Jellyfish

Debbie Morkevich has hated jellyfish since one almost ate through her swimsuit. After swimming in the ocean several years ago, Morkevich, of Northfield, N.J., got all the way home to her shower before finding the jellyfish in her suit. "It didn't hurt my skin but it ate through the material," Morkevich said. "I am deathly afraid of jellyfish now. " So Morkevich did not go to the beach last weekend as usual. And she might not go this week, if the jellyfish are still around.

For all the years that he worked with his hands, Michael Pisano says, his head was planning a revolt. He had skipped college and gone into the masonry business - a long tradition in his family. But by his early 30s, Pisano wanted out. "I just didn't see myself as being a bricklayer for the rest of my life," he said, "even though it was the only thing I knew. " As the years of hard labor took their toll on his burly frame, they also wore away his spirit. "I was giving guys that I went to high school with job estimates for their houses, and they were doctors or working for Merck," he said.

The jellyfish vacationing at the Jersey shore this month are the reddish-orange tinged Lion's Mane variety, biologists said. They won't kill you, but they will irritate you. "They'll give you a nice sting," said Marc Kind, a laboratory biologist at the New Jersey State Aquarium. The sting of the Lion's Mane, a jellyfish variety named for its fluffy appearance, can't usually be felt until the victim steps out of the water, Kind said. The post-sting sensation, he said, begins with a prickling pain, subsides into an itch, then usually fades away within about an hour.

HE'S GOING TO THE MAT IN BID TO BE ELECTED MAYOR Jerry Kennett figures he's ready for politics. He loves to be hated, he's not afraid of the spotlight and he's used to grappling with difficult problems in public arenas. But is the town of Bunn, N.C., population 366, ready for "Kahn the Warlord" as mayor? Seems Kennett is the only candidate for mayor of the town near Raleigh. During the week, he's an assembler at a manufacturing plant. But on weekends, Kennett becomes "Kahn" - a loud, boisterous, mean-spirited, bad guy - as a professional wrestler.

TOMS RIVER, N.J. - Flood tides, hurricane-driven winds, and the change of seasons may drive this year's onslaught of sea nettles - tens of millions of them - out of Barnegat Bay. But researchers from Montclair State University who study the stinging species say it will likely be a short reprieve. Chrysaora quinquecirrha - the white, saucer-shaped nettle with long, thin tentacles - is a stinging jellyfish that has always been a part of the Barnegat Bay ecosystem. Commonly found on the East Coast, the jellyfish can grow to six to eight inches wide.

The biggest event of this weekend, certainly among the biggest of the season, is Saturday's spectacular "Night in Venice" boat parade, which begins at 6 p.m. on Ocean City's northwest shore and winds southward through the bayside canals. Ocean City officials expect 125,000 spectators to view more than 140 boats of all sizes, most of them outrageously decorated. Bleachers will be set up at streets that deadend at the bay (9th Street through Battersea). Over the years, the Night in Venice has gotten a reputation as a drunken festival in this otherwise wholesome, quiet, family-oriented resort.

"Next time don't order so much," said the smiling young woman who had served lunch at Ocean Harbor. Actually, I had ordered only a main dish and soup at the popular Chinatown restaurant. But the portions had been so generous and the food so delicious that I had finished every drop and morsel of both, and left grumbling happily about being overstuffed. The West Lake Beef Thick Soup was available in two sizes. I'd ordered the small, which turned out to be a tureen with enough for four refills of my soup bowl.

Future dinners - lobsters, fish and a lone turtle - were alive and swimming in the window at the new Ocean Restaurant as we walked in. To their right dangled just- roasted ducks. Once such a display would have been unusual in Philadelphia's Chinatown; today it's standard. So what makes the Ocean Restaurant worth a visit? It could be the prospect of 47 lunch specials, each served with the soup of the day and priced at just $4.50. Or the fact that the restaurant's chef, newly arrived from New York, brings dishes more familiar there than here.

One of Chinatown's first - and smallest - Vietnamese restaurants has moved. The new location? The busy Chinatown block of Race Street between 10th and 11th. Hoa Viet's original digs, on 10th Street south of Arch, packed 30 diners elbow to elbow. The new place can handle at least twice that many. And in slightly - but not terribly - more decorative surroundings. The move was fairly recent, yet customers seem to have found the new address. Hoa Viet's front window is hung with glossy-skinned ducks and roasts.

POINT PLEASANT, N.J. - He's no David Hasselhoff, and "Big Al" Wutkowski doesn't know any women who have one-piece red swimsuits. But the Point Pleasant sport fisherman and boater is becoming a real-life baywatcher. The American Littoral Society, a New Jersey shore environmental group, is enlisting him as its first Barnegat Bay Guardian, sworn to be the eyes and ears of environmentalists and law enforcement on the endangered waterway. He'll be out on the water looking for illegal or dangerous boating activities, sources of pollution, and unapproved development along the coast.

TOMS RIVER, N.J. - Flood tides, hurricane-driven winds, and the change of seasons may drive this year's onslaught of sea nettles - tens of millions of them - out of Barnegat Bay. But researchers from Montclair State University who study the stinging species say it will likely be a short reprieve. Chrysaora quinquecirrha - the white, saucer-shaped nettle with long, thin tentacles - is a stinging jellyfish that has always been a part of the Barnegat Bay ecosystem. Commonly found on the East Coast, the jellyfish can grow to six to eight inches wide.

They're slimy, gelatinous sea creatures about the size of a dime, and they're washing up on Ocean City beaches. The clear, blob-like salps appear every few years, usually driven in by winds and ocean currents, state officials said. They don't sting or harm bathers. They're just annoying, especially when encountered in clusters. Salps "pop up when the conditions are right, then they're gone a short time later," said Larry Ragonese, a spokesman for the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.

POINT PLEASANT, N.J. - He's no David Hasselhoff, and "Big Al" Wutkowski doesn't know any women who have one-piece red swimsuits. But the Point Pleasant sport fisherman and boater is becoming a real-life baywatcher. The American Littoral Society, a New Jersey shore environmental group, is enlisting him as its first Barnegat Bay Guardian, sworn to be the eyes and ears of environmentalists and law enforcement on the endangered waterway. He'll be out on the water looking for illegal or dangerous boating activities, sources of pollution, and unapproved development along the coast.

Osamu Shimomura just wanted to know what makes jellyfish glow in the dark. Now, the green-glowing protein that came of his quest is lighting up mouse tumors at the University of Pennsylvania and fruit flies at Fox Chase Cancer Center. And last week, it won him and two other scientists the 2008 Nobel Prize in chemistry. Shimomura discovered green fluorescent protein, or GFP, in 1962, and no one understood its potential. But today scientists studying everything from cancer to Alzheimer's disease are using GFP to light up and look into living things as no one had done before.

Dozens of moon jellyfish - diaphanous, graceful, eerily dreamlike in blue light - undulate in the artificial current. Children racing in from a hippopotamus exhibit skid to a halt and gaze at the soundless ballet in Camden's Adventure Aquarium. These are the subjects of Alejandro Vagelli, an ichthyologist whose groundbreaking research has painted new pictures of Aurelia aurita. Moon jellies wash up dead on the beach, all flat and gooey, in sizes ranging from saucers to dinner plates, with cloverleafs visible inside.

Tattle can't understand why we haven't been invited to any fabulous New Year's Eve parties. Apparently anyone who's anyone will be in Miami tonight. Derek Jeter, Lindsay Lohan, Paris and Nicky Hilton, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, Jamie Foxx, Queen Latifah, Hilary Duff, Jessica Alba, Vin Diesel, John Stamos, Tommy Lee, Lionel and Nicole Richie, Ivanka Trump and Amanda Hearst are all supposed to be at South Beach hotspots, according to the New York Post's Page Six. Tattle has been waiting and waiting for an invitation to fly down there with Paris or Lindsay, and nothing.

Oregon scientists have created the first genetically engineered primate - a baby rhesus monkey named ANDi. The apparently healthy, frisky 3-month-old carries a gene from a jellyfish. The scientists who carried out this genetic-engineering feat at the Oregon Primate Center in Portland say they eventually want to create genetic defects in monkeys to mimic human diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, much the way specially bred mice are used today. "Our goal is to learn more about human disease," said Anthony Chan of the Oregon team, adding that they have no interest in creating genetically engineered humans.

The world's leading indoor Mummers will celebrate their latest victory this weekend on thrillin', chillin' Two Street. The Jokers New Year's Association, champions of the Fancy Brigade Division for the third time in four years, play host to the brigades' Serenade in front of their clubhouse, at South 2nd and Tasker streets, at 6 p.m. tomorrow. Serenade is a tradition in which the non-winning brigades sport their New Year's suits and perform outside the winners' clubhouse on the Saturday after the Mummers Parade.

For all the years that he worked with his hands, Michael Pisano says, his head was planning a revolt. He had skipped college and gone into the masonry business - a long tradition in his family. But by his early 30s, Pisano wanted out. "I just didn't see myself as being a bricklayer for the rest of my life," he said, "even though it was the only thing I knew. " As the years of hard labor took their toll on his burly frame, they also wore away his spirit. "I was giving guys that I went to high school with job estimates for their houses, and they were doctors or working for Merck," he said.