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Marine Ecology: Attack of the Blobs
from Nature News
Last summer, intrepid surfers flocked to Florida's east coast to ride the pounding swells spawned by a string of offshore hurricanes. But they were not prepared for a different kind of hazard washing towards shore--an invasion of stinging moon jellyfish, some of which reached the size of bicycle wheels. The swarms of gelatinous monsters grew so thick that they forced a Florida nuclear power plant to shut down temporarily out of concern that the jellies would clog its water-intake pipes.
Earlier in the year, similar invasions had forced shut downs at power plants in Israel, Scotland and Japan. The gargantuan Nomura's jellyfish (Nemopilema nomurai) found in Japanese waters can weigh up to 200 kilograms and has plagued the region repeatedly in recent years, hampering fishing crews and even causing one boat to capsize. Jellyfish have destroyed stocks at fish farms in Tunisia and Ireland. And in the Mediterranean Sea and elsewhere, officials have built nets to keep out jelly swarms.
The jellyfish blooms seem to bear out warnings from some scientists and conservationists, who argue that humans are knocking marine ecosystems off balance, causing a massive increase in the global population of jellyfish--a catch-all term that covers some 2,000 species of true cnidarian jellyfish, ctenophores (or comb jellies) and other floating creatures called tunicates. But many marine biologists are now questioning the idea that jellyfish have started to overrun the oceans.
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