Fireworks in the Sea

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The men who lived in the huts that lined the barren rocky stretch of land above the beach went out in their boats to fish in the morning but apart from that necessary endeavour declined to go near the water, and plainly thought anyone who wished to do so must be crazy. They spent much of the day working on their nets and floats in front of their huts. Their wives in dark shawls, accompanied by silent children, bundled the family rubbish down to the rocks above the beach and, through a hole in the rocks, dumped everything into the sea. The rubbish floated free of the rocks, bobbed briefly on the grey surface of the water, and then drifted out with the current and disappeared, swallowed up by advancing whitecaps. The water was very cold.

For several hours in the middle of the day, everyone, men, women and children, seemed to disappear. They were in their huts, eating and sleeping.

The fishermen said there were creatures in the water to watch out for. Laconic caveat in form of frown and shrug. Their minimal information was elaborated upon by an ex-British military fellow, resident of one of the huts in the village. He had one crippled leg and wheeled about the sandy unpaved front on a crutch. Nasty things they are, he said, like electric whips. To set foot into that cold, rocky stretch of sea would have been pretty crazy anyway but having been warned about the giant jellyfish, the great lion's mane, one could have no excuse.

Fifty yards out the Cyanea capillata extended its salutation invisibly in the dark water. At first there was simply the sensation, familiar from swimming in coastal bays, of a kelplike entanglement of one's limbs, a sinuous attachment, momently becoming a sharp entrapment -- hardly nostalgic this, which in turn quite quickly changed again into a ligature of tiny stings, each a bright little pain explosion, a hundred small fireworks going off all over one's body.

What seemed an eternity, then, to flail one's way out of the surf, livid red welts already emerging. The beach was deserted. It was not yet morning.

Playa de los Muertos en el Parque Natural de Cabo de Gata, Almería, near Carboneres, Spain: photo by Jsanchezes, 2003
Lion's Mane Jellyfish (Cyanea capillata): photo by derekkats, 2006
Lion's Mane Jellyfish (Cyanea capillata), capturing a ctenophore: photo by U.S. Geological Service, 2007

Parque Natural de Cabo de Gata, Almería, Spain: photo by José Marco de la Rosa, 2006
Lion's Mane Jellyfish (Cyanea capillata): photo by Dan Hershman 2006