Episode 248: The Giant Jellyfish Revisited
b"Sign up for our mailing list! We also have t-shirts and mugs with our logo!\\n\\nWe're down to the last few days to back our Kickstarter!\\n\\nWe've got a slightly different type of episode this week. Follow along as I try to find out more about the giant jellyfish that nearly sank a ship!\\n\\nFurther reading:\\n\\nKraken: Monster of the Deep\\n\\nA lion's mane jellyfish:\\n\\n\\n\\nA giant squid:\\n\\n\\n\\nThe first photo ever taken of a giant squid:\\n\\n\\n\\nShow transcript:\\nWelcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I\\u2019m your host, Kate Shaw.\\nHalloween is behind us and we\\u2019re all now ready to head into winter, if we live in the northern hemisphere, or summer, if we live in the southern hemisphere. This week\\u2019s episode is a little different, but hopefully you\\u2019ll like it.\\n Before we get into this week\\u2019s topic, let me give you the very last Kickstarter update, I promise! From here on out you\\u2019ll only get updates through the Kickstarter page if you backed the project. If you\\u2019re listening to this episode within a day or two of its release on November 1, 2021, you still have time to back the Beyond Bigfoot & Nessie book! The campaign ends on Nov. 5, but at 12:03 am eastern time, and one of the many things I\\u2019ve learned about running a Kickstarter is maybe don\\u2019t launch the project at midnight because then it ends at midnight. Remember that if we reach 100 backers before the end, I\\u2019ll release a second bonus episode from the audiobook. I\\u2019m really late getting this episode done so it\\u2019s actually Halloween as I record this, and we currently have 67 backers, which is amazing! Remember, we have a $1 tier if you just want to pitch a dollar in.\\nThat reminds me, after the campaign is over I\\u2019m going to update the first bonus episode and take out the ten minutes of Kickstarter talk that starts it. Thanks again to everyone who\\u2019s backed the project. I\\u2019m blown away by everyone\\u2019s support! If you want a copy of the book but not right now, it\\u2019ll be available to buy from your regular book-buying places but only after all the Kickstarter backer rewards are sent.\\nAs it happens, this week\\u2019s episode is connected with the Beyond Bigfoot & Nessie book. Specifically, I decided to add a chapter about the giant jellyfish we talked about in episode 16, but to do that I needed to do a lot more research.\\nThat story has actually bothered me for a long time. When I first started the podcast, I wasn\\u2019t always as diligent in my research as I am now. If a story came from a source I trusted or had enough realistic-sounding details, I\\u2019d assume it was accurate. This story met both criteria but whenever I thought about it, something felt off. So I was glad to dig in and find out more.\\nThis episode is about the research process I went through, which will give you a little bit of a behind-the-scenes look at how I approach each episode. We\\u2019ll also learn about a couple of other weird events where a ship or boat was seemingly attacked by a sea monster.\\nLet\\u2019s start with the story as I reported it in episode 16. I think you will appreciate how much better our audio quality is these days. Here it is:\\n\\u201cIn 1973, the Australian ship Kuranda collided with a huge jelly in the South Pacific while traveling through a storm on her way to the Fiji Islands. The jelly was so enormous that the deck was covered in jellyfish goo and tentacles up to two feet deep [61 cm]. One crew member died after getting stung. The weight of the jelly was so great, an estimated 20 tons [18 metric tons] that it started to push the ship nose-down and the captain, Langley Smith, sent out an SOS. The salvage tug Hercules arrived and sprayed the Kuranda\\u2019s deck with a high-pressure hose, dislodging the jelly. Samples were sent to Sydney and tentatively identified as a lion\\u2019s mane jelly.\\u201d\\nMy first step was to find where I got that story. I was pretty sure it was from Karl Shuker\\u2019s blog but when I looked, it wasn\\u2019t there. I checked his books that I own and it wasn\\u2019t there either. A quick internet search turned up the story in a lot ..."