RARE: Aurelia Jellyfish swarm Crimean shores, make for an unusual spectacle

School of jellyfish has gathered on the shores of the Black Sea producing an unusual natural display and its photos were posted on the social media platforms. The images show thousands of jellyfish of a particular group Aurelia glowing on the coast of Balaklava Bay in Russian-annexed Crimea. Jellyfish are very common in the area, however, such a large gathering is reportedly a rare sight at this time of the year.

According to a researcher of A.O. Kovalevsky Institute of Biology of the Southern Seas, Boris Aninsky, said that the jellyfish likely come to the shores of the bay by southwesterly winds.

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Jellyfish accumulates in Black Sea

He added that if the wind speed was in the opposite direction, the jellyfish would have probably ended up in Sevastopol, the largest city on the Crimean peninsula. He further added that there are two types of jellyfish in the Black Sea. The one in the Balaklava is Aurelia jellyfish. They feed on planktons and are not dangerous. He also said that such an accumulation is an unusual phenomenon in winter. Most often the peak biomass of jellyfish off the coast of Crimea reaches from March to July. Now in Balaklava, there is a generation of jellyfish, preserved from last fall and gradually dying. In general, it just seems that there are a lot of jellyfish this year.

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Social media users surprised

Social media users who came across such an unusual sight compared it to "kissel", a fruit drink with a jelly-like substance that is popular in Russia and other east European countries. Aurelia Jellyfish also called them Moon Jellyfish, which are found throughout the world’s oceans.

These jellyfish can be recognized by four horseshoe-shaped gonads that are visible through their translucent, shallow, dome-shaped bell. Also, a few months ago, in a rare encounter, a diver came across a colossal ambling jellyfish while diving off the coast of Cornwall in Britain. 

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(with inputs from agencies)