Invasion of Jellyfish in the Ecosystem
Between massive swarms and habitat invasions, jellyfish are changing ecosystems,
stinging beach goers, and causing millions of dollars’ worth of damage.
stinging beach goers, and causing millions of dollars’ worth of damage.
Jellyfish are increasing in the majority of the world's coastal ecosystems
- In the Gulf of Mexico's densest jellyfish swarms there are more jellyfish than there is water - 100 jellyfish can occupy each cubic meter of water.
- Stinging gelatinous creatures cause various reactions in people, ranging from no noticeable sensation to rashes, and some cases, death.
- Australia's beaches host many types of toxic gelatinous animals, including the
Portuguese man-of-war and the world's most venomous animal, the Chironex
fleckeri, which can kill a person in under three minutes. - In the Bering Sea off Alaska, the population of Chrysaora melanaster has jumped at least 10-fold over the past decade, reaching record numbers last year, reported biologist Richard Brodeur of the National Marine Fisheries Service in Newport, Oregon.
- They damage some power infrastructure, with obvious damage to the fishing industry,
tourism and other. - Black Sea nettle jellyfish also invaded San Diego coast in 2012.
Jellyfish destroying the food chain
“Jellyfish are consuming more or less everything that’s present in the food web,” said Robert Condon, a Virginia Institute of Marine Science and co-author of a jellyfish-impact study published June 7 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “They’re eating a lot of the food web, and turning it into gelatinous biomass. They’re essentially stealing a lot of the energy, then putting it away.”
-When jellies are around, they’re shunting this energy into a form that is just not very usable. They’re just shunting energy away from the rest of he food web
-“Jellyfish are voracious predators on the bottom of the food chain,” Graham says. They feed “on the plankton that we’d prefer to go to fish in the Gulf of Mexico. But instead, jellyfish are very good at taking advantage of that food.”
-When jellies are around, they’re shunting this energy into a form that is just not very usable. They’re just shunting energy away from the rest of he food web
-“Jellyfish are voracious predators on the bottom of the food chain,” Graham says. They feed “on the plankton that we’d prefer to go to fish in the Gulf of Mexico. But instead, jellyfish are very good at taking advantage of that food.”
Damage of Fishing net Power Plant clogged with jellyfish
- Jellyfish swarms have damaged fisheries, fish farms, seabed mining operations,
desalination plants and large ships, and they have disabled nuclear power
plants by clogging intake pipes.
Jellyfish Around the World
- 1/3 of the total weight of all life in Monterey Bay is from gelatinous animals.
- 3 minutes after a person stung by box jellyfish-most venomous around the world, he or she may be dead.
- 8 years after fats-reproducing comb jellies invaded the Black Sea, they dominated it.
- by 1990, total biomass of the Black Sea's comb jellies, which had been introduced into the Black Sea in 1982, totaled about 900 million tons--more than ten times the weight of the total annual fish catch from all of the world's oceans.
- 20 to 40 people are killed annually from box jellyfish stings in the Philippines alone.
- An average of one person is killed annually by box jellyfish in Australia.
- 400 plus vast marine DEAD ZONES, which all life can't survive but jellyfish can, covered a total area of almost 100,000 square miles around the world. The number of global DEAD ZONES has doubled about every 10 years since the 1960s. During the summer of 2008, the Gulf of Mexico's DEAD ZONE covered about 8,000 square miles, about the size of Massachusetts.
- 1,000 plus fist-sized comb jellies filled each cubic of meter of water in Black Sea jelly blooms.
- 38,600 square miles of the North Atlantic have been periodically covered by blooms of salps, a jellyfish-like creature.
- 45,000 eggs may be released daily by a single sea nettle in the Chesapeake Bay.
- 150 million people are annually exposed to jellyfish around the world.
- About 500,000 people are annually stung by jellyfish in the Chesapeake Bay.
- About 200,000 people are annually stung by jellyfish in Florida.
- About 10,000 people are annually stung in Australia by the dreaded Portuguese man-of-war, many other species of gelatinous creatures also cause large numbers of stings in Australia.
- $350 million in losses to the Black Sea's fishing and tourism industries resulted from the invasion of comb jellies into the Black Sea.
- Losses from the ongoing comb jelly invasion of the Caspian Sea are expected to exceed those from the Black Sea invasion.
- 500 million Nomura jellyfish (which may each weigh up to 450 pounds and sport a bell up to seven feet in diameter), floated in the Sea of Japan daily recent summer Nomurai blooms.
- A total of at least $20 million resulting losses to fishermen in just one Japanese prefecture have.
Asia- Japan
- Increasing numbers of the jellyfish have been recorded in the Sea of Japan since 2002, with experts suggesting the population explosion in recent years is due to the 1.89 degree Fahrenheit increase in temperature in waters off China making conditions more favorable for breeding.
- In 2007, there were 15,500 reports of damage to fishing equipment caused by the creatures. The supersize sea creatures—normally found off the coasts of China and North and South Korea—occasionally drift east into the Sea of Japan to feed on tiny organisms called plankton. But now one hundred times the usual number of jellyfish are invading Japanese waters. And local fishermen are feeling as if they are under siege.
- The fishermen's nets are getting weighted down, or even broken, by hundreds of jellyfish. The jellies crush, slime, and poison valuable fish in the nets, such as the tuna and salmon that the fishermen rely on to make a living.
- Four nuclear reactors in Japan, Israel and Scotland were forced to shutdown due
to infiltration of enormous swarms of jellyfish, which clogged the plant's
cooling system.
-The reactors were closed as precautionary measure due to high volumes of jellyfish fouling the cooling water screens, an EDF spokesman said.