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People have been shocked to see the corpses stretched out on the sands and rocky shorelines at their local beaches. Student James Wileman, 23, of Farlington, Hampshire, went to take a
picture of the weird sight after hearing reports of the starfish on Facebook. He found hundreds of the creatures strewn along the shoreline from Southsea Pier to Eastney in Portsmouth. He
said: "I was hoping to throw them back into the sea until I realised they were dead. "I did not even know we had starfish around here. "It's the first time I have seen
them in the wild and they were dead. "It was a bit depressing. You had to be careful where you trod because there were so many." Starfish can live up to 35 years. They are common
in the seas around Britain, and are pinky orange when alive but turn orange when they die and dry out. They are tough creatures which can grow up to 18 inches across, and they have hundreds
of little suckers called tube feet to help them manoeuvre and turn. Meanwhile hundreds of jellyfish - usually spotted in the hot summer months - have washed up on a beach in West Sussex
following storms out at sea. They were strewn across East Beach in Littlehampton, among the seaweed washed up near the pier. Their unseasonable appearance was caused by recent storms and
mild temperatures, according to a spokesman from Sussex Wildlife Trust. Although they varied in size, one of the larger specimens, a barrel jellyfish, was around fifty centimetres in
diameter. Olle Akesson, marine officer at the Sussex Wildlife Trust said: "It's a little more unusual to see them this late in the season. They've probably been carried in
from farther offshore, probably by the recent storms. "You'll normally see much fewer this time of year, and I wouldn't have really expected to see this many of them." He
said the jellyfish get 'kicked up' from the seabed in the storms and the warmer than usual water temperature means there are more plankton and nutrients for them to eat. However,
despite their size, Mr Akesson said they are harmless.