Jellyfish of the Black Sea are very beautiful and different.

For example, a jellyfish Cornerot. Together with the detachment, sailing on a yacht, we saw them far from the coast. On the surface of the sea, small Cornerots (about 20 cm in diameter) were observed, and at a depth, going down with scuba gear, one big jellyfish with a diameter of up to 50 cm, and a lot of about 30 cm. This Cornerot has a cap, under it there are tentacles, on which there are poisonous cells.

The color of the Cornerots is transparent, sometimes with a purple or pink tint and often yellowish.

Medusa Cornerot burns the skin like boiling water, and redness of the skin is similar to nettle burns. So it's better not to touch it, so as not to make yourself unnecessary trouble!

These jellyfish are certainly beautiful and it is simply impossible not to admire them! But some people pull them ashore. But why? Let the fish be in the water, and the animals on land, why kill the jellyfish?!

On the seashore we saw several dead cornerots, but the leaders of the detachment strictly forbade touching them, since even dead jellyfish can sting with their venom in their tentacles.

There is still such a jellyfish in the Black Sea, Aurelia. Counselors and locals just call them eared. These are harmless jellyfish, if you touch them or step on them, you will feel as if algae or jelly under your foot. So they don't sting. But if you throw them in the face, you can get a burn of the lips or eyes. With jellyfish, you need to wash the burns several times with a solution drinking water with soda.
Eared ears are absolutely transparent, they have a flat cap and 4 small ears, from which “hairs” grow (not all eared ones). The sizes of the Ushastiki are not as large as those of the Cornerots - from the size of a marigold to 30 cm.

There are few Cornerots on the surface of the Black Sea, mostly Ushastiki.

I'll tell you interesting story like sailing on a yacht on the sea and, all the guys in the detachment watched a large number of Ushastikov. Eating, we decided to treat the jellyfish. One of the boys threw a piece of watermelon pulp, the Ushastiki “rushed in”, tore it apart and swallowed it. But then, a large piece of watermelon fell from someone, a huge “Ushast” swam up (you can’t call it an eared one) and completely swallowed it or sucked it in (I don’t know how to say it right). For 10 minutes it was red, like a watermelon, but then it began to brighten before our eyes and became transparent again. At the same time, the counselors said that jellyfish feed on plankton, algae, small fish, but they didn’t say anything about watermelons :).

And the last jellyfish that our detachment saw in the Black Sea is comb jelly. It is also called sachet! Why Packet? Because it is very similar to a small package without handles.
It is transparent, tentacles grow from the center of the bag, shimmering in the water with a mother-of-pearl color. The largest of the Comb Jewels fit on two palms (children's). They are harmless, but like eared ones, you should not throw them at each other.

The first story about bags: We sailed on a yacht in the open sea, went down to swim in the sea, and all around us were teeming with Bags. The boys threw jellyfish, fortunately they didn’t hit me, but one of the boys was hit in the eye - he was sooo hurt, the walk on the sea ended immediately and we returned to the camp.

Second case: The boys put one of the Bags on a stone and in a matter of minutes it melted into a white speck. It's a pity that one bag is less.

And in conclusion, I want to tell you about a poisonous fish - Scorpio which I have seen several times. Scorpionfish are very small, but with poisonous spines, they live in caves made of stones or in seaweed.

Therefore, when you walk, before stepping on the algae, you need to rummage around with your foot. Scorpionfish are very cowardly and will immediately swim away. If a person steps on them, the temperature will rise, nausea will occur.

Luckily, no one from the camp was hurt.
My story about the Black Sea jellyfish and poisonous fish is over. I hope you liked it.

sea ​​wasp(box jellyfish) belongs to the class of box jellyfish cnidaria. This multicellular organism is rare and very dangerous for humans. In nature, there are a huge number of different ones, but this is considered the most poisonous on the planet. It stings like a well-known wasp, only instead of one sting, box jellyfish have a hundred times more of them. Their poison is death for all living organisms. Behind last century these predators killed about a hundred people. If a diver gets into a flock of sea wasps, then he has practically no chance of returning to shore.

Who is called a sea wasp?

AT sea ​​depths hides a large number of dangerous predatory creatures, many of which have not yet been studied at all. Who is called the sea wasp, who swims up in an invisible shadow and injects a lethal dose of poison? This monster - the box jellyfish - is almost impossible to see in the water, the people call it "invisible death".

You can't call this creature a monster when you see it. These are relatively small jellyfish, shaped like a cube or a bottle. The body is about 5 cm in diameter, although there are rare individuals in which the dome reaches 20-25 cm. It is better not to meet such people, as this is a real death machine. By the way, the box jellyfish was so named precisely because of the cube-shaped structure of the dome.

The tentacles of the sea wasp deserve special attention, because they are the formidable weapon of the jellyfish. In length, they reach one and a half meters, their number can reach up to 60. If you fall into such a deadly "embrace", then a lethal end is inevitable. Glands are hidden in these long, terrible lashes, so they produce a poison that is stronger than that of a snake.

Scientists cannot figure out another feature of the sea wasp in any way - why does a jellyfish, which has no brain, need eyes, can it see the world? Surprisingly, the box jellyfish really has eyes - as many as twenty-four. These organs are divided into 4 groups of 6 eyes each. With so many, this creature must see?

Where do sea wasps live in nature?

It would seem that a jellyfish can live in any sea water. All the expanses of the oceans and seas are subject to these tentacled miracles, but this false statement. The sea wasp, for example, lives only in Australia. Favorite place marine predators- northern shores, in those waters relatively shallow depth and a large accumulation of corals.

Lifestyle of a poisonous monster

As mentioned earlier, the sea wasp is an active dangerous predator. When hunting, the box jellyfish keeps completely still, but as soon as the prey touches the tentacles invisible in the water, it immediately receives a large dose of poison. Moreover, the jellyfish stings several times in a row so that the victim quickly dies. The poison is very strong, it affects nervous system, on the cardiovascular system and damage the skin.

Sea wasps feed on shrimp, small crabs and small fish. The predator pulls the stung prey with its tentacles to the dome and sucks it inward, where it calmly digests.

Box jellyfish hunt in the coastal zone, but keep far from the coast. During a storm or high tide, when the sea is rough and strong waves roll on the shore, these poisonous creatures often go straight to the beaches where people swim.

reproduction

The sea wasp goes through the same breeding stages as other jellyfish. First, predators lay eggs, larvae appear from them, which attach to the bottom and then turn into polyps. Polyps reproduce by budding.

Through certain time the body of a jellyfish breaks away from the polyp and swims away to create its black deeds in the open spaces of the sea. Without a jellyfish, an abandoned polyp dies instantly.

Can a sea wasp sting?

As mentioned earlier, the box jellyfish poses a great threat to human life. Although we will not make such a thing out of it bloodthirsty predator, it attacks only what can serve as food. People are not included in this list; when meeting with them, the sea wasp prefers to swim away. It can sting a person, but only by chance, when it does not have time to dodge a collision. Most often, divers are exposed to such danger.

After receiving several doses of the strongest poison, the body instantly begins to react. The skin turns red, the stung feels unbearable pain, from which there is no escape, the burn site swells terribly. Dizziness, fainting, high fever - these consequences of a meeting with a sea wasp may well end in respiratory arrest and cardiac arrest. Death can occur in the very first minutes after a collision with deadly tentacles, or it can occur in a day. It all depends on the amount of poison injected.

This "invisible death" swims very well, can quickly turn and maneuver between corals and algae, moves relatively quickly under water - up to 6 meters per minute. It is possible to consider transparent predators only in shallow water, the warm sandy bottom is best place for their existence and reproduction. In the daytime, sea wasps stay at the bottom, with the first twilight they float to the surface.

To protect vacationers on the beaches from jellyfish, lifeguards put up warning signs along the coast, but unfortunately, this does not guarantee people complete safety in places where sea wasps are found - the most poisonous among jellyfish.

We already wrote that on . Now the waves are throwing dead carcasses of animals ashore, in huge quantities.

Experts link the invasion of jellyfish with temperature changes and ask residents of Odessa to be careful. However, due to the cold snap, the residents of the city do not climb into the water, but simply watch sea ​​creatures from the side. Many of them arrange a kind of flash mob on social networks, where they post photos of jellyfish different colors and sizes.

“I often ride a bike to the Seaport,” said Nastya, a young Odessa woman. recent times I noticed a lot of jellyfish. From the outside, they look intimidating and bewitching at the same time.

beautiful, strange creatures are called cornerots (Rhizostoma pulmo). Such jellyfish usually live in Atlantic Ocean including the Mediterranean and Black Sea. In August-September they usually approach the shore.

Jellyfish love cold water, their largest concentrations are observed in the Irish Sea, where the water is cold. Also, their clusters can be found off the coast. South Africa where the cold Bengal current passes.

This type of jellyfish can cause burns in humans. Touching the tentacles causes a sensation similar to a nettle burn. Jellyfish mucus is also toxic. After touching the jellyfish with your hands, in no case should you touch your eyes, lips and nose. The burn site must be immediately washed with water, preferably fresh.

In Sevastopol unexpectedly ended bathing season. The Black Sea was filled with hordes of jellyfish. With details - the correspondent of "Vesti FM" Oleg Grinev.

"Vesti FM": What's up, what's going on?

Grinev: In fact, there is still no clear explanation of the reasons why all coastal beaches are occupied by jellyfish. Two days ago, bathers discovered that, literally one meter away from the shore, they were swimming in a continuous carpet consisting of both dead and live jellyfish. The scientists took water samples. It is possible that toxins, traces of human activity, got into the water. Because of this, some of the jellyfish died out, and some simply migrated from their permanent habitats and approached the shore. As a rule, jellyfish come ashore in Sevastopol in mid-autumn, when storms begin. And why they approached now remains to be seen.

"Vesti FM": The version that the matter is only in a cold snap does not stand up to criticism?

Grinev: The version does not stand up to criticism for the reason that there is no cooling as such, even recent storms, of course, mixed the upper and lower layers, but, nevertheless, the water temperature is plus 18-19 degrees, and in some bays even reaches 20.

"Vesti FM": But everyone who has ever vacationed on the Black Sea coast knows that there are jellyfish there, but it’s just that now is probably not the season. Too early they appeared and there are a lot of them?

Grinev: Yes. Jellyfish, of course, are. They are met in any weather and at any time of the year. But the fact is that it is precisely hundreds of thousands of jellyfish that covered all the Sevastopol beaches with a continuous carpet, not only the bays, but also the beaches of Fiolent, which are constantly washed by the current, including the cold one, why this happened is still not clear. But, again, the possibility is not ruled out that sand was mined on Fiolent just two weeks ago, and thereby destroyed all the benthic fauna. It is possible that it was precisely because of this that the jellyfish were forced to migrate in order to avoid destruction by humans. It is quite possible that, during the migration, storms destroyed some of them, of course, and the living ones approached the shore, where there is food for them.

"Vesti FM": Are the beaches officially closed by order of the city authorities?

Grinev: No, the beaches are not closed. There are no unsanitary conditions on the beaches, there are no toxic substances in the water, only jellyfish in the water. Jellyfish are organic. And although they do not pose a serious danger to humans, let's just say that it is unpleasant to swim when you are surrounded by jellyfish.

"Vesti FM": The administration is not going to do anything?

Grinev: So far, it is impossible to do anything - to scoop out jellyfish, very serious forces and means are needed, and given that the coastline is more than 50 kilometers long, it will take more than one day. It is much easier to wait for the next storm or hope that the jellyfish will move away on their own. But, most likely, the next wave of about three points will throw all the jellyfish ashore, and the jellyfish that can will simply go to the depths to avoid the storm.

Popular

25.04.2019, 07:10

“Ukraine abandoned the inhabitants of Donbass”

VLADIMIR SOLOVIEV: “Putin said that these are “humanitarian measures”. But Zelensky provoked such a decision. Firstly, he not only repeated all Poroshenko’s mantras about Donbass, but managed to bring to the stage of de facto negation of the Minsk agreements that there would be no special status for Donetsk and Lugansk and there would be no amnesty.”

The painting by the French artist Theodore Gericault "The Raft of the Medusa" in 1819 attracted me primarily with its plot and the terrible tragedy that formed its basis. The gigantic canvas impresses with its expressive power, combining in one picture the dead and the living, hope and despair.

The canvas is huge. Its length is 7 m, and the width 5 m

Raft of the Medusa.

TRAGEDY IN THE SEA.

With The plot for the picture was an event that excited all of France at that time. On June 17, 1816, a small French squadron - the frigate "Medusa", the corvettes "Echo" and "Loire" and the brig "Argus" - set off from France to Senegal.

On board each of the ships were a considerable number of passengers - soldiers, officials colonial administration and members of their families. Among them were the governor of Senegal, Schmalz, and the soldiers of the "African battalion" - three companies of 84 people each, recruited from people of different nationalities, among whom there were both former criminals and various daredevils. The flagship Medusa and the entire squadron were commanded by Durouade Chaumaret, an inexperienced captain who received this position through patronage.

Frigate.

Corvette

Brig.

The captain's inexperience quickly showed itself. The high-speed Meduza broke away from the rest of the ships of the flotilla and, less than a month later, ran aground near the Cape Verde Islands, 160 km from the coast West Africa. A small sand bank was clearly marked on the maps as a bright spot, but Chaumeret, who did not read sea charts well, managed to drive his ship into this particular part of the Atlantic. When the crew began to throw weights overboard to lighten the ship's weight, did the captain stop these attempts? How could state property be squandered? He decided to get to the shore in boats.

There were only six of them, and the Meduza carried about four hundred people on board. Among them were the future governor of Senegal, Colonel Julien Schmalz, his wife, as well as several dozen scientists, high-ranking military and aristocrats. It was this audience that took their places in the boats. Seventeen people remained on board the Medusa. The remaining one hundred and forty-nine with a minimum supply of food and fresh water were loaded onto a small raft, hastily put together from masts and planks.

According to all maritime laws, Chaumare, as a captain, was supposed to be the last to leave the ship, but did not. He, Governor Schmalz and senior officers were placed in boats. Several junior ranks, thirty sailors and most of soldiers and passengers simply moved to the raft. The command of the raft was entrusted to midshipman Coudin, who had difficulty moving due to a leg injury.

Those who happened to sail on the raft were not even allowed to take provisions with them, so as not to overload the raft. There were 17 people left on the abandoned frigate, who could not find a place either on a raft or in boats.

Transporting a bulky heavy raft proved to be extremely difficult. The rowers were exhausted. They, like the captain of the Medusa, who was in one of the boats, were already worried about the thought of only their own salvation - a storm was about to come. Suddenly, the rope holding the raft in tow broke. It is not clear whether this happened due to someone else's fault or if the rope simply failed.

Unrestrained, the boats with the captain and the governor on board rushed forward. Only the crew of one boat again tried to take the raft in tow, but after several failures, they also abandoned it.

Both those who were in the boats and those who remained on the raft understood that the fate of the raft was a foregone conclusion: even if it stays afloat for some time, people still do not have provisions. On the raft - without a rudder, without sails, which was almost impossible to control - there were 148 people left: 147 men and one woman, a former marque. People were overcome by a sense of hopelessness ...

As the boats began to disappear from sight, screams of despair and rage rang out from the raft. When the first stupor passed, which was replaced by a feeling of hatred and bitterness, they began to check the available supplies: two barrels of water, five barrels of wine, a box of crackers, soaked sea ​​water, - and that's all ... Soaked crackers were eaten on the first day. Only wine and water remained.

By nightfall, the raft began to sink into the water. “The weather was terrible,” the engineer Correard and the surgeon Savigny, participants in the drift on the Medusa raft, write in their memoirs. The raging waves swept over us and sometimes knocked us down. What a terrible state! It is impossible to imagine all this! By seven o'clock in the morning the sea calmed down somewhat, but what a terrible picture opened up to our eyes. There were twenty dead on the raft. Twelve of them had their feet caught between planks as they slid across the deck, the rest were washed overboard…”

Having lost twenty people, the raft rose somewhat, and its middle appeared above the surface of the sea. There they all huddled. The strong crushed the weak, the bodies of the dead were thrown into the sea. Everyone looked eagerly at the horizon in the hope of seeing the Echo, the Argus, or the Loire rushing to their aid. But the sea was completely deserted...

“Last night was terrible, this one is even more terrible,” Correard and Savigny write further. “Great waves crashed into the raft every minute and boiled furiously between our bodies. Neither the soldiers nor the sailors doubted that their last hour had come.

They decided to lighten their dying moments by drinking themselves unconscious. Intoxication did not take long to create confusion in the brains, already upset by the danger and lack of food. These people were clearly going to finish off the officers, and then destroy the raft by cutting the cables connecting the logs. One of them, with a boarding ax in his hands, moved to the edge of the raft and began to cut the fastenings.

Action was taken immediately. The madman with the ax was destroyed, and then a general squabble began. In the midst of a stormy sea, on this doomed raft, people fought with sabers, knives, and even teeth. Firearms the soldiers were taken away when landing on a raft. Through the wheezing of the wounded, a woman's cry broke through: “Help! I'm sinking!"

This was the cry of a canker who had been pushed off the raft by the rebellious soldiers. Correar rushed into the water and pulled her out. In the same way, junior lieutenant Lozak ended up in the ocean, and they saved him; then the same disaster with the same outcome fell on the lot of midshipman Coudin. It is still difficult for us to comprehend how an insignificant handful of people managed to resist such a huge number of madmen; there were probably no more than twenty of us fighting with all this rabid army!

When dawn came, 65 people were counted dead or missing on the raft. A new misfortune was also discovered: during the dump, two barrels of wine and two barrels of water, the only ones on the raft, were thrown into the sea. Two more barrels of wine had been drunk the day before. So for all the survivors - more than sixty people - now there was only one barrel of wine left.

Hours passed. The horizon remained deadly clear: no land, no sail. People began to suffer from hunger. Several people tried to organize fishing by building tackle from improvised material, but this idea was unsuccessful. The next night was calmer than the previous ones. People slept standing up, knee-deep in water, closely clinging to each other.

By the morning fourth day a little over fifty people remained on the raft. A school of flying fish jumped out of the water and flopped onto the wooden deck. They were quite small, but very good in taste. They were eaten raw... next night the sea remained calm, but a real storm raged on the raft. Some of the soldiers, dissatisfied with the established portion of wine, revolted. In the midst of the darkness of the night, the massacre boiled again ...

By morning, only 28 people remained alive on the raft. " Sea water corroded the skin on our feet; we were all bruised and wounded, they burned from salt water, forcing us to scream every minute, - Correar and Savigny say in their book. There was only four days of wine left. We calculated that if the boats were not washed ashore, they would need at least three or four days to reach Saint-Louis, then still need time to equip the ships that would go looking for us. However, no one was looking for them ...

Wounded, exhausted, tormented by thirst and hunger, people fell into a state of apathy and complete hopelessness. Many went crazy. Some have already gone into such a frenzy of hunger that they pounced on the remains of one of their comrades in misfortune ... “At the first moment, many of us did not touch this food. But after a while, everyone else was forced to resort to this measure.

On the morning of July 17, a ship appeared on the horizon, but soon disappeared from sight. At noon he reappeared and this time headed straight for the raft. It was the brig Argus. A terrible sight appeared before the eyes of his crew: a half-sunken raft and on it fifteen emaciated to the last extreme, half-dead people (five of them subsequently died). And fifty-two days after the disaster, the Meduza frigate was also found - to everyone's surprise, it did not sink, and there were still three living people on board from among those seventeen that remained on the ship.

Among those rescued on the raft were officers Correard and Savigny. In 1817 they published notes about these tragic events. The book began with the words: "The history of sea voyages knows no other example as terrible as the death of the Medusa."

This publication had the widest response. France was amazed that its enlightened citizens could descend to cannibalism, eating corpses and other abominations (although, perhaps, there is nothing particularly surprising here - after all, the passengers of the Medusa grew and formed in a bloody era of revolution and continuous wars).

A considerable political scandal also broke out: the liberals hastened to blame the royal government for the tragedy of Meduza, which had poorly prepared the expedition.

THE ARTIST'S WORK ON THE PICTURE.

In November 1818, Gericault retired to his studio, shaved his head so that there was no temptation to go out to social evenings and entertainment, and devoted himself entirely to working on a huge canvas - from morning to evening, for eight months.

The work was intense, a lot changed along the way. For example, having spent so much time on gloomy sketches, Gericault hardly used them for the painting itself. He abandoned pathology and physiology in order to reveal the psychology of doomed people.

On his canvas, Gericault creates an artistic version of events, but very close to reality. He unfolded on a raft, overwhelmed by waves, a complex scale psychological states and the experiences of people in distress. That is why even the corpses in the picture do not bear the stamp of dystrophic exhaustion and decomposition, only the accurately conveyed stiffness of their bodies shows that the audience is dead.

At first glance, it may seem to the viewer that the figures are located on the raft somewhat chaotically, but this was deeply thought out by the artist. In the foreground - the "frieze of death" - the figures are given in full size, here people are shown dying, immersed in complete apathy. And next to them are already dead ...

In hopeless despair, the father sits by the corpse of his beloved son, supporting him with his hand, as if trying to catch the beating of a frozen heart. To the right of the figure of the son is the corpse of a young man lying head down with his arm outstretched. Above him is a man with a wandering look, apparently losing his mind. This group ends with the figure of a dead man: his stiff legs are caught on a beam, his hands and head are lowered into the sea.

. The raft itself is shown close to the frame, and therefore, from the viewer, which involuntarily makes the latter, as it were, an accomplice in tragic events. Dark clouds hung over the ocean. Heavy, huge waves rise to the sky, threatening to flood the raft and the unfortunate people crowded on it. The wind tears the sail with force, tilting the mast held by thick ropes.

In the background of the picture is a group of believers in salvation, because hope can come to the world of death and despair. This group forms a kind of "pyramid, which is crowned by the figure of a Negro signalman, trying to attract the attention of the Argus brig that has appeared on the horizon." frieze of death" it was dark, then towards the horizon - a symbol of hope - it becomes lighter.

HOW DID YOU RECEIVE THE PICTURE?

When Géricault exhibited The Raft of the Medusa in Salone in 1819 , the picture aroused public outrage, since the artist, contrary to the academic norms of that time, used such a large format not to depict a heroic, moralizing or classical plot.

Highly appreciated the painting by Eugene Delacroix , who posed for his friend, witnessed the birth of a composition that breaks all the usual ideas about painting . Delacroix later recalled that when he saw the finished painting, he“In delight, he rushed to run like crazy, and could not stop until the house”.

After the artist's death in 1824, the painting was put up for auction and purchased by his close friend, the artist Dedreux-Dorcy, for 6,000 francs, while the representatives of the museum in the Louvre were not ready to go beyond 5,000. Dedreux-Dorcy subsequently turned down an offer to sell the work in the United States for a much larger amount and eventually gave it to the Louvre for the same 6,000 on the condition that it be placed in the main exhibition. The Raft of the Medusa is currently in the Louvre.

There is no hero on Gericault's painting "The Raft of the Medusa", but nameless people, suffering and worthy of sympathy, are immortalized.In this picture, Gericault was the first to raise the theme of humanity to the romantics and demonstrated an exceptional realistic style of painting.

FATE OF THE CAPTAIN:

Captain 1st Rank Jean Duroy de Chaumare appeared before the tribunal, was dismissed from the Navy and sentenced to prison for three years. In the regions where he lived out his life, everyone knew about his "exploits" and treated him with contempt and hostility. He lived long life, died at 78, but longevity was not a joy to him. He had to spend the rest of his life as a recluse, as he had to listen to insults everywhere. His the only one the son committed suicide, unable to endure his father's shame ...

Artist Theodore Géricault died at the age of 32 as a result of a fall from a horse.

YOUR OPINION ABOUT THE PICTURE AND THE TRAGEDY WHICH FORGED IN ITS BASIS?

(Write about what touched you the most)