Summer brings unwelcome New England visitors

The gelatinous blob, a foot-and-a-half wide and ribboned in royal red and inky blue, stopped Cynthia Chamberlain cold. In nearly 40 years of living on Cousins Island, she had never seen anything like it.

''I took a stick and lifted it,'' Chamberlain said. ''It was the deepest blue underneath.''

The exotic-looking jellyfish known as lion's mane is actually quite common in the deep waters of the Gulf of Maine but doesn't usually wash ashore. A mysterious confluence of weather events, though, is giving beach-goers their first look at the poisonous invertebrate.

''Every decade or 15 years or so, we'll have a summer like this where there's just a lot of jellyfish,'' said John Sowles, the director of ecology at the state Department of Marine Resources. ''That's what's so interesting about the ocean. It's unpredictable.

He has fielded 10 calls about jellyfish from beach-goers and park managers so far this summer. Last year, he received none, and said he won't be surprised if no one calls him next year.

Scientists said wind currents may explain the jellyfish groundings, which have also been reported in Crescent Beach State Park in Cape Elizabeth and on Chebeague Island.

''It doesn't take very much,'' said Lewis Incze, research professor in the environmental science department of the University of Southern Maine. ''If you have wind for several days, and it comes out of the east just at the right time, they'll be pushed into the shore.''

All along the New England coast, summer has brought a large number of unexpected visitors. While shark do inhabit the Gulf of Maine, rarely do they come as close to shore as they have this past month.

Shark sightings in York County, including one estimated to be 15 feet long, led to the closure of Long Sands Beach in York and Wells Beach earlier this month.

Rhode Island waters have attracted tropical fish such as juvenile orange filefish and lookdowns, and even a manatee showed up this week.

The lion's mane at Chamberlain's local beach so transfixed her that she went back to her cottage to fetch a camera and a neighbor. But the jellyfish stings, so she's hoping the creature won't become a fixture along with the clams and blue herons.

''I wouldn't want to go swimming knowing it's in the water,'' said Chamberlain, a research coordinate in a doctor's office. ''Hopefully, this is the only one.''

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