Water blob is actually a jellyfish

NICKLE SIZED: Rollie Gippert of Anderson found freshwater jellyfish at a pond in Anderson River Park.

From the dock at one of Anderson River Park's fishing ponds, Rollie Gippert looked down last weekend and saw familiar blobs dancing in the water.

"Sure as heck they are jellyfish," said Gippert, 24, who moved from Crescent City to Anderson a couple of months ago.

Surprised to see what he thought of as an ocean creature swimming in the freshwater pond, Gippert scooped up a pair of the jellyfish with the help of his 6-year-old nephew, Nathaniel Gippert, and a Mason jar. On Monday, he took the tiny animals - they're about the size of a nickel - to Marianne Dickison at Shasta Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation.

Dickison said she was amazed to see the tiny fish in the jar.

"They do the whole jellyfish blob thing," she said.

While most people associate jellyfish with the ocean, there is one species that lives in standing freshwater and is found around the world, said Steve Baumgartner, an environmental scientist for the state Department of Fish and Game in Redding. Although they grow only to about the size of a quarter, he said the fish have a big name - craspedacusta sowerbyi.

Anglers have brought in samples of the fish found in coves on Lake Shasta before, but Baumgartner said this is the first time he's seen ones from the ponds at Anderson River Park. He said he doesn't know how the jellyfish ended up there.

Small and nearly translucent, the jellyfish are difficult to spot.

"They are kind of hard to see because they are so clear," he said.

The jellyfish are originally from China and likely came to the United States on ornamental plants - like those used in aquariums - as cysts early in their life cycles, said Jim Smith, project leader at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Red Bluff office.

"They are not native species," Smith said.

The jellyfish have been found in waters around the U.S. for about 100 years, said Scott Flaherty, a Fish and Wildlife Service spokesman.

Three encounters with freshwater jellyfish have been reported in the north state in the past decade, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. They were at Lake Shasta in 1999, Turtle Bay Exploration Park in 2006 and a pond near Palo Cedro in 2006. All had likely made it into the waters by hitchhiking with stocked fish, USGS scientists determined.

Like their seafaring cousins, freshwater jellyfish use venom to sting their prey - macro invertebrate and small fish, Baumgartner said.

"They can paralyze tiny little food items," he said.

But the sting isn't enough to stun or harm a human, Baumgartner added.

Having lived in Crescent City for about 15 years, Rollie Gippert said he was used to seeing jellyfish the size of dinner plates washed ashore on the beach after a storm. His father, Roll Gippert, 54, said when the family lived in Crescent City, he often saw huge jellyfish when deep-sea fishing, but he never expected to see small versions of the animal bobbing around a pond.

Roll Gippert has been coming to the ponds at Anderson River Park for about a year and a half, and last weekend was the first time he'd seen jellyfish.

"It's freshwater, so you don't look for it," he said.