Frozen Jellies and a Flying Suit

While walking along the beach with Luna and Harvey this afternoon we came upon a sad, but beautiful sight. Spread out on the rocks near the high tide line was a jelly, frozen solid after meeting an untimely demise from several hours of exposure to the 15 degree air. The normally semi-transparent creature was now milky white, it's rusty tentacles, all bunched up and frozen together, looked like slimy, rust-colored warts on the surface of the unfortunate creature. I flipped it over to get a look at the rest of it and was quickly able to identify it as a lion's mane jelly:

They're fairly common in the bay and can get pretty big. In fact, their tentacles can reach lengths of up to 100 feet. This one was about the size and shape of a frisbee.

We finally got rid of the rest of the crappy cat food today. Although it took a while for the gulls to find it. I guess they were busy gulling somewhere else. Once they did show up I was able to get some cool close-up pictures. Once all the food was gone they just sat around staring forelornly up at me as I stood in the snow, surrounded.

It was interesting to watch the dominance hierarchy play out as they all moved around, occassionally jostling for a better position in the event that I would throw more cat food.

Finally, Ivan Ivanovich has gone silent. After being tossed from the International Space Station yesterday he completed two full orbits of Earth in nothing but a space suit before radio contact was lost...somewhere over Japan, I guess.

Here he is being pushed out the hatch:

So long, Ivan, and thanks for all the fish.