“Incredibly rare” freshwater jellyfish captured on camera in Lake Erie
By Madeline Bartos
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ERIE, Pennsylvania (KDKA) — A rare freshwater jellyfish was captured on camera at Lake Erie.
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection shared a video of freshwater jellyfish at Presque Isle Bay. The DEP said an intern recorded the freshwater jellyfish right off the dock at Marina Lake.
The tiny jellyfish is “super hard” to find, and the DEP called it “incredibly rare.”
“Most of the time, it’s stuck to the bottom as a little polyp. But once in a while, it grows into the jellyfish shape we all recognize and Ray was in the right place at the right time to see it,” the Pennsylvania DEP wrote on Facebook.
What are freshwater jellyfish?
According to the National Park Service, freshwater jellyfish are a non-native species found across North America in slow-moving streams, larger river systems, lakes, ponds and artificial bodies of water. They’ve been observed in North America since the early 1900s.
The NPS says the Craspedacusta sowerbii, also known as the peach blossom jellyfish, is the only known species of freshwater jellyfish.
Native to the Yangtze River in China, the NPS says some people think they may have made it to North America along with imported aquatic ornamental plants.
They’re about the size of a penny, no bigger than a quarter, and and they’re harmless to humans. Though they hunt by using the singers on their long tentacles, they’re too small to sting larger organisms, the NPS says. Like marine jellyfish, they’re opportunistic predators, eating small organisms like zooplankton and insects.
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