In yet another case of jellyfish bloom and gloom, the gigantic Nomura jellyfish are back in the Sea of Japan for the third year since 2005. Check out the full story at CNN.
Guilty Planet
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Jennifer Jacquet is a postdoctoral research fellow working with Dr. Daniel Pauly and the Sea Around Us Project at the UBC Fisheries Centre. As a kid, she read 50 Simple Things Kids Can Do to Save the Earth and would come to discover that while those 50 things were indeed simple, saving the Earth was not.
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Another Year, Another Giant Jellyfish Invasion
Category: Oceans
Posted on: July 20, 2009 12:36 PM, by Jennifer L. Jacquet
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Comments
Again, so soon? It seems I saw this just a post or two down.
;-)
Posted by: Russell | July 20, 2009 2:51 PM
What if, according to some non-conforming discussions out there [wild / esoteric postulations on a lot of levels...]: A Giant Jellyfish ‘Crop’ circle design [communication] is part of symbolic messages understating, and agitating our need to focus on our elemental and essential life sustaining grain crop food chain because of the dire environmental instability of our other food systems.
The ocean food chain is in trouble, and we are also getting alarming warnings that other food chains that are dependent upon pollination are in critical early warning stages of potential collapse due to the Honey Bee Colony Collapse Disorder. If my agricultural botany understanding is correct here, grain crops are open pollinated and can withstand aberrations in the insect realm that are needed to make certain food bearing plants function.
Nature is talking...
A “MONEY MAKING” marketing pitch from the 1970 / 1980 era, “When E.F. Hutton talks people listen.”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PwP1EjaBik&NR=1
Maybe, we need to shift [nurture] into the mode of saying and understanding, “When Mother Nature talks, we all better listen.” Because if we do not listen, our social / educational focus on making short term money and wealth above all else will become meaningless when the viable stability of our biosphere undermines all human desires, dreams and economic plans...
Thank you Jennifer, for doubly ‘Agitating’ us / me with your reminders of the complex and essential realms of ocean systems in crisis...
Posted by: Chris | July 20, 2009 4:11 PM
If this were a bloom of unicorns you wouldn't write about it. This is how your mind works "organism that is viewed as negative in public eye = direct result of overfishing or other negative human impact" I prefer to be in awe of nature and admit I might study the intricacies of a single ecosystem my whole life and never fully understand the mechanisms and dynamics of how it functions and why certain populations ebb and flow the way they do. You on the other hand will take every change that occurs in nature and instead of trying to understand the underlying mechanisms in the ecosystem which are extraordinarily complex, you will turn it into some kind of cautionary tale of the destructive powers of mankind. I prefer to stay far far away from your paradigm and call it out when I see it, because it will lead to no further understanding of our world, but instead only desires exactly what the title of this blog suggest - to evoke guilt in the public conscious.
Posted by: jim | July 23, 2009 3:57 PM
There is no news report here. Just an anticipated re-occurrence of jellies that hasn't happened. This is in contrast with another report that the jellies there are lower than ever.
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20081126f2.html
We need to focus on facts and not sensationalism to figure out this problem.
Posted by: Steve | July 29, 2009 4:12 PM
The article in the Japan Times is nice but it is from November of 2008. According to the CNN report (written this month), Nomura jellies were recently spotted in the Sea of Japan. However, I agree it is worth trying to sort out the difference between natural/seasonal phenomena and whether there is a true global increase of jellyfish in the oceans (for Spanish readers, see: http://www.elalmeria.es/article/almeria/468793/quotno/hay/mas/medusas/pese/la/alarma/socialquot.html). We have a graduate student at the Fisheries Centre studying jellyfish blooms globally and I will be reporting on his results when they are available. I will soon do a post on the FAO jellyfish statistics as well (which are compelling, to say the least).
Posted by: Jennifer L. Jacquet | July 29, 2009 4:38 PM
This is exactly the problem with the new conservation pseudo-science paradigm that is taking over: you have made the conclusions before collecting the data...
Posted by: jim | July 31, 2009 9:58 PM