JellyFish taking over the world

[wiredantz]

You didn't hear from me or Jim Day


Watch where you hang those feet.



http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/04/travel/jellyfish-taking-over-oceans/index.html?hpt=hp_c3

[Redeyejedi]

"Gershwin says the explosion in jellyfish populations is a visible indicator that life in the oceans is out of balance."

[Fiskadoro]

There's a huge omission in that article that's worth mentioning.
It never talks about the role of the global economy and global shipping.

Ships around the world take on bilge water for ballast depending on how much cargo they are carrying. Larger ships take on as much as 20+ million gallons, but most of the big ships you see out there carry about three million gallons. That's a lot of seawater, and when they pump in that seawater they also pump in the local larval forms of marine life, that they then pump out somewhere else when they take on new cargo.

Since trips are long not all of it survives but some organisms like Jellyfish clams, and other inebriates or even bacteria can get transported by the millions to regions and oceans where they have never existed before, where they have no checks and balances or natural predators to control them.

The worst instance I've heard of relates to the Atlantic Comb jellyfish which was transported by bilge water from our East Coast to the Black Sea. There they fed on young crustacean and fish larva in zooplankton, and with no natural predators they bred in such large numbers that they completely destroyed several fisheries.

Imagine if some obscure Indonesian Jellyfish got established here and killed off our entire lobster population, or Australian Box jellyfish (the most venomous creatures in the sea) moved into our waters and started killing local swimmers and divers. Just incredibly not cool.

If you think that's far fetched or science fiction you'd be wrong. This stuff is already here.

Scientists believe that quite possibly the majority of red tide globally is caused by invasive microorganisms that have been transported by bilge water into regions they never lived in before. Infections of Cholera in the US have been attributed to bilge water from other countries like Brazil.

In San Francisco Scientists now estimate that up to 90% of the biomass (living things) in the water in that Bay are invasive species from other places on the globe brought in by bilge water.

Of course shipping is a huge business and it's hard to regulate the discharge of hundreds of millions of gallons of bilge water taken from all over the world and dropped in any given port on a given day, but if you want to know where the environmental imbalance that's causing these jellyfish explosions is coming from look at shipping because that's the most likely culprit in my opinion.

[Fiskadoro]

No doubt someone will call bullshit unless I supply a peer reviewed scientific document to back up what I just said.


Here you go:

Cohen,A.N.1998.Ships 'Ballast Water and the Introduction of Exotic Organisms into the San Francisco Estuary:


http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/water_issues/programs/tmdl/docs/303d_policydocs/178.pdf

San Francisco Estuary Institute, 1325 South 46th Street, Richmond CA 94804 (510-231-9539).


That's mostly about San Francisco Bay but in it's history section it discusses catastrophic fishery destruction in the Baltic and other areas due to overpopulation of invasive Jellyfish brought in by bilge water. Just glancing through it it's interesting to note that after 30 years comb jellyfish populations in the Baltic are finally on the decline mainly due to another invasive species, another jellyfish that feeds on larva comb jellyfish, that was (you guessed it) brought in from another part of the world by commercial ships in their bilge water.

The publication is a few years old but they do not say anything about whether or not the destroyed Baltic fisheries have started to, or if they possibly could ever recover.

[wiredantz]

very good point

[Vikingj]

Global shipping has caused an interesting, if not frightening, invasion of species from distant shores. In the early 90's a colleague discovered a pretty pink jelly in the Petaluma river. I had her send me a specimen which I still have pickled in a jar somewhere. It was determined that it was a Russian form that originated in the Black Sea. The community of Petaluma named it the Pink Petaluma Czarina!
Life has an amazing ability to adapt and balance itself. Now if we can just learn to assist nature without trying to over control every little detail?

[blitzburgh]

Good info Jim TY