"It’s their environment out there and we’re just guests in it."
Did you see them? Those translucent, dinner-plate-sized blobs with a four-leaf-clover shape — their gonads, actually — in the middle? Maybe one bobbed near you in the surf, or nearly got crushed beneath your flip-flop in the wet sand?
Moon jellyfish are also known as common jellyfish, familiar to beach-goers though they may still seem pretty alien if you’re a land-bound human from the north.
Earlier this week, their ranks apparently washed up in higher-than-usual numbers on some Pinellas County beaches; maybe you saw one, beached and looking a little sad, pop up on your Facebook feed.
About 20 people at Clearwater Beach got a lot closer than that. They reported being stung by jellyfish, starting over the weekend and through early this week, said water safety supervisor Konrad Ciolko. He suspects the movement of Hurricane Delta through the Gulf of Mexico — it struck Louisiana on Oct. 9 — caused the preponderance of jellies.
Read more at the Tampa Bay Times