by KRISTIN LARMORE
Intern News Reporter

Senior criminal justice major Katherine “Katie” McSwain caught a small freshwater jellyfish swimming around the edge of Appalachian State University’s  Duck Pond Thursday.

McSwain said she was standing in front of the metal railing bordering the side of the pond, looked into the water and saw the jellyfish.

“No one believed me, and I got a net…it was easy because [it] was available,” McSwain said.

She said she put the jellyfish in a cup and took it to James S. Barbee, one of her former professors in the biology department.

Barbee said the paper-thin organism was about half-inch to one-third inch thick in diameter.

The freshwater jellyfish, “Craspedacusta sowerbyi,” has two main phases or life cycles during its lifetime, he said.

It could be in the asexual reproducing hydra stage, in which it attaches itself to some surface like a rock or vegetation with its tentacles.

Or, the jellyfish could be in the medusa phase or sexual phase, when it takes on an umbrella-like shape.

“It is a very exotic thing to see…normally we attribute jellyfish to salt water,” Barbee said.

Shea R. Tuberty, an Appalachian biology professor who specializes in freshwater marine biology said there has been a jellyfish in Duck Pond before, but it has probably been around 10 years since one was found.

“A lot of fish eggs can be carried on the feet and feathers of foul,” Tuberty said in regards to how he thinks the jellyfish made its way to Duck Pond.

Though fairly rare, there have been jellyfish sightings throughout the United States.

The particular jellyfish found in Duck Pond happened to be in the medusa stage, a rare occurrence because it is in the hydra stage most of its life.

Scientists currently cannot explain why they do this, or predict when or how often they change, Tuberty said.

He said many people do not realize even as scientists there are many things he and his colleagues still do not know about what they study.

“That is kind of the way things are…what we know about them is that we don’t know much about them…no one is able to study them on a regular basis,” he said.

The jellyfish was released back into the pond, but university biologists would like to retrieve it again so they can do some testing and learn more about these rare creatures.

There might be more jellyfish in the pond, Tuberty said, but they would be very difficult to find, and it would involve some exhaustive collecting to accurately report the number, if there were more.

Tuberty said he attributes the sighting to the warmer weather this summer, as freshwater jellyfish are only found in warm waters.

If students are concerned about seeing jellyfish at the annual Polar Plunge held spring semester, Tuberty said the water would not be warm enough.

He said he does not believe the jellyfish found in Duck Pond could sting a person.

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