Large smacks of jellyfish swarmed the Israeli coastline on Wednesday with many of them washing ashore.
According to Dr. Zafrir Kuplik, a jellyfish researcher at the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History at Tel Aviv University, the swarm was lurking off the Israeli coastline for some time before paying bathers a visit due to strong currents in the Mediterranean.
Kuplik estimates that the wave thronging Israeli beaches consists of hundreds of thousands of individual jellyfish and is planning to stay over for a while.
“The jellyfish arrive in Israel towards the end of June and disappear in early August. This timeframe is pretty much set in stone leaving slight deviations of several days here and there. We now have a month full of jellyfish,” Kuplik said.
“They come here in at an advanced stage of their reproductive cycle. They fade on their own as the summer fades, that is why before the swarm disperses, one can see a lot of dead jellyfish both on the beach and in the water. Those that live, usually migrate north,” he added.
Kuplik also listed the different species of the notorious sea jellies that make up the horde.
“The nomad jellyfish is the most dominant species in Israel since the 80s, its sting also hurts the most. The other jellyfish sting a little less. Those we can usually spot belong to a group known as Scyphozoa, or true jellyfish,” Kuplik explained.