Giant pink jellyfish are turning the Sea of Japan into an "ocean of slime," overwhelming Japanese and Korean fishermen, reports the Wall Street Journal.
The blobs, up to six feet across and 450 pounds, are called echizen kurage, or Nomura's jellyfish. "Blooms" like this had been observed only occasionally before 2002, but now have become an annual event. 500 million immature jellies drifted into the Sea of Japan each day in 2005.
Fish can suffocate in the swarms of jellyfish, or be marred by their slime, and fishing nets can be torn by their weight.
Another recent attack wiped out Northern Ireland's only salmon farm. The culprit there was the mauve stinger, noted for its purplish nighttime glow. A second pack (or "smuck" or "smack") appears to be on its way to Scotland.
Several factors appear to account for the rise of the cnidarian, and they are all man's doing.
Overfishing is slowly ridding the jellyfish of its main competitor, and its main food source, plankton, is nourished by increased pollution, leading to a "jellyfish spiral."And of course global warming is encouraging the dispersion of jellies by warming the waters, as is the case with the mauve stinger, which formerly confined itself to the Mediterranean.
Professor Shinichi Uye, leading jellyfish researcher at Hiroshima University told the Wall Street Journal, "It's like a harmless living thing has been angered...The reason for its anger might lie with human activity."
WHAT CAN YOU DO?
We're smarter than the jellyfish: they have no brain.We can eat them, for instance as ice cream or tofu.
"If the jellyfish are cut into three or more bits, they usually die and get eaten by other sea creatures," claims the Journal.
Attack them with barbed poles.
"Fishermen have also taken a trawl net and added a wire grill like a large potato masher at the trailing end: When the net is pulled through a swarm of jellyfish, they float through and are sliced up." (Wall Street Journal)
