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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.
Many endangered species, such as sea turtles, eat jellyfish.
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
Slashdot headline 50 years from now:
"Scientists Says Turtles Are Taking Over the Oceans"
(The typo is intentional, because even in 50 years, /. will still lack quality control.)
"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.""
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.
Does anyone know how vulnerable dolphins are to jellyfish stings? They don't have a layer of protective scales like fish, and there is a long-standing mystery regarding dolphin beachings.
Something else for the environment list to get all uppity about. When are they going to realize we live on a dynamic planet!?
What does this even mean? Do you even know?
Capital letter for genus, lower case for species. Like Homo sapiens. Not "Homo Sapiens" or "homo sapiens". The two parts of a species name should also be italicized (i.e. Chironex fleckeri). Although it's a little technical, it's not a hard rule to remember when using species names.
Can't we find a use for them? As soon as capitalism gets to work on them, they'll be goners too.
Let's hear it from greedy fisherman and their right-wing supporters, who think it's humanity's God-given right to rape the oceans and trash the food chain upon which everything depends... human greed will do us in for sure, because it overrides even the survival instinct.
I've seen Google Maps. My car is "visible from space."
Funny enough:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/11/07/10/0234250/millions-of-jellyfish-invade-nuclear-reactors
http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/10/01/2123254/new-threat-to-seaside-nuclear-plants-datacenters-jellyfish
They don't need to blame nuclear energy, they are working in concert with the jellyfish to shut them down.
Next in the nuclear arms race will be some sort of aquatic animal with lasers attached to their heads clean out the jellyfish infestations.
I often go crabbing up the indian arm in Vancouver - during summer the last 3 years i've noticed a ridiculous amount of jellyfish.. you literally cannot look anywhere in the water and not see jellyfish... pulling a crab trap up through the water column sees you cutting through like 100 of them.
Put the territory under some sort of corporate or government control and let the employees in charge of the territory use deadly force to stop the poachers. Works quite well in Africa where their game reserve rangers can put a .308 through you quite legally if they catch you hunting endangered species.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/sep/26/jellyfish-theyre-taking-over/?pagination=false
As long as you don't mind being one of those species. Sure. Guess what: your species depends on its environment to a greater degree than others like cockroaches or jellyfish.
Fugu me.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
explain to be how the plane isn't occupying a space...
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
it's jellyfish all the way up, now.
There's two ways of looking at it.
1) Humanity does not have the moral right to wipe out other species.
2) Humanity damages it's long-term survival chances by reducing biosphere diversity.
Take your pick.
In my country, terawatt globes are reserved for police helicopter chases and warning sailors of hazardous shoals. This is despite the fact that practically every living creature there can kill you in under three minutes. Our primary spoken language is screaming.
http://www.27bslash6.com/halogen.html
Yes, it means shit changes. Species go extinct. Other species move in to fill a niche when condition change. That's how life works.
Preserving the status quo, and attempting to freeze the environment in a particular point in time, is futile and shortsighted.
Right, so we might as well just take every fish that we possibly can out of the ocean. A fishing net that can hold 14 747s is not big enough, we need larger nets so that we can also mistakenly catch whales, sharks, rays, dolphins, turtles, etc. Because that's how life works, being caught in a gigantic net when you're not even being hunted. We should also speed up production on more boats that can catch 3,000 tons of tuna in a single trip, because the ocean can totally sustain a tuna fleet like that. I mean, who cares if the boat catches and kills tons and tons of other species that they just get rid of, those things shouldn't have been swimming near the tuna, right? Who cares if Japan is allotted 6,000 tons of bluefin tuna to catch in a year (they only need that boat to make 2 trips, then they can relax!), but instead they catch between 12,000 and 20,000 tons? That doesn't affect me! I don't give a shit if my grandchildren ever taste tuna! They'll be happy with their peanut butter and jellyfish sandwiches. This doesn't make me angry because I know that Japan isn't alone in these practices, so I can't blame them. Hell, the Pacific bluefin tuna stocks are down 96%, you know what that means? Yeah, baby, we still have 4% left! Go get it! In the recent catch 90% of the fish were juveniles who had never reproduced. You know what that means? Last generation, fuckers! Get it while you can! We need to get that boat that can catch 3,000 tons at once out there to finish off those cocky fuckers, what with their "waaa, I'm the top of the food chain" bullshit.
This is exactly the way the world works - people discover fishing, they discover nets, build boats, and entire villages, cities, and countries survive because of the plentiful fish that the ocean provides. Then we build a fishing fleet bigger than the world has ever seen, take everything we possibly can out of the ocean in order to get the high-dollar stuff we're after, leave nothing for the local communities, and they can all go fuck themselves because this a fucking dynamic planet. I'm right there with you, pal.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
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.
My house is "visible from space": it's right there on Google Maps. This phrase is meaningless, because it's almost entirely a function of weather, the camera being used, and whether something is covered.
The phrase "visible from space" is generally considered short-hand for "visible from space with the naked eye." An unobstructed view is also assumed, because it would be pointless to consider the alternative, and normal vision can also be assumed for similar reasons. The only real variable that matters that isn't often explained is just how high up you are.
It seems that a 1000 mile long mass could qualify if it was wide enough. It's impossible to say just from the length, though, without the width of the mass and the height of the observer.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Why don't they just eat cake?
The Official Site of 1337 Pwnage
What about feeding people indirectly y first feeding the jellyfish to some animal that humans eat? Could jellyfish be made into feed for salmon or other fish farm fish species and if so, what effect would that have on the nutritional contents of the farmed fish?
This was on the radio the other day. Basically the guy sailed a yacht race from Melbourne to Osaka ten years ago and lived on fish and rice the whole way. Now he does it and he's calling it a dead ocean.
I reserve the write to mangle english.
Those particular numbers come from a Pew Environment Group report from January:
http://www.pewenvironment.org/news-room/other-resources/new-scientific-report-shows-pacific-bluefin-tuna-population-down-964-percent-85899441247
Complete with various articles discussing it:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/jan/09/overfishing-pacific-bluefin-tuna
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/10/pacific-bluefin-tuna-overfishing_n_2448967.html
Here's a page designed by someone who misses Geocities that talks about the Atlantic stocks which includes several graphs showing the decline since the 60s and 70s:
http://www.bigmarinefish.com/bluefin.html
I would highly recommend that you watch the documentary End Of The Line. The data that they show and the conclusions that they reach are pretty difficult to argue against. The world and its oceans look like a massive, massive place that we cannot possibly influence. But, as they say in the movie, we are fighting a war against fish, and we are winning. If we keep doing what we're doing then there will in fact come a day when we won't have any more fish to eat. The scary thing is that it looks like that day is coming really soon. Things like the jellyfish swarms should be a red alert alarm that we have a major problem on our hands, but there are always going to be people who look at those concerned with the low levels of fish in the ocean and write those peoples and their opinions off as some sort of environmental fanaticism. Unfortunately, this is reality.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Last year I got stung by a fairly common benign species of jellyfish called a blue bottle in the surf on a hot summer's day swim.
I came up to the surface with the thing about a meter in front of me and immediately tried to escape. The tentacle wrapped around my left arm from my knuckles to the armpit, across the chest and onto the right are and, somehow, on my right left.
The Lifesavers (clubbies) saw the whole thing as I got out of the surf two of them helped me over to the clubhouse and doused me we very hot water. Over the next three hours I had icepacks all over me and a nurse debated whether I would go to hospital as I just hung onto consciousness due to shock. The pain was astounding, my glands were inflated and later it felt like my testicles had been massaged by a hammer. I had welts on my arms for a couple of weeks from the sting. A year later I am still pulling stingers out of my arms which come up as painful little pimple like things that bleed and take about two weeks to heal (I'm looking at three now).
That's "a fairly common benign species of jellyfish".
My ism, it's full of beliefs.