Into the Ocean

Tonight, we had dinner at a seafood restaurant right by the ocean. As we waited for our check to come (not a speedy process at that place), I took my younger nephew, J, to look at the boats parked at the dock while we waited.

When we got there, a small portion of the water was illuminated at the rear of a boat. At first, I thought that the ocean was full of trash, but as we looked closer, J and I decided that it was actually a flock of jellyfish. (Flock? Gaggle? Herd? I don't know. I could Google it, but then how would you learn how to find answers for yourselves?)

The pictures are just from my phone, so they're a bit blurry, but it was amazing! I've never seen jellyfish not in a movie, and certainly not in the ocean.



(The jellyfish are in the top-left corner of the water).



There were some jellyfish closer to us, but that was where the lighting was the best to capture them. We hurried to tell the others to come and look, and then we watched the jellyfish swoosh around the water until they moved, as a group, into the darker waters.

I told J that it was the first time I had seen jellyfish. He told me it was his first time, too. I told him I was glad that we were seeing them for the first time together. He then proceeded to explain that the more opaque part of each jellyfish was where it had a baby jellyfish inside of it. I told him that I wasn't sure that that was how it worked, and he assured me that it was. As he recently studied the ocean in preschool and made a paper jellyfish, I suppose he is the expert.

So, if you're wondering what jellyfish look like, they look like trash.

Many things that look like trash are actually pretty amazing, if you take a closer look.