Rare ‘pink meanie’ creature washes up on Texas shore. It stings and can get huge
If you see something in the water along the shoreline of the Gulf of Mexico that sorta resembles your favorite state fair treat … it’s best not to, well, attempt to eat it.
Because they’re called pink meanies for a reason.
And they’re feeding.
But don’t worry, these rare jellyfish aren’t looking for just anything to snack on. They’re swarming to areas along the Gulf Coast to satisfy their appetite for moon jellyfish, which have been gathering along Port Aransas marina, according to Jace Tunnell of the Harte Research Institute.
In the video posted to Facebook on Sept. 22, the rare creature looks like a bubble gum pink blob in the water, and a giant blob that was sneezed up by Xenomorph on land. While speaking about the jellyfish, Tunnell was stung in the video posted.
“I even spotted one in a Port Aransas marina wrapped around a moon jellyfish (their favorite food)… and yes, I got stung while filming this episode. Don’t worry—it’s only a mild sting, but you’ll see it all on camera,” Tunnell said.
The thing about these pastel shaded blobbies is they can get up there in size, Tunnell warns.
“These giants can reach 70-foot tentacles, weigh over 50 pounds, and look like floating cotton candy in the water,” he said.
The creature, known as Drymonema larsoni, was named by a former post-doctoral student named Keith Bayha, the Dauphin Island Sea Lab (DISL) said.
“Pink meanies first started showing up in the northern Gulf of Mexico in the early 2000s and were recorded by Monty Graham at DISL,” Bayha said according to DISL.
“Dr. Graham sent me samples for DNA analysis when I was a graduate student at the University of Delaware. I tried to use them for a study I was doing on the Lion’s Mane Jellyfish, whose family the pink meanie previously belonged to, but they were too different.”
Bayha soon discovered that the meanies were a brand new family of jellyfish.
While they may get huge, the sting itself isn’t too painful, Bayha said.
“I had my arm up to the elbow in a really large one we had collected and the sting was minor. My entire arm had a rash the next day, but it wasn’t bad at the time.”
This story was originally published September 23, 2025 at 4:20 PM with the headline "Rare ‘pink meanie’ creature washes up on Texas shore. It stings and can get huge."