Walking along a popular Australian beach, a local woman was recently stopped in her tracks.
What she thought were “piles and piles of seaweed” blanketing the shoreline turned out to be thousands of bright red jellyfish — a phenomenon not seen for years.
Clare Cowen told Yahoo News she’s lived near Cable Beach in Broome, Western Australia, for over 30 years, and has “never seen them in such enormous numbers before.”
Often, the brightly coloured jellyfish, known as crambione mastigophora, or sea tomatoes, wash ashore during big tide events in smaller numbers, and they’re often scattered rather than clustered.
It was 7am last Thursday when Clare first noticed the bright red blobs spanning kilometres along the shoreline. She was walking her dog, a collie named Jesse, when she saw them, she said.
“It looked like piles and piles of seaweed. As I got closer, I realised they were jellyfish,” she told Yahoo.
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Local woman Clare Cowen frequents the popular beach, but admits she has never seen the jellyfish in such large numbers.
(Clare Cowen)
“They were almost in plague proportions, and I would estimate they were between 10 and 15 centimetres in size.”
“There were a few other people on the beach, including some swimming, which surprised me because the jellyfish were clearly visible in the water as well.”
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The last time they washed up in such large proportions was in 2012, according to scientist and jellyfish expert Lisa-Ann Gershwin.
At the time, a jellyfish bloom, “arguably one of the biggest in history,” spanned 1,2000 kilometres from Derby in the state’s north to Rottnest Island in the south.
“It was an incredibly, incredibly massive bloom,” she told Yahoo News.
No one really knows why it happened, or why it hasn’t happened in such “plague-like proportions” since, she explained.
Sadly, it’s often the case that many die after becoming stranded.
The bright red jellyfish, known as sea tomatoes, are often found in the waters around Western Australia but rarely wash up in such large numbers.
(Clare Cowen)Do sea tomato jellyfish sting?
Speaking of the recent phenomenon on Cable Beach, Lisa said it was pretty “remarkable” to see. She admitted the sea tomato is one of her favourite jellyfish species.
They get their name from the “deep red” colouring and size, both of which resemble a ripe tomato.
“They do sting a bit, but they’re not considered life-threatening,” Lisa explained, unlike the Irukandji or Box jellyfish, which are also commonplace in Western Australia.
The sting “can be uncomfortable”, especially when they occur in large numbers.
“They’re constantly sloughing off mucus that’s saturated with stinging cells. I think it would be fairly unpleasant for people to swim when they’re in large numbers,” she warned.
Clare said Broome Surf Life Saving Club had put up a warning sign advising beachgoers about the jellyfish, explaining they could cause a mild sting.
They didn’t stick around for long, though. She returned to the beach later that day and was “amazed to find that approximately 99 per cent of the jellyfish had been washed away.”
It’s likely that large tides in the area are what caused them to wash up in the first place and washed them back to sea.
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