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Sea Lice Balmoral
Description and Comments
The Sea Lice was pretty bad today with several swimmers complaining of stings.
Author
swimmingidiots
Type of organism
Jellyfish
Quantity
100
Sun, 03/24/2013 - 18:00
Latitude
-33.83
Longitude
151.25
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Comments
Hello, when you say sea lice,
Hello, when you say sea lice, are you talking about Linuche? The thimble jelly?
I just spent the last hour
In reply to Hello, when you say sea lice, by jellyhunter
I just spent the last hour researching what sea lice are. I was under the impression that it's microscopic jellyfish larvae, but I found this video on youtube with a guy talking about the thimble jellyfish which actually looked like a sea comb. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HL7eWoJfYM
So sea lice seems to represent different marine stingers depending on who you talk to. The common reaction though is tiny bites and a skin rash.
This description sourced from http://www.marine-medic.com.au/pages/firstaid/jellyfish_species.asp#Anc… describes a few culprits:
"Sea Lice is a "loose" term applied to minor skin stings occurring almost any time or any place whilst swimming in the sea. An actual sea creature or jellyfish does not cause the stings, but fine netting of the water and the use of a face mask at these times has shown a number of possible culprits, including:-
Small jelly-like creatures such as Hydroids, Salps and Ctenophores ("sea gooseberries" and "comb jellies").
Small, broken-off jellyfish tentacles.
Glaucus - a small creature that was found in the water on one occasion after a large number of minor stings. This tiny mollusc eats jellyfish tentacles and uses them to sting its own prey!"
However, I have never been stung by salps or ctenophores.
Finally, these two articles are more appropriate to what I've experienced:
http://oceanfit.com.au/pro-blog-post/sea-lice-an-itchy-problem/
http://www.seanasmith.com/sea-lice-stings-sea-lice-bites/