Fried Egg Jellyfish

Habitat:  P. Camtschatica can be found worldwide in temperate oceans. It alternates between a benthic polyp stage (lowest level of the ocean) and pelagic (open-water) medusa stage.  Most people would be familiar with the medusa stage of the jellyfish when it’s swimming close to docks or the shore near the surface of the water. These jellies have been studied mostly at Monterey Bay Aquarium.  Around Victoria, British Columbia they can occur in large numbers during the summer and next to the Moon Jellyfish (Arelia labiata) are one of the most commonly seen jellyfish in the area.

Prey:  Fried Egg Jellyfish eat gelatinous zooplankton, smaller jellyfish and little crabs. Their tentacles can be 10 to 20 feet long.  They discharge their stingers in a harpoon like motion after being coiled in capsules filled with a “stinging”venom.  The stinging apparatus is called a nematocyst and it is in a specialized cell called a cnidocyte. Juvenile crabs and parasitic amphipods often ride on the Fried Egg Jellyfishe’s bell and steal food from it.  According to Wrobel and Mills (2003) it only has a mild sting.

Lifecycle:  The Fried Egg Jellyfish sexually reproduce in the medusa stage of life which is the stage that looks like a typical jellyfish.  After the eggs are released from females and sperm from the males, the resulting fertilized eggs turn into a larva that eventually settles onto docks or the ocean floor.  They develop into small polyps.  The polyps will begin dividing asexually and will end up looking like a stack of bottle caps. The top individual on the stack detaches, now being called an ephyra, to float away and continues to grow into an adult medusa.

Photos by D. Young