Another Monster For the Menagerie

Behold the "Pink Meanie."

(Attaching a radio transponder. To a jelly fish!)

It's a jelly fish. A jelly fish large enough to be tagged. They grow over 3 feet in diameter with tentacles over 100 feet long. And they're suddenly all throughout our coastal water. Again.

(Pink Meanie way too close to shore)

(Supposedly yummy Blue Moons)

Hundreds of them have been spotted in the Gulf. Apparently, they "blossom" in response to the presence in the water of their favorite food, the much smaller but even more stingier "Blue Moon" jelly which they eat literally by the dozens at a time.

There's been a bloom of Blue Moons this summer and so the Pink Meanies, which otherwise exist as inconspicuous bottom feeding polyps, have responded for the first time in about five years.

Between these guys and the lion fish, I'm surprised we get any tourists at all.

And Tasty, Too (Once You Get Past All the Poison Sticker Thingies)

So, with all the publicity around tegu (maybe a few dozen sightings over the years) and hyperventilating about Burmese pythons (a grand total of fifty killed over 30 days by 1500 "hunters" during the Great Python Hunt) apparently we've been ignoring a much greater threat just because it's not something the average person could even imagine bumping into during their normal routine.

Behold the lionfish.

(Noticeably less than life-size)

Native to southeast Asia a concern on the Atlantic coast for over a decade, voracious omnivores and destroyers of reefs, with no natural predators in this part of the world, they have now rounded Key West and are working their way up the Gulf coast and across the Caribbean. They have short gestation periods and spawn year round.Their quills contain a toxin. As a result, Goliath groupers have been found with lionfish in their stomachs but it's not something they will eat on a regular basis.

People, fortunately, will eat just about anything. 

If the lionfish eat everything else in the water, they may be the only seafood we have left to eat.