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Fort Point jellies

Jellies!

Sandcastlmatt looks down and sees zillions of jellyfish in Fort Point Channel.

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I have some similar pictures that I took the other day at the Charlestown Navy Yard.

Nasty little buggers - sting like hell!

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I thought Jellyfish were only found in the ocean.

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The Charlestown Navy Yard is on Boston Harbor, not the Mystic River.

The Mystic River is around the corner and under the Tobin Bridge from the Navy Yard.

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up to the Amelia Earhart Dam in Somerville/Everett. But I don't know if jellyfish swim up it.

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Charlestown is a peninsula bordered on one side by the Mystic River, and (sort of) on the other by the Charles River - lots of fill and a dam have altered the arrangement. The Navy Yard is on the harbor at the point of the peninsula, between where the Mystic meets the harbor and the Charles meets the harbor.

The Tobin crosses the Mystic, but the Mystic continues to flow along the side edge of the Navy Yard proper.

Yes, there are jellies in the Mystic river too. You can see them where Rt. 99 crosses over by the Everett power plant. That portion of the river is tidal.

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The Charlestown Navy yard does not border the Mystic River on any side. It is smack dab on Boston Harbor. The Boston Inner Harbor goes all the way up to the confluence of the Chelsea and Mystic Rivers - well past the Navy Yard.

The North edge of the Navy Yard borders not the Mystic River but the Little Mystic Channel. The Little Mystic Channel does not have a current, and is salt water. Between the Little Mystic Channel and the Mystic River is a little peninsula mostly occupied by the MassPort Auto Terminal, which you can see them off the Tobin as you enter Boston. That peninsula borders the Mystic River on one side and the Little Mystic Channel on the other, but it has never been part of the Charlestown Navy Yard.

The point of all this being that there is no point of the Charlestown Navy Yard that abuts the Mystic River or any other fresh water.

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The watershed map I have shows the Navy Yard in the Mystic River Water Shed. Tudor Wharf is the dividing line between the Mystic and the Charles.

The Navy Yard isn't just the historic National Parks part with the USS Constititution - it once stretched all the way to the edge of the peninsula. It was scaled back to the national park portion and the redeveloped pieces when the yard was decommissioned.

If I head out my office and take a left, I eventually run into the spot where the Mystic - or maybe little Mystic channel - meets the harbor. It is nothing but buildings once used as part of the Navy Yard all the way over to the end of the road. Directly across is Chelsea Creek. What is salt and what is fresh depends on the river flow and the tide, but I'll buy the CarPort as the dividing line.

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Just because my yard drains into the Charles doesn't mean I have river-front property. And if your map really shows Tudor Wharf as the border between the Mystic and the Charles, you should get a new map; it's pretty far from the Mystic. Tudor Wharf (where the Marriott is now) is at the mouth of the Charles on Boston Inner Harbor. It's almost under the Charlestown Bridge.

http://www.nps.gov/carto/PDF/BOSTmap8.pdf

That map labels the area where Tudor Wharf is as the Charles River. But the fact is that it's below the locks and dam, so it's not the Charles anymore, but the Inner Harbor. The Charles River now ends at the dam and locks, which turned the lower Charles from tidal mud-flats into, essentially, a fresh-water lake.

This map from Woods Hole shows the boundaries between the Inner Harbor and its tributaries correctly:

http://woodshole.er.usgs.gov/pubs/of2006-1008/imag...

The Inner Harbor is in blue; the rivers are in white.

I think you may still be confused about the geography and history of the Charlestown Navy Yard. The Navy Yard is indeed bigger than the National Park around the Constitution. The Yard closed in 1974; look at the map from WWII, when the Navy Yard was at its peak:

http://www.nps.gov/bost/planyourvisit/upload/BOST%...

As shown, the Little Mystic Channel (which is not the Mystic River) is and has long been the border.

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Some people are afraid of sharks, but others such as myself couldn't possibly care less about them.

I for one, have an overpowering paranoia regarding jellyfish creeping up on me and stinging the crap out my body. People rarely get attacked by sharks, but find me someone who doesn't know a person who has been stung by one of these little bastards.

A jellyfish swarm is easily one of my worst nightmares.

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I've never been stung by a jellyfish, but then I grew up a thousand miles from any ocean. I'm sure it's only a matter of time now.

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"'ve never been stung by a jellyfish, but then I grew up a thousand miles from any ocean. I'm sure it's only a matter of time now."

As somebody who's done a fair amount of ocean swimming, I guess I've gotten lucky in that respect, too.

Come to think of it, I still remember going to Jones Beach and Brighton Beach, out by Brooklyn's Coney Island and the Boardwalk, back in the late 1950's, as a young preteen, during frequent visits to my grandparents, who then lived in Brooklyn, and seeing lots of jelly-fish lying in transparent globules of jelly on the wet sand.

Being that young and naive back then, I wasn't aware that jellyfish stung, and I recall collecting some of the jellyfish in a pailful of ocean water just for the heck of it and watching in fascination as the jellyfish puffed up into small, transparent balloons.

Fast forward to getting older and driving up to Cranes Beach or Plum Island on summer weekends with friends, spending a long day at the beach, swimming and sunning--never getting stung by jellyfish, and then stopping offf at a great seafood joint for a fabulous dinner on the way home.

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independentminded: you are lucky! I grew up in Maryland, only a 45 minute drive from the Cheseapeake Bay - a giant, gorgeous body of water completely overrun with jellies. It was so bad that you could only swim in designated areas surrounded by thick anti-jelly nets. The jellyfish managed to get through, of course, or they would wash up on shore, where they would blend into the sand, and we would step on them (the stingers live much longer than the rest of the beast). I haven't been stung in 15 years, but I remember the sensation of having one getting tangled around my ankle like it was yesterday. At its worst, it feels like a half dozen bee stings at once, and the more you squirm the more they get tangled around you, stinging more and more places. To be sure, sometime it wasn't so bad - maybe like 1/4th of the pain of a bee sting, but it was never any fun.

When you wipe out while waterskiing or knee-boarding out in the open water of Bay, the first thing you look for are the jellies - I've landed in a pack of them before, and it sucks. Of course, this was all many years ago - maybe they aren't so bad anymore.

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What a terrible experience it must've been--especially getting stung a number of times at once by jellyfish! Is there anything that can be done to eliminate them? I guess not. I wonder if Global warming, and the gutting of our Environmental laws by the G. W. Bush Administration has anything to do with it. I wonder if the Jellyfish are worse now, as opposed to being not so bad.

I guess I really have been lucky in that respect, since I don't swim in the ocean, or anywhere for that matter, on a regular, ongoing basis, but only occasionally. It seems that no matter where one goes, nature presents some sort of risk like that.

From what I understand, the Portuguese man o' war presents much worse, much more poisonous stings than the ordinary jellyfish-I certainly wouldn't want to get stung by either one of them.

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Well, I have to admit that its been so long since I've been stung by jellyfish that my childhood memories may be exaggerating the pain associated with them, but trust me - its no fun. And you are correct, different varieties have different strengths of venom - or perhaps different types of venom, I'm not sure. I do recall some that just left welts that tingled a bit, like a bad mosquito bite. I've heard the man of war is the most dangerous, too - but they are perhaps the most beautiful. I have seen small ones washed up on the beach in Miami - they look almost manmade, like bright blue sandwich bags filled with clear jelly. At first, I thought they were trash or an art installation, until I noticed the strands of tentacles. I'm not sure how dangerous these small ones are, but once I saw how many wash up on South Beach, i opted to stay out of the surf!

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hey look almost manmade, like bright blue sandwich bags filled with clear jelly

And then there's Boston Harbor, where sometimes it's really hard to separate the wildlife from the rubbish.

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#2 Son (age 9): Mom, what's this bump on my foot?

Me: Looks like a blister, but your sandals don't go there. (checking it over) Looks like a bite!

#2 Son: oh

Me: but it is too big for a mosquito bite - did you get a spider bite? A bee sting?

#2 Son: #1 Son and I were playing in the water at the (Wessagussett) beach with 2nd Cousin last night before the fireworks ...

Me: and ...

#2 Son: Well, I had my legs in the water and something felt like a wasp stinging me. But I looked and there was no wasp and there wasn't a stinger, just my foot. How could a wasp sting under the water?

Me: Remember what I told you? I told you and 2nd Cousin and #1 son to look out for the jelly fish.

#2 Son: Oh. I'm sorry.

Me: Well now you know why.

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