📷 Diving with Barrel Jellyfish

Beautiful, isn't she? This is the barrel jellyfish (Rhizostoma pulmo) — the largest of the jellyfish living in the Black Sea, where we met it in the fall at the end of one our dive. When you look at something under water (and then in photographs), it is often difficult to correctly assess the distances and sizes of objects or animal: water visually distorts everything, and besides, there are very few familiar things around which our brain could rely on, comparing with them for a rough estimate of the size of something.

It seems to me that this jellyfish was about 50 cm in diameter of the dome, which is slightly larger than the usual size of an adult, although there are exceptions — giant barrel jellyfish up to one and a half meters in diameter. Alas, we were not lucky to meet such huge ones :) Barrel jellyfish are found in addition to the Black Sea in the northeastern Atlantic, in the Adriatic, Mediterranean and Azov seas, and near the coast of Britain it is considered one of the largest jellyfish, just like here in the Black Sea.

To be honest, our happiness knew no bounds when we saw this big jellyfish. And even more — we saw another one swimming nearby! The waters of the Black Sea are not very abundant in large underwater animals and fish, and in comparison with, for example, the Red Sea, they are considered to be very poor in living creatures, both in terms of color and quantity. Well, speaking about jellyfish — we have enough of them, but they are mostly small and not so beautiful - completely different kind.

Well, this one turned out to be two in one: a guest was sitting inside it — a yellow crab!

At first I couldn’t even believe my eyes when I saw a crab among these branched oral arms of the jellyfish. Wow! And Olya, who at that time was photographing me near the jellyfish and at the same time tried to pose for me, as it turned out later, did not even understand then under the water that it was the crab sitting inside — she just saw something dark, but what it was she did not see...

So it's good that I got these photos so that I can show her (and you too :)), what interesting things can sometimes be seen under water.

At first I thought that this is some form of symbiosis, like clown fish that live and hide in the thickets of anemones, in return protecting it from possible enemies, but no — I was told that crabs simply climb inside the jellyfish to feed on it. And in the end, this cunning guest will eat the jellyfish from the inside. It's a pity, but that's nature.

By the way, while we were swimming around them, we didn’t even think that jellyfish could be in any way dangerous for us — after all, in the Black Sea there are no dangerous or poisonous underwater inhabitants, and people in the season rake out hundreds of jellyfish (although another species and smaller) from the beaches, and sometimes swim among them, as in jellyfish soup.

But later it turned out that these particular barrel jellyfish are still a little poisonous. Although they are not very dangerous to humans, touching their oral arms (similar to the roots of a tree) can deliver very unpleasant sensations for several hours - maybe a small, but very unpleasant burn ... Well, we didn't touch them. It was enough for us to just look at them, swim with them and take pictures. So everything was fine :)

It's better to watch the photos in high resolution.

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OLYMPUS E-M5 Mark II
Exposure time: 1/1000 sec
Aperture: F 2.2
Sensitivity: ISO 200
Focal length: 8 mm
35 mm equivalent: 16 mm

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You can also see my photos in my blog LJ and in my profile on NatGeo

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