Serene jellyfish spotted swimming in Venice’s clearer waters

22 April 2020, 14:15 | Updated: 23 April 2020, 09:08

The peaceful jellyfish has been captured on film gliding along a clear canal, after coronavirus lockdown has cut down pollution and footfall in the Italian city.

A jellyfish has been spotted swimming serenely up a Venice canal.

A rare sight (watch below), the creature has been seen due to clearer waters flowing through the city’s canals since the coronavirus crisis has seen the population largely confined to their homes, and a lack of tourists flocking to the city.

The decrease in boat traffic means the water is less disturbed, and so appears more transparent, and this has resulted in plenty of wildlife being spotted in the city’s abandoned waterways.

Read more: Venice canals run clear and dolphins appear in Italy’s waterways during lockdown >

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As populations around the world remain in varying forms of lockdown to help stem the spread of coronavirus, non-essential travel abroad remains halted and tourist “honey traps” like Venice aren’t seeing their usual hoards of visitors.

“The water now looks clearer because there is less traffic on the canals, allowing the sediment to stay at the bottom,” a spokesperson for the Venice mayoral office told CNN last month.

“It’s because there is less boat traffic that usually brings sediment to the top of the water’s surface.”

This little critter was caught on camera by zoologist Andrea Mangoni, who spotted it near the city’s Bareteri Bridge last week.

This isn't the first time wildlife has been seen in the deserted waterways – last month Twitter users enjoyed spotting more fish and swans than usual in Venice’s canals due to lockdown. And waterways around Italy were being reported as being abundant with wildlife, including with dolphins in the south of the country!

If there’s a silver lining to governments’ restrictive self-isolation measures, it’s sightings like this.