EU Vacationers Warned Of "Unprecedented" Levels Of Jellyfish At Beaches

[hatrack]

A plague of jellyfish along Europe's beaches has become the latest environmental hazard to be blamed on global warming. Holidaymakers heading for Mediterranean beaches are being warned to prepare for an unprecedented invasion of the invertebrates whose sting can, in extreme cases, cause heart failure.

Oceana, which campaigns to protect and restore the world's oceans, attributes the rise in the number of jellyfish to a rise in water temperature because of climate change. It also highlights over-fishing of natural predators that feed on jellyfish, and pollution along the continent's coasts. The group sent a research boat around Spain's coastal waters last month and concluded that many beaches are suffering an "invasion by this species".

After navigating the waters of the Mar Menor, Ricardo Aguilar, the director of research on Oceana's catamaran, said: "We have found jellyfish all over the Mediterranean, but in this area we've seen concentrations of more than 10 jellyfish per square metre. Wherever we look, there is practically nowhere without jellyfish."

Among the most notorious of jellyfish is the Portuguese man of war (Physalia physalis), whose stings can produce painful burns for bathers, and have even led to heart failure. The Spanish researchers highlighted the prevalence of the purple jellyfish or mauve stinger (Pelagia noctiluca), whose stings can provoke severe swelling, burning pain and allergic reactions.

EDIT

http://www.ecoearth.info/articles/reader.asp?linkid=59252

[elehhhhna]

1. We've got Man o'War ALL over Galveston's beaches. EUWWW.

like gal'ston's beaches weren't sickening enough.

[RaleighNCDUer]

2. A few months ago it was the giant jellies of the Sea of Japan.

The ocean is a very hard thing to change. It can absorb a lot of abuse. But between the pollution, the rising ocean temps, the over-fishing, we are irrevocably changing the ocean, the source of all life on this planet. The plankton dying off will be the beginning the total ecological collapse.

Have a nice day.

[bloom]

3. "A Primeval Tide of Toxins" discusses that

if people want more info:

"In many places — the atolls of the Pacific, the shrimp beds of the Eastern Seaboard, the fiords of Norway — some of the most advanced forms of ocean life are struggling to survive while the most primitive are thriving and spreading. Fish, corals and marine mammals are dying while algae, bacteria and jellyfish are growing unchecked. Where this pattern is most pronounced, scientists evoke a scenario of evolution running in reverse, returning to the primeval seas of hundreds of millions of years ago.

Jeremy B.C. Jackson, a marine ecologist and paleontologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, says we are witnessing "the rise of slime."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x62160

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/oceans/la-oceans-series,0,7842752.special


I was also noticing that this Marine Conservation (UK) site tracks jellyfish and other beach things http://www.mcsuk.org/

They have an "adopt a beach" and a "good beach guide".

[ClayZ]

4. Lots of Washington State Jellyfish dead on beach, too!

We just took the grandkids to the beach and had to dodge dead jellyfish up and down the beach. While the kids were throwing rocks into the water there were many dead jellyfish just floating around.

It was sad. I told the kids we should have brought bread and peanut-butter. :-(