Cronulla Shark Island Swim 14th March

Jellyfishing









REVENGE OF THE PURPLE PEOPLE-EATERS
Cronulla Shark Island Swim 2.3k
Cronulla Beach Swim 1k
On Saturday morning I inadvertently pranked a fellow-swimmer at Coogee by telling her that the swarm of Purple Jellyfish lurking just beyond the breakers was quite harmless. She was not happy yesterday after then swimming through the swarm and being stung many times by those same purple jellyfish. It was an honest mistake, albeit a little ill-informed.
Today was payback day.
With the same Easterly wind blowing in at Cronulla and tell-tale purple blobs washed up along the shoreline, I knew it would not be an easy swim.
King Neptune served up hundreds of stinging purple jellyfish at Cronulla today. Not as thick as at Coogee yesterday, but difficult to swim through nevertheless. Then into the mix he added thousands of the harmless white jellyblubbers, so swimmers could not be sure if they were grabbing a harmless jellyblubber or a stinger with every stroke.
I did the 1k "warm-up" swim first. I swam into a few stingers on the way out, a couple of them brushed my legs with their tentacles, some little stings, but no trouble at all.
I had a plan to avoid the stingers in the main 2.3k swim. I knew where they would be, and by swimming with my head forward in the clear water, I could spot them and meander past before they got me. As I approached the first turning buoy in deep water about 400m out, I was congratulating myself on my successful strategy. I never saw the creature that hit me in the back, but it must have been a whopper. It felt like I had been tasered in the kidneys. Like a slow racehorse that had been jiggered by an unscrupulous trainer, I accelerated in the water to get away from the swarm.
Actually the sting wore off quite quickly, so by the time I finished the race it had gone. On the way back in I had made friends with the little purple jellyfish and quite enjoyed watching them swimming underwater. The sea bottom around Shark Island was lovely with plenty of fish to be seen in the clear water. I really enjoyed these swims today.
1k time 20.09
2.3k time 52.17
I held about the same pace for both swims, there were a few currents around the island which might have slowed me down a little on the longer swim.