Mediterranean Resorts From Spain To France To Italy Battling Huge Jellyfish Invasion - Independent

Like dozens of other resorts along the north Mediterranean coast, Cannes is under siege from a monstrous-looking primeval creature from the depths. For reasons still little understood, this summer the coast is facing a plague of an especially poisonous and painful species of stinging jellyfish, the " mauve stinger", or Pelagia noctiluca. Luminous at night, it is armed with a ferocious sting that can swiftly paralyse humans. Follow the coast further west from Cannes and the mauve stinger invasion is in full spate, threatening Spanish holiday beaches from the Costa del Sol to the Costa Brava. The Spanish environment ministry has adopted new measures to combat the annual onslaught, which has been worsening steadily for two decades.

To the east, Italy's beach resorts are braced for the worst. A task force of the government's Agency for the Protection of the Environment is monitoring jellyfish movements, ready to warn bathers to stay out of the water. Last year, many of Italy's most popular coastal stretches were attacked, but so far this season they have been spared. Experts are divided as to the reason. Some put it down to unusual wind and tidal conditions; others claim the creatures' life cycle is at a low point. The jellyfish, in other words, are lying in wait. No one doubts they will be back.

Sixty million jellyfish swept up on Spanish beaches in 2006, and more than 70,000 holidaymakers were treated for painfully swollen limbs and allergic reactions – 300 in one day in Benalmadena, near Malaga. The year before, four glaucous tons of stranded jellyfish were carted from the luxury coastal resort of Marbella. The environment ministry has mobilised hundreds of volunteers, skippers of pleasure craft, divers and fishermen the length of the southern coastline in an early warning system to alert for poisonous swarms before they approach the beach.

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The French-Canadian biologist Daniel Pauly paints an apocalyptic vision of oceans taken over by jellyfish: "We are moving from a marine ecosystem dominated by big fish to a soup of small organisms. If we carry on like this the only things in the sea will be jellyfish and plankton soup." A return to primeval slime? "A lot of pressures are pushing in that direction," says Dr Santilo. "The mechanisms are there to make that happen. Ecosystems are flexible up to a point, but no one knows when elasticity breaks into a different sort of ecosystem and you get an irreversible shift. This plague of jellyfish is a like hazard warning light. It's a wake-up call." Ecologists do not criticise the Spanish government's effort to protect holidaymakers from unwelcome tentacular visitors. But they say it is not enough. "It's like using a fly swat to combat malaria," says Ricardo Aguilar, a spokesman for the international environmental organisation Oceana. "The sickness remains."

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http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article2809433.ece

This really doesn't seem to bode well. :scared:

Just sayin.

Is this type of jellyfish edible, or useful for some commercial or energy purpose? Does anyone here know? When life gives you jellyfish, make fish jelly....

aphrodiasics and and maybe they will stop making our Texas and Southern water turtles into soup.