Jellyfish several countries; jellyfish caused a cascading blackout in the Philippines in 1999, as well as damaging the Diablo Canyon Power Plant in California in 2008. They can stop desalination plants and ships' engines. Jellyfish Jellyfish or sea jellies are the informal common names given to the medusa-phase of certain gelatinous members of the subphylum Medusozoa, a major part of the phylum Cnidaria. Jellyfish are mainly free-swimming marine animals with umbrella-shaped bells and trailing tentacles, although a few are not mobile, being anchored to the seabed by stalks. The bell can pulsate to provide propulsion and highly efficient locomotion. The tentacles
Jellyfish the word "fish" with its connotations of an animal with a backbone, though shellfish, cuttlefish and starfish are not vertebrates either. In scientific literature, "jelly" and "jellyfish" have been used interchangeably. Many sources refer to only scyphozoans as "true jellyfish". The term jellyfish broadly corresponds to medusae, that is, a life-cycle stage in the Medusozoa. The American evolutionary biologist Paulyn Cartwright gives the following general definition: The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines jellyfish as follows: Given that jellyfish is a common name, its mapping to biological groups is inexact. Some authorities have called the comb jellies and certain salps jellyfish, though other