10/24/2026
The Lion's Mane Jelly Fish a fascinating sea creature. By this time of year most of them have completed their life cycle and sank to the bottom of the sea to be feasted on by scavengers, but not before reproducing. This is where things get weird. It starts off pretty standard for a lot of ocean organisms. Broadcast spawning. The males throw their stuff out into the water column, the female picks it up and the eggs get fertilized. Ok so then those eggs hatch into tiny larvae, like microscopic tiny, and hairy, their called planulae. They swim down until they find a rock, or reef, a dock post, anything hard. They flip upside down and attach themselves. Then it grows into a anemone looking thing called a polyp. Next, another morphing. It develops horizontal grooves and becomes a stack of discs, like dinner plates in the cupboard. It literally clones itself! Spring comes and each one of those plates becomes a single tiny baby jellyfish called ephyra. Ya one thing becomes many things..of the same thing. What?! I know! I didn't even come here to tell you about this, I wanted to talk about a solar powered sea slug, but I didn't have a picture of one those so I thought I would lead into it with a different sea creature. Then what inevitably always happens, a question crossed my mind. What happens in the winter? These free floating jellies are at the mercy of current and wind, they can't migrate, their pulsing is a minimal source of propulsion. That led into what is the reproductive cycle of lions manes? There I go again, Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole.. And I'm not even done! So that stack of plates releases anywhere from 10-30 discs sequentially over a period of days and weeks. Baby jellies. THEN...it changes back to a polyp and begins the cloning process all over again. More baby jellies. And it doesn't die off in one season, a single polyp can produce hundreds of baby jellies in it's life time. But wait, the polyp can also clone itself into another polyp to live next door. And so can that polyp, and that polyp, and on and on until there is a colony of polyps. So just a few larvae floating down at this time of year could produce thousands of jelly fish come next spring. Lions Mane's are 95% water, 5% gelatinous goo with a touch of proteins, a dash of salt and trace elements absorbed from the water, no brain, (a te****le touches prey and it just autopilots the thing to it's mouth) the nervous system is a full body network where signals can come and go as they please and yet the extent most people think about jellies is if your friend gets stung they have to p*e on them. That's not a thing, it's 100% myth, stop p*eing on your friend's leg. In an odd coincidence , like our jelly friend, urine is also made up of 95% water, any neutralizing agents are far to diluted. Ok that's enough tumbling for today, solar power sea slugs will have to wait, I'm headed out on the water. !!!
