Foreign jellyfish are thriving in an Oxfordshire lake, writes Peter Stone.
Sixteen-year-old Ashley Baughan, who works at JK Tackle in Bicester, fishes the lake known as the RAF Pit at Bicester. Ashley said: "They've been in there quite a while, and when you get a big group of them together they put the tench and carp off feeding. They don't sting or anything and they don't really seem to cause problems."
Asked for his views, scientist Dr Paul Gardner said he was baffled.
"They sound like tropical fresh water ones to me. I've never heard of them in this country before," he said.
But former Natural History Museum keeper of fishes, Alwyne Wheeler, is less surprised.
"You do occasionally see freshwater jellyfish in this country but they are not very common," he said. "Kew Gardens had them in one of their lakes and I think some were once found in the upper Thames."
The Environment Agency say the jellyfish grow to about 2cm and are found throughout Europe in warm ponds.
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