Wow! I want to go swimming with jellyfish!
(Photo by Caters News Agency and ganked by me from Yahoo News)
Apparently there is a lake in the middle of the island of Palau that, having separated from the ocean, now contains an estimated 8 million jellyfish that have evolved to all but lose their sting. Those with sensitive skin, which would be me, can sometimes still detect a small sting, but nothing that will hurt you. I wouldn’t want to get too much of that water in my mouth because it sounds like the algae content of extremely high, but I would love to find to what it feels like to have the jellyfish brush up against you sans searing pain.
In high school I inadvertently swam with sharks, while swimming with friends to a bay on Catalina Island from a boat anchored roughly a mile offshore. We looked down at one point and there were dozens of leopard sharks ranging from two to four feet in length swimming about 15 feet below us. Leopard sharks aren’t known for attacking people so I doubt we were in any danger but I wasn’t going to go down any further and say hello, you know. Still, I treasure that memory. Nothing moves through the water as gracefully and effortlessly as a shark and to see so many of them up so close just doing their thing? Magical!