Jellyfishwhat is a 'jellyfish'?This is one of those tricky 'define animal' questions like frog/toad and kangaroo/wallaby. There are many creatures that regular people observers may call ‘jellyfish’. These include a variety of floating, soft, jelly-like, transparent animals, such as some of the Hydrozoa (‘blue bottles’ and ‘by-the-sea sailors’), the Ctenophora (the small ‘sea-combs’) and the Thaliacea (chain like salps and pyrosomas).
However, these animals are all in separate groups and it is only really the following two classes, the Scyphozoa (the rounded bell like 'jelly blubbers'), and the Cubozoa (the infamously dangerous 'box' jellyfish') , that are usually considered by biologists as the true ‘sea jellies’.
There are several ways to track down jellyfish. First, one can do it randomly by travelling at sea by ship or boat and waiting. It doesn't happen very often, but you may spot some of the bigger species pretty much anywhere in the ocean. Traveling this way, you may spot the ‘Fried Egg Jellyfish’ and the ‘Lion’s Mane Jellyfish’, which can have bells the size of a laptop computer and tentacles up to three or four metres long. The most common larger aggregations of jellyfish are when they travel inshore, even up creeks, to breed. At these times, the adults may appear in huge numbers along rivers anywhere in the word. This should in theory happen more in the summer or wet seasons, but I have observed such aggregations in rivers in the dry season in the King George River and Red Cone creek in the Kimberley.
The 'box' jellyfish are quite hard to see. Many people who are stung do not see them when they get stung. The best (or worst) time and place to see the larger box jellyfish is near the beach and in estuaries in the wet season across northern Australia. Of course, during this time you should not be swimming along the coast, nor is it even a good idea to wade.
'Blue Bottle' or 'Man'o war' jellyfish
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