Scientists Says Jellyfish Are Taking Over the Oceans 274
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.""
On the plus side (Score:5, Informative)
Many endangered species, such as sea turtles, eat jellyfish.
Re:On the plus side (Score:5, Informative)
That's very interesting. However, there is also a big problem with people poaching their eggs [seaturtles.org].
Re:On the plus side (Score:4, Informative)
Wild salmon, too
Don't worry, we are making them extinct in about 10 years. /s
Please be patient!
Chironex fleckeri (Score:4, Informative)
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.
I have noticed this locally in Canada (Score:2, Informative)
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.
Re:On the plus side (Score:4, Informative)
Jellyfish do have a very minimalistic nervous system. It's simple, but it's there. Visible in some species as a ring around the bell, near the edge. Just enough to handle the only two things a jellyfish needs to do: Swim straight (It makes sure the bell contracts in sync, not one side before the other) and handle the task of transferring food from tentacles to stomach.
Re:On the plus side (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Fish do possess UV cones (as do reptiles and birds) -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_in_fishes#Ultraviolet [wikipedia.org]. For example, cyprinids, a large family of freshwater fish, have a short-wave sensitivity as short as 277 nm with a peak sensitivity for the short-wave cones of 358 nm (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8782369). Human short-wave cones have a peak at 420 nm and turtle UV cones are at 372 (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11925010).
Blue bottle sting (Score:5, Informative)
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".