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Experience a 3-hour showcase of more than 16,000 animals including sharks, birds, frogs, turtles, dolphins, and jellies.

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Enjoy a 45-minute introduction of America's Aquatic Treasures featuring more than 1,500 animals including alligators, sharks, and turtles.

Balt, MDExplore: Baltimore, MD »

Experience a 3-hour showcase of more than 16,000 animals including sharks, birds, frogs, turtles, dolphins, and jellies.

Wash, DCExplore: Washington, DC »

Enjoy a 45-minute introduction of America's Aquatic Treasures featuring more than 1,500 animals including alligators, sharks, and turtles.

Balt, MD

Blue Blubber Jelly

The blue blubber jelly actually ranges in color from white to light blue to dark purple. Its bell pulses in a distinctive, staccato-like rhythm.

This venomous jelly can be safely eaten once it's been correctly dried and processed. Dried jellies are popular in many Asian countries, especially Japan, where they're considered a culinary delicacy. The texture is reportedly crispy, yet elastic—hence the name "rubber band salad" for a dish sold in China. The Chinese believe eating jellies will reduce high blood pressure.

Diet

Zooplankton

Size

The blue blubber’s bell can be up to 16 inches wide.

Range

Coastal waters of eastern and northern Australia.

Population Status

In the past, jelly populations were kept in check by predators like sea turtles and jelly-eating fish. Due to the reduction of their predators, jelly populations are growing at alarming rates.

Predators

Sea turtles and other jelly-eating animals, such as tuna, sunfish, butterfish, and spiny dogfish, keep the jelly populations in balance. All seven species of sea turtles include them in their diets. The largest sea turtle species, the leatherback, depends on jellies for food. Because jellies are more than 90% water and an adult leatherback can weigh more than 2,000 pounds, one turtle can consume a lot of jellies!

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A Note From the Caretaker

Blue blubbers often come to us with tiny symbiotic copepods that eat dead tissue off the jelly and usually don’t harm the animal, as long as it is healthy. However, if the animal’s delicate tissue rips even slightly, the copepods begin to feast on the jelly, often leading to its demise. The aquarists work diligently to keep these copepods to a minimum.