Silent But (Kind of) Deadly

Black Sea denizens                                                      from englishrussia.com

My first encounter with a jellyfish was in Hawaii, when I was about 10. It was lying (yes, not "laying," "lying"!) on the sand, and I thought it was a strange, partly deflated balloon with a blue (or red? ~ can't remember now) string, so I picked it up to show my parents. Alarmed, they told me what it was and wanted me to drop it immediately. Instead, I waded out into the waves and placed it on the water. It was only then that I started to feel the prickly burning on my hand. I can't remember how long it lasted, but I'll never pick up another jellyfish! from wisegeek.com:

The Black Sea, an inland sea located between Asia and Europe, is often referred to as the jellyfish capital of the world because there are an estimated 1 billion tons (907 billion kg) of jellyfish living in its waters. At one point in the 1990s, the Black Sea contained the equivalent of more than 10 times the weight of all of the fish caught in the world each year. Jellyfish are not native to the Black Sea and are thought to have been inadvertently introduced there by a ship in 1982. After the introduction of the jellyfish into the Black Sea, the supply of fish that are caught for food — such as mackerel, anchovies and sturgeon — declined rapidly in the surrounding areas and
affected the economies of countries such as Romania and Georgia.

More about jellyfish:

• Jellyfish are able to double in size each day by eating 10 times their body weight in food.


• The Chinese have been eating jellyfish for at least 1,700 years, according to ancient texts.


• The jellyfish is thought to have appeared three times as many years ago as the first dinosaurs.