Thousands of jellyfish washed up on the beach at Tybee Island in Georgia, and photos are garnering widespread attention.
The woman who snapped the photos, Jodi Moody, shared them to Facebook and has garnered hundreds of reactions.
"It was a little intimidating, honestly, because I've never seen that," Moody said told the Savannah Morning News, part of the USA Today network. "And I do walk at the beach pretty frequently for years now, and had not seen that."
Officials say that it’s normal for the cannonball jellyfish to wash ashore, though not typically by the thousands.
Georgia Department of Natural Resources spokesman Tyler Jones explained to local news outlets that the jellyfish wash up every year. Unable to swim, they drift where the winds and currents lead them, including on shore.
Washing back into the water depends on the tides and the weather, he explained to WTOC.
“They don’t even have the ability to swim, so basically what happened is they got washed up on shore with the current and the very strong easterly wind we had last week,” Jones told the station. “They strand themselves on the beach where most of them will die. They’ll be food for other animals and gradually over time they will kind of desiccate or dry up and they’ll be carried back out to see eventually, those that are not eaten by birds and things like that.”
He also said to the Savannah Morning News: "It isn't like a sign of the apocalypse or anything."
Photo: Getty Images