I like long walks on a beach...just watch for massive jellyfish

Well, we spent the long weekend enjoying sun and relaxation over at Black Creek on the mid-Island. That's where my dad and stepmom, Hazel, have lived for well over a decade - on a beautiful private lake, no less.

A picture of the private lake taken by dad earlier this year

Anyway, the weather was so awesome, we couldn't help but take advantage of it by going down to the beach on the other side highway from where their home is and walk as far as we could while the tide was low.

Saratoga Beach is one of those funny Inside Passage beaches that appear to be inhospitable and craggy from afar. But once you're actually past the rocks at the trail head and mucky patch at the river mouth, you're treated to miles of hard-packed sand flats at low tide. Perfect for walking unhindered for miles and playing fetch with dad and Hazel's dog, Buddy.

With dad, Hazel and Buddy at Saratoga (at high tide), May 2007

So, as we get past all rocks and seaweed and mud and head out to the flats, we catch sight of these big, shiny things lying on the beach. Dozens upon dozens of them, and they are huge. At first, they look like rose-coloured splotches of marine fuel glinting in the sun, perhaps spilled by careless boaters coming to shore. Yet as we get closer, it becomes obvious that is not what they are. These have a thickness and weight to them. Closer, they look a bit more like large, clear plastic bags filled with putrid wastewater and worms.

Then we notice a couple of the other beach strollers have dogs, each one barking at these splotches on the beach. These dogs have to eventually be restrained from the goops. Some passers by stop in their tracks and just point at them and gawk. Then we come upon the first of what is just one of many clusters of these as yet unidentified things, spread out as far as the eye could see.

Keep in mind, there were probably about a hundred of these things in the immediate vicinity, and they were at least the size of a garbage can lid, if not bigger. Here's what was causing the 'sensation at Saratoga':

When Spike meets splotch, everyone gets grossed out...

These splotches on the flats were actually Pacific sea nettle jellyfish. A bloom had brought all of them to shore - presumably to become gull food or rot if they didn't make it out with the next tide. Most of them were the size of the one pictured above, about 1.5 to 2 feet in diameter each. Big enough to do some serious damage to any swimmer unlucky enough to run into one in the open water.

According to Wiki, jellyfish blooms, just like algae blooms (e.g. red tide), occur because either water temperatures have risen and the jellyfish have followed their feed into these warmer areas, or because the waters have been depleted of oxygen and the jellyfishes' predators cannot survive there. Both pointed to something amiss on these shores, now mostly laid bare by the receded tidewaters - if not for the army of beached jellyfish scattered about.

But we aren't marine biologists, so we gawk and take pictures of these dying puddles of goo, just like everyone else. We keep Buddy on a tight leash because he wanted to sniff them and maybe have a lick or two. No fetch today. Jellyfish still sting long after they're dead. It made the walk even more interesting, to say the least. Something I won't forget in a while, and not necessarily for the right reasons.

Indeed, Mother Nature is a mad scientist.