Larger than normal jellyfish have floated in on Israel’s shores this year.

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Israel Electric Company workers forced to clean out thousands of jellyfish that got sucked into the Ashkelon power plant cooling water system.

By Paul Shindman, World Israel News

Workers at the Israel Electric Company power plant in the southern coastal city of Ashkelon worked overtime Thursday to remove thousands of jellyfish that had been sucked into the cooling system and threatened to disrupt power.

The power plant, which is located on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea just north of the Gaza Strip uses sea water for cooling. A massive swarm of jellyfish – a seasonal phenomenon that plagues Israel’s beaches every summer – came near the intake pipes and got sucked into the power plant, threatening to clog the pumps.

“Since last night, Ashkelon power plant workers struggled against a wave of thousands of jellyfish that came into the station via the seawater,” the Israel Electric Company said on its Facebook page. “For the electric company, this is a real danger that can disrupt the production processes at the station.”

Workers had to clean the pipes of thousands of the blue-colored blobs that are an annoyance to swimmers because of the burning venom they excrete. A video posted on the company’s Facebook page showed hundreds of bright blue jellyfish, with a few giant white jellyfish mixed in, being washed down a chute into a giant bin.

The electric company said among the jellyfish they also found a sea turtle, who was uninjured and released back into the sea.

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Hundreds of kilometers long, the swarm of Nomadic jellyfish are expected to reach Israel in a few days.

By World Israel News Staff

It’s a problem Israel faces every summer – jellyfish.

This one looks to be particularly bad as a giant army of the tentacled creatures are slowly being drawn toward Israel’s coasts, the Walla! news site reports.

The exact number of jellyfish, referred to as medusot in Israel, is unknown. It could be in the tens of millions, researchers say, according to Walla!

They’re expected to reach shore in a few days. Already in Israel’s south, stings have been reported.

The most common type of jellyfish Israel sees are Nomadic jellyfish. They are light blue and can be mistaken for plastic bags floating in the water, a painful mistake for swimmers.

Nomadic jellyfish trail poisonous tentacles to catch plankton. They are extremely painful. Treatment recommendations vary from a mixture of baking soda and water to applying a cold pack.

Washing with seawater is not always recommended as it might be filled with tiny jellyfish, a thought that likely sends shivers through most beachgoers’ spines.

One person who is not upset about the jellyfish invasion is Dr. Dror Angel of the Institute for Maritime Studies at Haifa University.

“They are part of nature and they’ve been here for hundreds of millions of years,” he told Walla! “They have a role: they clean the sea, they serve as food for a wide variety of marine creatures, such as sea turtles and fish, and also people can make from them healthy food and cosmetics.

“In Israel, they’re already working on the innovative development of the use of their droplets for cleaning micro-plastic waste, for example, in sewage treatment plants.”

Apparently, jellyfish did not always come to Israel.  The problem first began in the 1970s when Egypt’s Aswan Dam stopped the freshwater from the Nile, which kept saltwater species from the region.

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