Rare Jellyfish Species Native to Australian Waters Wash Up on Texas Shores— Experts Call Them a Threat
The Australian white-spotted jellyfish are fond of pearly white moon jellies. Wherever the moon jellies go, pink meanies follow. Lately, the violent squalls of Hurricane Francine, coupled with high tides and whiplashing storms, as experts told KHOU11, have triggered an influx of these love mates on Texas’ golden beaches. With moon jellies veering into Texan waters, pink meanies are following the suit of their favorite buffet. Beachgoers have been noticing these uninvited guests invading Texas’ shores for the past few years, but this time, unprecedented numbers are unabashedly setting up their homes on the beaches, including Padre Island and Port Aransas, according to a recent report by MySA.
Pink meanies need an exact formula of environmental conditions to survive. Despite the absence of a brain, heart, and even blood, these translucent, glowing creatures are often recruited by scientists to control the populations of other jellyfish. As heavy rains and better nutrient environment push moon jellies to take up lodges in Texas, pink meanies are recurrently chasing them so as not to starve. Without moon jellies and considerably warmer waters, pink meanies can’t survive, Jace Tunnell, community engagement editor for the Harte Research Institute at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, told CBS News.
It’s a rare occurrence, a rare opportunity for beach explorers to line up their cameras and binoculars to capture a sight that wouldn’t be accessible on most days. These pink meanies, dubbed Drymonema larsoni, are normally the residents of coasts across Australia, Japan, Thailand, the Philippines, and India. Weighing up to 50 pounds, these jellyfish weren’t supposed to be in the Gulf of Mexico. Visitors are as curious to touch them as terrified. Curious because they carry a limitless library of marine wisdom. And terrified because their tentacles are laced with venom, which can trigger severe itching and rashes on the flesh of the bitten person.
In conversation with MySA, Tunnell confirmed documenting several of these jellyfish during his beachcombing episodes. Recently, Eric Ozolins, a beachgoer, shared the same story with the outlet. On November 22, he found a 16-inch jellyfish along the shores of Padre Island National Seashore. On Sunday, October 19, this year, Captain Michael Rasco of Tritoon Charters spotted one pink meanie in the waters off South Padre Island, mySA shared on Facebook.
No one precisely knows how these moon jellies and pink meanies arrive in the Texan waters, but the hunch is that they hitch rides from ballast ships or boats, per the National Science Foundation. It all boils down to how jellyfish reproduce, the foundation explains. When a jellyfish’s sperm meets with the egg, the resulting larvae sinks to the bottom of the ocean, where it latches onto a hard surface and becomes a “polyp.” These polyps cling to the hardy rocks until the “Medusa” phase arrives and they start growing bells with tentacles dangling underneath. Describing how gigantic these meanies can turn, KSAT12 says one pink meanie can grow to up to 70 feet, which is five giraffes stacked on top of each other.
Their dome-shaped bells, speckled with bright white spots, can lure the prey, such as a moon jelly, and sting it with their venom to cook up their day’s buffet. As the coastlines of the Lone Star State give off this elusive pinkish glow, the meanies themselves don’t live very long. After they finish off their supply of moon jellies, they don’t have much to feed on, as a result of which they die very shortly. Gulls and crabs compete to win the lottery of their carcasses. Tunnell believes that the sand of Texas is not the best place for them to cross the rainbow bridge. The best place, likely, would be where they came from, their home. “They are beautiful, but don't belong here,” Tunnel told MySA.
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