Summer brings tourists and jellyfish to local beaches

If you’ve been to the beach lately, you might have seen a lot of jellyfish on the shore and in the water."I mean, I’ve surfed here for years. I haven’t really seen jellyfish too much, like one once every six months, but now all of a sudden I’m seeing them every day," said Pismo Beach surfer Bryson Frank.He’s not the only one. Another surfer we talked to recently had a slightly painful encounter with a jellyfish."So I was surfing northside without booties and I felt like this tingly thing kind of like pins and needles like wrapped around my foot, so I pulled up my foot and I saw the tentacle-like wrapped around my foot and I like peeled it off," said surfer Jake Edwards.The Central Coast Aquarium in Avila Beach, which has some jellyfish on display, says all these jellies mean we might be in the midst of a jelly bloom.The bloom could be caused by a change in weather or a change in currents."It creates a lot more nutrients in our waters which ends up being a great feast for the jellies and they reproduce so quickly, it ends up creating this huge bloom," said Emily Sampson, Central Coast Aquarium Director of Husbandry."There was a lot out this morning. I saw like three out in the water and there’s a bunch out on the beach right now," Edwards said."If you find them along the beaches as well, it’s best not to touch them. It’s best to go and have a lifeguard help remove it. Even though they are beached, they can still have active stingers," Sampson said.Jelly fish all over the sand in #PismoBeach – watch out bc you can still get stung by one! ?????? pic.twitter.com/B4hjFD7ocf— Alexa Bertola (@Alexa_Bertola) July 23, 2018Other beachgoers have spotted more stingrays near the shore. The best advice if you see one of those is to do the stingray shuffle."They’ll sense those vibrations, know you’re around, and swim away," Sampson explained.The ocean is home to many creatures. Frank says he even saw a shark last week."It was about 20 feet away from me and it had to be at least eight feet long. I saw the fin come up and the tail kick and I know it wasn’t a dolphin," Frank concluded.If you are stung by a jellyfish, you’ll want to give it time, and put warm water and vinegar on it.If you’re stung by a stingray, you’ll want to seek medical attention to have the barb removed.