Stinging Tentacles Offer Hint of Oceans’ Decline
Dani Cardona/Reuters
A jellyfish in the Mediterranean off the coast of the Spanish island of Mallorca.
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
Published: August 3, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/science/earth/03jellyfish.html?_r=1&hp=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=all
BARCELONA, Spain — Blue patrol boats crisscross the swimming areas of beaches here with their huge nets skimming the water’s surface. The yellow flags that urge caution and the red flags that prohibit swimming because of risky currents are sometimes topped now with blue ones warning of a new danger: swarms of jellyfish.
In a period of hours during a day a couple of weeks ago, 300 people on Barcelona’s bustling beaches were treated for stings, and 11 were taken to hospitals.
From Spain to New York, to Australia, Japan and Hawaii, hey!!! thats my line on the housing bubble!!! and everyone's complaint regarding the credit crisis. Frickin plagiarizer!!! jellyfish are becoming more numerous and more widespread, and they are showing up in places where they have rarely been seen before, scientists say. The faceless marauders are stinging children blithely bathing on summer vacations, forcing beaches to close and clogging fishing nets.
But while jellyfish invasions are a nuisance to tourists and a hardship to fishermen, for scientists they are a source of more profound alarm, a signal of the declining health of the world’s oceans. Designing stalwarts will come up with nets that catch only jellyfish and allow all other sea-creatures to slip thru them. This is the firefighting that I think we will indulge in, and then pat ourselves on our backs. To quote a current example that millions are witnessing without the slightest clue that they are doing so - the Chinese factory shutdowns. Show blue, smog free skies to a numb, slumbering population laying on their couches, glued to their TV sets and lapping up the buy-more ads; whew!!! Hoping everything will set itself right while unknowingly existing in denial, instead of making some painful choices. The choices not taken will come back to haunt us in ways we dont like. That is a Bell Curve of population which shall shortly be covered. Going to the 'root of the problem' is not in our societal mindset. We cannot see beyond our noses. It is not our fault, it is our very nature; the way we have evolved so to say. If we could see beyond our noses, we may not have survived our hunter gatherer days. Not many philosophers made it through that evolutionary bottleneck. Often in life, one's biggest strength ironically turns into one's biggest handicap. Like the peacock trying to get away from its predator and being forced to carry along its grand plumage. Life does suck!!!
“These jellyfish near shore are a message the sea is sending us saying, ‘Look how badly you are treating me,’ ” said Dr. Josep-María Gili, a leading jellyfish expert, who has studied them at the Institute of Marine Sciences of the Spanish National Research Council in Barcelona for more than 20 years.
The explosion of jellyfish populations, scientists say, reflects a combination of severe overfishing of natural predators, like tuna, sharks and swordfish; rising sea temperatures caused in part by global warming; and pollution that has depleted oxygen levels in coastal shallows. There was the recent event of dead fish floating in Mir Alam Tank in Hyderabad, cause unknown, but probably due to oxygen depletion in the lake waters they said. This was a local event and has absolutely nothing to do with global warming, but, for those unaware about ocean anoxia that could be an example close to home. Nutrition buildup leads to algal bloom. Algal dead bodies' decomposition-process sucks up and eventually depletes oxygen and leads to build-up of toxic gases in the lower levels of the water. Oxygen breathing organisms kick the bucket en masse. It has happened before in the oceans in the geological past.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anoxia
These problems are pronounced in the Mediterranean, a sea bounded by more than a dozen countries that rely on it for business and pleasure. Left unchecked in the Mediterranean and elsewhere, these problems could make the swarms of jellyfish menacing coastlines a grim vision of seas to come.
“The problem on the beach is a social problem,” said Dr. Gili, who talks with admiration of the “beauty” of the globular jellyfish. “We need to take care of it for our tourism industry. But the big problem is not on the beach. It’s what’s happening in the seas.”
Jellyfish, relatives of the sea anemone and coral that for the most part are relatively harmless, in fact are the cockroaches of the open waters, the ultimate maritime survivors who thrive in damaged environments, and that is what they are doing. I have heard it said, that, if anything survives a nuclear holocaust, it is going to be the cockroach. One needs to give that statement zero credence, but, just mentioning it.
Within the past year, there have been beach closings because of jellyfish swarms on the Côte d’Azur in France, the Great Barrier Reef of Australia, and at Waikiki and Virginia Beach in the United States. Where are the goddarn net designers???
In Australia, more than 30,000 people were treated for stings last year, double the number in 2005. An inverse doubling of the stock market would concern us or scare the freakin daylights out of us, but a doubling of jellyfish stings to some others.....nah, couldnt care less. As a species, we have survived by recognizing immediate dangers to our group as distinct from other groups. If we had gone to help Johnny over on the other side of the mountain, we wouldnt have returned from the mission and The rare but deadly Irukandji jellyfish is expanding its range in Australia’s warming waters, marine scientists say.
While no good global database exists on jellyfish populations, the increasing reports from around the world have convinced scientists that the trend is real, serious and climate-related, although they caution that jellyfish populations in any one place undergo year-to-year variation. these are the riders in science that will always be there. There is never certainty in biological phenomenon until 2 minutes before noon. At noon there is little we can do.
“Human-caused stresses, including global warming and overfishing, are encouraging jellyfish surpluses in many tourist destinations and productive fisheries,” according to the National Science Foundation, which is issuing a report on the phenomenon this fall and lists as problem areas Australia, the Gulf of Mexico, Hawaii, the Black Sea, Namibia, Britain, the Mediterranean, the Sea of Japan and the Yangtze estuary. Yeah, alright, I heard you. But i need more proof.
In Barcelona, one of Spain’s most vibrant tourist destinations, city officials and the Catalan Water Agency have started fighting back, trying desperately to ensure that it is safe for swimmers to go back in the water. I told you!!! Wait and watch - anyone willing to place a bet that some pharma company, somewhere, is burning the midnight oil, developing an antidote for jellyfish stings!!!
Each morning, with the help of Dr. Gili’s team, boats monitor offshore jellyfish swarms, winds and currents to see if beaches are threatened and if closings are needed. They also check if jellyfish collection in the waters near the beaches is needed. Nearly 100 boats stand ready to help in an emergency, said Xavier Duran of the water agency. Wow!!! what a boost to our economy!!! Increase In Boat Demand Stretches Boat Manufacturers: Stock Values Rise - Boosts in employment we could do with, given Spain's real estate & banking woes.The constant squeal of Dr. Gili’s cellphone reflected his de facto role as Spain’s jellyfish control and command center. Calls came from all over.
Officials in Santander and the Basque country were concerned about frequent sightings this year on the Atlantic coast of the Portuguese man-of-war, a sometimes lethal warm-water species not previously seen regularly in those regions.
Farther south, a fishing boat from the Murcia region called to report an off-shore swarm of Pelagia noctiluca — an iridescent purplish jellyfish that issues a nasty sting — more than a mile long. and we get nightmares about snakes with a sting of a couple of inches in length :) A chef, presumably trying to find some advantage in the declining oceans, wanted to know if the local species were safe to eat if cooked. If life deals you lemons, make, and drink, lemonade. Much is unknown about the jellyfish, and Dr. Gili was unsure. Dr. Gili will get back to you, Mr. Curious Chef.
In previous decades there were jellyfish problems for only a couple of days every few years; now the threat of jellyfish is a daily headache for local officials and is featured on the evening news. As if we were short of fodder for the idiot-box. “In the past few years the dynamic has changed completely — the temperature is a little warmer,” Dr. Gili said.
Though the stuff of horror B- movies, jellyfish are hardly aggressors. They float haplessly with the currents. They discharge their venom automatically could pretty much be describing the harmless homo sapiens (home colossus) !!! when they bump into something warm — a human body, for example — from poison-containing stingers on mantles, arms or long, threadlike tendrils, which can grow to be yards long.
Some, like the Portuguese man-of-war or the giant box jellyfish, can be deadly on contact. Pelagia noctiluca, common in the Mediterranean, delivers a painful sting producing a wound that lasts weeks, months or years, depending on the person and the amount of contact.
In the Mediterranean, overfishing of both large and small fish has left jellyfish with little competition for plankton, their food, and fewer predators. Unlike in Asia, where some jellyfish are eaten by people, here they have no economic or epicurean value.
The warmer seas and drier climate caused by global warming work to the jellyfish’s advantage, since nearly all jellyfish breed better and faster in warmer waters, according to Dr. Jennifer Purcell, a jellyfish expert at the Shannon Point Marine Center of Western Washington University.
Global warming has also reduced rainfall in temperate zones, researchers say, allowing the jellyfish to better approach the beaches. Rain runoff from land would normally slightly decrease the salinity of coastal waters, “creating a natural barrier that keeps the jellies from the coast,” Dr. Gili said.
Then there is pollution, which reduces oxygen levels and visibility in coastal waters. While other fish die in or avoid waters with low oxygen levels, many jellyfish can thrive in them. And while most fish have to see to catch their food, jellyfish, which filter food passively from the water, can dine in total darkness, according to Dr. Purcell’s research.
Residents in Barcelona have forged a prickly coexistence with their new neighbors.
Last month, Mirela Gómez, 8, ran out of the water crying with her first jellyfish sting, clutching a leg that had suddenly become painful and itchy. Micro level system interplay? Her grandparents rushed her to a nearby Red Cross stand. “I’m a little afraid to go back in the water,” she said, displaying a row of angry red welts on her shin.
Francisco Antonio Padrós, a 77-year-old fisherman, swore mightily as he unloaded his catch one morning last weekend, pulling off dozens of jellyfish clinging to his nets and tossing them onto a dock. Removing a few shrimp, he said his nets were often “filled with more jellyfish than fish.” Hey!! Relax Padros, Mr Curious Chef may yet come up with an innovative, seminal, path-breaking recipe, and that will be the end of your woes.
By the end of the exercise his calloused hands were bright red and swollen to twice their normal size. “Right now I can’t tell if I have hands or not — they hurt, they’re numb, they itch,” he said.
Dr. Santiago Nogué, head of the toxicology unit at the largest hospital here, said that although 90 percent of stings healed in a week or two, many people’s still hurt and itched for months. He said he was now seeing 20 patients a year whose symptoms did not respond to any treatment at all, sometimes requiring surgery to remove the affected area. arent we good at fire-fighting!!!
The sea, however, has long been central to life in Barcelona, and that is unlikely to change. Recently when the beaches were closed, children on a breakwater collected jellyfish in a bucket. The next day, Antonio López, a diver, emerged from the water. “There are more every year — we saw hundreds offshore today,” he said. “You just have to learn how to handle the stings.” Alright!!! there is hope!!!
More Articles in Science »
A jellyfish in the Mediterranean off the coast of the Spanish island of Mallorca.
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
Published: August 3, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/science/earth/03jellyfish.html?_r=1&hp=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=all
BARCELONA, Spain — Blue patrol boats crisscross the swimming areas of beaches here with their huge nets skimming the water’s surface. The yellow flags that urge caution and the red flags that prohibit swimming because of risky currents are sometimes topped now with blue ones warning of a new danger: swarms of jellyfish.
In a period of hours during a day a couple of weeks ago, 300 people on Barcelona’s bustling beaches were treated for stings, and 11 were taken to hospitals.
From Spain to New York, to Australia, Japan and Hawaii, hey!!! thats my line on the housing bubble!!! and everyone's complaint regarding the credit crisis. Frickin plagiarizer!!! jellyfish are becoming more numerous and more widespread, and they are showing up in places where they have rarely been seen before, scientists say. The faceless marauders are stinging children blithely bathing on summer vacations, forcing beaches to close and clogging fishing nets.
But while jellyfish invasions are a nuisance to tourists and a hardship to fishermen, for scientists they are a source of more profound alarm, a signal of the declining health of the world’s oceans. Designing stalwarts will come up with nets that catch only jellyfish and allow all other sea-creatures to slip thru them. This is the firefighting that I think we will indulge in, and then pat ourselves on our backs. To quote a current example that millions are witnessing without the slightest clue that they are doing so - the Chinese factory shutdowns. Show blue, smog free skies to a numb, slumbering population laying on their couches, glued to their TV sets and lapping up the buy-more ads; whew!!! Hoping everything will set itself right while unknowingly existing in denial, instead of making some painful choices. The choices not taken will come back to haunt us in ways we dont like. That is a Bell Curve of population which shall shortly be covered. Going to the 'root of the problem' is not in our societal mindset. We cannot see beyond our noses. It is not our fault, it is our very nature; the way we have evolved so to say. If we could see beyond our noses, we may not have survived our hunter gatherer days. Not many philosophers made it through that evolutionary bottleneck. Often in life, one's biggest strength ironically turns into one's biggest handicap. Like the peacock trying to get away from its predator and being forced to carry along its grand plumage. Life does suck!!!
“These jellyfish near shore are a message the sea is sending us saying, ‘Look how badly you are treating me,’ ” said Dr. Josep-María Gili, a leading jellyfish expert, who has studied them at the Institute of Marine Sciences of the Spanish National Research Council in Barcelona for more than 20 years.
The explosion of jellyfish populations, scientists say, reflects a combination of severe overfishing of natural predators, like tuna, sharks and swordfish; rising sea temperatures caused in part by global warming; and pollution that has depleted oxygen levels in coastal shallows. There was the recent event of dead fish floating in Mir Alam Tank in Hyderabad, cause unknown, but probably due to oxygen depletion in the lake waters they said. This was a local event and has absolutely nothing to do with global warming, but, for those unaware about ocean anoxia that could be an example close to home. Nutrition buildup leads to algal bloom. Algal dead bodies' decomposition-process sucks up and eventually depletes oxygen and leads to build-up of toxic gases in the lower levels of the water. Oxygen breathing organisms kick the bucket en masse. It has happened before in the oceans in the geological past.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anoxia
These problems are pronounced in the Mediterranean, a sea bounded by more than a dozen countries that rely on it for business and pleasure. Left unchecked in the Mediterranean and elsewhere, these problems could make the swarms of jellyfish menacing coastlines a grim vision of seas to come.
“The problem on the beach is a social problem,” said Dr. Gili, who talks with admiration of the “beauty” of the globular jellyfish. “We need to take care of it for our tourism industry. But the big problem is not on the beach. It’s what’s happening in the seas.”
Jellyfish, relatives of the sea anemone and coral that for the most part are relatively harmless, in fact are the cockroaches of the open waters, the ultimate maritime survivors who thrive in damaged environments, and that is what they are doing. I have heard it said, that, if anything survives a nuclear holocaust, it is going to be the cockroach. One needs to give that statement zero credence, but, just mentioning it.
Within the past year, there have been beach closings because of jellyfish swarms on the Côte d’Azur in France, the Great Barrier Reef of Australia, and at Waikiki and Virginia Beach in the United States. Where are the goddarn net designers???
In Australia, more than 30,000 people were treated for stings last year, double the number in 2005. An inverse doubling of the stock market would concern us or scare the freakin daylights out of us, but a doubling of jellyfish stings to some others.....nah, couldnt care less. As a species, we have survived by recognizing immediate dangers to our group as distinct from other groups. If we had gone to help Johnny over on the other side of the mountain, we wouldnt have returned from the mission and The rare but deadly Irukandji jellyfish is expanding its range in Australia’s warming waters, marine scientists say.
While no good global database exists on jellyfish populations, the increasing reports from around the world have convinced scientists that the trend is real, serious and climate-related, although they caution that jellyfish populations in any one place undergo year-to-year variation. these are the riders in science that will always be there. There is never certainty in biological phenomenon until 2 minutes before noon. At noon there is little we can do.
“Human-caused stresses, including global warming and overfishing, are encouraging jellyfish surpluses in many tourist destinations and productive fisheries,” according to the National Science Foundation, which is issuing a report on the phenomenon this fall and lists as problem areas Australia, the Gulf of Mexico, Hawaii, the Black Sea, Namibia, Britain, the Mediterranean, the Sea of Japan and the Yangtze estuary. Yeah, alright, I heard you. But i need more proof.
In Barcelona, one of Spain’s most vibrant tourist destinations, city officials and the Catalan Water Agency have started fighting back, trying desperately to ensure that it is safe for swimmers to go back in the water. I told you!!! Wait and watch - anyone willing to place a bet that some pharma company, somewhere, is burning the midnight oil, developing an antidote for jellyfish stings!!!
Each morning, with the help of Dr. Gili’s team, boats monitor offshore jellyfish swarms, winds and currents to see if beaches are threatened and if closings are needed. They also check if jellyfish collection in the waters near the beaches is needed. Nearly 100 boats stand ready to help in an emergency, said Xavier Duran of the water agency. Wow!!! what a boost to our economy!!! Increase In Boat Demand Stretches Boat Manufacturers: Stock Values Rise - Boosts in employment we could do with, given Spain's real estate & banking woes.The constant squeal of Dr. Gili’s cellphone reflected his de facto role as Spain’s jellyfish control and command center. Calls came from all over.
Officials in Santander and the Basque country were concerned about frequent sightings this year on the Atlantic coast of the Portuguese man-of-war, a sometimes lethal warm-water species not previously seen regularly in those regions.
Farther south, a fishing boat from the Murcia region called to report an off-shore swarm of Pelagia noctiluca — an iridescent purplish jellyfish that issues a nasty sting — more than a mile long. and we get nightmares about snakes with a sting of a couple of inches in length :) A chef, presumably trying to find some advantage in the declining oceans, wanted to know if the local species were safe to eat if cooked. If life deals you lemons, make, and drink, lemonade. Much is unknown about the jellyfish, and Dr. Gili was unsure. Dr. Gili will get back to you, Mr. Curious Chef.
In previous decades there were jellyfish problems for only a couple of days every few years; now the threat of jellyfish is a daily headache for local officials and is featured on the evening news. As if we were short of fodder for the idiot-box. “In the past few years the dynamic has changed completely — the temperature is a little warmer,” Dr. Gili said.
Though the stuff of horror B- movies, jellyfish are hardly aggressors. They float haplessly with the currents. They discharge their venom automatically could pretty much be describing the harmless homo sapiens (home colossus) !!! when they bump into something warm — a human body, for example — from poison-containing stingers on mantles, arms or long, threadlike tendrils, which can grow to be yards long.
Some, like the Portuguese man-of-war or the giant box jellyfish, can be deadly on contact. Pelagia noctiluca, common in the Mediterranean, delivers a painful sting producing a wound that lasts weeks, months or years, depending on the person and the amount of contact.
In the Mediterranean, overfishing of both large and small fish has left jellyfish with little competition for plankton, their food, and fewer predators. Unlike in Asia, where some jellyfish are eaten by people, here they have no economic or epicurean value.
The warmer seas and drier climate caused by global warming work to the jellyfish’s advantage, since nearly all jellyfish breed better and faster in warmer waters, according to Dr. Jennifer Purcell, a jellyfish expert at the Shannon Point Marine Center of Western Washington University.
Global warming has also reduced rainfall in temperate zones, researchers say, allowing the jellyfish to better approach the beaches. Rain runoff from land would normally slightly decrease the salinity of coastal waters, “creating a natural barrier that keeps the jellies from the coast,” Dr. Gili said.
Then there is pollution, which reduces oxygen levels and visibility in coastal waters. While other fish die in or avoid waters with low oxygen levels, many jellyfish can thrive in them. And while most fish have to see to catch their food, jellyfish, which filter food passively from the water, can dine in total darkness, according to Dr. Purcell’s research.
Residents in Barcelona have forged a prickly coexistence with their new neighbors.
Last month, Mirela Gómez, 8, ran out of the water crying with her first jellyfish sting, clutching a leg that had suddenly become painful and itchy. Micro level system interplay? Her grandparents rushed her to a nearby Red Cross stand. “I’m a little afraid to go back in the water,” she said, displaying a row of angry red welts on her shin.
Francisco Antonio Padrós, a 77-year-old fisherman, swore mightily as he unloaded his catch one morning last weekend, pulling off dozens of jellyfish clinging to his nets and tossing them onto a dock. Removing a few shrimp, he said his nets were often “filled with more jellyfish than fish.” Hey!! Relax Padros, Mr Curious Chef may yet come up with an innovative, seminal, path-breaking recipe, and that will be the end of your woes.
By the end of the exercise his calloused hands were bright red and swollen to twice their normal size. “Right now I can’t tell if I have hands or not — they hurt, they’re numb, they itch,” he said.
Dr. Santiago Nogué, head of the toxicology unit at the largest hospital here, said that although 90 percent of stings healed in a week or two, many people’s still hurt and itched for months. He said he was now seeing 20 patients a year whose symptoms did not respond to any treatment at all, sometimes requiring surgery to remove the affected area. arent we good at fire-fighting!!!
The sea, however, has long been central to life in Barcelona, and that is unlikely to change. Recently when the beaches were closed, children on a breakwater collected jellyfish in a bucket. The next day, Antonio López, a diver, emerged from the water. “There are more every year — we saw hundreds offshore today,” he said. “You just have to learn how to handle the stings.” Alright!!! there is hope!!!
More Articles in Science »
