A BIG barrel jellyfish washed up close to Bournemouth Pier as experts warn it will be a bumper year for the creatures.

Pat Matek, 44, from Castlepoint, said she was out walking along the beach at around 6pm on May 16 when she noticed a transparent object in the sea, which an expert has confirmed to be a barrel jellyfish.

She said: "I saw it in the water and I thought that it was a bag or something because it was completely transparent. It was a strange-looking jellyfish as they are normally round and it was around one-metre in size.

See all our pictures of jellyfish from last year here

"I went to the other side of Bournemouth Pier and saw another one, which I can only assume was dead as well, but it washed back into the sea.

"I thought that they were interesting to see. I've seen jellyfish before, including some in Bulgaria, but they were round and orange in colour, whereas these ones had no colour.

"Everybody was stopping by and looking at it, but nobody knew what it was. It almost looked extra-terrestrial, so I poked it with a stick and it was hard."

Last year hundreds of the jellyfish - which have a very mild sting despite their size - were spotted along the Dorset coast.

Dr Peter Richardson, biodiversity and fisheries programme manager at the Marine Conservation Society, said that results from their national jellyfish survey show that this is another big year for the creatures in our region.

He added: "We are getting a lot of reports of jellyfish in the south west, which are mostly barrel jellyfish. We have had 120 reports of jellyfish from the south west so far this year alone.

"We run a national jellyfish survey and barrel jellyfish normally make up 10-per-cent of the breeds reported, but last year that was about 40-per-cent.

Dr Richardson said that the smaller jellyfish disintegrate and disappear in the cold winter months, but the larger barrel jellyfish are thick, robust creatures which sink to the bottom of the sea. He said that in the warmer months, they float up to the top of the water to feed.

He added as a result of more sightings of jellyfish, there is chance that people could spot some marine turtles in the water, which see jellyfish as food.

Anyone who spots a jellyfish is asked to report it on the Marine Conservation Society's website, which can be found at Mcsuk.org/sightings