Purple Pain

Heading for the beach for the Fourth? Don’t forget to pack your beach towel, sunscreen and vinegar.

Vinegar?

A surprise invasion of jellyfish along the Los Angeles-area coast, just in time for summer’s kickoff, is forcing beach goers to seek out a refreshing splash of vinegar to treat painful stings.

Although they have been in ocean waters for 600 million years, jellyfish have been almost nonexistent along local beaches for the past quarter-century, according to experts.

“We’ve got a bumper crop this year,” said Zuma Beach lifeguard Capt. Jim Dolman as rescuers were kept busy Monday administering vinegar to stings and burying washed-up jellyfish in the sand.

“I couldn’t even remember the last time I saw one, it’s been so long,” said Bob Janis, who has worked as a Zuma Beach lifeguard for 25 years.

“I certainly can’t remember it ever being this bad.”

Although the jellyfish stings are not fatal, twice last week paramedics were called to Zuma Beach when swimmers suffered allergic reactions to them and had difficulty breathing. Lifeguards there treated 150 sting victims Saturday and 130 more Sunday. They figure many other stings went unreported.

In the South Bay, lifeguards have all but given up trying to keep a tally of those lining up at towers for help.

“When I was a younger guard we had jellyfish every summer. Then they disappeared and everybody got used to not having them. Now everybody’s alarmed. What do we do?” said Hermosa Beach lifeguard Capt. Robert Moore, a 33-year veteran.

Los Angeles County officials supplied all lifeguard towers with vinegar last week.

Lifeguards have been instructed in a flier how to remove tentacles with tweezers or gloves, rinse with seawater and then use vinegar “to prevent the firing of undischarged nematocysts (stinging cells) and the injection of more venom into the victim.” Use of freshwater worsens the stinging.

Malibu lifeguard Nick Steers, a 35-year veteran, turned to his daughter, marine biologist Julianne Steers, for more information about the purple-striped jellyfish, the Pelagia colorata.

“There’s a whole generation of beach goers who haven’t seen them,” Steers said Monday. “For that matter, there’s a whole generation of lifeguards that haven’t seen them and don’t know how to treat the stings.”

Both groups are learning fast.

Fourteen-year-old boogie-boarder Scott Zeller of Simi Valley was stung on the back of his leg Sunday. On Monday a jellyfish became entangled on one of his swim fins. He escaped injury that time and took the jellyfish ashore for lifeguard Jon Van Duinwyk to bury in the sand.

Minutes later, Van Duinwyk was pouring vinegar on Tiyana Aber’s sting. “It hurts bad,” moaned the 10-year-old from Westlake Village.

The reappearance of jellyfish may be linked to changing El Nino weather patterns, according to Mike Schaadt, a marine biologist at the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium in San Pedro. “This could go on all summer,” he said.

William Hamner, a marine biologist and UCLA professor who is head of its Marine Science Center, suggests that now is a good time for people to learn about jellyfish.

Hamner is credited as being one of the first scientists to swim among jellyfish to study them. Thanks partly to his work, jellyfish are on view at the Cabrillo Aquarium, the Long Beach Aquarium of the Pacific, the California Science Center in Los Angeles and the UCLA Discovery Center at the Santa Monica Pier.

Hamner said the purple-striped jelly can grow to about 2 feet in diameter. Its gelatinous bell is harmless but its tentacles can continue to sting long after they are washed onto the beach.

“When they’re lying there on the sand they look like gobs of snot” Hamner said Monday. “But they’re spectacular in the ocean, like Christmas tree ornaments or chandeliers.”

Still, Hamner views them with respect.

So does 11-year-old Nick Eberstein of Westlake Village.

He was stung 11 times on his last swim in the ocean.

“I’m not going back in,” Nick said Monday from a Malibu beach perch well above the high tide line.

*

Times Staff Writer Monte Morin in Orange County contributed to this story.