Liminal beauty

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So on my wish / dream list of underwater experiences, seeing a barrel jellyfish was like beyond up at the top of my list, and it still sits there now because this has become clear, they’re one of the most common jellyfish in the UK waters. And I’m like, I’ve never seen one and so we have loads of blue jellyfish here, moon compass, we also get crystal jellyfish that are really rare but no barrels.

So, when I was up in Scotland, in summer 23, we were going snorkelling and we only had about 45 minutes ahead of sunset. We didn’t have much light left and when we’ve snorkelled, we just tend to kind of get to a beach or some rocks that you can access and give it a go and see.

So we never know where we’re getting in, whether it’s going to be anything worth worth seeing is I really don’t like the fact that I just said that, but I did, but yeah, anything that is actually kind of like eye catching. So for me, it’s that that kind of intrigue or that novelty around something that is interesting to photograph. Be it jellyfish, starfish, I don’t know, sandworms these really teeny tiny little creepy crawly things, or even, like sea foam so anything, anything interesting.

So sometimes when you get into snorkel in UK waters and all you can see is a bit of seaweed and it’s a bit murky. It’s a bit disappointing because you’ve put so much effort into your getting into your wetsuit and getting everything set up, underwater housing set up, and in you get and then you don’t really see much. It can be really quite disappointing. So this night of tune, really felt like that. And so the light was lovely in the water, but we were literally just seeing a load of knotted rack and not a lot else, occasionally teeny tiny fish but they moved away so fast that you, they weren’t anything you could photograph.

And then just as golden hour was starting to kind of hit its absolute peak, sizzling lushness. I noticed this barrel jellyfish that looked like it was the size of my torso. I mean, I’m six foot, so that’s quite, quite the torso, right? And so we were just mesmerised by this, this barrel because it was the most incredible colour. And I didn’t realise at that point that they come in different colours, like, they come in different colours. It sounds like you can specify that, like buying a new car.

They have lots of different colours it can be found in lots of different colours. And they that this one that night we met was just this orangy coral colour. And then that was just amplified by the fact that there’s golden hour light pouring down into the water onto it.

And the things I love most about watching this barrel was seeing teeny tiny fish have that, reciprocal relationship where it works for both of them. And there was just this tiny little school of fish that we’re hanging out with the barrels. It moved around, and so I’d been shooting it for maybe 5 or 10 minutes, not long and I’d moved around it, and I shot it from quite a few different angles and Mark, was we kind of gave each other kind of the thumbs up to pop up to the surface and have a chat, and I said look, lights going, we’ve got to drive back up to Glasgow. We should probably get out soon. I said, well, can we just give it five more minutes with this barrel because once the lights just drops behind there, it will have gone off to see and then it it’s just is too dark.

So we’re like, yeah let’s do that. And then we popped our snorkel masks back on, faces in the water. And we couldn’t see this jellyfish anywhere. Like it had completely disappeared. And the visibility was really good. So we could see maybe 15, 20 metres. So it moves so slowly. I don’t think it could have moved that far that fast and we were literally heads above the water for about 15, 20 seconds. So neither of us can understand or have ever understood where this jellyfish went. So it feels like the most liminal beauty I’ve ever experienced, because I wanted to spend more time with it and just being in awe of it and all of its shapes and textures and that was scuppered, unfortunately.

So I am still in an absolute mystery zone as to what happened to that barrel jellyfish that day, especially as it was, you know, maybe 80cm long. And then it’s kind of, you know, the bell of it was almost the width of my shoulders. So it was quite a big jelly, for it to just suddenly disappear.

And then I think, did I actually see it? I know I did. I’ve got the photos, but I yeah, I hope to see some more, some day soon and spend some time with them because they are just so beautiful.