AC Unit vs. Jellies

Rockport Harbor

"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment." ―Ralph Waldo Emerson

The water around Texas Pearl has been thick with moon jellies. These alien-looking creatures are named for their translucent, moonlike circular bells. They’re found worldwide in temperate and tropical waters, and they feed in quiet bays and harbors. Like other jelly populations, overabundant moon jellies indicate an unbalanced ecosystem. Scientists have discovered that jellies reproduce best when the water has too many nutrients—usually the result of run-off from land—and too little oxygen. Maybe we have so many in our harbor right now, because we’ve had so much rain lately. Moon jellies can sting, but they pose little threat to humans. Little pain...maybe, but they certainly are a menace to the intake of our AC unit. They get sucked into the strainer and as soon as we clean out the strain and start the AC again…another one plugs it up.

The only option we have for now is to run freshwater through our system. In order to do that Stan had to modify our current plumbing. We have four AC units, but the water for all of them comes into the boat through one seacock. Stan has it rigged up now so we can run either freshwater or seawater through our unit by flipping a valve and opening and closing the seacock. We hate using so much freshwater, but when the jellies get thick we have no other option. Hopefully they will disappear soon.

We noticed them a few weeks ago and thought they were bad then...

But this is how thick they were this weekend. Unbelievable