Word: waterous
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...nervous debility. Think ''Last month, off Ketchikan'' while futilized in a traffic jam on the San Diego Freeway, and all the other cars disappear. Zap, there they go. Last month, off Ketchikan, from an altitude of about 1,000 ft., Bush Pilot Dale Clark spotted something glinting in the water of Carroll Inlet. He pointed. ''Down there, see?'' His passenger, a sightseer from the Lower 48, saw nothing but salt water. Clark, a burly, bearded man, threw his float-equipped Cessna into a tight, 80 degrees bank, and a few moments later landed in the light chop near a sizable...
...they don't inspire the same cue-the-menacing-cello-music terror that killer sharks off America's beaches might, but Pelagia noctiluca has vacationers along France's Cote D'Azur wondering whether it's really safe to go back in the water. And the discomforting answer is, Probably not - unless you happen to be a big fan of jellyfish stings...
...along France's coast in June. And those menacing the shorelines are simply the outriders of giant shoals that marine biologists have identified hovering between Corsica and France's southern shores. Sections of that invertebrate mother ship are blown to land by unpredictable shifting winds that can turn coastal water into jellyfish marshes overnight - and then leave the same area virtually stinger-free the following day. A large part of the current jellyfish scare is that swimmers rarely know whether the water into which they're wading is benign Mediterranean surf or a dense minefield of tentacles...
...news, according to experts, is that there's more of that gummy pain on the way. Overfishing and other destructive human activity have prompted the prolific multiplication of jellyfish by decimating their natural predators: tuna, sharks and turtles. That, and the fact that global warming has raised the water temperature of the Mediterranean by a degree, have produced an explosion of the jellyfish population and a prolonged presence of the creatures in waters where humans like to flounder. Traditionally, scientists say, jellyfish turn up along France's coastline every 10 to 12 years, for a period of four to five...
...safety of a net-protected "pool," doctors have some advice for coping with the sting. Rinse the lesion with cool seawater, they say, and once dry, apply a medicated cream to lessen the pain. Physicians warn against common but counter-productive remedies such as dousing the sting with drinking water, rubbing it with sand, trying to suck the venom from it and - especially - urinating on it. These "therapies," doctors say, are all certain to aggravate the sting's burning sensation, and the last one ... well, it's not only useless and disgusting, it adds insult to jellyfish injury...