‘I thought it was a marble.’ Thousands of jellies on California beaches puzzle visitors

Hunting for sea glass on a Southern California beach, Calli Murray came across an unusual find — a tiny, transparent sphere glistening in the sand.

“I thought it was a marble,” Murray said, The Orange County Register reported. “My husband picked it up. It turned out to be jelly-like. I could see right through them. It was crazy.”

Thousands of sea gooseberries, a species of comb jelly, washed up on Southern California beaches the weekend before Christmas, said naturalist Erica Page in a YouTube video posted by Newport Landing Whale Watching.

“They are similar to jellyfish and they float and drift with the tide,” Page said in the video. “These comb jellies are harmless to humans and do not contain stinging tentacles.”

Parent Sandy Burns encountered the sea gooseberries while on a homeschooling trip to the beach with her two children, The Orange County Register reported.

“They looked like little perfect water droplets on the beach,” Burns said, according to the publication. “We weren’t quite sure what it was. They looked so perfect.”

Sea gooseberries use sticky tentacles to trap and eat zooplankton, Page says in the video.

They reach up to 20mm in size and live four to six months, according to ExoticAquaculture.com.

Gelatinous and transparent, sea gooseberries are found in oceans around the world, Brittanica.com says. They propel themselves with thousands of cilia.

This story was originally published December 29, 2020 at 11:50 AM with the headline "‘I thought it was a marble.’ Thousands of jellies on California beaches puzzle visitors."