A mammoth jellyfish with “bus-sized” tentacles has been spotted off the coast of Wales.
A young freediver, Iestyn Morgan, has captured footage of an enormous lion’s mane jellyfish while swimming off the Pembrokeshire coastline.
The 21-year-old conservationist from Pembrokeshire made the remarkable discovery near Trefin Beach and said he “couldn’t believe his luck” at the astounding encounter.
The specimen, which Morgan estimated measured roughly 10 to 15 metres, marked the first time he had observed a lion’s mane jellyfish in Welsh waters.
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The species is typically associated with the cooler seas surrounding Scotland.
“It must have been the length of a bus or small train. I couldn’t believe how big it was,” Mr Morgan.
The conservationist’s encounter unfolded gradually as he first noticed a handful of tentacles drifting through the water, which quickly multiplied into dozens.
“Three turned to 10, and then to 20. They just kept on coming,” he recalled.
The sheer scale of the animal meant its tentacles stretched “beyond the range of visibility” in the surrounding sea.
At first, Mr Morgan assumed he had come across a compass jellyfish, a species commonly found in British coastal waters.
He soon realised, however, that the creature was far too large to be one.
Lion’s mane jellyfish can reach body lengths of up to three metres, but their tentacles — deployed to ensnare prey — may trail between 30 and 36.5 metres, placing them among the longest animals on the planet.
Dr Cathy Lucas, a marine biologist at the University of Southampton, confirmed that Morgan’s footage demonstrated the animal’s extraordinary dimensions.
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She noted the tentacles are so slender and elongated that swimmers may not even notice them in the water.
Drawing on her own fieldwork experience in Scottish waters, Dr Lucas recalled divers picking up stray tentacle fragments even when no jellyfish were visible nearby.
“They still sting after they break off,” she warned.
Although she described the lion’s mane’s sting as “the worst in the UK” and undeniably unpleasant, she stressed it posed no serious danger.
Her advice for anyone who encounters stray tentacles is to remove them from the skin using a stick and rinse the affected area with warm water.
According to Dr Lucas, lion’s mane jellyfish “occasionally” drift as far as the Welsh coast during late summer or autumn, but Scotland remains their primary UK habitat.
Mr Morgan said there was a growing number of jellyfish arriving in Welsh waters during his time filming underwater.
He suggested this formed part of a wider pattern, with warm-water species “becoming more abundant” along the coast.
“I don’t have enough summers to compare it to, but I put down a camera a few weeks ago and saw a Triggerfish, which is native to the Mediterranean,” he said.
Despite the excitement of such encounters, Mr Morgan said: “I don’t want to turn it into something that I’m going out to hunt the animals or anything.
“I just get in the water, film and swim.”
His broader ambition, he explained, was to make underwater environments “more accessible” to the public through his content.
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