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Image by Dan Hershman (click through)

With tentacles up to 30 feet long and measuring three feet across the bell, this is a Lions Man Jellyfish. The tentacles are full of nematocysts, small cells that automatically sting when they come in contact with something.

Last Wednesday, pieces of one of these jellyfish washed up on a beach in New Hampshire and stung up to one hundred people. One hundred people! Horrific! Just imagine swimming about, splashing, maybe macking in the surf, when suddenly for no apparent reason you’re being stung and a hundred people around you starts freaking out. ‘Tis why I stay on ship.

I remember visiting North Queensland where they protect people from swimming with the deadly box jellyfish by walling off areas of the sea into small pools. Sea water passes through a filter to fill the pool. But I heard that if a jellyfish gets caught in the filter, it can get ripped up and washed into the pool, stinging everyone inside.

The first aid treatment for jellyfish stings is vinegar. In North Queensland they have bottles of pink vinegar kept in letterbox-shaped metal contraptions all along the beach, in case of box jellyfish stings.Why is the vinegar pink? I’m told it’s so people don’t pour it over their chips!

Hat tip to Deep Sea News.