This week in jellyfish

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Re: This week in jellyfish

Postby Joe Hillshoist » Thu Apr 29, 2010 11:24 pm

When my brother was about 10 or 12 he had the tentacles from something, box jelly or a man'o'war, wrap around his body on a beach in Fiji.

That was fucking intense - tho he survived. It dropped him like a bag of potatoes and he was writhing, almost seizing, on the ground from the pain. It was one tiny tentacle that was floating loose in the water, and you could see where it wrapped around his chest and arms.

Messed him up a bit I think, for a few days he was scattered, not quite himself.

The welts and stuff looked a bit like the girls leg, but he had less than 1% of the coverage she seems to have.

She must be tough as nails.
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Re: This week in jellyfish

Postby beeline » Fri Apr 30, 2010 9:44 am

Joe Hillshoist wrote:She must be tough as nails.


No doubt huh? When they showed that image on the news yesterday morning, it made my stomach turn, looks like severe chemical burns, which I suppose it is, really.
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Re: This week in jellyfish

Postby Joe Hillshoist » Fri Apr 30, 2010 1:13 pm

Jellyfish are primordial killing machines. That stuff the box jellies have is lethal, and they actually hunt, actively. Imagine being hunted by the most lethal jellyfish on the planet.

Here's a page on Irukandji syndrome from wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irukandji_syndrome

It is caused by sea wasps as well as Irukandji jellyfish, which are tiny versions and not quite as deadly cos they have smaller tentacles and less area to hit you with.

Mind you if you worried about all the things that can kill you you'd never get out of bed let alone set foot in the ocean.

But I dunno what it is about young girls and surviving that sort of stuff. The other year that girl beat off a shark that attacked her in Tassie, and I know a girl who was bitten by one of those seriously deadly coral snakes, on the neck of all places. Not that far from where that girl was stung, in FNQ. Apparently her neck turned black and swelled up but she survived - a bit of a miracle according to her parents and sister. She was 8 - 10 years old when the snake bit her.

I sure hope Rachael Shardlow recovers completely.
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Re: This week in jellyfish

Postby lightningBugout » Fri Apr 30, 2010 4:10 pm

Is anyone aware of any sort of milieu that worships jellyfish? I can't seem to find reference to any and am wondering if our lack of reverence is what's causing all them earthquakes and the like....
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Re: This week in jellyfish

Postby kristinerosemary » Thu Jul 22, 2010 4:50 pm

The zombie apocalypse now features zombie jellyfish too.


http://gawker.com/5593996/zombie-jellyf ... 150-people
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Re: This week in jellyfish

Postby matrixdutch » Wed Aug 11, 2010 6:54 pm

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap_travel/20100 ... invasion_4

Flotilla of stinging jellyfish hit Spanish beaches
By DANIEL WOOLLS, Associated Press Writer Daniel Woolls, Associated Press Writer Wed Aug 11, 3:46 pm ET

MADRID – A vast flotilla of small, virtually undetectable jellyfish have stung hundreds of people on Spanish beaches this week — a swimmer's nightmare that biologists say will become increasingly common due to climate change and overfishing.

The blobs attacked three areas near the eastern city of Elche along a famed stretch of white sand beaches known as the Costa Blanca. On Tuesday alone, 380 people were stung, compared to the usual four or five swimmers a day, said Juan Carlos Castellanos of the Elche city tourism department.


The was no sign of the jellyfish on Wednesday, but since Sunday at least 700 people have been stung.

"In the five or six years I have been in this job, I have never seen anything like this," Castellanos said.

The beaches were never closed but officials put up warning signs and stationed lookout boats offshore.

The tourism official blamed strong currents for sweeping the jellyfish onto the beaches and then calm seas for letting them hang around for three days. Particularly warm waters — which jellyfish like — also helped boost their numbers during Spain's key summer tourism season.

One problem was these jellyfish were small and almost transparent were not readily visible and thinly spread out over five kilometers (3 miles) of coastline.

"The swimmers could probably not even see them," Castellanos added.

Far to the north, a much more menacing species looms — the Portuguese Man-of-War, a floating, violet-colored sack with meters-long tentacles. They have stung more than 300 people over the past three weeks in Atlantic waters off Spain's northern coasts of Cantabria and the Basque region, officials said.

Spanish marine biologists say, in general, they are seeing fewer jellyfish this summer than in other years. In the Catalonia region and the Balearic islands — both hugely popular with British and German tourists — officials said this summer has been relatively quiet on the jellyfish front.

But scientists also Spanish beachgoers are going to have to get used to higher concentrations of jellyfish.

Normally, jellyfish are kept from getting close to the shore by a natural barrier of less-salty water formed with runoff from summer rains.

But with rain more scant because of global warming, this protective cushion is weaker, said Jose Maria Gili, a jellyfish specialist at the Institute of Marine Sciences in Barcelona.

Another problem is overfishing, which depletes stocks of tuna, swordfish and other species that are natural predators of jellyfish. And fewer fish means fewer competitors for tiny plankton that jellyfish feed on, allowing the latter to flourish, Gili says.

___

Associated Press writers Ciaran Giles and Jorge Sainz contributed to this story from Madrid.
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Re: This week in jellyfish

Postby Jeff » Sat Aug 28, 2010 9:35 am

Time Magazine, normalizing the calamitous:


Stinging Season: Can We Learn to Love the Jellyfish?
By Andrew Marshall Wednesday, Aug. 25, 2010


They're alien-looking, they're stealthy, and they can hurt. Jellyfish are the pests of the sea, coming out in droves every summer to turn a day at the beach into a world of pain. After a three-mile-long armada of jellyfish stung hundreds of vacationers on Spanish beaches earlier this month, the question might seem perverse: Can we ever learn to love the jellies?

Fernando Boero thinks we can. A professor of zoology and marine biology at the University of Salento in Lecce, Italy, Boero is the brains behind JellyWatch, the first attempt to mobilize the public in a wide-scale survey of the Mediterranean Sea's least popular resident. Run under the auspices of the Mediterranean Science Commission (CIESM), the scheme was piloted in Italy in 2008, meeting such success that Israel joined a year later. So have France, Tunisia and Turkey, with other jelly-vexed nations expected to follow. "Nobody was looking at jellies over a vast scale," says Boero. "There are similar initiatives for birds or butterflies, but nothing like it for marine science."

...

"People like the sea to be a swimming pool," says Boero. "If they see a living being, they are horrified. But they have to be aware that there is life in the sea, and it has to be respected." Whether we love or loathe jellies, it seems all we can do is learn to live with them.


http://www.time.com/time/health/article ... 78,00.html
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Re: This week in jellyfish

Postby Blue » Sat Aug 28, 2010 10:49 am

..."and we are at the mercy of jellyfish.”

Pretty decent article from Smithsonian Magazine, August 2010.

Jellyfish: The Next Kings of the Sea

On the night of December 10, 1999, the Philippine island of Luzon, home to the capital, Manila, and some 40 million people, abruptly lost power, sparking fears that a long-rumored military coup d’état was underway. Malls full of Christmas shoppers plunged into darkness. Holiday parties ground to a halt. President Joseph Estrada, meeting with senators at the time, endured a tense ten minutes before a generator restored the lights, while the public remained in the dark until the cause of the crisis was announced, and dealt with, the next day. Disgruntled generals had not engineered the blackout. It was wrought by jellyfish. Some 50 dump trucks’ worth had been sucked into the cooling pipes of a coal-fired power plant, causing a cascading power failure. “Here we are at the dawn of a new millennium, in the age of cyberspace,” fumed an editorial in the Philippine Star, “and we are at the mercy of jellyfish."


Purcell, who sports jellyfish earrings the day I meet her in Monterey, says she is disgusted by what she sees as humanity’s efforts to exploit the ocean, filling it with fish farms and oil wells and fertilizer. Compared with fish, jellies are “better feeders, better growers, more tolerant of all kinds of things,” she told me, adding of the marine environment: “I think it’s entirely possible we’ve made things better for jellyfish.” Part of her likes the idea of unruly jellies causing a commotion and foiling our plans. She’s cheering for them, almost.


In lieu of dismantling superpowers or importing invasive species, countries have adopted jelly-proofing strategies. South Korea recently released 280,000 native, jelly-eating filefish along the coast of Busan. Spain dispatched indigenous loggerhead sea turtles off Cabo de Gata. Japanese fishermen hack at the giant Nomura’s with barbed poles. Mediterranean beaches have organized jellyfish hot lines, spotter boat armadas and airplane flyovers; the slimy troublemakers are sometimes sucked up by garbage scows, carted off by backhoes or used for fertilizer. Bathers in the worst areas are advised to wear full-body Lycra “stinger suits” or pantyhose or to smear themselves with petroleum jelly. Most sting-treatment products feature vinegar, the best remedy for jelly venom.


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Re: This week in jellyfish

Postby dqueue » Wed Sep 08, 2010 10:46 pm

NewScientist (via Slashdot) reports that scientists are using fluorescent green biomass from jellyfish (and algae) to produce solar power.

The link: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1 ... yfish.html

The article:
Green machine: Squeezing solar juice from jellyfish

Silicon solar cells are so, well, dead. Dollops of green goo made of living cells – from jellyfish to algae - are now being recruited to produce cheaper solar power.

Zackary Chiragwandi at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden, and colleagues are developing a photovoltaic device based on green fluorescent protein (GFP) from the jellyfish Aequorea victoria.

The team deposit two aluminium electrodes with a tiny gap between them onto a silicon dioxide substrate. A droplet of green fluorescent protein is then added on top, whereupon the protein assembles itself into strands between the electrodes.

When exposed to ultraviolet light, the GFP absorbs photons and emits electrons, which travel around a circuit to produce electricity.

Cheap goo

The green goo acts like the dye used in current "dye-sensitised" solar cells, called Grätzel cells.

However, unlike such cells, the GFP does not require the addition of expensive materials, such as titanium dioxide particles. Instead, the GFP can be placed directly on top of the electrode, simplifying the design and reducing overall cost.

The team have also used the proteins to create a biological fuel cell that generates electricity without the need for an external source of light.

Instead, they used light emitted from a mixture of chemicals such as magnesium and the luciferase enzymes found in fireflies (Lampyridae) and sea pansies (Renilla reniformis) to generate electricity from the jellyfish biophotovoltaic device.

Such a fuel cell could be used to power nano-devices embedded in living organisms, says Chiragwandi, for example to diagnose disease.

Algaelectricity

Jellyfish are not the only sea creatures that can be exploited to generate energy: algae could power floating devices on the ocean wave. Adrian Fisher and Paolo Bombelli at the University of Cambridge and colleagues are developing biophotovoltaic devices based on algae and photosynthetic bacteria.

The team deposit a film of photosynthetic cells on top of a transparent conductive electrode, which faces a carbon cathode seeded with platinum nanoparticles.

When exposed to sunlight the algal cells begin splitting water and producing oxygen, electrons and protons. These would usually be used by the algae to convert carbon dioxide into organic compounds, but instead the device siphons them off to generate electricity, says Fisher. "The algal cells produce electrons very generously," he says.

The team has so far used a proof-of-concept device to power a clock. The sunlight-to-electricity efficiency of the device is only 0.1 per cent at present, compared with between 10 and 15 per cent for existing dye-sensitised solar cells, however. Screening different algae species to find the most productive electron donor might be one way to produce more juice.

Eventually, algal cells could float out at sea, generating electricity from sunlight and seawater. "We might end up with less efficiency than [conventional] photovoltaics, but we think we can win on cost, and we don't require space where people want to live," says Bombelli.
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Re: This week in jellyfish

Postby Jeff » Fri Sep 10, 2010 1:37 pm

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Re: This week in jellyfish

Postby justdrew » Mon Sep 27, 2010 1:18 pm

Jellyfish in Inner Harbor a sign of drought
Stinging nettles swim north as dry conditions make upper bay saltier



The Inner Harbor's no place to swim anyway, but now you can add another reason not to go in the water downtown: jellyfish.

Softball-sized, milky white and bell-shaped, with long tentacles trailing, the gelatinous animals could be seen moving slowly about Thursday in the murky water by the Constellation.

Scientists identified them as Chrysaora quinquecirrha — the most common of sea nettles in the Chesapeake Bay. Usually, though, they hang out farther south, where they sting unwary bathers and swimmers.

But the researchers said the lack of rainfall this summer likely triggered the harbor invasion by making the water here just salty enough to attract them. It's been abnormally dry on both sides of the bay, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, with moderate to extreme drought gripping the western end of the state and the lower Eastern Shore.

"What apparently has happened is that the optimal salinity range has shifted up the bay," said Raleigh Hood, a biological oceanographer at the University of Maryland's Horn Point Environmental Laboratory near Cambridge. "Normally, down here, we're sea nettle heaven."

Hood said he's not surprised by their northward migration this year. He and Christopher Brown, a scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, developed a system for predicting and mapping their abundance and spread, based on a variety of factors like water salinity and temperature. The computer model shows little likelihood of finding nettles in the Patapsco River, but it does show that salinity levels in the harbor and just outside it are elevated now, right around what sea nettles find most comfortable.

"They're happy as clams in that range," Hood said.

Sea nettles can be found year-round in the middle and lower bay and its rivers, from around Annapolis south, according to the Chesapeake Bay Program's field guide. They're at their peak in July and August, typically in the moderately salty middle of the bay, according to Denise Breitburg, senior scientist with the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater. But they can remain abundant as late as October, she added in an e-mail.

While the harbor influx of sea nettles is just one more weather-related oddity in a year of extremes, it's hard to say whether it has any broader relevance, Hood says.

"Global jellyfish populations are increasing," he explained. "That's a pretty good indication the world is going out of kilter." Some have attributed the jelly surge to global warming, others to the degradation of coastal waters worldwide.

Here in the Chesapeake Bay, though, it's not clear whether sea nettles are increasing or declining, Hood said. The average water temperature has increased slightly — possibly an indication of climate change — and water quality generally is considered poor throughout much of the estuary.

But Breitburg, who's been studying the bay's jellyfish for years, found that sea nettle densities have actually declined since the late 1980s, according to an article published last year by the Maryland Sea Grant program. She suggested that the dropoff may be related to the swoon of the bay's oysters, despite the bay's pollution and signs of climate shift.

Jellyfish lay eggs in the water, which settle to the bottom and attach to hard surfaces like rocks, pilings and oyster shells. But as oysters have dwindled, their shell-covered reefs have been smothered in silt, depriving jellyfish polyps of places to spend the winter.

Even if the numbers are down a bit, there are still plenty out there to nail folks who spend time in or on the water.

"I got stung by one just the other day," Hood said. "It's annoying but not life-threatening, unless you're allergic to it."

Of course, that shouldn't be an issue in the harbor — Baltimore health authorities warn against swimming there because of potentially disease-causing bacteria in the water.

But the ghostly looking nettles are safe to watch, as long as you stay out of the drink. And if it's any consolation — or motivation to get out to see them — this is likely their last hurrah. The nettles farther south are already starting to die off, reports Breitburg, and these will, too, once it rains enough to lower the salinity level again, or it gets colder.
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Re: This week in jellyfish

Postby brainpanhandler » Sat Oct 30, 2010 11:48 am

29 October 2010 Last updated at 12:13 ET

Jellyfish 'may benefit from ecosystem instability'
By Mark Kinver
Science and environment reporter, BBC News

A team of researchers have been trying to identify how jellyfish may benefit from marine ecosystems destabilised by climate change and overfishing.

There is concern that a rise in jellyfish numbers could prevent depleted commercially important fish stocks recovering to historical levels.

However, a study by European scientists says more data is needed to understand what is happening beneath the waves.

[yes, by all means more data. I think I'll have an "end of world headline" to that effect.]

...

The main concern, the team wrote, was the establishment of a "never-ending jellyfish joyride" in which the creatures become so established that it makes it almost impossible for commercial fish stocks to return to historical levels.

But Dr Lynam told BBC News: "I don't think that the hypothesis that jellyfish will come into an area and dominate, not allowing anything to come back again, is really supported.

"Such a nightmare scenario does not seem to be the case, when you consider the data and studies that have been carried out."

[More data....]

He explained that the team looked at whether factors such as changes to the climate and overfishing were responsible for the increase in jellyfish abundance.

"It is quite a complicated set of possible linkages that need to be drawn, which we really only have a vague insight at the moment.

"For the recent period where we have good data, it appears as if sea surface temperature is the most important variable.

"This does not necessarily prove it of course, but it does appear to be benefiting jellyfish."

The team, using data provided by the UK Met Office, commented: "The regional seas of the northeast Atlantic have been warming for the past 15 years at a rate not experienced in recent centuries."

...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11644500
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Re:

Postby anothershamus » Sun Oct 31, 2010 2:59 pm

brainpanhandler wrote:29 October 2010 Last updated at 12:13 ET

Jellyfish 'may benefit from ecosystem instability'
By Mark Kinver
Science and environment reporter, BBC News

A team of researchers have been trying to identify how jellyfish may benefit from marine ecosystems destabilised by climate change and overfishing.

There is concern that a rise in jellyfish numbers could prevent depleted commercially important fish stocks recovering to historical levels.

However, a study by European scientists says more data is needed to understand what is happening beneath the waves.

[yes, by all means more data. I think I'll have an "end of world headline" to that effect.]

...

The main concern, the team wrote, was the establishment of a "never-ending jellyfish joyride" in which the creatures become so established that it makes it almost impossible for commercial fish stocks to return to historical levels.

But Dr Lynam told BBC News: "I don't think that the hypothesis that jellyfish will come into an area and dominate, not allowing anything to come back again, is really supported.

"Such a nightmare scenario does not seem to be the case, when you consider the data and studies that have been carried out."

[More data....]

He explained that the team looked at whether factors such as changes to the climate and overfishing were responsible for the increase in jellyfish abundance.

"It is quite a complicated set of possible linkages that need to be drawn, which we really only have a vague insight at the moment.

"For the recent period where we have good data, it appears as if sea surface temperature is the most important variable.

"This does not necessarily prove it of course, but it does appear to be benefiting jellyfish."

The team, using data provided by the UK Met Office, commented: "The regional seas of the northeast Atlantic have been warming for the past 15 years at a rate not experienced in recent centuries."

...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11644500


anothershamus wrote:"Jellyfish are an excellent bellwether for the environment," explains Jacqueline Goy, of the Oceanographic Institute of Paris. "The more jellyfish, the stronger the signal that something has changed."

...

Two centuries worth of data shows that jellyfish populations naturally swell every 12 years, remain stable four or six years, and then subside.

2008, however, will be the eighth consecutive year that medusae, as they are also known, will be present in massive numbers.

“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.

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.

On the NW coast there are record #'s of Crab which are also the scavengers of the ocean. This means that there is more death and destruction in the oceans than we really know.

I just saw 'The day the earth stood still' last night and although the ending was sort of abrupt, and used the usual Star Trek philosophy of 'we are a nasty and destructive race, but we should get a pass because we have the capacity to love' give me a break! If we really had the capacity to look beyond our own avarice we wouldn't be killing the oceans, air and land.

(rant, rant)
)'(
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Re: This week in jellyfish

Postby norton ash » Mon Nov 01, 2010 12:37 am

Happy meals on Plastic Beach! :yay

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Re: This week in jellyfish

Postby anothershamus » Mon Nov 01, 2010 12:55 am

The aliens are on to the jellyfish as well!

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