Block Island jelly fish

F

firstlight

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Mar 25, 2005
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16749
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The wife and I did our annual trip to Block. We stay on a ball in the Nw Harbor. Three days into vacation generator over heated. I found a burnt out impeller caused by a strainer full of spawning Jelly Fish. Had a spare part and cleaned out strainer every day until we left. Never saw that before! Capt. Fank
 
I was at dock last week and they kept clogging my AC pickup. They never made it into the strainer but I would get no flow and hence no AC. Once I drove the boat it cleared and worked great again. Frustrating while I was there, I had the same thing in Montauk as well.
 
Here in Watch Hill on the ocean side beach of Napatree there is a huge bloom of what appear to be jellyfish larvae (each one about the size of a small jelly bean). So many in fact that when you look down into the water, if it wasn't for the fact that you can see through them, you probably couldn't see the bottom. All along the beach edge the waves have mashed them into jellyfish soup...yuck. I've never seen this many this before.
 
So you guys have a 3 1/2 week swim season when you can get in the water for 5 minutes without getting hypothermic and that a when jelly fishes pop up. :)

Seriously, a good reminder to regularly keep an eye on your Genset exhaust. Usually strainers don't suddenly clog up and you can notice and hear the reduced flow before damage to impeller occur.
 
These actually look like little jelly beans; thankfully no stinging tentacles. Still a nuisance though.
 
I remember being up there and swimming in something I called "Tapioca Pudding."
 
I was at Block last week also and they were all over the beach and in the water. They are not jellyfish they are salp. They clean the water feeding on algae. They do not sting and do not hurt you but I am sure they could plug sea strainers. I ran my genset for about 2 hours a day but had no problems and did not check my strainer. I'll have to look at it when I get back to the boat.
 
The salps are still here in Great Salt Pond!
Had to clean the generator's strainer every 30 minutes. The first time my Fischer Panda stopped due to overheating I discovered the critters. Interesting story of salps in Wikipedia. They feed on phytoplankton adjusting their numbers to the bloom. When massive numbers die they sink to the bottom and raise the carbon level of the oceans. Here's the kicker, according to Wiki, salps can cause climate change!!
It's not us it's the salps!

Ronbo
 
I noticed several salp in the cockpit after boating several fish in Nantucket Sound this evening, but they certainly weren't around there in clogging numbers yet. They are around every summer.
 
Salp! I have seen these creatures (sometimes attached in strings almost 2 feet long) in the waters from Delaware to Cape Cod over the past 45 years and always just considered them as some form of jellyfish. I'm always interested in learning something new...thanks for enlightening me once again Boatered:)
 
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