Slashdot Mirror
Scientists Says Jellyfish Are Taking Over the Oceans
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Karla Cripps reports at CNN that a combination of overfishing, warming water, low oxygen and pollution are creating perfect conditions for jellyfish to multiply. "The jellyfish seem to be the ones that are flourishing in this while everything else is suffering," says Australian jellyfish researcher Lisa-ann Gershwin. In 2000, a bloom of sea tomato jellyfish in Australia was so enormous — it stretched for more than 1,000 miles from north to south — that it was even visible from space. While most blooms are not quite that big, Gershwin's survey of research on jellyfish from the last few decades indicate that populations are most likely on the rise, and that this boom is taking place in an ocean that is faced with overfishing, acid rain, nutrient pollution from fertilizers and climate change, among other problems. This past summer, southern Europe experienced one of its worst jellyfish infestations ever. Experts there have been reporting a steady increase in the number of jellyfish in the Mediterranean Sea for years. With more than 2,000 species of jellyfish swimming through the world's waters, most stings are completely harmless, some will leave you in excruciating pain, then there are the killers. There are several species of big box jellyfish that have caused many deaths — these include chironex fleckeri in Australia, known as the "most lethal jellyfish in the world whose sting can kill in three minutes. "Just the lightest brush — you don't even feel it — and then, whammo, you're in more pain than you ever could have imagined, and you are struggling to breathe and you can't move your limbs and you can't stop vomiting and your blood pressure just keeps going up and up," says Gershwin. "It is really surprising how many places they occur around the world — places you would never expect: Hawaii, Caribbean, Florida, Wales, New Caledonia, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, India ... as well as Australia.""
Time to dust off that recipe for sesame jelly fish with chili sauce.
The biggest thing we can do to help turtles is to install UV lights on commercial fishing nets to significantly reduce the bycatch rate, turtles can see into the UV spectrum but fish cannot so there is no impact on the fishermen other than a fairly minimal cost for waterproof led housings.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
The problem is that it takes whole ecosystems to successfully fend off encroaching jellyfish, which is why they're on the rise--the ecosystems are collapsing.
There are a few creatures that eat jellyfish, but they eat EVERYTHING. Once the ecosystem starts to crumble, jellyfish feed into the loop by eating larvae and fry and eggs and anything available. They're good in anoxic environments, they're not affected by acidification (since they have no hard parts that are vulnerable; the only hard part they have isn't impacted), and they provide low nutritional value back to the ocean despite their intake.
It's a bit of a miracle that the oceans ever moved past the jellyfish stage at all. They're very old, really adaptable, and very, very good at surviving.
I read what is REALLY helping them spread are all those floating bits of plastic out there.
Jellyfish spores need something to cling-to to survive.
That used to be very hard in the ocean because it's all water.
But today, thanks to plastic bits floating everywhere in the ocean, this is no longer a problem.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
I've seen Google Maps. My car is "visible from space."
we can farm turtles through aquaculture techniques and mitigate directed fishing pressure on sea turtles and wild eggs. this farm has been operating for over 40 years, and can complete the life cycle from hatch to reproductive recruitment.
"We must plant the sea and herd its animals using the sea as farmers instead of hunters. That is what civilization is all about - farming replacing hunting." - Jacques Yves Cousteau
I wrote a summary of research paper 10 years ago for a course I was taking. That paper described what happened in the Black Sea after top level predators were removed. As I remember, the removal of the top level predators made the entire ecosystem unstable. Overfishing of smaller fish opened up a niche for other species like jellyfish, which then displaced for a time the opportunities for the populations of the small fish to recover.
In essence, this is what is happening worldwide. We are killing off the sharks via the shark fin industry, and sharks are the top level predator in the ocean. We are also overfishing smaller species. This seems to be opening up niches for jellyfish, which may displace the fish that we normally eat. This experiment has already been carried out in the Black Sea, and the results are not good.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
No, places I would never expect would be Kansas, Siberia and the middle of the Sahara. If cable television has taught me anything, it's that the sea is out to kill me. If I can smell saltwater in the air, I'm expecting some explosion of deadliness.
who says they have to be marine only? bioinvasive, freshwater jellies have been found:
Hamilton County
Erie County, Ohio
Trenton, Ontario
Hoosier county (aka Laporte), Indiana
Lobster used to be prisoner food, until someone got the bright idea to use the newly available railroad to sell canned lobster to inland dwellers who didn't know better and considered all seafood a delicacy.
Foie gras used to simply be a kosher source of cooking fat (since lard isn't kosher). It wasn't until the French gourmands elevated it to a delicacy.
Build ships which vaccuum up jellyfish, puree them, and use the proteins as feed stock for 3D printing of food. The stingers can get filtered out, or just left into the low-grade product used in prisons and orphanages.
I'm sure that Red Lobster can come up with some clever marketing term for this stuff. After the actual lobsters, cod, and king crabs die off they'll have plenty of motivation.
Interesting Geek-culture historical note: In the 1973 movie "Soylent Green," the titular product is supposed to be made from krill scooped from the oceans. The underlying horror of the movie isn't that the crackers are made of dead people, but that the ocean ecosystem has collapsed due to pollution. The movie also has Edward G. Robinson bitching about how the greenhouse effect has made it hot and damp year-round.
Is this close enough?
"One kind of jellyfish, which might be termed the zombie jelly, is quite literally immortal. When Turritopsis dohrnii “dies” it begins to disintegrate, which is pretty much what you expect from a corpse. But then something strange happens. A number of cells escape the rotting body. These cells somehow find each other, and reaggregate to form a polyp. All of this happens within five days of the jellyfish’s “death,” and weirdly, it’s the norm for the species."
or this?
"One of the fastest breeders of all is Mnemiopsis. Biologists characterize it as a “self-fertilizing simultaneous hermaphrodite,” which means that it doesn’t need a partner to reproduce, nor does it need to switch from one sex to the other, but can be both sexes at once. It begins laying eggs when just thirteen days old, and is soon laying 10,000 per day. Even cutting these prolific breeders into pieces doesn’t slow them down. If quartered, the bits will regenerate and resume normal life as whole adults in two to three days."
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/sep/26/jellyfish-theyre-taking-over/?page=2
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure