climate change Jellyfish

[ensho]

http://www.scienceinafrica.co.za/2009/september/jellyfish.htm


The rise of the 'jellyfish joyride'

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In South Africa, jellyfish have already demonstrated their power. During 2005 Eskom’s Koeberg nuclear power station outside Cape Town lost power because unusually high numbers of jellyfish were found in the sea water that is sucked up for cooling the nuclear reactor.

In another example close to home, a boom in jellyfish numbers in Namibia has been fingered as the reason behind the decline in the country's once highly-lucrative fishing industry.

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Although data is lacking, what appears to be emerging is that a combination of man-made factors such as eutrophication of the oceans and global warming are leading to a “back-to-the-future” scenario where jellyfish are taking over patches of ocean that then come to resemble what the oceans used to look like before fish evolved about 500-million years ago.

“It is ironic that the same activities that are driving rapid industrialisation and technological achievements are threatening to push marine ecosystems back to the future,” said Professor Mark Gibbons, a jellyfish expert in the Biodiversity and Conservation Biology (BCB) Department at the University of the Western Cape (UWC).

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Jellyfish found in large numbers, points out Gibbons, are not unusual, but a cocktail of factors appear to be tipping the balance to a situation where jellyfish become dominant, completely changing the ecosystem.

It's what Gibbons and fellow scientists from around the world refer to as “the jellyfish joyride”.

But it's not the jellyfish themselves that, like the aliens in Hollywood movies, are inherently out to cause mischief for the human race. Rather, evidence suggests that the blame for an explosion in jellyfish numbers can be placed squarely on the doorstep of human excesses.

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And the jellyfish blooms might also be the proverbial canary in the mine shaft when it comes to climate change. Warming oceans, says Gibbons, are potentially more favourable for jellyfish than fish and could also spread the range of more toxic jellyfish species that are usually only found in subtropical areas.
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there are whole flocks of canaries singing/screaming over the oceans