Jellyfish: Red Menace Returns To Bay Beaches
July’s unwanted guests annoy bathers
 Hundreds of lion’s mane jellyfish like this one have invaded sections of the Peconic Bay Estuary.
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(7/10/2008) It can feel like a stubborn itch, or as if someone has poured acid on your skin. For reasons not fully understood, a few species of jellyfish have “bloomed” in the Peconic Estuary this summer, making swimming precarious in places.
“Last Saturday I was on my boat in Three Mile Harbor. I have never seen the density. You couldn’t put your arm in the water without touching one. They were from quarter-size to 10 inches across, and not just one layer, the entire depth,” said Stephanie Talmage, an East Hampton Town trustee and a postgraduate student of marine biology at the State University at Stony Brook.
Ms. Talmage was concerned for the town’s swim program that is held at various locations on East Hampton’s bay side.
Lori Miller-Carr was clamming with her daughter, Jamie, a week ago on the still-water side of Napeague. “We got stung, not bad. This was more like an itch. I’ve had it really bad. These were very small, red, about the size of a 50-cent piece. They seem to come out when it’s warm. We had red spots on our legs,” Ms. Miller-Carr said.
The half-dollar-size jellies might well have been juvenile lion’s manes, of the phylum Cnidaria, which encompasses other stinging organisms, including sea anemones. Lion’s manes in the madusa, or adult, stage can grow to be truly enormous. In 1870, one washed up on the shore of Massachusetts Bay. Its bell, or top portion, was seven feet in diameter, with tentacles that measured 120 feet long.
Jellyfish can propel themselves slowly and vertically by flexing or pumping their bodies, but travel is mostly dependent on wind and current. The primitive muscles of the jellyfish appear to have developed more to create currents to attract prey than for purposes of mobility.
“Nobody really knows what causes jellyfish blooms, although wind and current will concentrate species,” said Eric Klos, the facilities coordinator at the University of Rhode Island’s graduate school of oceanography, who studies jellyfish underwater. “But why some years are more profound than others? Global warming is a possibility, but [it] is far from pinned down. Or, there could be a link with declining fisheries. A resource is fished out, and jellyfish take over. The most spectacular year I ever saw here was 2004. We don’t know why.”
Ms. Talmage said there seemed to be a connection between algae blooms and jellyfish blooms, both of which might be the result of rain runoff and westerly winds forcing higher than normal amounts of nutrients out of coastal estuaries. Jellyfish are carnivorous; that is, they feed on zooplankton (tiny marine animals), which in turn forage on phytoplankton (tiny marine plants, such as algae), which flourish when nitrogen and phosphorous-rich nutrients are in the water column.
There is a large brown-algae bloom in the Great South Bay this summer.
Non-stinging varieties of jellyfish found in this area include saucer-size, virtually transparent moon jellies. In late summer these are often joined by comb jellies, voracious predators that glow in the dark.
Stingers include an occasional mid-summer visitor, the Portuguese man-o’-war, which is actually a floating colony of jellyfish identified by a hollow purple float that acts as a sail. Man-o’-war stings can be especially severe. Smaller sea nettles have a sting like their vegetable namesakes. A large, purple offshore variety known as pelagia makes an inshore appearance at times.
Around Long Island the peak period for many kinds of jellyfish is now: July. Although the stinging apparatus varies somewhat by species, most often it involves hollow coiled threads called nematocysts, located on the tentacles. When tentacles make contact with a fish, object, or person, thousands of nematocysts, like tiny harpoons, are released, become attached, and inject toxins. Stings can hurt badly but are rarely fatal. The toxin from the man-o-war can travel through the lymph system and cause excruciating pain and clinical shock.
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 Eric Klos Photos
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We have meat tenderizer on the bay side, but it runs out quick. We have to keep up with it,” said John Ryan, chief lifeguard for the Town of East Hampton. Guards sometimes keep handy a solution of ammonia and water in a spray bottle, Mr. Ryan said. If and when Portuguese man-o’-wars are seen sailing into the bay, the chief lifeguard said, the East Hampton Town Marine Patrol is alerted.
“It’s normally not this bad,” Mr. Ryan said of this summer’s bloom. He added that while most stings were not serious, however, people who were allergic to bee stings can have a more serious reaction to jelly stings. Sometimes a trip to the hospital is necessary.
Ammonia, the enzyme in meat tenderizer (such as the brand Adolph’s), and papaya juice can relieve the sting by breaking down the protein that causes it. When stung, it is important that a towel or item of clothing, even sand, be used to remove any fragments of tentacle that have stuck to the skin before applying the neutralizing potion of choice.
At least one creature, an endangered one, enjoys the occasional jellyfish bloom. Jellies are a major part of the leatherback turtle’s diet. Kim Durham, a biologist with the Riverhead Foundation for Marine Research and Preservation, said the big turtles, which are not uncommon in local waters, did not seem to discriminate between stinging and non-stinging jellies. Leatherbacks can grow to more than 1,000 pounds, Ms. Durham said, adding that a study underway at the University of Florida seeks to explain how they can attain such enormous size on a jellyfish diet.
Mr. Klos said the cause of jellyfish blooms and their movements continued to be somewhat mysterious. Ed Swenson, Sag Harbor’s harbormaster, said yesterday that he had spoken to the lifeguards at Haven’s Beach about the problem. They told him there were quite a few in the swimming area last week, but not as many this week.
“They probably came in for the fireworks,” Mr. Swenson said.