Friday 13 August 2021 Jimble-Jamboree

BOLD & BEAUTIFUL IS NOT CURRENTLY RUNNING
DUE TO THE RISKS OF CORONAVIRUS (COVID-19).

Thank you for following public health advice at all times
to protect yourself and your community.
Maintain physical distancing, limit outdoor exercise to
no more than two people at a time, stay within your LGA or 10kms from your home.
Check in and out wherever you go even when you’re ordering coffee.

When you go for a swim in open water there are many things to contend with – maybe waves, rips, seaweed floating, other swimmers, adorable fish but also JIMBLES.

I don’t know about you but until I started swimming at Manly I had never heard of jimbles before. And yet, in 1984, Australia Post featured a stamp with a jimble on it!

But really so little is generally known about these stingers. I think as citizen scientists swimmers probably have made lots of observations about their behaviour such that the corporate knowledge of BB swimmers could help increase general jimble knowledge. Wikipedia tells us a bit – they have lots of eye type organs. The pink part of them is their gonads. I did not know that.

We have observed that they don’t like swimming over the rocks and sea weed but prefer swimming over sand. I have come across them in the waves and in the middle of the bay. Now that I swim at Balmoral where I generally never see fish (similar experience to Alison Blazey) but I regularly see jimbles there. And get stung. The wikipedia entry says that when a human bumps into them they accidentally sting but really they don’t mean to. I say then why do they swim towards me to sting?

I have borrowed from the bountiful gallery of photos held in the Bold and Beautiful Blog archive to show jimbles

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For some the sting is annoying and fades quickly. For others the sting can have serious consequences – scarring, pain, inflammation and so on. 

Here is a redacted photo of a beautiful and bold swimmer showing a past sting event. Still swimming though

And like many before me, I am having a lockdown dalliance with Balmoral which is within 10km of me and can say I am noticing it has some charm. My heart belongs to CTB though. 

Here is  a photo of a swimmer