Arrival of Summer Means One Thing for Israeli Beachgoers: Watch Out for Jellyfish
by Algemeiner Staff
It’s summer, which means one thing for Israeli beachgoers on the Mediterranean coast — watch out for jellyfish.
“It’s their time,” Dr. Tamar Lotan of the University of Haifa’s Marine Biology Department told the Hebrew news site Walla. “They come every year, like clockwork, exactly when the kids go on vacation.
“The jellyfish were here 700 million years ago, and they’ll be here long after there is no remaining trace of us,” Lotan noted.
Dr. Dor Edelist, also of the University of Haifa, predicted a normal level of jellyfish on Israel’s beaches this summer.
Edelist, a co-operator of the jellyfish tracking website www.meduzot.co.il, said, “This year, we have still not seen a full swarm. It’s still thin at the start of the season. This season is expected to last around two months. We expect it will end in the first or second week of August. At that point, the water will be too warm, and the jellyfish will die or move northward.”