Jellyfish: A Gelatinous Invasion
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1931659,00.html
Jellyfish have always been feared by swimmers Mnemiopsis seems to pose no danger, at least to humans. This fish is thin veiled, transparent, they have no tentacles orthe beautiful color signaling danger. In the July, the first pictures of this jellyfish was taken in a northern Italian city by the name of Lerici by a local biologist. The thumb-sized jellyfish is most commonly know as the sea walnut and originates from the US moving to the Black Sea in 1980s. It is not harmful to humans, but still is to the fish swimming in the same waters and this is explains the collapse of local fisheries. This fish was first discovered by an Italian biologist, Ferdinando Boero, that requested Italians to send in pictures of jellyfish sightings after there had been many attacks along the Mediterranean sea causing the early closing of many resorts. In Tunisia a fish farm was attacked by a swarm of the sea walnut killing the years production of local fish. Some reasons for this sudden jellyfish boom could be the incapacity of reproducing according to a healthy ecosystem.
This was a very interesting article to read because, as many people know, i love the sea and its ecosystem and one day hope to become a marine biologist. It was interesting to read about jellyfish that have infested our waters for so long, now attack other fish. I always believed that fish would co-exist without any problems, today i was proved wrong. However, the overflowed jellyfish population could also depend on climate change, i.e the rising temperatures tend to make reproduction faster. It will be fascinating to read about the sea walnut and see what more it will do to our world and ecosystem.
