22×
Beats / minute
at rest, unfed
01
Nothing here is choreographed.
The medusa in Tank 07 is not on a loop. It moves because it is contracting a ring of muscle, and it steers because your cursor is the brightest thing in its water.
Move your pointer and the bell tips toward it — phototaxis, the same reflex that pulls wild jellies toward the surface at dusk. Leave it be and the animal wanders on its own, tracing slow figure-eights through the dark.
Behind the bell, sixteen marginal tentacles and four ruffled oral arms hang on soft-body physics. When the jelly lunges, they lag; when it coasts, they catch up. Every strand is solved, not drawn.
02
How a bell becomes a motor.
A single stroke lasts under three seconds. It is not smooth — the power comes fast, the recovery comes slow.
- 01ContractionThe coronal muscle fires. The bell clamps in and up, firing a ring of water backward.
- 02ThrustReaction drives the animal forward, apex first — a soft jet, roughly a body-length per beat.
- 03RecoveryElastic mesoglea springs the bell open again, slowly, sipping water for the next stroke.
The exhibit runs this exact curve. Thrust is applied only while the line rises — so the jelly surges, then glides, then surges again.
16
Marginal tentacles
verlet strands
4
Oral arms
frilled, trailing
98%
Water, by mass
mesoglea jelly
03
Come sit with it a while.
The Drift Aquarium keeps one animal per room. Tank 07 is the darkest — bring your eyes, not your camera flash.
- Hours
- Tue – Sun, 10:00 – lateLast drift 21:30. Closed Mondays for feeding.
- Where
- Pier 9, Lower GalleryFourteen steps below the boardwalk.
- Admission
- Pay what you canMembers drift free after dark.
- House rule
- No flash, no glass-tappingThe medusa answers light. Be gentle with it.