Visitor video: And since we started the day with a visitor picture of jellies, let’s continue on the theme with this awesome video of our jellies from andimthedad, complete with original music!

For those of you who want more jellies, go behind the scenes to see some babies here. And don’t forget to tag New England Aquarium if you post your own pictures and video of your visit.

Thanks for sharing andimthedad!

SEA JELLIES: original video from Andimthedad.com

This past summer, on a visit to Boston, we took in the jellies exhibit at the New England Aquarium. Beth, age 4, didn’t really care about them — she was more into the penguins — but Luke, age 8, was totally enamored.  He especially liked the small phosphorescent “sea walnuts.” He grabbed my iPhone and started taking photos and videos.

In order of appearance, the types of jellies in this video are:

• Leidy’s comb jelly (“sea walnuts”)
• European moon jelly
• Pacific sea nettle
• Australian spotted jelly
• Atlantic sea nettle
• Leidy’s comb jelly (again)
• European moon jelly (again)
• Lagoon jelly

Luke was the camera man and/or director for most of these shots.  He also helped me picked out the clips to include from the ~40 minutes of footage.  I handled the final video edits and scored the music. The basic contours of the song had been floating around in my head for awhile and, in a fit of insomnia, I finally connected with some kind of sea jelly inspiration. I work with digital media professionally, and have written a lot of songs over the years, but this one is gratis: If anyone wants to use it for anything, the MP3 is up on Soundcloud for downloading under a Creative Commons license. You are free to share it and remix it, but please drop me a note by e-mail or Tumblr ask to let me know what you’ve done with it.

As with the prior And I’m the Dad nature videos on hummingbirds and bees (or that strange tutorial on bristlebots) this is one minute long. I have no explanation for the chosen length, other than that it is an easily digestible time, and that forcing a boundary keeps you focused on quality.

Would it be even cooler if these were live shots in the wild? Yes. Can I afford the money or time to take my kids on such a trip? Unfortunately no. Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy this.