forward, putting on a show as extravagant as any sci-fi flick. Catching the light like a prism, the cilia flash red, green. The effect is a poetic procession of alien creatures zooming around a liquid universe.

The scariest-looking animals, the lagoon jellies, come from Palau and the Philippines. They are dark, speckled creatures with eight thick tentacles that resemble the legs of hairy tarantulas.

Yet lagoon jellies have lost their ability to sting. Instead, they grow their own food--algae--inside their own tissue. The aquarium bathes these jellies with special lighting to stimulate algae growth.

By the time I made it through the exhibit, I had discovered a new appreciation for these slimy ocean drifters. They may be heartless (they have no organs other than a mouth and reproductive organs), but they’re not so bad--so long as we’re separated by an inch-thick wall of plexiglass.

BE THERE

“Jellies: Phantoms of the Deep” at the Long Beach Aquarium of the Pacific will run through December 2001. The aquarium is open 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day except Dec. 25. Adults: $14.95, seniors $11.95, children 3 to 11, $7.95. Children under 3 are free. Information: (562) 437-FISH. Or check the Web site: https://www.aquariumofpacific.org.