Calling all jellyfish spotters
Please be on the lookout for this possibly rare, certainly easily overlooked, tiny stalked jellyfish. It may be a new species.
Stalked jellyfish photograph courtesy of Sheryl Miller, NIWA.
It has been seen only twice – on kelp (Macrocystis and Marginariella) in Stewart Island in 1998, and recently by NIWA’s Sheryl Miller on Cystophora in the Taputeranga Marine Reserve (good spotting Sheryl).
Stalked jellyfish photograph courtesy of Sheryl Miller, NIWA.
On both occasions photographs were obtained but no specimens. Dennis Gordon (d.gordon@niwa.co.nz) and Lisa Gershwin, a jellyfish expert in Tasmania, are writing a paper about New Zealand jellyfish and urgently need specimens of any stalked form (of which there are probably four species in New Zealand). If you do spot one, please remember NOT to collect from within a marine reserve – outside specimens only please.
Filed under: Ali Perkins, Diving New Zealand, Miscellaneous
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Here’s a comment from Dennis regarding specimen collection:
My experience with these things (admittedly small) is that they will survive well in the mail, alive. A diver once mailed me two specimens of another species in a marmite jar of seawater, half-filled. But it came from warm water (Northland). Maybe a specimen collected in cool water might not survive well in a heated area.
When doing specimen collections I take sandwich bags (or some similar zip-lock bag) in my BC. Can transfer to that with ease underwater and then to a specimen jar of some description (ie. washed out marmite jar!!) and post in bubble wrap to Dennis Gordon, NIWA, Greta Point, Wellington.