Credit: André Karwath

Tens of thousands of jellyfish have been discovered washed up on the shores of Ocean Beach, San Francisco.

The jellyfish covered a section of the beach about three miles in length and twenty feet wide.

George Durgerian, a spokesman for the National Park Service, has commented that this strange event was much like “a huge, cobblestone walkway made of jellyfish.” he added that he has not seen anything like this before.

Durgerian reported the incident right away to the Ocean Beach Bulletin. He commented that this amazing thing can be seen by many residents of San Francisco from Pacheco to Lawton streets.

He went on record stating that the cause of this phenomenon could be the tides.

“There was a large swell overnight that may have been responsible,” he explained.

The jellyfish were identified by Durgerian as a common species known as moon jellyfish.

“There were jellfish like you think they look like – large, circular, translucent and gelatinous,” he continued.

The only other time that Dergerian was witness to such an event was around seven years ago on Ocean Beach which involved by-the-wind sailor jellyfish, more commonly known as Valella jellyfish.

‘They kind of look like a windsurfer,’ Durgerian commented..

Durgerian has commented that he can not explain just why the jellyfish beached over the weekend, but said that a park service biologist would be looking over some specimens.

He also mentioned that there is no planned cleanup for the jellyfish, as high tide will just sweep them back out to sea.

Portuguese Man-O-War (Physalia physalis)

Authorities have said that a woman had a deadly reaction and died after being stung by a jellyfish on an Italian beach.

Maria Farcus, 69, is thought to be the first such case of a person dying of a jellyfish-sting in Europe.

Furcas came up onto the beach and collapsed having suffered what appeared to be anaphylactic shock after being stung by the Portuguese Man-of-war jellyfish. Paramedics rushed onto the scene, but were unable to save her, reported the Daily Mail.

“The lady came out of the water dragging her leg and screaming she had been stung by a jellyfish. There was a very vivid red mark on her right leg. Then she collapsed to the ground and a lifeguard and other people on the beach rushed to help her. … She died on the sand in front of dozens of people” A witness on the scene reported.

Experts have said that they believe that Furcas’s case is the first fatal case in the Mediterranean, despite the fact that thousands are stung each year on the beaches by jellyfish.

Furcas’s death happened just days after more than 700 jellyfish stings were reported along the Costa Blanca in Spain.

“This type of jellyfish has always been present in the Mediterranean but now they are increasing in numbers due to global warming and they can grow tentacles up to 60 feet long,” explained a marine biology lecturer at the University of Lecce, Ferdinando Boero.

It has been reported that in the warm, sunny, and usually tranquil beaches of Spain that at least 700 tourists have been stung by small, transparent jellyfish this past week, leading the local officials to rapidly post up warning signs.

The wiggly little invaders have caused “a swimmer’s nightmare,” reports The Associated Press.

The majority of the attacks seem to be occurring the most often near the city of Elche in Eastern Spain, in an area known as Costa Blanca, a rather popular tourist destination for its remarkable white sand beaches.

This past Tuesday alone, 380 people felt the sting from these tiny creatures, comments Juan Carlos Castellanos of the Elche city department for tourism and tourism development.

“In the five or six years I have been in this job, I have never seen anything like this,” Castellanos calmly explains to the AP.

Besides putting up signs warning people of the dangers, officials from Elche are keeping a close lokout for the jellyfish from boats so they can warn the crowds on the beaches when a swarm is approaching.

Meanwhile, just off of the northern coast, in Cantabria and the Basque region, more menacing, and likely more painful, jellyfish-like Portuguese man-of-wars have been inciting their own wave of fear. More than 300 people have had the misfortune of being stun by on those bad boys during the past three weeks, AP comments.

No one knows for sure why the jellyfish are coming up in such immense numbers, but researchers are blaming it on global warming and overfishing practices in the region.

A Swedish woman vacationing with her family in Langkawi, Malaysia was killed by a jellyfish while bathing off the coast of Pantai Cenang.

Carina Löfgren was on her way back to the beach when she encountered the dangerous jellyfish just a few meters from the shore.

“Carina was walking roughly one meter in front of me,” her husband Ronny Löfgren told Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet. “It wasn’t deep; the water barely reached my trunks. Suddenly she started screaming violently and grasp at her legs. It made us realise that it was some kind of stinging jellyfish. We tried to remove the tentacles from her. It took four to five seconds, then she collapsed.”

Carina was dragged out of the water and her brother, who used to work as an emergency first responder, administered first aid with heart compressions and mouth-to-mouth.

“He administered CPR for four or five minutes”, Ronny Löfgren explained. “Then I replaced him. But I instantly felt that she was lifeless. She died in my arms.”

The ambulance reached the beach after 15 minutes. According to Ronny Löfgren they immediately understood that they could do nothing to help Carina at this point.

“One of them said ‘ah, jellyfish’ and shook his head. They tried to revive her for half a minute. Then they shook their heads again.”

Box Jellyfish

Box jellyfish are a group of invertebrates belonging to the class Cubozoa. One of the most dangerous members of this group is Chironex fleckeri, also known as the Sea wasp. Chironex fleckeri is found in the oceans of Australia and southeastern Asia and an average specimen contains enough venom to kill 60 adult humans.

“They can be very small and transparent which makes them difficult to spot”, says Swedish marine biologist Lars Hernroth. “Heart failure is the most common cause of death when stung by a sea wasp. In most cases, it happens extremely fast. The overall health condition of the victim will in part determine the victims’ resilience towards the venom.”

Hernroth believes it is important to ask local tourist information agencies about the jellyfish situation in the area. Some popular holiday destinations places nets in the water to catch jellyfish, but it will only work against the big ones – the small ones will slip through.

Swimmers stung by Chironex fleckeri often fail to make it back to the shore; they die from drowning or cardiac arrest within minutes. If a person does make it back he or she will be in need of immediate treatment, and even with proper treatment, fatalities are common. While administering first aid, make sure that some calls an ambulance. Chironex fleckeri antivenom does exist, but must be administered quickly. In areas where Chironex fleckeri is common, ambulances often carry antivenom – at least in developed parts of the world.

For the first time, a predatory coral has been captured by the camera while eating a jellyfish almost equal to its size. The event occurred in March 2009 during a dive among the Red Sea reefs located near Eilat in Israel, and the photos has now been published in the journal Coral Reefs.

Israeli researchers Omri Bronstein from Tel Aviv University and Gal Dishon from Bar-Ilan University were conducting a survey on reefs when they spotted a mushroom coral sucking in a moon jellyfish.

“During the survey we were amazed to notice some mushroom corals actively feeding on the moon jellyfish,” says Ada Alamaru, a member of the research team who is doing her PhD in marine biology supervised by Prof Yossi Loya at Tel Aviv University. “We couldn’t believe our eyes when we saw it.”

Corals are predatory animals but most of them feed on tiny plankton, and corals living close to the surface can also obtain energy by forming symbiotic relationships with photosynthesising algae. While it may be possible for plankton eating corals to ingest miniscule embryonic jellyfish, this is the first time anyone has photographed a coral feasting on adult jelly.

“This is definitely unusual. As far as I know no other coral are reported to feed on jellyfish. However, some sea anemones, which are close relatives of corals, are documented feeding on other jelly species,” Alamaru explains.

The coral in question was a mushroom coral belonging to the species Fungia scruposa while the unfortunate jellyfish was an Aurelia aurita – a type of moon jellyfish. Exactly how the coral managed to capture the jellyfish remains a mystery. The area was subjected to a seasonal bloom of jellyfish brought on by nutrient rich ocean currents.

For anyone interested in learning more about the fascinating creatures inhabiting the deep and chilly waters of the Canadian Basin, details of a 2005 research mission has now been published in the journal Deep Sea Research Part II.

“There were a lot of surprises,” says biologist Dr Kevin Raskoff of Monterey Peninsula College in California, US, a leading member of the dive team.

“One thing was just how many different jellies there were, and the sizes of their populations. Some were somewhat well known from other oceans, but had not previously been found in the Arctic. That caused us to rethink our ideas about what the typical habitat would be for the species. We also discovered a number of new species that had not been found before.”

The deep Arctic Ocean is isolated from much of the other seas and the Canadian Basin even more so since it contains deep-sea ridges that separate the resident deep-dwellers into comparatively small compartmentalized areas.

To learn more about this inaccessible part of our planet, an international team of scientists conducted a series of deep-sea dives using a remote operated vehicle (ROV) capable of filming and photographing in dark, high-pressure conditions. During a series of dives to depths of 3000 meters, over 50 different types of viscous, jelly-like creatures were caught on tape. Surprisingly, one of the most commonly seen animals in this arctic deep turned out to be a type of jellyfish never before described by science.

“Probably the single most interesting discovery was a new species of a small blue jellyfish, from a group called the Narcomedusae,” says Dr Raskoff. “It was also the third most common jellyfish found on the cruise, which is really surprising when you think about the fact that even the most common species in the area can be totally new and unexpected species.”

“You don’t have to go too far to find interesting areas to study, you just have to dive deep,” Dr Raskoff explains.

The team also encountered large amounts of Sminthea arctica, a jellyfish found down to a depth of 2,100 meters, as well as various ctenophores and siphonophores.

The newly discovered jellyfish won’t be formally described until later this year, but has already been classified within its own genus. Just like all the other members of the Narcomedusae group, this small blue jelly distinguish itself from typical jellyfish by holding its tentacles over its belly as it swims instead of letting them drift behind in the water.

The 2005 expedition was funded primarily by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office of Ocean Exploration and Research.

During recent years, massive jellyfish congregations have appeared along the Northeast U.S. coast, in the Gulf of Mexico, in the Mediterranean, in the Black and Caspian Seas, and in South-East Asian coastal waters.

“Dense jellyfish aggregations can be a natural feature of healthy ocean ecosystems, says Dr Anthony Richardson of the University of Queensland, but a clear picture is now emerging of more severe and frequent jellyfish outbreaks worldwide.”

A new study by Richardson and his colleagues at the University of Miami, Swansea University and the University of the Western Cape, presents convincing evidence that these massive jellyfish populations are supported by the release of excess nutrients from fertilisers and sewage, and that fish populations depleted by over-fishing no longer are capable of keeping them in check.

“Fish normally keep jellyfish in check through competition and predation but overfishing can destroy that balance,” Dr Richardson says. “For example, off Namibia intense fishing has decimated sardine stocks and jellyfish have replaced them as the dominant species. Mounting evidence suggests that open-ocean ecosystems can flip from being dominated by fish, to being dominated by jellyfish. This would have lasting ecological, economic and social consequences.”

In addition to this, the distribution of many jellyfish species may extend as a response to global warming and an increased water temperature could also favour certain species by augmenting the availability of flagellates in surface waters.

The study, which was lead by CSIRO Climate Adaptation Flagship, has been published in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution.

You can find more information about CSIRO Climate Adaptation Flagship here:

450 pound blobs filling up the Sea of Japan

The changing ecosystems affect a long row of different jellyfish species, but some of the most spectacular jellyfish congregations observed during recent years have involved the Nomura jellyfish (Nemopilema nomurai) living in the Sea of Japan (Also known as the East Sea). This colossal species, which can reach a size of 2 metres* across and weigh up to 220 kg**, is also present in the Yellow Sea as well as in the rest of the East China Sea.

After becoming a major problem in the region, the Nomura jellyfish population is now combated by a special committee formed by the Japanese government. Killing jellyfish or ensnaring them in nets will however only prompt these animals to release billions of sperm or eggs; aggrevating the problem rather than reducing it. Coastal communities in Japan have started to harvest jellyfish and sell them as a dried and salted snack, and students in Obama, Fukui have started making jellyfish cookies and jellyfish-based tofu.

* circa 6 feet 7 inches

** circa 450 pounds

A strange algae plume has turned the normally crystal clear Caribbean Sea around the Virgin Islands green down to a depth of roughly 80 feet (25 metres) and sharply decreased visibility in these popular dive waters. How and if the plume will have any long-term effect on the region’s marine life remains unknown.

Tyler Smith, assistant professor at the Center for Marine and Environmental Studies at the University of the Virgin Islands, said that when he went diving Tuesday the visibility inside the plume was no more than 10 feet (3 metres). Below 80 feet, the water was just as clear as normally.

The reason behind the extraordinary plume can be found in South America, in the Orinoco River which flows through Venezuela before reaching the Atlantic Ocean. When the Orinoco outflow is larger than normal, the vast amounts of nutrient-rich freshwater from Venezuela cause a major algae bloom in the nearby ocean. Mixed fresh- and saltwater is lighter than seawater and will therefore rise to the top of the water column.

“It’s very stable, so it just sits there,” Smith explains.

Carried by currents, the algae plume has now spread from the South American east-coast to the Caribbean Sea and can currently be seen not only off the British and U.S. Virgin Islands but in Puerto Rican waters as well. The first patch was noticed by Smith and his colleagues in the waters off St. Croix on April 9.

When the amount of photosynthesising alga increases in a region, it attracts all sorts of organisms that feed on algae and make it possible for these populations to boom as well. The algae plume around the Virgin Islands supports an entire food chain of marine life, including plankton, jellyfish, crustaceans and fish. It is not dangerous to swim or scuba dive in, but some people might dislike the high density of jellyfish.

“This is an event that occurs every year, but we haven’t seen it come this far north,” says Trika Gerard, marine ecologist with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). In a stroke of good luck, a NOAA research vessel was scheduled to research reef fish in these waters from April 7 to April 20 – right at the peak of the unexpected plume.

To find out more about how the plume effects marine life, the Caribbean Fisheries Management Council is urging anyone who goes out fishing in the green plume to report their location, target species and success rate of each trip. According to local fishermen the fishing is always awfully bad when the water is green, but this has not been scientifically researched yet and all data is of interest.

You can reach the Caribbean Fisheries Management Council by calling (787) 766-5927. Their website is http://www.caribbeanfmc.com.

“The ‘underwater turbulence’ the jellies create is being debated as a major player in ocean energy budgets,” says marine scientist John Dabiri of the California Institute of Technology.

Jellyfish are often seen to be aimless aquatic drifters, propelled by nothing but haphazard currents and waves, but the truth is that these gooey creatures continuously contract and relax their bells to move in desired directions.

The jellyfish Mastigias papua carries algae-like zooxanthellae within its tissues from which it derives energy and since the zooxanthellae depend on photosynthesis, the jellyfish has to stay in sunny locations. Research carried out in the so called Jellyfish Lake, located in the island nation of Palau 550 miles east of the Philippines, shows that this jellyfish doesn’t rely on currents to bring it to sunny spots – it willingly budges through the lake as the sun moves across the sky.

In Jellyfish Lake, enormous congregations of Mastigias papua can be found in the western half of the lake each morning, eagerly awaiting dawn. As the sun rises in the east, all jellyfish turn towards it and starts swimming towards east. The smarmy creatures will swim for several hours until they draw near the eastern end of the lake. They will however never reach the eastern shore, since the shadows cast by trees growing along the shoreline cause them to stop swimming. They shun the shadows and will therefore come to a halt in the now sundrenched eastern part of the lake. As the solar cycle reverses later in the afternoon, millions of jellyfish will leave the eastern part of the lake and commence their journey back to the western shore.

Together with his research partner, marine scientists Michael Dawson of the University of California at Merced, John Dabiri have investigated how this daily migration of millions of jellyfish affects the ecosystem of the lake.

What the jellies are doing, says Dabiri, is “biomixing”. As they swim, their body motion efficiently churns the waters and nutrients of the lake.

Dabiri and Dawson are exploring whether biomixing could be responsible for an important part of how ocean, sea and lake waters form so called eddies. Eddies are circular currents responsible for bringing nitrogen, carbon and other elements from one part of a water body to another. The two researchers have already shown how Jellyfish like Mastigias papua and the moon jelly Aurelia aurita use body motion to generate water flow that transports small copepods within jellyfish feeding range; now they want to see if jellyfish movements make any impact on a larger scale.

“Biomixing may be a form of ‘ecosystem engineering’ by jellyfish, and a major contributor to carbon sequestration, especially in semi-enclosed coastal waters,” says Dawson.

Japanese eel (Anguilla japonica) larvae have amazing buoyancy compared to other oceanic plankton, and the reason may be a type of gelatinous goo contained within the body.

When researchers from the University of Tokyo measured the specific gravity of Japanese eel larvae, they found it to be as low as 1.019, rising to 1.043 – showing the larvae to be potentially lighter than seawater itself. (Sea water has an average specific gravity of 1.024.)

When they checked other marine creatures for comparison, such as juvenile jellyfish and the sea snail Hydromyles, their specific gravity turned out range from 1.020 to 1.425. Of 26 plankton creatures tested, the Japanese eel larva was the lightest.

The food consumed by Japanese eel larvae and many other planktons tend to be found in the greatest abundance really close to the water’s surface where there is plenty of light. The low specific gravity may therefore increase the survival rate of Japanese eels by making it easier for them to find a lot of things to eat.

So, why does the Japanese eel float so well? According the Japanese study, the answer may rest in gelatinous goo – or more specifically in a matrix of transparent gelatinous glycosamino-glycans. Controlled by osmoregulation through the chloride cells that cover the body of a Japanese eel larva, this marvellous adaptation makes it possible for the larva to stay close to the surface. Researchers have also suggested that it might help the larva to stay away from predators.

For more information, see the paper: Tsukamoto K, Yamada Y, Okamura A, Kaneko T, Tanaka H, Miller MJ, Horie N, Mikawa N, Utoh, T and S Tanaka (2009) – Positive buoyancy in eel leptocephali: an adaptation for life in the ocean surface layer. Marine Biology, vol. 156, no. 5. pp. 835-846.