Crystal Jellyfish

Animal Unique | Crystal Jellyfish | Crystal jellyfish is bioluminescent hydrozoan  jellyfish, or hydro medusa. Crystal jellyfish can be found along the coast of North America from the Pacific Ocean from the Bering Sea to southern California. Crystal jellyfish is a pelagic organism, which is germinated in a soil-dwelling polyp in late spring. It can be found swimming and floating both near shore and off shore in the eastern Pacific.

Scientific classification
Kingdom:     Animalia
Subkingdom:     Eumetazoa
Phylum:     Cnidaria
Subphylum:     Medusozoa
Class:     Hydrozoa
Subclass:     Leptolinae
Order:     Leptomedusae
Suborder:     Conica
Family:     Aequoreidae
Genus:     Aequorea
Species:     A. victoria

 

Crystal jellyfish is eaten by Lion's Mane Jelly, and ctenophores, siphonophora or hydromedusae, including documented cases of cannibalism. Much larger specimens are found with the parasitic amphipod hyperiid Hyperia medusarum confirmed the either or subumbrella exumbrella, these amphipods may burrow into the gel, but such activities do not kill the jellyfish.

Crystal jellyfish can be quite difficult to distinguish, as the morphological features on which the identifications are made are usually the numbers of tentacles, the number of radial channels, the number of marginal statocysts, and size. Another type is occasionally found in the same geographical area as Aequorea victoria, it's another form called Aequorea coerulescens. While A. coerulescens is apparently generally found at sea in the eastern Pacific, rare specimens have been collected in central California and in Friday Harbor, North Puget Sound. While morphologically similar to Aequorea victoria, the Aequorea coerulescens form is larger (about the size of a plate), with more radial channels. Animals of intermediate size between these two forms are also quite intermediate in appearance, making morphological identification difficult.