[DoA] Jellyfish Shennanigans: [DoA] Deep-sea jelly hunt

The next morning, Sharlok slowly swam out of his little cave tucked under the sunken carcass of a ship. He once again nearly face-planted in the white scales of Imussiara, who was apparently waiting in front of the entrance.

“Did you have to wait for me right in front of my entrance?” Sharlok greeted her with some exasperation in his voice. A little green salamander poked its head out of the bag he was carrying, before quickly retreating when it spotted the imposing figure of Imussiara.

“Did you have to break into my cave to tell me it’s jellyfish season in the middle of the night?” Imussiara parroted back, and whacked him playfully with her tail fin. Yelping, he assumed a face of mock offense on behalf of the salamander that almost got hit and chased down the Abyssal, getting his revenge through a fin to the snout. She narrowed her eyes at him in annoyance, and forcibly stopped him from swimming in circles around her long enough to tell him that she wanted to go jellyfish gathering with him today.

Sharlok stopped swimming in circles briefly, long enough to process what she had said, and then started swimming circles of joy around her again. Why did she agree to this. She gave up and just let him tire himself out around her until he was laying in a tired and dizzy heap of Sea Skimmer on the rocks next to her.

“So…” Sharlok started, after he’s recovered enough to talk somewhat. “This is actually my first proper jellyfish season that I’ve participated in, and I don’t really know where to go find them. Do you know a good place to find a few swarms?” He asked Imussiara. “That’s half the reason why I wanted to find you,” he added.

Imussiara nodded, gesturing for him to follow her as she started at a leisurely pace towards… The bottom of the ocean? But that’s the Abyssals’ area! He said as much to her, to which she replied, “yes, because the jellyfish actually glow in the dark. So in the darkness you can find them a lot faster than some of the spots near the wrecks.”

Suppressing a shiver of fear that trickled down his fins automatically whenever he thought about the deep black of the lower regions, Sharlok followed behind Imussiara, eyes locked onto the red light of her glowing tail-node. As the morning sunlight from above slowly disappeared into the greys of the twilight zone, the water went infinitesimally colder the lower he swam. After a while of swimming, which seemed like hours and hours to him, Imussiara stopped going downwards. She pulsed her glowing nodes in some sort of pattern that another Abyssal probably could read, and gently said, “we’re here.”

‘Here’ referred to the water above a sloped section of the continental shelf, deep enough that only small flecks of light made it down here. The water looked murky with tiny chunks of matter swirling with each swish of his tail, and the grey stones of the sloped shelf housed small crustaceans in the cracks. He also spotted an adolescent sperm whale briefly, lit by the dim light filtering from above and the red glow of Imussiara’s light. It was no mystery why swarms of these jellyfish gathered here in these nutrient-rich waters that had relatively few predators. Of course, that is until they showed up.

“See,” Imussiara pointed out with a front flipper, “those specks of light over there are the jellyfish. Their heads glow, but not the tentacles.” Sharlok looked over to where the jellyfish congregated, scattered everywhere and drifting slowly in a sea of pale blue light. “These are one of the smaller and less deadly of the jellyfish that live in these waters, their tentacles aren’t too long but you’ll need to keep a healthy distance away from the glow unless you can figure out where their tentacles are drifting. Their stings make you feel a bit numb, but unless you’re actually allergic to these jellyfish which I don’t think you are, they won’t do much to you. Still an unpleasant feeling though.” Sharlok nodded, recalling the time he had been stung by the tentacles of one of these jellies as a hatchling when his parents bought one back alive for him.

“Okay,” he replied. “I stay away from the glowing jellies, figure out which way the current is moving so that I don’t get stung, and then I just lunge from the direction of the current and grab one by the head?” He confirmed.

Imussiara smiled. “You got it. Also, if you need help, let me know. Just dump the jellyfish in the bag over here once you’ve got one,” and he watched astounded as he finally realised that the harness she had put on her neck when they had first started actually unrolled into a net-like bag. According to her, it was a specialised jellyfish-storage bag, where the fibres that made up the bag’s main contents were weaved so that water passes through with little trouble, but the inside was thickened so that the jellyfish couldn’t sting through the bag. It made carrying large loads of the jellies easier, and was probably commonly used by Abyssal hunters considering Sharlok has never even heard of them before.

Excitedly, Sharlok put on a burst of speed as he neared the mass of glowing jellyfish. Figuring out the current direction was pretty easy- it seemed to flow from one side of the shelf to the other, and he could visually see the jellies drifting across the rocks with the current. So that means their tentacles must trail in the direction that the current is going, and with a little bit of manoeuvring Sharlok managed to bite down onto the bell of a jellyfish at the fringe and successfully grabbed it. He happily swam back to Imussiara, head high and trying to avoid the masses of jellyfish still feeding, but when he got back he realised that his jellyfish was missing a chunk. The little salamander? Chewing on some glowy jellyfish.