I’ve nev­er real­ly giv­en seri­ous thoughts to keep­ing a buck­et list. But if I do keep one, vis­it­ing the jel­ly­fish lake in the Repub­lic of Palau would be my num­ber one item. (First I would need to learn how to swim, though)

Can you imag­ine? Swim­ming with thou­sands of jellyfish!

 

The video’s cre­ator Sarosh Jacob gives a fas­ci­nat­ing back­ground about the jel­ly­fish lake:

Twelve thou­sand years ago these jel­ly­fish became trapped in a nat­ur­al basin on the island when the ocean reced­ed. With no preda­tors amongst them for thou­sands of years, they evolved into a new species that lost most of their sting­ing abil­i­ty as they no longer had to pro­tect them­selves. They are pret­ty much harm­less to humans although some peo­ple with very sen­si­tive skin may get a minor sting from them…

These fas­ci­nat­ing crea­tures sur­vive by shar­ing a sym­bi­ot­ic rela­tion­ship with algae that live inside of them. At night, the jel­ly­fish go down to the depths of the lake where the algae feed on nutri­ents. Dur­ing the day, the jel­ly­fish come back to the sur­face and fol­low the sun across the lake in a mas­sive migra­tion. The algae con­vert the ener­gy of the sun via pho­to­syn­the­sis into a sug­ar that feeds the jellyfish.

So mag­i­cal… *sigh* Don’t know when I’ll be able to vis­it them in per­son, but for now, let’s enjoy the video.

 

p.s. if you’re inter­est­ed in watching, here’s my attempt of mak­ing a jel­ly­fish video while vis­it­ing Hong Kong :D