SOUTH AFRICA 34.1938°S 18.4357°E
HELEN WALNE
“I love the ballet, the Tchaikovsky tentacles dancing like embroidery threads.”
at the marina , a blond boy in a wetsuit squealed through his snorkel. “Dad! They’re everywhere! I want to get out! I want to get out!” He hauled himself up onto the jetty, scattering a gang of cormorants into the sky, and examined the tops of his feet. “See? They got me. Here, here, and here.” The man pulled himself out of the water and inspected the boy’s feet. Anchor chains clinked, sails flapped, and a seagull waddled past with a French fry in its mouth, like a pale cigar. Wetsuit dad put an arm around his son’s shoulders, dipped his head against the wind, and the pair headed toward the clubhouse.
They were everywhere. I had to get in.
At first, I could see only one or two, pulsing in the surprising blue. The wind had been howling for a few days, and expectations of any visibility were low. But the water was face-numbingly cold, and the sandy bottom glowed like an aqua moonscape. A perfect backdrop for mulberry froth. And, suddenly, there they were: dozens and dozens of purple compass jellyfish backed up against the black breakwater barrier, pulsating in a mass plié. A tragic, fatal dance of sugar-plum fairies. Blown inshore, far from the familiarity of the high seas, these pelagic animals stood little chance of survival. They would inevitably end up as gelatinous blobs on the beach, where they would be prodded by curious human toes or sniffed at by bounding dogs. And they were pensioners! The indignity! Unlike wetsuit dad and his son, whose lives track a linear trajectory—sperm, egg, gestation, birth, school, possibly boring jobs in boring companies run by men called Dave, and then death—jellies have a complex life cycle that belies their simple existence. It starts in the open ocean, at dusk or dawn, when fully formed jellies swarm together like Tinder-fueled suitors. They do a mass swipe right, and deposit sperm and unfertil- ized eggs into the water column—and then mostly go on their way. However, some species, such as moon jellies, are less casual about their flings, and allow fertilized eggs to cling to their bodies, so they can nurture them to their next phase. And jellies have more phases than Lady Gaga. They are masters of reinvention. The fertilized eggs grow into microscopic larvae called panula, which resemble flatworms swimming around like blind hairballs. They then attach themselves to a reef or stretch of sand, where they develop into polyps, with a digestive system and a mouth/anus. They spend their days—which sometimes stretch into years—feeding and waiting for the right conditions. And then they start asexually cloning. Each polyp produces more polyps, which then start shaping up to become the adult jellies we know.
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MOTHER VOLUME TWO
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