Barrel Jellyfish

Polmone di Mare Rhizostoma pulmo scifo medusa intotheblue.it

Barrel Jellyfish (Rhizostoma pulmo Macri, 1778)  is a jellyfish from the Rhizostomatidae family.

It is a pelagic species widespread in the eastern Atlantic Ocean, in the Mediterranean Sea, frequent along the entire Adriatic and Ionian coast, particularly in the late summer and early autumn periods and in the Black Sea.

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This jellyfish features a hat with a hemispherical opalescent shape but tending towards transparent, with fringed blue-violet edges. Under the hat the body is called the handlebar and is composed of 8 extensions of curled and lumpy white-transparent fabric, from which 8 elongated, frayed and semitransparent tentacles start.

Young specimens tend to have a more transparent coloration, adults much more opalescent. The common name of sea lung is due to the typical throbbing movement made by the jellyfish to move. The dimensions are noteworthy: being able to reach 50-60 cm in diameter and 10 kg in weight, it represents the largest jellyfish in the Mediterranean.

The species does not cause serious consequences: its tentacles are not usually stinging enough to create serious dangers for humans. Only on particularly sensitive subjects, contact can cause irritations that disappear spontaneously in a short time but leaving an itchy or annoying pain. In water, it releases some stinging substance or toxin that causes small abrasions of severe itching and slight burning.

(tratto da Wikipedia)

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