Meduzot (מדוזה)

It's July and, as we expected, it's hot and humid in Israel.  Haifa is averaging a high of 88F and a low of 70F with 65% humidity so it's not that pleasant for walking around.  When you drive inland, the humidity drops but the temps rise to +90F.  This is not a nice time for touring relative to April or May.  If you're planning a trip here, go before the end of June.  So now everyone is thinking "water" and we're sitting pretty right on the beach, with plenty of sandy shore access and a beautiful swimming zone just across the street.  The only problem is that relatively no one is in the water.
 
The first problem is the waves.  We've seen some of the biggest breakers come in from June to July (bigger than they were in March) and swimming is not safe even though there's no storm in sight.  Today is sunny and hot and windy but the waves are in the 6ft range and too dangerous for swimming.

The second problem is the jellyfish or meduzot.  I learned the Hebrew name because yesterday I had a close encounter with one and the lifeguard was the only thing that saved my face from a mass of stinging tentacles.  The waves were up, but still swimmable.  I was trying to get pictures of the local fish for my blog and was focused on chasing a small tillapia.  Suddenly, the lifeguard shouted at me: "meduzot!" but I didn't understand so he switched into English.  "Lady, there is a jellyfish, right there." Sure enough, there it was, about 1 foot away, a blue jellyfish with a 6 inch bell.  I got to my feet and backed away from it, but it must have had a cousin or something because no sooner had I stood up then I felt two stings on the backs of my legs. 

The pain related to them was somewhere between a wasp and a bee sting, so not horrible but not easily ignored.  We had both been stung before with the small broken bits of tentacles that float in the water, but these stings were much more intense.  That ended our swimming for the day and the stings went away in about 2 hours. 

One of my coworkers insists that from July-August she swims exclusively in the fresh water of Lake Kinnereth (Sea of Galilee), and, having been stung, I don't blame her.  In Tel Aviv we saw schools of 8-10 jellyfish with 1 ft bells floating in the waves and I've seen even larger ones off the coast of Dado South Beach in Haifa.  We wear UV shirts to protect our arms and upper bodies so we're pretty safe and usually it's easy to avoid the meduzot when the water is calm.  Dealing with jellyfish is just the cost of enjoying a nice swim in these hot summer months--the water itself is 82 degrees and very refreshing!

Jellyfish identification chart (we usually see the Drymonema type):

If you have a strong stomach check out pictures of a much larger jellyfish school that shut down a power plant just north of Tel Aviv:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2011565/Jellyfish-shut-power-station-amid-claims-climate-change-caused-population-surge.html

Pictures of the jellyfish that washed up this weekend (each white blob is a different stinger):