Jelly Dive, Alaska

Jellyfish in Smudges, Alaska, is an otherworldly jelly diving experience.

Jason Bradley

Jelly smacks — as these groups of jellies are unofficially called — are seasonal, but their emergence is predictable to an extent. Finding them consistently, in terms of place and time of year, is challenging — from year to year, conditions change: Currents shift, temperatures fluctuate, and biology does what biology does. But the crew of Nautilus Swell (a liveaboard that no longer offers this itinerary, sadly) seems to have solved this problem with a dive site they call Smudges. On the northeastern side of Baranoff Island, there is a narrow canyon that they bring divers to during the summer months to have an otherworldly jelly experience. The numbers of moon jellies there are massive, among other species of jellies.