Jellyfish | Alaskan Harvest Seafood Blog

Giant Jellyfish Attack Fishing Operations, But Have Plus Side Too

Filed under: News — Tags: fishing industry, giant jellyfish, Japan, Japanese fishermen, jellyfish, mucin, Nomura, Nomura's jellyfish, qniumucin, sea monster —

Have you ever seen a jellyfish while you were fishing or swimming? OK. Have you ever seen a jellyfish over six and a half feet across, and weighing up to 450 pounds? How about several thousand of them at once, drifting like a massive, toxic flotilla into your fishing net?

This is what Japanese fishing operations have been dealing with in recent months: legions of Nomura’s jellyfish (Nemopilema nomurai) have been floating out of their usual terrain in Korean and Chinese waters, possibly being pushed from the Yangtze delta by currents produced by unusually heavy rains in the region, and in to the nets of fishermen. Another hypothesis is that global climate change and heating ocean temperatures are creating optimal breeding conditions, thus leading to the jellyfish reproducing in unprecedented numbers. The jellyfish are very poisonous - in some rare cases even causing human fatalities - but more commonly are responsible for poisoning hauls of fish with their toxins while clogging nets.

There does seem to be a plus side, however: some fishing fleets have transformed the nuisance into cash by using the giant jellies as bait or fertilizer; some have even tried drying, shredding, and salting them into a novelty snack.

Even more optimistic are the findings of the Riken Discovery Research Institute, which has discovered that the Nomura’s jellyfish contain a large quantity of a compound called mucin, a glycoprotein that could have a number of medical applications for humans.

Like This Post? Share With Others:

Close Bookmark and Share This Page

Save to Browser Favorites / Bookmarks

Email This to a Friend

Link to This:

If you like this then please subscribe to the RSS Feed.

Comments (0)

Strangers in the Deep

Filed under: News — Tags: cephalopod, climate change, crustacean, deep sea, fish, Global Warming, jellyfish, marine, new discovery, new species, new species of fish, science —

Researchers in both Antarctica and the waters south of Tasmania have been exploring uncharted underwater terrain, including over a hundred undersea mountains, some as high as 1,640 feet, and trenches even larger than the Grand Canyon. These deep sea topographies have proven to be home to thousands of species of fish, sponges, corals, mollusks, crustaceans, and other forms of aquatic life. Many of these animals are completely new to science, or are previously unrecorded forms of known species, for example:

In order: brittlestar, squid, deep sea jellyfish, fish, sea squirt, “psychedelic” octopus.

The researchers in Antarctica claim that the species have come to their attention due to the break up former ice sheets, a result of global warming trends. The changes in global temperature have created a number of radical shifts in marine ecology. Scientists don’t yet know how great the extent of this impact will be, nor how much of an effect it will have on shallower water ecosystems, such as those farther north used for commercial fishing operations.

Sources:

1. http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/10/08/new-marine-species.html, retrieved 10/10/08.

2. http://www.livescience.com/environment/070225_antarctic_biodiversity.html, retrieved 10/10/08.