So early this morning I was driving along Southend Seafront on my way home when I felt the urge to have a wee paddle in the Thames. I opted to park near Shoebury Coastguard Station and doodled of in shorts and flip flops along the boulevard and down the shingle to the water. The water clarity was good as I waded in upto my knees in the cool, refreshing water.
As I stood there enjoying the nice cooling feeling on my feet I noticed a fair few opaque white jellyfish drifting back and fourth with the waves until a little further out I saw a bright blue blob floating towards me. Now being as this is the Thames and although its waters are exceptionally clean now I did walk back out of the surf as the blue ‘thing’ got closer, you never know what some dirty day-tripper may of thrown in the river. As it got closer I realised it was actually a bright blue jellyfish, and as I looked around a bit harder I could see that there was fair few of them drifting around. I’ve never seen jellyfish this colour around these shores before, just the usual whitish ones of varying sizes. In fact if you look HERE you will find a short video I took of one ‘swimming’ along a narrow drainage channel.
After doing some research when I got home it turns out these are ‘BLUE JELLYFISH’, original name, and are actually pretty common around our shores and they grow to roughly 30cm across and do have a nasty sting. I’m surprised I,ve not seen any before now but I,m glad I have seen them now, they’re pretty little things….
