Swimmers beware! Humungous jellyfish are washing in off the Atlantic

There's a legendary swim that takes place every year and starts on this very island.

They call it the North Channel Challenge. From Donaghadee, just south of the Belfast lough, swimmers take off on a 35km trek across hazardous waters and all the way to Portpatrick in Scotland. The fastest it's ever been done is just sub 10 hours but the typical time can be anywhere between 11 and 18 hours. One of the things that swimmers are warned about is the temperature of the water which, even at the height of summer, is flirting with 10 degrees. Another is the tides and the currents of a rough patch of this globe where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Irish Sea, it offers some of the toughest conditions in open water. It isn't a marathon for the faint-hearted and, as the old fact goes around the coast, Everest has been conquered more times than the North Channel. The other thing they're expected to contend with? Jellyfish. Big ones. Around the island of Ireland, these creatures are swimming the waters with some of them the size of a f**king poker table. Swimmers from Derry to Wexford know all about them but they just get on with it. In the beautiful Beale Strand of county Kerry, at the mouth of the Shannon, a frightening beast of a jelly fish washed up ashore and it prompted others to post theirs. Radio Kerry highlighted the problem for swimmers in the county with another reported in Ballybunion. Every stretch of water usually comes with its own advice and warning and they should always be heeded. This particular animal was located in the south west. As if swimming wasn't tough enough. As if doing it in the ocean wasn't worse. You now not only have the thought of these jellyfish floating around beside you, you have the very daunting reality. Be careful out there.