Officials from the Institute of Marine Sciences are asking people to be extra careful when bathing as a number of jellyfish (Portuguese Man o War – Physalia Physalis) were spotted off the coasts of Málaga and Cádiz during March.
The species arriving off the coast of Southern Spain are not deadly but they can give a very nasty sting. The main advice is, if there are jellyfish about, don’t swim.
There were a number of Portuguese Man o War jellyfish reported off the northern coast of Spain during last summer. One of the problems is that there is no project to study offshore jellyfish which means that predicting their arrival is very difficult. It is mostly a case of ‘ah, they’re here’.
Biologists would like to see a study project set up by the Ministry of Environment to enable a reliable means of forecasting the arrival of these creatures.