This is an authorized translation in English of a post in French by @marc-allaria: BORNEO - Stop#6 - LE LAC AUX MEDUSES...!

^{As my primary language is not English, there are probably some mistakes in my translation.}

Remember that the person who speaks here is NOT me, Vincent Celier (@vcelier), but Marc Allaria (@marc-allaria), a French guy.

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BORNEO - THE JELLYFISH LAKE

One of two species present

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After several weeks of diving on similar profiles, we always want a little change. If the flat allows me to vary the pleasures a little, what the villagers and managers of the hotel tell me amazes me.

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There would be in the small forest of Maratua, a lake. So far, not enough to take out my e-pen to tell it on Steemit! But less common, this lake, like only a few others on the planet, would have appeared following a fast decline of the water that would have imprisoned thousands of jellyfish. The same pattern is known in the [Palau](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palau) archipelago and is extremely exploited by the tourism industry. As time passed, and the jellyfish finding no predator, they would have lost their stinging power. Although this feature is fully proven, I assure you that at this point in the story, the conditional is still in place!

So here I am engaged machete by hand in the mangrove. Soon, my adventure in "jungle" takes the form of a small hike along an old trail formerly used to transport wood cut in the forest. My machete being there only to remind me some perfumes of Guyana! A machete, a pair of fins and a photo box in hand, this is a very curious equipment for a hiker! The banks of the lake are not easy to reach, but I manage to find a place to enter this definitely green water. The encounter with jellyfish is immediate. At their first contact along my legs, my arms, I have some reflexes, which leave the place quickly to the pleasant sensation that brings the completely harmless softness of their contact.

Two species are found here. One is transparent, the other is pink. That's about all my science can tell about these jellyfish! I had never seen so many jellyfish. Thousands of them, locked up for generations in a small space perhaps waiting one day for a return to open water ...

Brittle stars and sponges

The water half salty, half sweet, is cool, the pleasant moment and the banks offer a whole set of sponges, brittle stars, "sea" stars, and small fish that bring a little diversity to my usual decor. Everything seems so foreign to me that I will not be surprised that new species are hiding here. Surely someone has already done this job.

Borneo will have given me many images and memories, it is now time to go to another land of discovery, Sulawesia.

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01: DISCOVER THE PHILIPPINES: Funny situations ...! at sea..., by @marc-allaria
02: DISCOVER THE PHILIPPINES: The fishing file ...!, by @marc-allaria
03: DISCOVER THE PHILIPPINES: The Cagayan Islands, by @marc-allaria
04: DISCOVER THE PHILIPPINES: Seaweed...!, by @marc-allaria
05: DISCOVER THE PHILIPPINES: The Bacuit Archipelago, by @marc-allaria
06: BORNEO: Kudat and the technical stop, by @marc-allaria
07: BORNEO: Kinabatangan River, by @marc-allaria
08: BORNEO: Maratua, part 1, by @marc-allaria
09: BORNEO: Big Fish School, by @marc-allaria
10: BORNEO: Diving in Maratua ...!, by @marc-allaria