Re: common and scientific name of a rare, purple, giant jellyfish

Hi Luz:

We had a look at the segment by Jim Hill (available here if you haven't already seen it). They indeed don't give a common or scientific name for the featured jellyfish, and none of the links gave us any hints either. The jellyfish in the segment bears a resemblance to Pelagia panopyra or Cyanea capillata (also known as the Lions Mane Jellyfish; click here for another link on C. capillata), though I think the Lion's Mane Jellyfish is found mostly in the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans.

I searched around for more by Lisa-Ann Gershwin, and found she's a co-author in a recent paper of the Biological Bulletin of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute:
Martin, J.W., Gershwin, L-A., Burnett, J.W., Cargo, D.G. and D.A. Bloom. 1997. Chrysaora achlyos, a remarkable new species of scyphozoan from the Eastern Pacific. Biological Bulletin Woods Hole 193(1):8-13. (The abstract is available here)

Judging from the abstract, it sounds like that's the beast that was on the CNN segment- since it's a new species, however, there aren't a lot of net resources on that particular species. The only way to be sure would be to ask Lisa-Ann Gershwin, and her mailing address is given in the abstract of the above paper.

Rob Campbell, MAD Scientist
Eric Maass, MadSci Admin