Thursday, November 3, 2016

Jellyfish Day presents Mastigias papua! (the spotted lagoon jelly)


The Spotted Lagoon Jelly, has multiple mouth openings on each of it's 4 oral arms (see those things that look like odd tentacles? those are oral arms), instead of a single central mouth opening.
The lagoon jelly is greenish brown in color due to the crop of symbiotic algae (zooxanthellae) it grows in its tissues, which produces food for the jelly to harvest. It also catches about 30% of it's food with it's oral arms.
 Sometimes mall fish live inside of the jellies!

It is also known as "lagoon jelly", is found in bays and lagoons in the tropical zone of the Pacific Ocean.
This particular jelly was filmed at Seattle Aquarium.

These jellies live 3 to 4 months and are most active from summer to early fall.



The life cycle and anatomy of jellies will be discussed in another post!

For best viewing go to our YouTube channel and change video settings to 1080 HD.

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©Danaan DeNeve / Chiara DeNeve, 1999-current

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