Jelly Fish

Natural History
No Backbone, No Problem.
 Jellies don’t have bones, brains, teeth,
blood or fins–and they’re more than 95 percent water.
Yet they thrive in all the world’s oceans, and to its darkest depths.
Jellies are strange and captivatingly beautiful.

Sea nettles, have a distinctive golden-brown bell with a reddish tint. The bell can grow to be larger than three feet in diameter in the wild, though most are less than 50 cm across. The long, spiraling,white oral arms and the 24 undulating maroon tentacles may trail behind as far as 12 to 15 feet.

Jellyfish live mainly in the ocean, but they aren't actually fish -- they're plankton. These plants and animals either float in the water or possess such limited swimming powers that currents control their horizontal movements. Some plankton are microscopic, single-celled organisms, while others are several feet long. Jellyfish can range in size from less than an inch to nearly 7 feet long, with tentacles up to 100 feet long.

Jellyfish are also members of the phylum Cnidaria, (from the Greek word for "stinging nettle") and the class Scyphozoa (from the Greek word for "cup," referring to the jellyfish's body shape). All cnidarians have a mouth in the center of their bodies, surrounded by tentacles. The jellyfish's cnidarian relatives include corals, sea anemones and the Portuguese man-o'-war.

Jellyfish are about 98 percent water. If a jellyfish washes up on the beach, it will mostly disappear as the water evaporates. Most are transparent and bell-shaped. Their bodies have radial symmetry, which means that the body parts extend from a central point like the spokes on a wheel. If you cut a jellyfish in half at any point, you'll always get equal halves. Jellyfish have very simple bodies -- they don't have bones, a brain or a heart. To see light, detect smells and orient themselves, they have rudimentary sensory nerves at the base of their tentacles.

These images were created at The Monterey Bay Aquarium using the Leica M9 with a 35mm Summicron Lens. While very challenging, they provide a delightful experience, and the resulting images are quite stunning.
(no pun intended).

@ 2013 Photo Pro - Jeffrey P. Hopp