Alex Rottler spotted those two jellyfish while paddleboarding about a week ago off the 5000 block of Beach Drive and wanted to share the photo. As best Alex, and we, can ID them, it’s a lion’s-mane jellyfish that used its long, stinging tentacles to capture an egg-yolk jellyfish; read about both here.
Being stung by one of these put me off swimming in the Sound for quite a while. It was like a bee sting on my foot. I thought I had given it plenty of room but those stinging tentacles can reach several feet long.
Just a reminder that full-strength vinegar is a fast, effective treatment for jellyfish stings as it inactivates the venom-producing nematocysts. Everything else, including seawater, alcohol, baking soda and peeing on the stung site are fairly useless.
On one of our visits to Waikiki I was stung by a Box Jellyfish while sitting in an inner tube float ring…so let’s not go there with the vicinity of the sting :>( but anyways the lifeguard said as CJBOFFOLI said, vinegar will take the sting away, but if you have tentacles stuck in you, you should go to the ER/Urgent Care to get them removed because they can cause allergic reactions to some people.
As a note even though I used the vinegar which helped a lot, I still had these “zaps” of pain where I got stung for days afterwards.
I guess that is why they call them the “Sucker-Punch of the Sea’s!!!
Also not sure if it is the same here but in Hawaii the Jellyfish come ashore 10 days after a Full Moon, so plan your vacations accordingly…we do now!
There’s been a ton of large jellifish lingering around the dock by Marination the past few weeks. Even today on the South Sound I saw a few. First year I’ve really seen them around here, maybe I’m just hanging out by Puget Sound more often, I dunno.
The jellyfish show up this time every year – as kids we would count them on the ferry ride across the pond. Great place to view them as you are above the water!
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