---
title: Mauve Stinger (Pelagia noctiluca)
scientific_name: Pelagia noctiluca
common_name: Mauve Stinger
taxon: Jellyfishes
published: 2024-11-03T09:29:55.262Z
updated: 2026-08-31T20:30:14.469Z
tags: Mauve Stinger, Pelagia noctiluca, Jellyfishes, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/stinging/jellyfishes/mauve-stinger
---

# Mauve Stinger (*Pelagia noctiluca*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Jellyfishes (*Scyphozoa*)
- **Size:** bell up to 12 cm
- **Depth:** 0-150 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Nocturnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Open water, arriving inshore on the wind
- **Reproduction:** Broadcast spawner, Gonochoric
- **Hazard:** Venomous

## How to recognise it

- small mushroom-shaped bell, mauve to pink, covered in fine warts
- eight long thin tentacles and four frilled arms, all far longer than the bell
- stinging cells on the bell itself, not only on the tentacles
- glows blue-green when disturbed at night
- bell up to 12 cm across

Almost every jellyfish needs a piece of the seabed. This one never touches it.

The usual life cycle runs through a polyp: the larva settles on hard bottom, becomes a small anemone-like animal, clones itself for years and buds off young medusae when conditions turn. It ties the whole species to a coastline. The mauve stinger skips that stage completely and develops from egg to medusa in open water, which is why it can hold enormous populations with no coast involved at all, and why a bloom can appear in the middle of nowhere with nothing on the seabed to have predicted it from.

The animal itself is small: a warty mushroom of a bell to 12 cm (5 in), mauve to pink, trailing eight thin tentacles and four frilled arms several times its own length. It is an open-water drifter that reaches the coast only when wind and current deliver it, and it arrives in numbers when it does.

The name means night light. Disturbed in the dark it produces a blue-green glow from its own tissue - one of the few jellyfish that does - so a swarm crossed by a fin or a boat wake lights up along the line of the disturbance.

The sting is why it makes the news. Stinging cells cover the bell as well as the tentacles, so contact anywhere burns; the pain is sharp, the welts last days, and torn-off fragments of tentacle sting exactly as well as attached ones.

## Also known as

- **English:** mauve stinger, night-light jellyfish, phosphorescent jellyfish
- **Hebrew:** שייטת ארגמנית
- **French:** méduse pélagique, Pélagie, piqueur-mauve
- **Italian:** medusa luminosa
- **German:** Feuerqualle, Leuchtqualle
- **Spanish:** acalefo luminiscente, Medusa boca de bandera, medusa luminescente
- **Greek:** Μωβ μέδουσα, Μωβ τσούχτρα
- **Portuguese:** Água-viva-luminosa
- **Dutch:** lichtende kwal, Parelkwal, Lichtene kwal
- **Swedish:** lysmanet
- **Polish:** meduza świecąca, pelagia świecąca
- **Czech:** talířovka svítivá
- **Japanese:** オキクラゲ
- **Russian:** Пелагия ночесветка
- **CA:** Acàlef luminescent, acàlef luminiscent, medusa luminiscent
- **FI:** Loistomeduusa
- **HR:** Morska mjesečina
- **HU:** világító medúza
- **KO:** 야광원양해파리
- **SL:** mesečinka

## Scientific synonyms

- *Medusa noctiluca* Forsskål, 1775
- *Medusa perla* Slabber, 1769
- *Pelagia neglecta* Vanhöffen, 1888
- *Pelagia parthenopensis* Lesson, 1843
- *Pelagia perla* (Slabber, 1781)
- *Pelagia purpuroviolacea* Stiasny, 1914
- *Pelagia rosacea* Stiasny, 1914

## Range

Adriatic Sea, Aegean Sea, Alboran Sea, Azores Canaries Madeira, Belgium, Caribbean Sea, Celtic Seas, France, Ionian Sea, Levantine Sea, North Atlantic Ocean, North Pacific Ocean, North Sea, Saharan Upwelling, South European Atlantic Shelf, Tunisian Plateau/Gulf of Sidra, Western Mediterranean

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/stinging/jellyfishes/mauve-stinger)*
*Updated: August 31, 2026*