Why are there so many sea nettles in Chesapeake Bay?
Sea nettles are made up mostly of water and salts, with organic materials totalling only about 0.2k of their entire live weight. For this reason, very little food can provide enough organic materials to result in a lot of growth. The jellyfish can get bigger very rapidly, and the amount of food they catch increases directly with their increasing size. Sea nettles are geared for high reproduction. They begin producing eggs when the swimming bell is only about 1 1/2 inches in diameter. The number of eggs increases tremendously as they grow, with a nettle about 4 inches in diameter shedding about 40,000 eggs into the water daily. The polyps can bud to produce more polyps. Each polyp produces up to 45 jellyfish each summer The Sea Nettle is unusual in its ability to live in water of low salinity (salt content). Most jellyfish species live at ocean water salinity, about 35 ppt (35 parts salt to 965 parts water). The Sea Nettle prefers waters having as little as 12 ppt salinity, and may have
