Jellyfish Ring Alarm Bells

For a decade, reports have been coming in describing increasingly nightmarish jellyfish swarms in the world's oceans. The same mauve stingers that wiped out Northern Ireland's fledgling salmon aquaculture industry in a matter of days have been playing havoc with summer vacationers on the Mediterranean coasts, threatening billions in tourism revenue. In 2006, they washed up on the beaches from Costa Brava to the Cote d'Azure by the tens of millions and 70,000 bathers and beachcombers required medical treatment for painful stings and allergic reactions while clean-up crews struggled to dispose of tonnes of rotting invertebrates. Off the coast of Africa, reports a research team from St. Andrew's University in Scotland, the biomass of a sudden jellyfish infestation near Namibia is found to have ballooned to three times the biomass of the entire resident fish population. And the commercial fishing industry in Japan has been plagued by repeated outbreaks of monster jellyfish that grow to two metres in diameter and weigh more than a defensive tackle from the New York Giants. What's triggering the infestations isn't clear. Historic records show they are not a new phenomenon. However the frequency and magnitude appears to be increasing. http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/editorial/story.html?id=354fc39b-920c-4230-8608-742a624c4458

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