TIMES RECORD • August 13, 2020
Aside from the salt that can dry on your skin and make you feel a bit crusty, there are actually some critters living in the water can irritate your skin. I can identify some likely culprits. The first is a sand flea. The other marine creatures that can make you itchy don’t seem so nasty. These are tiny larvae – the babies of creatures like jellyfish or crabs that are floating in the water column before settling and growing into adults. To avoid getting eaten, they have chemicals in their bodies that make them irritating to creatures that come in contact with them. While it may seem icky to think of all of these creatures sharing the waters that we swim in, I think it is pretty neat to know how much life there is in the water that we can’t even see. ~ Susan Olcott