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Swarm of Giant Jellyfish Capsize 10-Ton Trawler
Hugh Pickens writes "The Telegraph reports that the Japanese trawler Diasan Shinsho-maru has capsized off the coast of China, as its three-man crew dragged their net through a swarm of giant jellyfish (which can grow up to six feet in diameter and travel in packs) and tried to haul up a net that was too heavy. The crew was thrown into the sea when the vessel capsized, but the three men were rescued by another trawler. Relatively little is known about Nomura's jellyfish, such as why some years see thousands of the creatures floating across the Sea of Japan on the Tsushima Current, but last year there were virtually no sightings. In 2007, there were 15,500 reports of damage to fishing equipment caused by the creatures. Experts believe that one contributing factor to the jellyfish becoming more frequent visitors to Japanese waters may be a decline in the number of predators, which include sea turtles and certain species of fish. 'Jellies have likely swum and swarmed in our seas for over 600 million years,' says scientist Monty Graham of the Dauphin Island Sea Lab in Alabama. 'When conditions are right, jelly swarms can form quickly. They appear to do this for sexual reproduction.'"
But didn't human error capsize this ship?
Do the jellyfish also serve as flotation devices?
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
The worst part of this "invasion" is that the species isn't really tasty at all. Not to mention that every part of this particular jellyfish contains toxins. Every touching the top of the jellyfish will result in temporary numbness.
If they are proliferating because of a lack of predators, we should probably go ahead and kill as many of these as we can to maintain a good ecosystem balance.
it looks like a job for SpongeBob and friends...
If its a predator fish, we probably think its tasty or at least good
enough for pet food.
It's peanut butter jelly... fish?
"Relatively little is known about Nomura's jellyfish, such as why some years see thousands of the creatures floating across the Sea of Japan on the Tsushima Current, but last year there were virtually no sightings."
Godzilla had the munchies?
Capsizing Jellyfish: The Hentai
This message was brought to you by Sarcasm and Troll Feeders United (STFU)
Wrong, we should stop killing predators. The seas have been overfished for too long, equilibrium is broken on so many levels that only true regulation and control of fishing will get any results.
After all, fishing is *so* primitive. Civilized people *grow* their food, hunter/gatherer economics are for barbarians.
I for one, welcome our new trawler capzising jellyfish overlords!
The boat turned turtle off the coast of Chiba, which is a Japanese port, rather than the coast of China. TFA did mention that the jellyfish's breeding location is off the Chinese coast though.
Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
"Relatively little is known about Nomura's jellyfish, such as why some years see thousands of the creatures floating across the Sea of Japan on the Tsushima Current, but last year there were virtually no sightings."
Hey there! FlashMob4Jellyfish is using Twitter
WhN? 2day. Where? Sea of Japan. What? Jam as many of us into
a fishing net and capsize the boat.
4:48 PM Oct 9th from ocean
(Please.)
I saw a Nation Geographic (I think) special on this.
These jellyfish spawn off the cost of China, near Hong Kong. The increasing water temperature (since the end of the last ice age) coupled with the pollution that China dumps into the sea, has caused an explosion of the aforementioned animals. The jellyfish then float eastward, right into the Japanese fishing waters.
The Japanese have no real solution to this problem. Thy only thing they can do it try to kill as many jellyfish as they can (using bladed or hooked poles).
Here's when I venture into probably troll country: I'm okay with the affect the jellyfish are having. The way that the Japanese over-fish the oceans (not to mention killing whales), I'm okay with anything that slows them down. Now only if something could slow down the over-fishing done by the rest of the world. This includes the US, of which I'm a citizen.
I'm not a Green Peace lovin' (I hate 'em), tree hugging, nut job; but we really need to have some sort of international regulation (with punishments in the form of sanctions) on the fishing and care of the oceans. From over-fishing to habitat destruction (often a side affect of fishing) to pollution, we're well on our way to killing the oceans as we know them. Which will lead to the killing of our civilization as we know it. Not the end of it, mind you. Just the end of it as we know it.
That's got to be one of a mariner's worst nightmares...
Hard to top that... capsizing amidst a swarm of hungry sharks, maybe.
It's not a lack of predators. The problem with this particular jellyfish stems from increased global temperature and pollution from China (near Hong Kong).
Thinking about it, the Chinese and Japanese will eat rhino penis because they think it's an aphrodisiac. Someone should tell them that eating giant jellyfish will give them a bigger penis.
Problem solved.
Perhaps they should make winches that aren't strong enough to capsize a boat. Just a thought.
Is there any doubt that these giant, radioactive jellyfish are headed for Japan? Fortunately, they probably can't move very well on land. so Tokyo Tower is safe.
I move to petition Congress to recommission the USS Iowa and deploy it to the Sea of Japan.
Jellyfish born near China and hanging out near Japan will not be open to English-language negotiations, so we must instead negotiate with 16 inch guns. They will surely give in to a show of force... everyone knows jellyfish are spineless!
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
Great...can't wait for the Syfy movie. *rolling eyes*
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
'When conditions are right, jelly swarms can form quickly. They appear to do this for sexual reproduction.'"
Perhaps genetic experimentation to produce K.Y. Jellyfish would aid this.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Good to see that the seas are fighting back at our rape of the oceans.
I, for one, welcome our Nemopilema overlord swarms reclaiming their underworld domain.
Why is trawling still legal? Are we only going to stop when there are no fish or reefs left?
Why are we still eating Tuna?
ICCAT
Seems likely.
The article at Telegraph states: "The trawler, the Diasan Shinsho-maru, capsized off Chiba`as its three-man crew was trying to haul in a net containing dozens of huge Nomura's jellyfish."
The Slashdot submitter states: "... three-man crew dragged their net through a swarm of giant jellyfish ... and tried to haul up a net that was too heavy."
There's some difference between "haul in" and "haul up", but in both cases the ship's crew is hauling. Sounds to me like the crew capsized their boat by hauling too hard.
-kgj
Another thing for Japanese to hate....including dolphins, whales, and the Enola Gay
Perhaps they should make winches that aren't strong enough to capsize a boat. Just a thought.
WOW, I'm sure decades of fishermen haven't considered that. Thank god we have Slashdot.
"What capsizes a boat" is probably very complicated- how loaded is it with fish? How high are the seas? How much water and fuel does it have on board? How much angular momentum does the boat have? How much water resistance does the hull give?
It's probably possible or even normal to haul up a load that, if you kept it hanging out on the crane, would slowly cause the ship to heel over too far, but if brought aboard relatively quickly, wouldn't...
Please help metamoderate.
...our Cnidarian Overlords
"Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish"
Albert Einstein
In this case, a German eco-thriller by Frank Schätzing entitled "Der Schwarm" (The Swarm), which features just such an attack, orchestrated by an intelligent marine species, (named the Yrr 'cause that randomly-typed letter sequence worked as well as any) that has decided to get rid of those messy, polluting land-dwellers, AKA us.
Next up: Swarms of highly-toxic white crabs invade the beaches of the US East Coast, while Canadian Orcas start dining on whale-watchers.
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
I thought it sounded kinda small for a commercial vessel.
It was a Chibi-trawler.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
and oddly i just watched that early next generation episode where the giant space jellyfish blasted the bandi on deneb
now there here wonder if the govt has one against its will at gitmo
With a purposeful grimace and a terrible sound
He pulls the spitting high tension wires down
Helpless people on a subway train
Scream bug-eyed as he looks in on them
He picks up a bus and he throws it back down
As he wades through the buildings toward the center of town
Oh no, they say hes got to go
Go go Godzilla, yeah
Oh no, there goes Tokyo
Go go Godzilla, yeah
Rinji news o moshiagemasu!
Rinji news o moshiagemasu!
Godzilla ga ginza hoomen e mukatte imasu!
Daishkyu hinan shite kudasai!
Daishkyu hinan shite kudasai!
Oh no, they say hes got to go
Go go Godzilla, yeah
Oh no, there goes Tokyo
Go go Godzilla, yeah
History shows again and again
How nature points up the folly of men
Godzilla!
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
After all, fishing is *so* primitive. Civilized people *grow* their food, hunter/gatherer economics are for barbarians.
I for one welcome our new Soylent Green overloards.
As opposed to what? Cloning?
Not necessarily. If the net is any distance from the ship, hauling in means hauling the net through the water. Only when the net is adjacent to the boat (beneath the business end of the boom arm, I suppose) is it hauled into the boat. Hauling up out of the water is the dangerous part, I assume that's when the ship capsized. But the ship could conceivably have capsized while hauling the net through the water, given enough jellyfish mass and enough pull from the ship's winch (not likely, but the syntactic ambiguity bugs me to I have to explore the problem).
As you say, rated maximum weights, center of mass tilt, boat flip. The crew should know such things and acted accordingly.
-kgj
Japanese fishers running into problems, again?
"Fuck you, jellyfish!"
---
Cryptozoology Feed @ Feed Distiller
Fuck you Whale, Dolphin, and Jellyfish.
While I may be off base here I do have a suggestion; perhaps we could all cut a deal with the Japanese, give them a new country, preferably NOT in the middle of cyclone central, and far away from the Chinese, we then decimate the island, place all of the prison lifers/deathers on the island giving them only tools to hunt Jellyfish, and leave. We either get rid of the prisoners or the jellyfish and preferably BOTH. What's this "humane" you speak of?
I am totally unsurprised by this development after reading about the 5 species that seem to be trying to take over the earth article at Cracked.com.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
It's not hard to understand how this happens when many of those predators of zooplankton (e.g. small fish) are overfished to supply fish farms with cheap food (e.g. salmon, tuna). Aquaculture is often portrayed as the way of the future, what they don't tell you is that much of it is only enabled by fishing. And such practice is ridiculously inefficient, like feeding cows to lions so that we may eat the lions.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
They appear to do this for sexual reproduction.
I don't know you, but I'd be pretty pissed if someone dragged me in a net while looking around to hook up. Not that jellyfish get blue balls or anything like that, but still sucks.
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
Looks like the ocean is getting back at the planet destroying trawlers.
Mmmmmm, cheddar jalapeno!
Back in the late 1980s, a friend took his shiny new chemistry Ph.D to the then State-run Dairy Research Organisation in New Zealand. His first assigned task was to figure out a way to reduce or eliminate milk in cheese and replace it with water.
A fun fact: It takes something along the lines of 5,000 litres of water to produce 1 litre of milk using New Zealand's current extravagantly wasteful and heavily polluting dairy farming methods and practices.
But water is still relatively cheap, although, having said that, the latest NZ dairy farming boom has seen natural landscapes ploughed under and replaced by heavily irrigated pasture, leading to erosion, run-off pollution, and man-made drought.
However, the cheese made from (mostly) water is of course cheaper than that produced using milk, which is why "more water, less milk!" means bigger profits.
The reason NZ cheese now has the texture of dried earwax and tastes like stale snot is because my friend did his job very well, and is now in a very senior management role at the organisation, which is no longer State-run, and very focused upon the Capitalist ideal of "Everything for me and the rest of you can fuck off and die."
I agree that we dont need to eat animals. I'm vegan, with a family history of farmers, and if I can change my ways, anyone can :).
PETA does not speak for all Vegans, in fact, many vegans like myself strongly disagree with PETA, I dont like their campaigns with women in cages etc, and I dont like their new welfarist message of "oh well, all animals feel pain and are very cute, but eat the GOOD kind of meat". Theres no such thing as "Happy Meat".
Sad to see you get modded 1 insightful while "If they didnt want to be eaten then why would they taste so good. Answer me that." got 3 insightful.
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In the Chesapeake Bay, jellyfish populations are proportional to pollution. Pollution kills the turtles that eat the jellyfish eggs and feeds the jellies. They don't mind the cruddy water.
Anyone interested in some background on these jellyfish in video form can have a look at the (Australian) ABC's catalyst program - http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/2721180.htm
I am not usually the one to yell "Mods on crack!" but I don't really think an 'attention grab' this obvious should be marked funny. Nothing personal...
Odi profanum vulgus et arceo
Well, fair's fair... I doubt he tastes good either, why should we care about him? He just wants to get out his shotgun and start hunting these poor creatures.
Equal treatment for Jellyfish NOW!!! We need naked models to raise awareness of this issue!
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
I've done crazier things than sink a boat for sexual reproduction.
Were some of the jellyfish underage?
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
You're doing it wrong.
Fuck you Dolphin! Fuck you Whale! Fuck you Jellyfish! (stab stab stab)
I am not usually the one to yell "Mods on crack!" but FUCKING QUIT MODDING THIS THREAD UP. Thank you.
I've seen that episode of Secret Saturdays. Someone on board must have had a sonic mind control device that attracted them.