This is my friend Amy looking relaxed and happy during our dory tour of Budd Inlet in August. Amy was steering the boat while I was doing all the hard work rowing it at .05 knots an hour on flat water at high tide. This was the day we encountered the masses of moon jellies and lion's mane jellies. The latter jellies were enormous (about eighteen inches across with a good ten feet of tentacle) but we were both surprised to learn that the lion's mane is the world's largest jelly fish and that it was in Budd Inlet. I guess we imagined it would be found cavorting with the Giant Squid, the Blue Whale, and other creatures of mythic proportions somewhere in open ocean.
On a recent trip to Washington, DC, Amy and I toured the Natural History Museum and encountered a model of what is likely the world's largest specimen the world's largest cnidarian (below).
We were quite happy to have not encountered a lion's mane this size on our dory ride, though I am sure we would have gotten our pictures in the paper and not just in a blog posting.
Our tour of the museum's natural wonders followed a visit to the National Gallery of Art where I ruined Amy's appreciation for the great masterpieces by commenting on the clouds in each one. Now I am done with jellyfish and will resume my Still Life with Clouds work.