According to Georgia state marine biologist Jim Page, they’re very common. “We always kind of laugh but, when they’re abundant, you could just about walk on water with them, you could walk from one to the next.”

They look like big floating mushrooms.

“They have a pretty solid core, a fairly rigid core, on the underside of a dome shaped cap," Page says. "The cap is real soft. It is clear typically, usually has a maroon coloration around the outer edge of that cap, the soft dome that’s on top.”

Their tentacles are shorter than those of other jellyfish, and cannonballs don’t sting. Most are about the size of grapefruits, although some can be as big as basketballs.

Georgia jellyfish are dried, preserved and packaged before being sold to a seafood distributor that ships them to Japan, China and Thailand.

During shrimping season, they often get trapped in nets, so shrimpers have installed special devices - called jellyball shooters - in their nets to clear them out.

Darien became a jellyfish hub two decades ago, when a man named George Tai started catching them and exporting them to Asia. When he left Darien, he sold the processing plant and his fishing equipment to TK and his partner. Today, Marco Seafood is the area’s only jellyfish processor and exporter, even though the creatures can be found all along the southeastern coast, from North Carolina to Florida.

The jellyfish are dried, preserved and packaged before being sold to a seafood distributor that ships them to Japan, China, and Thailand.