Close encounters with jellyfish in LI waters

Almost a year later, Nancy Tischler still sounds shaken from her encounter.

It was late September when Tischler, a real estate agent from Wantagh, was out with two friends for a morning swim, heading west from Tobay toward Jones Beach. A strong swimmer and competitive triathlete -- her father was a Long Beach lifeguard -- Tischler, 65, has been, in her words, a "water bug" for her whole life.

"Nothing scared me out there," she said. "Until that day."

She was about 25 yards from the shore, and her friends were a few yards further out, when they began swimming into a school of jellyfish. Little ones, mostly, and she felt some small strings, but nothing to be concerned about -- nothing she hadn't experienced before.

Suddenly, she saw red -- a red glob that covered her goggles and face. "It was like a monster," she said. That was followed by searing pain. "I felt like my face was being ripped off."

Tischler had been stung by a large jellyfish, most likely a type common to Long Island waters known as Lion's Mane. She began thrashing in the water and managed to pull the tentacles off her skin -- all the while, she said, "screaming bloody murder."

Her friends heard her cries and made a beeline back to the beach, where they found Tischler holding her face in her hands.

"I asked them, 'Do I still have a face?' I really thought they would tell me that it was all bloody and ripped up."

Assured that her face looked fine, she calmed down and walked back to Tobay Beach. She washed off in the outdoor shower, and by the time she left the beach, the pain had dissipated.

Still, she said, "it was the scariest thing I've ever experienced."

The lowly jellyfish can have that effect.

When they fire their toxic, dart-like stingers, they can hurt -- and in very rare cases, even kill. They are scary, they are repulsive, and they are part of summer life on Long Island.

Local New York State Parks officials say they have not discerned a noticeable increase in the jellyfish population this summer compared to last, but they acknowledge that the numbers can change quickly -- so it's not unusual for a beach to experience a sudden influx. (Jellyfish are weak swimmers, so they are carried in and out by tides.)

Stony Brook University marine biologist Darcy Lonsdale said that even as the jellyfish population in some regions of the world has grown in recent years, data for Long Island waters are inconclusive. She has heard reports that suggest that ctenophores, also known as "comb jellies," seem to be in greater abundance in Long Island Sound this summer, even as jellyfish in the ocean are not.

There's not really much to a jellyfish: They have no brains and no bones. They do come in all kinds of bizarre shapes and sizes, from tiny comb jellies to monstrous ones that are larger than humans, their tentacles trailing as long as 90 feet.

And, Lonsdale points out, not every gelatinous creature we see in the water is technically a jellyfish. The comb jellies (ctenophores) are a related but distinct species and, though they're found in large quantities in the Sound, there's good news: They don't sting.

But plenty of jellyfish do -- including Lion's mane, Sea Nettles (commonly found in Chesapeake Bay), and, for more exotic locales, the Irukandji jellyfish found in the waters of Australia's Great Barrier Reef. Its sting can be fatal.

But she cautions against reading too much into fluctuations. "It's not unusual to have big year-to-year variations," she said. 

What brings more here
There's no definitive explanation why the population is rising in some regions, she said, but possible culprits include changes in water salinity and temperature and the growth in the number of submerged marine structures, such as piers and docks -- which give jellyfish polyps places to attach and grow.

Mindy Davidson said she wasn't aware of an increase in jellyfish encounters during her regular swims at Sunken Meadow State Park in early August. "I seem to remember there were more last year," said Davidson, 50, of Seaford, who trains with the Runner's Edge Triathlon Team. "This summer, all we've seen are the little jellies that you can feel with your fingers. They're no problem."

Davidson revised her opinion two days later, after a swim at Sunken Meadow with another group of triathletes. "I'm slower than everyone, so I was swimming by myself. All of a sudden, I look down -- and there's this huge, octopus-looking jellyfish right beneath me. I couldn't believe it, it was so scary."

Davidson immediately turned around and swam back to shore. "The other guys ahead of me are yelling, 'C'mon, go a little further,' " she said. "I was like: 'No way!' "

Indeed, jellyfish can be disgusting.

That's where psychologist Bunmi Olatunji of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., comes in.

Olatunji is an expert in the role of emotions and anxiety - specifically, the experience of disgust. And while jellyfish don't rank at the top of creatures that elicit that response (spiders, he said, top the list, followed by lice, cockroaches and rats), he concedes they have all the right disgusting characteristics to qualify.

"Texture is huge," he said. "And that jellyfish sliminess taps into the emotion of disgust."

And don't rule out the visual cues. "I would argue that visually, jellyfish are very creepy," he said.

Which prompts this question: Why aren't there great jellyfish horror movies?

"Frequency of contact," he said, pointing out that, unlike spiders and snakes, there are many people between the coasts who probably have never seen a jellyfish. 

The horrors of slime
But one novelist insists that jellyfish are made to order for a horror writer. "To make horror work," said Gary Goshgarian, who writes under the pen name Gary Braver, "you've got to have the visceral, physical stuff that disgusts . . . and the stuff that disgusts most are fluids.

"Blood, mucus . . . think of the movie 'Alien,' " he said. "And jellyfish fall into that category. They're slimy, dangerous, and also they're mindless, which kind of smacks a phobic nerve. They're a horror writer's twofer: They're disgusting and they can also hurt you."

Goshgarian, who lives in Arlington, Mass., northwest of Boston, opened his 2005 medical-horror thriller "Flashback" with a scene based, in part, on his own experience -- as a diver who has been stung many times.

The novel's protagonist, Jack, dives into the water off a cove on Cape Cod and, after swimming out to a rock, realizes that to get back to shore, he must swim 100 yards through a bloom of jellyfish -- essentially, running a jellyfish gauntlet. He tries, but the subsequent attack leaves him in a coma. When he regains consciousness, he learns his attacker was a rare jellyfish with a toxin that had given him extraordinary powers of memory.

Jellyfish stings don't typically have silver linings. Still, some humans think jellyfish are getting a bad rap.

Among their virtues: "They play an important role in food webs," said Lonsdale. Jellyfish, she explained, are part of the chain that starts with single-celled phytoplankton, which are eaten by other abundant microscopic animals, which are in turn eaten by jellyfish, which then make a tasty meal for large fish, sea turtles and other marine animals. Without the jellies, the food chain would miss a link.

As someone who studies them, Lonsdale sees jellyfish a little differently than the rest of us do.

"I think they're beautiful-looking animals," she said. But she is not blind to their dangers. "I don't go swimming when I see them."

And neither does Tischler. Since her run-in with the Lion's mane, she is very careful. "I never used to worry about jellyfish," she said. "But now I'm the biggest baby in the water. The second I see one I say, 'I'm outta here.' "

Feel the burn: Jellyfish Rx
Jellyfish tentacles contain poisonous barbs, known as nematocysts, that are released when they make contact with a surface and release poison. Some jellyfish stings are more severe than others.

"People should realize that for most, jellyfish stings are not going to hurt for long, and relatively few can do more than cause short-term discomfort," says Rob Sherlock, a senior research technician at Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in Monterey, Calif.

If you do get stung, he said, make sure you remove the tentacle. Rinse the area with salt water. Anti-inflammatories such as Benadryl can help, he said.

Stingers that remain can be removed by applying shaving cream or a paste of seawater and baking soda or seawater and talcum powder, according to MayoClinic.com. Scrape off the paste when it dries.

As for preventing jellyfish stings, Sherlock suggests the following:

1. Wetsuit -- cover up.
2. Pantyhose -- on arms, too.
3. Vaseline -- Smear it over exposed skin. 

In addition, a new anti-sting cream, Safe Sea, claims to block the jellyfish's stinging dart. Sherlock said he is skeptical of its effectiveness, though he says he has heard success stories from other researchers. For more information, visit buysafesea.com.