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Imagining the Jellyfish Apocalypse
- golergka 9y agoWhat an awful article on such an interesting theme. Why do journalists so often start the text with some personal anecdote, either about themselves or about a person of interest in the story? I didn't click the link to read about the author or jellyfish researcher; I wanted to read about the damn jellyfish.
- jandrese 9y agoIt's the human interest factor. The idea is that people will pay more attention to a problem if they can put a face on it, otherwise it is too abstract and you lose half of the readers outright.
- skc 9y agoPerhaps we should be working harder at finding an industrial use for these creatures.
- cglace 9y agoI remember reading about an industry that is starting up for fishing/processing jellyfish. https://www.postandcourier.com/food/can-s-c-stomach-a-jellyfish-industry/article_f593610a-e47f-5cb5-bcf4-cb320e37079d.html https://www.postandcourier.com/food/can-s-c-stomach-a-jellyf...
- mrgreenfur 9y agoTheir natural predators are sea turtles, so there's one big upside!
- marcosdumay 9y agoWell, sea turtles have their own predators. Their population won't grow fast just because they have more food available.
- madaxe_again 9y agoYou don’t have to imagine it - you can already see it. I spent a month in Antarctica earlier this year, travelling from East Antarctica around the Ross shelf to the peninsula and beyond - and the ecosystem is seriously sick. Marine biologists on the expedition were almost panicking. Antarctic waters have warmed sufficiently for vast numbers of jellies and salps to multiply - and these guys eat krill and plankton. This is problematic as krill and plankton are fundamental to Antarctic food chains - penguins, seals, whales - all feed on both almost exclusively - and salps and jellies are inedible for these species, meaning that they are literally starving. Adelies, Chinstraps and Gentoos were all seen not moulting yet vomiting bile - this usually only happens during moult while the penguins starve as they can’t enter the water - but now they’re starving no matter what. Kings and Emperors were seen in significant numbers well outside of their usual range, suggesting they’re travelling farther afield to find food. This talks about a particular colony of Adelies having a disastrous season, and they posit krill fishing as a reason - but it likely has more to do with invasive species disrupting the food chain - expect to see papers on the subject some time next year. https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/science-environment-41608722 https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/scienc...
- nonbel 9y agoYour source says: "It was caused by unusually high amounts of ice late in the season, meaning adults had to travel further for food. [...] WWF says a ban on krill fishing in the area would eliminate their competition" Not that I find that any more trustworthy than your post, but it pretty much claims the opposite explanation (you claimed warmer waters lead to more jellies which eat the krill).
- madaxe_again 9y agoThere’s a delay between observed phenomena and the literature being updated - hence I surmised there’ll be papers published on the topic next year.
- nonbel 9y ago
- nradov 9y agoI've been out on boats in Monterey Bay (northeast Pacific Ocean) about once a month for the past 15 years and this year the population of sea nettle Chrysaora fuscescens jellies has been higher than ever. Sometimes they were so thick that it looked like a carpet on the water surface. This past summer I spent a week in western Greece and they had a huge bloom of mauve stinger Pelagia noctiluca jellies. We could barely go in the water. According to the locals they had never seen so many before. Those are just anecdotes and could be caused by random fluctuations, but it does seem like something is really changing.
- madaxe_again 9y agoI’ve seen similar in the gulf of Thailand, the Adriatic and the South China Sea this year - locals all saying it’s totally unprecedented, and that it’s almost all they’re catching.
- jcoffland 9y agoWhat a waste of adjectives not to mention logic or reason. The author should sit down with On writing well and have a good long concentrated read. > ecological collapse will spawn nothing new. No Boschian hellscape of strange and shuddering hybrids will emerge. Environmental disaster is fundamentally uncreative. The only evidence we are provided to support this claim is that due to a lack of fossil records we don't know how many jellyfish existed in ancient seas.
- rblatz 9y agoI was interested in the story, but the writing lost me too.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- pvaldes 9y agoThe article claims that Jellyfish are eyeless. This is false in this case. Irukandji have 24 eyes. Of those, four are bigger with well developped lenses and even a sort of iris, and are known to be able to see enough to navigate around obstacles. They can even rotate those eyes to focus on their target and can see humans swimming also. Cubozoans are ancient creatures, very interesting and much different to other jellyfishes.
- pvaldes 9y ago> Berwald travels to Spain’s Murcia region and takes us to the Mar Menor lagoon, which had become so jellified in 2002 that “you couldn’t drive a boat through the water Well, this is overstatement.
- madaxe_again 9y agoYou ever had to unclog an engine’s water intake after it’s rammed full of jellies? No overstatement.
- pvaldes 9y agoThe real problem with El Mar Menor is not jellyfishes, is artichokes (and too much people). Motor boats in the shallow lagoon damaging the bottom seaweeds should be forbidden directly. They have the entire Mediterranean Sea for sailing. No reason for damaging more the fragile and unique ecosystem in the inner lagoon.
- FrozenVoid 9y agoRelated: https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/03/150313-oceans-marine-life-climate-change-acidification-oxygen-fish/ https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/03/150313-oceans-ma...