Jellyfish invasions not unusual

I refer to the letter (June 14) by Carola Weitze entitled Jellyfish Invasion.

I would like to inform her that the appearance of enormous amounts of jellyfish in Maltese waters is not that unusual.

Exactly on June 14 of 1761, that is 245 years ago, on a Sunday afternoon, the Swedish botanist, Peter Foskaal, arrived on board the Danish ship Groenland in the Grand Harbour and he wrote in his diary the following sentence: "Vatnet hyst ganska myckna Medusae verrucosea".

When translated into English it reads: "In the water there are a lot of Medusae verrucose." Medusae is the Latin/botanic word for jellyfish. With this see also Wildlife Of The Maltese Islands edited by Joe Sultana and Victor Falzon in 1996 on pages 93/94: "Jellyfish, very abundant in some years, tending to collect in large numbers in bays - a natural phenomenon which occurs from time to time in the Mediterranean. Common".

Another occurrence like that was some two years ago, as reported in The Times of March 16, 2004.