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Thousands of Jellyfish Strand on North Oregon Coast |
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Covering 180 miles of Oregon coast travel: Astoria, Seaside, Cannon Beach, Manzanita, Nehalem, Wheeler, Rockaway, Garibaldi, Tillamook, Oceanside, Pacific City, Lincoln City, Depoe Bay, Newport, Waldport, Yachats & Florence.
10/30/08
Secrets of the Season |
Thousands of Jellyfish Strand on North Oregon Coast
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| Moon jelly photos by Seaside Aquarium |
(Gearhart, Oregon) - There are hundreds, perhaps even thousands of them in a 15-mile stretch of Oregon beach. Last week, hordes of moon jellies hit the north Oregon coast, between Gearhart and Warrenton.
'There was one every four feet," said Keith Chandler, manager of Seaside Aquarium. "They were all big, about four feet across. It looked like a beach full of pancakes."
Chandler said the surf got enormous on Saturday, bringing in the monster numbers of moon jellyfish (technically known as aurelia aurita). Chandler and aquarium staff drove the beaches of the area on Monday and saw tons of them between Gearhart and the wreck of the Peter Iredale, which is around Warrenton.
They did not see them as far south as Seaside, however.
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| Moon jelly photos by Seaside Aquarium |
Why they showed up suddenly in such abundance, and why they landed in that area is a mystery. “There was probably just a bunch of them out there when the sea pushed them in,” Chandler said.
Chandler said such strandings aren’t that unusual, as the ocean is simply a very dynamic place. Purple Sails – or velella velella – show up en masse all the time in the spring.
What happens next is also just another natural occurrence: they’ll simply dry up and sink into the sand.
Chandler doesn’t expect the beach to become thick with the fishy smell of decaying sea life, as when the velella velella hit the shores in the millions.
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| Moon jelly photos by Seaside Aquarium |
“There aren’t enough of them to make a big smell,” Chandler said. “Not like the purple sails, which are in the millions and are miles long on the beaches.”
The aurelia aurita is one of about ten jellyfish that are very similar, and it’s often hard to tell them apart from each other.
Moon jellies are translucent, and with their limited movement capabilities only drift with the currents. They feed by stinging small plankton and mollusks with prickly little tentacles, then moving the their food into their body for digestion. They also feed on crustaceans, tunicate larvae, protozoans, diatoms, fish eggs and other similarly small organisms.
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| Wreck of the Peter Iredale |
Moon jellies do not have breathing organs such as gills or lungs, but instead diffuse oxygen from water through a thin membrane.
They are essentially found all over the Earth’s oceans, but mostly in the upper hemisphere, living in temperatures that are typical of the oceans off the western U.S. and Pacific Northwest.
The Seaside Aquarium has had them on display in the past, said Chandler, but not at this time.
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