Move over locusts, triffids and body-snatchers, Opua marina is experiencing a plague of jellyfish.
Over the past few days large pink gelatinous blobs have been oozing around the boats. I find them fascinating – I could watch them gloop
their way around for hours, but the swarm seems to be causing a few issues with some of the boats.
What for me are a pretty pink distraction have been a slimy nuisance for others, clogging up water cooled fridges and gunking up generators. I quite liked the idea of a somewhat bemused jellyfish looking up at you from inside the fridge, but the stories I have been hearing about having
to remove them have kind of destroyed that image. Paddy has had it happen to himself on previous occasions and tells me it is a rather messy and unpleasant process. It’s certainly not an issue I would have ever thought of!
This particular breed of jellyfish has long flowing tendrils. Paddy reckons the ones with the dangly bits are the ones that do the stinging, but we are not 100% sure what breed these ones are. Needless to say, neither of us has volunteered to jump in and find out!
A fellow cruiser told us about an unidentified sea critter that got into the boat when it was a baby and wasn’t discovered until it outgrew
its hidey-hole. This can be a problem on a more expensive scale in Wellington when it comes to mussels. These guys enter the boat as microscopic spores, find a good place to cling and then grow until they start to clog stuff up. Paddy learned this the hard way when he discovered a crop of them growing on the refridgerator condenser. He figured such a bizarre thing couldn’t happen more than once and replaced the offending condenser, only to have the green-lipped hitchhikers turn up again 12 months later. He managed to solve the problem by changing to a keel cooler – a closed circuit cooling unit mounted on a vessel’s hull beneath the waterline (I had to google that!), but it certainly was an expensive exercise!
Below are a few gratuitous jelly fish shots. I got a few odd looks while kneeling down taking pictures, but I just think they’re awesome!
