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A silent, blobbing menace swarms the seas, thanks to overfishing, climate change and even "dead zones". Jellyfish seem set to regain their dominance of the oceans in future—and that could be bad news for humans.
The two-meter long jellyfish known as Nomura have begun swarming year after year off the coast of Japan, 500 million or more of them fouling fishing nets thanks to agricultural runoff from China spurring plankton blooms. With fewer fish, the Nomura giants can dominate.
In fact, jellyfish are quite good at proliferating, even when circumstances are less than favorable. Just eight years after comb jellies first entered the Black Sea, they became the most numerous animal. And various jellyfish are among the only animals that can survive in the more than 400 ocean areas devoid of oxygen around the world—more commonly known as dead zones.
Jellyfish mess with humans, too—from the deadly stings of box jellies to clogging water-intake pipes at nuclear power plants. This year the as much as 200-kilogram Nomuras actually capsized a 10-ton fishing trawler off the coast of Japan.
Ultimately, our only hope may be to acquire a taste for the gelatinous creatures. Jellyfish burger, anyone?
—David Biello
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Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnyone for a peanut butter & jellyfish sandwich?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWay to go jh443.As for the oxygen problem,just use the fish tank solution,just pump air in to the affected waters DUH.To my knowleage no one is doing this anywhere on Earth???With dead zones all over the place why isn't this being done???I guess a simple solution for all these people with PhD's isn't possible.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJellyfish. Heard anything from algore? He invented the damn things.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou obviously have a good grasp of qualitative analysis but no clue as to quantitative analysis (the numbers) or of costing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@jack.123 This is actually being done in the Swan River, in Perth Australia to help increase the rivers health, just google it, or "The Swan River Trust"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is about 10^20 (1 with 20 zeros after it) gallons of water in the ocean. A google of the wattages of aquarium pumps gives roughly 1gallon/hour using 1 watt. So if you assume everything scales nicely (which it won't, because it's harder to pump deeper into the ocean), you need at least 10^20 watts. Another google of current world consumption of energy is about 10^13 watts, Which means trying to do the same to an ocean as an aquarium needs about 10^7 times, or 10million times, the amount of energy the world is currently consuming.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPumping air into aquariums, ponds, lakes or even rivers, is more feasible because there is less water volume.