Fun Fact #22: Now I missed out the most fun part about the Normura's Jellyfish, not only is it HUGE, its also occurring in Plagues, in huge jellyfish huge blooms. These blooms are so big that on the Noto Peninsula, Japan, several thousand were caught daily in nets (when they were trying to fish). This jellyfish has an amazing lifecycle that results in these jellies being able to reproduce in such large numbers.

Question

trancenova · Answer

Normura Lifecycle:
1. Adult jellyfish release egg and sperm and they are fertilised to produce a planuar swimming larvae.
2. The planula settles on the ocean floor and turns into a scyphistomae. 
3. This scyphistomae produces a stolon and slowly moves over to a new site, this moving leaves behind a podocyst which itself, turns into another scyphistomae.
4. Now (I hope I haven't lost you) these scyphistomae finally stops moving and changes into a strobila.
5. Now this strobila starts forming a little jellyfish. Itself doesn't turn into jellyfish but the top of this sessile strobila separates into a ephyrae. This ephyrae grows into our friendly neighbourhood giant jellyfish (okay, not friendly, they sting). The strobila will continue to produced ephyrae for its lifespan.

trancenova · Answer

So, if I haven't confused you too much (can have a look at the diagram) I'll give you some numbers,  I believe fertilised eggs number in the millions (but of course not all of these survive). Each scyphistomae produce around 18 podocysts which develop into around 6 scyphistomae. Each of these produce 3-7 jellyfish. So from 1 egg you get around 30 jellyfish. So if we started with thousands of jellyfish producing millions of sperm and eggs.. I'll let those numbers jump around your head.

anonymous · Answer

THEY'RE EVERYWHERE!

trancenova · Answer

EVERYWHERE!!.. well mostly in the waters between Japan and China... but EVERYWHERE!!