On the beaches of New Jersey noticed dangerous jellyfish: one bite can send a person to the hospital

As if sharks weren't enough to worry about! Now, insidious clinging jellyfish from the Pacific Ocean have been spotted in the waters of New Jersey. And they have a powerful sting. What are these jellyfish and what to do if you meet them, the publication said New York Post.

“Just warn people. Over the weekend (May 20-21) I caught a pair of clinging jellyfish in the northern part of Barnegat Bay,” warned Paul Bologna, a marine biologist at Montclair State University.

Native to the Pacific Ocean, the invasive clinging jellyfish, whose scientific name is Gonionemus vertens, has been found in Cape May, New Jersey.

Bologna, which monitors the jellyfish and posts updates on the New Jersey Jellyspotters Facebook page, says the invertebrates live in the back of the bay and don't show up on the beach during the day.

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“These “stickers” live in grassy thickets and algae in shallow water. So if you throw the ball in shallow water, you may run into them. They are very small, so it is not always possible to miss them, Bologna said. “They are quite insidious: after their bite, nothing bad is immediately felt, but after four or five hours, severe pain begins to appear, similar to very strong muscle spasms.”

Tiny jellyfish usually appear in New Jersey in mid-May, according to the state Department of Environmental Protection.

They are only the size of a quarter, but their bite can send a person to the hospital.

They were discovered in New Jersey in 2016.

According to Bologna, they made their way "further south than ever before" this year.

The body of an adult is "mostly transparent" in appearance, with a single distinctive reddish-orange to yellow cross.

They have 60 to 80 alternating short and long tentacles containing stinging cells.