NEW SHARON, Iowa — Oskaloosa freshman Oscar Schiferl found a freshwater jellyfish while fishing at the Russell Wildlife Area.
Oscar is usually a pretty shy kid and avoids the attention. However, when he got a hold of the jellyfish he wanted to teach everyone at school all about it.
“It made me feel really excited and happy,” Oscar said. “I was really surprised.”
Fortunately, the jellyfish is a peach blossom jellyfish, which is so small that their sting doesn’t harm human skin upon contact.
“You normally don't get to see jellyfish in Iowa,” Oscar said. “You have to either go to the ocean or an aquarium with a fish tank with jellyfish in it..”
Oscar found the jellyfish, which is about the size of a penny, in a pond with hundreds of others. He captured two of them to bring home.
“When he came home and he had a mason jar, I was like, ‘Oh, my what did we find?’” Oscar’s mother Katie Schiferl said. “Then I found out that it was a jellyfish. And I was like, ‘That can't be. We're nowhere near the ocean.’”
The day after the fishing trip, Oscar took his mason jar to church. Then the following day he brought it to school to show it off to all his friends.
“My friends were really surprised that I found a jellyfish,” Oscar said. “They thought it was just a joke, like from an aquarium.”
Kim Bogenschutz, the aquatic invasive species program coordinator for the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, isn’t exactly sure how the jellyfish got to the hawkeye state. Her best guess is that they latched on to something coming from Asia, where they originate from.
“Maybe they were with some shipments, got attached to plants or to the fish or something like that in the water, and then people dump their aquarium or release their plants or their fish in the pond,” Bogenschutz said.
Oscar learned that the species start as microorganisms and turn into jellyfish with the warmer weather. He wants to continue studying different creatures and one day work in animal science or marine biology.
“I love learning new things that he has taught me,” Katie said. “Oscar will find out and his dad will find out things and then they do the research, and then they fill me in. I'm so happy that he's happy.”
Peach blossom jellyfish are extremely rare. The DNR said the last reported sighting of them in Iowa was in Ames in 2019. The last time before that was in Mason City way back in 1999.