By Narelle Allen
Now some might say that the people at the Numeralla Folk Festival were hallucinating when they said they had found jellyfish in the Badja River, but they were right.
The jellyfish are of the freshwater variety and are found in about 100 places in Australia, although this is the first documented species to be found in the Badja.
“So sporadic are these little critters, that these ones that were discovered near Numeralla may even be a new species, world renowned jellyfish expert Dr Lisa Gershwin said.
We still won’t know for a couple of weeks as the specimens are at present in formaldehyde, ‘setting’”, to be able to be transported to Dr Gershwin in Tasmania.
She thinks they may be a previously undiscovered species as they have been described to her as being blue in colour and most freshwater jellyfish are white or clear.
Freshwater jellyfish are not related to the salt-water variety and there are thought to be about a dozen different species of freshwater jellyfish around the world at present, but new species are still being discovered.
Their sting is very mild to nonexistent, although young children and people with sensitive skin or allergies to stings may suffer some irritation.
It is the opinion of scientists that the jellyfish are transported to different locations on birds’ feet, in the polyp stage, being bi-phasic in their reproduction, the polyps then produce the jellyfish.
The polyps are extremely small and invisible to the naked eye but once the jellyfish are born they are approximately the size of a five to 10 cent piece, with a lace-like appearance.
The jellyfish eat small aquatic invertebrates and larvae, including mosquito larvae and are thought to have no natural predators.
They are more commonly found in summer in large numbers and each group of jellyfish appear then disappear within a few weeks, either not appearing again in that location or not for many years. After the current rainfalls in the Monaro region the Badja River jellyfish have long gone, with only the samples collected remaining.
