Beach combers have been finding more than they bargained for this past week as hundreds of barrel jellyfish are being washed up on the coasts around Pembrokeshire and Ceredigion.

While they’re unharmful to humans, they’re moderately venomous with the result that a bite can sometimes result in an itchy or burning sensation to the skin, dermatitis or ulcers, which confirm the fish’s toxicity to humans. However if a person gets bitten by a jellyfish, they often feel no affects at all.

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    • One of the local beaches where barrel jellyfish were spotted in abundance this week was Broadhaven, where Jemma Stanley took her young son on Friday afternoon.

    “They were absolutely huge,” she exclaimed.

    “There must have been dozens of them washed up along the shore and in all the years I’ve spent on the beaches of Pembrokeshire, I’ve never seen any as big as that before.”

    County Times: One of the enormous jellyfish found on BroadhavenOne of the enormous jellyfish found on Broadhaven (Image: Jemma Stanley)

    Barrel jellyfish tend to swarm in warmer coastal waters in late spring where they feed on plankton. But as a result of our milder winters, the plankton has thrived resulting in a knock-on increase in jellyfish numbers. The recent spate of warm weather could also have sparked a boom in their numbers.

    If they underestimate the tides and wave strengths, they are often found washed up on beaches throughout the months of May and June. The barrel jellyfish, which is also known as the dustbin-lid jellyfish or the ‘frilly-mouthed’ jellyfish for obvious reasons, has eight frilly arms, which contain small stinging tentacles and hundreds of little mouths. Anyone who finds one lying on the sand is advised not to move or touch it.

    They’re common visitors to the Irish Sea where they grow to a typical size of around 40cm (16 inches) in diameter. But in exceptional cases, they can grow to 150cm or even larger, making it the largest jellyfish in British and Irish waters.

    County Times:

    In July 2019 wildlife biologist Lizzie Daly dived off the coast of Cornwall with underwater cinematographer Dan Abbott, where they encountered a human-sized barrel jellyfish.

    It is a favourite food of the leatherback turtle, with the result that the abundance of washed-up jellyfish Pembrokeshire is currently experiencing could trigger an increase in turtle sightings.

    Other species include the lion’s mane jellyfish, the mauve stinger jellyfish which is fairly uncommon in the UK and the blue jellyfish.