Latin name: Aurelia aurita

Delicate Ocean Lace

• Lacking a skeleton or a protective shell, the jellyfish is made of a blue-white translucent gelatinous matter consisting of 98% water. The shape of its body resembles an umbrella. 

• Its tentacles contain tiny urtican cells which enclose, in a capsule, some venom and a tiny barbed harpoon. When a prey comes in contact with the tentacles' micro cilia, the capsule bursts and shoots out its small barbed harpoon. 

• It is carnivorous and feeds mainly on small plankton organisms: tunicate larvae, copepods, rotifers, nematodes, young polychaetes, diatoms and fish eggs.  

• Throughout the day, it performs circadian migrations, its moves are dictated by sunlight, searches for food up towards the water's surface and then back down again. 

• The populations are thought to be constantly increasing and the species is not threatened with extinction.