Home » Latest » TRENDING NOW » Giant jellyfish spotted by divers – BBC News

Giant jellyfish spotted by divers – BBC News

6

43 0 TRENDING NOW

8.6

SaveSavedRemoved 2

A human-sized jellyfish just turned a routine dive off Cornwall into international news.

Wildlife biologist and BBC Earth presenter Lizzie Daly was diving off Falmouth in Cornwall when a barrel jellyfish roughly her own height drifted out of the murky water beside her. Underwater cinematographer Dan Abbott caught the whole thing on camera, and the footage — published online on July 13, 2019 — went viral within days. The dive was part of Wild Ocean Week, a campaign Daly runs to spotlight UK marine life and raise money for the Marine Conservation Society.

• The barrel jellyfish (Rhizostoma pulmo) was estimated at around 1.5 meters (5 feet) long and roughly 1 meter wide — matching Daly’s own height.
• The encounter lasted between 25 minutes and nearly an hour after the creature emerged from the murky water.
• Barrel jellyfish typically average just 40 to 50 centimeters in diameter and weigh up to 25 to 35 kilograms, making this specimen far larger than the norm for Britain’s biggest common jellyfish species.

The Encounter Off Falmouth

Daly and Abbott weren’t expecting anything close to what floated toward them that day. According to the pair, the barrel jellyfish appeared suddenly out of the low-visibility water, and Daly spent the better part of an hour swimming alongside it while Abbott filmed. Both divers said they’d never seen a specimen of that scale in open water before, calling the experience “breathtaking” and a “humbling experience.”

“I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Distinguishing Characteristics of the Species

Rhizostoma pulmo, nicknamed the “dustbin-lid jellyfish” for its shape, is already the largest jellyfish species commonly found in British waters even at its usual size. Most specimens top out around 40 to 50 centimeters across and can weigh up to 25 to 35 kilograms. Spotting individual barrel jellyfish drifting near shore or washed up on beaches during summer isn’t unusual — but encountering one this size while diving in open water is exceptionally rare, which is what made Abbott’s footage so striking to marine biologists and casual viewers alike.

It’s worth separating this species from the lion’s mane jellyfish (Cyanea capillata), a different animal entirely that trails much longer stinging tentacles but tends to run smaller in UK waters. Barrel jellyfish, by contrast, are gentle plankton feeders. Their sting is very mild and poses virtually no hazard to swimmers or divers, which is part of why Daly was comfortable floating right beside this one for nearly an hour.

Viral Growth of the Clip

Once Abbott’s footage hit the internet, it spread fast — the kind of trajectory that lands a clip squarely in trending-video territory almost overnight. News outlets around the world picked up the story within days of the July 13 upload, turning a single Cornwall dive into a global talking point about British marine life. It’s the sort of rapid pickup that regularly fills out a site’s trending coverage, and this clip did it without a single dramatic edit — just Daly, Abbott’s camera, and a jellyfish nearly as tall as she is.

Significance for Wild Ocean Week

For Daly, the viral moment did exactly what Wild Ocean Week is designed to do: get people talking about UK marine wildlife they’d otherwise never think twice about. The campaign exists to raise funds for the Marine Conservation Society and showcase species living just off Britain’s coastline, and a jellyfish the size of a grown woman turned out to be a far more effective ambassador than any awareness poster could manage.

Daly and Abbott haven’t said whether they expect to run into another barrel jellyfish of that size again — by all accounts, this one was a genuine outlier even for a species used to washing up on Cornish beaches every summer. What’s certain is that the footage did more for public interest in British marine biology in a few days than most awareness campaigns manage in a season.