Giant jellyfish washed up on Tasmanian beach is new to science

Twelve-year-old Xavier Lim was walking along the beach in Tasmania with his family, searching for shells, when he discovered something even more remarkable — a giant jellyfish washed up on shore that turned out to be a totally new species to science!

Upon finding this huge jellyfish, which measured over 1.5 metres across, the Lims sent the picture they took of it on to Australia's national science agency, CSIRO. There, research scientists Dr. Lisa-ann Gershwin got a look at it.

"The thing that I first said when I saw [the photograph] was 'Phwoar'. It's a very scientific term," Dr. Gershwin joked to the Sydney Morning Herald. "I'm just rapt by it, honestly. It's such an amazing find."

Dr. Gershwin had heard stories about this type of jellyfish before, had seen photographs of it that were sent in to CSIRO, and had even recently collected samples, but it still remains unclassified. Apparently, it's a third species of lion's mane jellyfish, sometimes called 'snotties', that's unique to the waters off Tasmania and is set apart from the other species by some muscle, tentacle and structural differences. Dr. Gershwin is now going through the process of getting this new species classified and named, but she can't name it publicly just yet. The Lims' find is the largest specimen she's ever seen.

"It boggles the mind. I mean, it's so big. I knew that the species gets fairly large, but I didn't know that it gets that large. It was really a surprise to me when they forwarded the photo to me," she said to the Sydney Morning Herald.

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This discovery is coming at a time when Tasmania has been seeing a massive jellyfish bloom in its coastal waters. However, although there are several possible causes — climate change, ocean acidification, overfishing, excess nutrients from agricultural runoff or pollution just to name a few — scientists aren't sure why it's happening.

"We don't actually know what's going on that's led, not only to this species, but many, many types of jellyfish blooming in massive numbers," Dr. Gershwin said in the interview. "Jellyfish do bloom as a normal part of their life cycle, but not usually this many. There's something going on and we don't know what it is. To me, the real question is ... what impact are all of these mouths having on the ecosystem, and what in turn does that mean to us?"

(Photo courtesy: Richard Lim/AFP/Getty)

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