Los Angeles Times

Flight of the jellyfish, eel and barnacle along the California coast

BODEGA BAY, Calif. - Marine biologist Jacqueline Sones was strolling along a beach near this Northern California fishing village one foggy summer morning when she spotted an unfamiliar jellyfish bobbing in the surf.

Her curiosity turned to shock, however, when she opened a field guide and identified the creature with a white bowl-shaped bell, vivid stripes and long tentacles.

"I'd discovered something unprecedented," Sones recalled Monday. "It was a purple-striped jellyfish."

While the impressively hued Chrysaora colorata is no stranger to Southern California, or Monterey Bay for that matter, it had never been recorded

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