Well, if you went swimming near Annapolis yesterday (for example) you could feel confident that you’d only have an 8 percent chance of encountering a dreaded sea nettle. That’s good information to have, especially if you’re taking kids to the beach.
But…how could I possible know this? The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has launched a useful new web site that uses buoys with water temperature and salinity gauges and other sensors to calculate the relative chance of encountering stinging jellyfish. It’s called “CBIBS” for “Chesapeake Bay Interpretive Buoy Information System.”
Check it out here. You can plug in one of several locations monitored around the Bay, and get a probability of a painful sting.
“Observations have shown that concentrations of sea nettles are found within a relatively narrow, well-defined range of temperature (79-86° F) and salinity (10-16 PSU),” according to the CBIBS site.
So swim with caution -- and knowledge.
By Tom Pelton
Chesapeake Bay Foundation
(Photo from NOAA)