Purple-striped Jellyfish Chrysaora colorata

The delicate Purple-striped Jellyfish is native to the Pacific coast off California. Adults have a white bell with a purple or crimson spotted edge and usually some purple or crimson stripes.

It typically has eight thin, stringy, long, dark tentacles and four white frilly shorter tentacles for feeding. The sting can be very painful. The young medusa has a pinker bell without dark stripes.

They can reach 70cm across. Diet is zooplankton. They are prey to leatherback turtles. Like other jellyfish, they have a multiform life cycle of egg, planktonic larva, polyp, ephyra and medusa.