An impromptu day trip to Rehoboth Beach yielded good news and bad news.
The bad news first: not a soul was in the water more than to their ankles. Jelly fish. I thought, foolishly, I could avoid them with my keen eyesight and focused attention. Alas. I could not. I was stung several times within minutes. The stings still hurt now, almost 12 hours later.
The good news: For whatever reason, gazillions of the highly invasive and quite destructive lantern flies were dead or dying along the beach’s line between wet and dry sand.
I searched online for the reason and the interwebs say high winds pick them up, they get carried over the ocean, they fall (as they’re more jumpers and not great fliers), die in the water, and then the tide carries them to land and deposits their carcasses on the beach.
That explanation doesn’t jive with what I saw. First, there was almost no wind today by the beach and nothing to carry them outward and over the water. Second, the ocean was really calm today. No wave breaks. Really gentle. I could see the surface of the water, and there weren’t any dead or dying lantern flies o nthe surface, and fourth, many of the lantern flies I saw were still alive and struggling, and were not exhausted or dead from days at sea.
So, maybe there is something along the shore that attracts the lantern flies. Maybe it’s the wind. IDK. Whatever is at play, yay! Fewer lantern flies are alive. And that’s good–no–great news!
