Experts said Hurricane Francine and recent heavy rain may have caused the bloom.

Dozens of huge, clear blobs are currently dotting the beaches of the Bolivar Peninsula like land mines. While combing for glass and seashells along the shoreline in the Gilchrist area Monday evening, Jodi and Jay Scott encountered the menacing-looking jellies crowded on the sand, motionless. "My husband and I come down here from the Dallas area at least once a year to beachcomb," Jodi told Chron on Tuesday. "I have been coming to this area since 1970 and have never seen anything like this. Still today they are everywhere!"

The couple took to a beachcombing Facebook group to look for answers on what may have caused the jellies to wash up in mass. In response, others also reported spotting several of them floating in nearby waters and along the shores over the weekend. Some beachgoers were reportedly left stung in the process. The jellyfish look similar to a massive floating group spotted by Captain Sharky Marquez with Out Cast Charters in Galveston on Monday.

Turns out the jellyfish are not cabbageheads (aka cannonballs) or Portuguese man o' wars as some beachgoers suspected, but instead are moon jellyfish (Aurelia labiata), which are very common in the Gulf of Mexico, according to Brandi Keller with Coastal and Marine Resources for Galveston County Texas A&M AgriLife Extension. Jace Tunnell, a marine biologist from the Texas A&M Corpus Christi Harte Research Institute, said the jellyfish are also washing up "by the thousands" on Mustang Island nearly 300 miles away as well.

Unfortunately, moon jellies do sting, Tunnel confirmed. "But they would be a 1 out of 10 on a scale of pain which is not that bad," he told Chron. "Most people would probably never feel the sting unless it was on a sensitive part of their body."

Moon jellies are a favorite prey of sea turtles. Tunnell, who plans to release a video about the moon jellies for his Beachcombing series, was able to capture a green sea turtle taking bites out of one. The alien-looking species tend to bloom during the right conditions which could be from heavy recent rains, Tunnell said. "Storms can push jellyfish and it's possible Hurricane Francine did so," Keller said.

While jellyfish can "pulsate vertically," the sea creatures do not have much control when moving horizontally, Keller explained. As a result, they are subject to the movements of the sea and go where the wind and tides take them. "Sometimes that is inland," Keller said. While moon jellies do migrate to the area annually, Tunnell said there seems to be a bit more than normal.