Scientists Mystified by Jellyfish Attacks on Fish Farm
Spiegel Online
A mass of poisonous jellyfish devastated stocks of organic farmed salmon off the coast of Northern Ireland -- not once, but twice. Is it a sign of global warming, overfishing or just the natural motion of tides?
Marine biologists are struggling to explain a series of bizarre jellyfish attacks which destroyed the entire fish stocks of a salmon farm in Northern Ireland.
The farm, which is operated by Northern Salmon Co. Ltd., suffered a massive and unexpected jellyfish attack last week before being revisited by the same poisonous, ghostly tide over the weekend. The owners of Northern Salmon say they had no defense against the attacks, and what caused the unusual swarm is still a matter of debate.
The first attack was like a Biblical plague: Billions of purplish pelagia noctiluca, or mauve stingers, drifted over cages of salmon in Glenarm Bay and stung to death about 120,000 fish. Estimated damage to the organic farm -- which sells salmon to high-end caterers in Britain -- was over £1 million ($2 million, €1.4 million). The jellyfish wiped out the company's mature harvest a month before Christmas.
The UK's chief fisheries officer at the Department of Agriculture, Mark McCoughan, told the Belfast Telegraph last Thursday that Northern Salmon would now have "no cash flow" until autumn 2008, when young fish at another site, Red Bay, were big enough for the market. By Saturday, though, the Red Bay stock had been killed off by jellyfish too.
John Russell, the head of Northern Salmon, who had taken up his job at the farm only three days before the first attack, told the Associated Press that he hadn't experienced anything like it in 30 years. "It was unprecedented -- absolutely amazing," he said. "The sea was red with these jellyfish and there was nothing we could do."
A Question of Scale
Even marine biologists who believe the swarms were a natural occurrence were surprised by their scale. Until now, experts had thought of the waters off Ireland and Britain as too cold to make a home for these particular jellyfish.
(Continued here.)
A mass of poisonous jellyfish devastated stocks of organic farmed salmon off the coast of Northern Ireland -- not once, but twice. Is it a sign of global warming, overfishing or just the natural motion of tides?
Marine biologists are struggling to explain a series of bizarre jellyfish attacks which destroyed the entire fish stocks of a salmon farm in Northern Ireland.
The farm, which is operated by Northern Salmon Co. Ltd., suffered a massive and unexpected jellyfish attack last week before being revisited by the same poisonous, ghostly tide over the weekend. The owners of Northern Salmon say they had no defense against the attacks, and what caused the unusual swarm is still a matter of debate.
The first attack was like a Biblical plague: Billions of purplish pelagia noctiluca, or mauve stingers, drifted over cages of salmon in Glenarm Bay and stung to death about 120,000 fish. Estimated damage to the organic farm -- which sells salmon to high-end caterers in Britain -- was over £1 million ($2 million, €1.4 million). The jellyfish wiped out the company's mature harvest a month before Christmas.
The UK's chief fisheries officer at the Department of Agriculture, Mark McCoughan, told the Belfast Telegraph last Thursday that Northern Salmon would now have "no cash flow" until autumn 2008, when young fish at another site, Red Bay, were big enough for the market. By Saturday, though, the Red Bay stock had been killed off by jellyfish too.
John Russell, the head of Northern Salmon, who had taken up his job at the farm only three days before the first attack, told the Associated Press that he hadn't experienced anything like it in 30 years. "It was unprecedented -- absolutely amazing," he said. "The sea was red with these jellyfish and there was nothing we could do."
A Question of Scale
Even marine biologists who believe the swarms were a natural occurrence were surprised by their scale. Until now, experts had thought of the waters off Ireland and Britain as too cold to make a home for these particular jellyfish.
(Continued here.)
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