Unknown Box Jellyfish Species?
A friend of mine in the U.S. is a professional amateur jellyfishologist (as best I can describe him), and for some years he has been trying to track down a particularly rare type of box jellyfish which he believes has not yet actually been properly IDed and classified. And I’ve been trying to help him here on Bonaire. It started with a promotional video someone here on Bonaire shot some years ago, that just happened to have a scene where the videographer was swimming with the particular box (cubazoid) jellyfish my friend Bud was looking for.
That was several years ago. Since then, there have been a few rare sightings of this critter - identified by four long tentacles which are brown/white banded - similar to a sea wasp, but a lot more toxic. But in recent weeks there have been several reports of people seeing this box jelly.
And on Sunday, a teen aged girl a few minute walk from my house was unfortunate enough to have found out how dangerous the sting could be. She’s apparently doing well now, but did end up going to the hospital. Through a combination of efforts described on a thread on the BonaireTalk web site, I ended up with the jellyfish in question, and in the image above you can see my wife Linda holding the still live jellyfish down with her finger in a rubber glove so I could take a picture to send to Bud for him to forward to the various scientists he works with.
More pictures can be found here, along with information on how the pictures were taken.
The next step will be to get the jellyfish - which I now have preserved in formalin - a watered down version of formaldehyde (that nasty smelling carcinogenic liquid you may recall from biology class, as it was what the frogs we had to dissect were stored in) - to the U.S. for DNA analysis.
Hi Jake,
Tish Dace just sent us this email and picture:
Late Sunday afternoon a young woman of roughly 13 was stung at Bachelors
Beach by a Bonaire Banded Box Jelly. We know for sure what stung her,
because the father leaped into the water and yanked it up onto the beach,
and Pauline Kayes went to her home, brought back appropriate supplies, and got
the jellyfish, still alive, into a container with salt water. She then brought
this to my house, and I took it to Jake Richter, who photographed it
and preserved it in formalin. (The whole story is much longer than this;
anyone wanting it all should write and ask me for it.)
I am writing to you because the BBBJ is highly toxic. I am attaching a
photo which I took 14 years ago while snorkieling at Windsock. Please post this
photo and alert all dive shops and dive masters, divers and snorkelers.
I have seen a more recent photo in which the bands are brown rather than
orange, but the one which Pauline brought to me also has orange bands. I have
heard of three more people who have recently received serious stings from
jellyfish, but I have no way of knowing whether this jelly was the culprit. Any
information which you can send to me I would appreciate having. May we all stay
safe in the water! Tish
The image is at:
http://www.blennylips.com/banded_box04.jpg
Roger
We also saw the same jelly in Cozumel about 3 years ago.Bob
Hey I also saw this jelly fish just last week when I was snorkeling on the islend of St. Lucia, on the side with the Piton mountains, then it stung a lady who was walking in the water, but it seemed like it was a delayed reaction though because she did not notice it until she got out of the water. The jellyfish was sort of box shaped and on each corner of the fish there was a tentacle that was brownish red and white stripped. In total there was only four tentacles. And the head of it was transparent.
Okinawa has lots of these, they are the reason I only swim at certain beaches during summer.
Wow, this is interesting =O
If you want to read more about the Box Jellyfish in all it’s kick-ass glory, visit the following blog link:
http://www.moonsheep.co.uk/blog/?p=4
Moon Sheep.
ieek i hate those species
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