I will admit that I have a fascination for jellyfish. I think it has something to do with their movement – I find the pulsation with which they propel themselves through the water to be very poetic.
Unfortunately, my Tropical Pacific fish and reef creature identification books don’t cover jellies, so I am not able to make a positive identification of this creature. I did dig a bit online trying to match it, but the closest I could find was a White Spotted Jellyfish (Phyllorhiza punctata), with which it shares a similar form, but it lacks the white spots on its mantle.
Factoids about jellyfish – they have no organs – no brain, no heart, and no eyes (with the exception of the extremely toxic box jellyfish which has four real eyes. Seriously). Yet they are very much alive. Lately, there has been an effort to rename them sea jellies, as they are not fish at all; instead they are a gelatinous, fairly simple organism, with many subspecies. They are found pretty much everywhere there is salt water, including in some marine lakes in Asia, where they have evolved to be quite benign with regards to envenomation, so snorkelers can safely enjoy close encounters with hundreds of these otherworldy creatures.
