A video of what looks like hundreds of thousands of jellyfish circling the shores of Bahrain's Hawar Islands is doing the rounds on social media. The water around this archipelago of desert islands is positively teeming with life. <strong>Watch the video above to see more.</strong> Sayed Mahmood Al Alawi, 36, a Bahraini fisherman, shot the footage while out fishing for safi and hammour. "[It looked like] maybe there were five or 10 million," he tells<em> The National </em>over the phone. Al Alawi has been fishing in Bahrain's seas for the past 20 years, having learned the trade originally from his grandfather. He says it's normal to see a lot of jellyfish in the waters at this time of year, but that this time it was a notably excessive amount. Jellyfish season in Bahrain usually runs from April to August, and while thousands of the sea creatures can be seen in the oceans surrounding the island every year, numbers have multiplied in 2020, confirms a spokesperson for <a href="http://bahrainweather.org/vb/index.php">Bahrain Weather</a>, which originally shared the video on Instagram. This is because, as a number of fisheries and factories slowed production amid the pandemic, jellyfish aren't being fished as much, and so the population is thriving. "It is normal that there are supposed to be that many every year, but there are companies that hunt and ship them to the eastern countries of Asia. "But this year, they have no work because of [the <a href="https://www.thenational.ae/world/mena/coronavirus-live-china-reports-highest-number-of-daily-cases-in-two-months-1.1021139">coronavirus</a>], so jellyfish multiplied so much." It takes about 45 minutes by boat from Bahrain's main island to get to Hawar Islands. The archipelago lies off the west coast of Qatar, but belongs to the kingdom. It used to be one of the settlements of the Dawasir tribe, but is now home to the Hawar Beach Hotel and was a popular spot for tourists to visit pre-pandemic. In particular, it's beloved by nature enthusiasts, as it's also home to more than 100 species of birds, as well as other desert animals, such as the gazelle and oryx. Apart from jellyfish, endangered dugongs, green turtles and bottlenose dolphins can be spotted out at sea, off the coast of the islands.
