The jellyfish season is here

Friday 27th June 2025

Overnight rain had washed everything clean and created shade puddles under the tall, tall hedges. They are flourishing and the verges are sprouting high blonde grass from the middle of their buzz cuts. This is what late spring early summer looks like.

A rough-edged sun shines hazy through thick cloud. It’s a favourable filter, fighting back the blue, enough room below for warmth without letting in scorching heat. On dry land, the temperature was around sixteen degrees

Wind’s off the land today, warm south westerlies strong enough to blow the flag straight out but not strong enough to nip.

The sea was a magnificent, dark pewter, scattered with silver, gently massaged by a rhythmic occasional wave. It is as if it’s rebuilding after the solstice lows, recovering and re-filling.

The underwater sand was still there. As if the sandbank had spread and wasn’t ready to go back, it was possible to walk out comfortably to where the sandbank once was with its steep uncomfortable sides, now a soft-sided mound with an underwater walkway to the shore.

The walk was ankle deep at the beginning and soon waist-high water, deep enough to swim in, if you don’t mind banging your knees now and then.

I started my walk with Cousin, we were nearly at the soft sanbank and close to the silhouettes of most of the other members of our group, when she, already submerged, squeaked and said that she wasn’t going any further.

‘He’s got a jellyfish and he’s about to throw it.’

Puck, standing, grinning, head of the group just the other side of the sandbank had scooped up a moon jellyfish and was pretending that he was about to throw it at one of the others.

It’s his best thing (maybe even better than tipping people off a paddleboard?). Making his favourite swimmers squeak by pretending that he is about to throw a large clear disc-shaped jellyfish at them.

Course he didn’t, but he’s an excellent mime and it’s quite hilarious to hear his hoots of laughter when his intended targets squeak and jump.

Moon jellyfish are actually pretty difficult to pick up. They look full of substance under the water but there’s not much to them out of the water and if you’re not careful, lifting them out will make them tear and dissolve.

We get tons of moon jellyfish when the water gets warm. They’re essentially huge great discs of clear jelly no central nervous system made of 95% water with no brain blood, or heart, but they power themselves across the ocean just loving the warm water.

They’re the most common sort of jellyfish in UK and frequently get washed up on beaches and although most are the size of a saucer, they can grow to the size of a substantial dinner plate.

Moon jellies are completely harmless, if you get the chance to look at one closely, you may see four purple circles close to their centre, the gonads which hold their reproductive organs. Baby moon jellies, polyps, hatch into tiny clear buds often seen like beautiful clear jewels on the shoreline.

I was swimming beside the others feeling rather smug that I hadn’t seen a single jellyfish despite the warmer water. This morning, sea temperature was almost seventeen degrees.

I reached down to make a stroke and my hand (gloved hand thank god) touched a meaty being that felt like it had the unseen substance and size of my head. I squeaked and jumped up, the others chortled.

Slow and generous waves powered me in. I made an ‘elective crawl’ over the soft sand.

Other swimmers were heading out into the summer sea. They were warned.

I went back to my blogs from June last year (2024) to check if there had been jellies about because they do seem rather early. In 2023, my first mention of jellies was 26th June, last year, 17th; not far off either way.

The fisherman heads out, his three-ton boat facing backwards, somehow navigating over the sand.

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