Previously Unseen Stinging Jellyfish Arrives Off Israeli Coast - Haaretz

[hatrack]

A hitherto unknown species of jellyfish has been sighted off Israel's Mediterranean cost and is being studied by Israeli and Australian scientists. While the sting of the new visitor is less painful than that of the type of jellyfish that local bathers know all too well, its sighting is another worrisome sign of ecological problems in the Mediterranean.

The species, which has been given the name Marivagia stellata, is star-shaped, with a diameter of about 15 centimeters. "It is impossible to know for sure where it came from, but because we have not run into it before in our region, we assume it came from the Red Sea or the Indian Ocean," Prof. Bella Galil, of the National Institute of Oceanography, Israel Oceanographic and Limnological Research, says.

Either way, the fact that it has been sighted on a number of beaches indicates that it has obtained a foothold in the area.

A dead specimen of the species was first found four years ago by an institute staffer on Haifa's Bat Galim and brought to Galil's laboratory. She sent it to Prof. Lisa-Ann Gershwin, a specialist in the field, in Australia, but to Galil's chagrin the Israeli postal system lost the specimen. But four months ago Meir Kadosh, a Haifa lifeguard, called Galil to report his find of an interesting creature that turned out to be from the same species.

EDIT

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/new-jellyfish-seen-as-evidence-of-troubled-local-waters-1.319441