Somewhere in China right now, there's a cannonball jellyfish from the waters off Panama City just waiting to be eaten. Jellyfish make for great story ledes, don't they? The article continues:
Shrimpers trying to stay afloat during the off season have been scooping them out of the gulf by the thousands since September. The gelatinous masses have turned out to be a profitable commodity on the Asian market, once they are processed into crispy protein wafers."Cannonball is a whole new business to us," said 68-year-old shrimp boat operator Steve Davis. "We used to run from them when we were shrimping because they would fill up the nets. Now we run to 'em."
Nets now shifting toward jellyfish. Just another shifting baseline...
Environment
Comments
I'm going to pay attention and see if this starts happening on the Texas shore. We're inundated with cabbage heads in the spring. The water looks like a green jello thick with marshmallows.
Posted by: Russell | January 7, 2008 3:48 PM
Well I say why not? You might as well as something!
Posted by: Phil | January 7, 2008 4:45 PM
How does that count as a shifting baseline? There's no hint that the jellyfish are more numerous now, or that the shrimp off season is less fruitful, than before. I see a possible "shifting baseline" in terms of the cost to process and ship the cannonball jellyfish to China and certainly new markets opened by increased knowledge. I do not see any indication of a shifting baseline of fishery stocks or same-species harvests.
Posted by: Michael Poole | January 8, 2008 5:08 AM
Hi Michael, The rise of jellyfish and jellyfisheries is a major theme here at Shifting Baselines (see banner) and so I post stories on jellyfish blooms and fishery developments in that spirit without always being explict.
If you had said to fishermen 50 years ago that they're children would one day be fishing for jellyfish, they wouldn't have believed it. Likewise, when Daniel Pauly, lead author on the1998 Science study titled "Fishing Down Marine Food Webs", said in the mid to late-1990s that we would be eating jellyfish burgers and plankton stew in the future, he did so as an absurd metaphor. It has become a reality (though there was historically a small popuation in China that ate jellyfish, now demand is growing).
We fish for jellyfish because they are now one of the few abundant (and apparently edible) organisms in the ocean. If the Gulf ecosystem was still in excellent shape, it's not likely there would be the quantity of jellyfish OR shrimp, but of their predators, which have disappered long ago (such as turles and groupers).
The hint that jellyfish are more numerous now is almost implicit in the article. One major element of shifting baselines is that things change without us (including reporters) noticing...
Posted by: Jennifer L. Jacquet | January 8, 2008 6:06 AM
And in related news... "Jellyfish declared endangered species" "Jelly fishery collapses" "Congress subsidizes industry jellyfishing" "Jellyfish burger shortage outrages Washington"
Posted by: Jon Rusho | January 8, 2008 6:35 AM
Nets now shifting toward jellyfish. Just another shifting baseline...
This seems to be a nice shifting baseline. Unless you are a jelly of course! LOL! Maybe the ocean has some more nice tricks up it's sleeve? Dave Briggs :~)
Posted by: Dave Briggs | January 8, 2008 9:59 AM
The article is fairly clear about jellyfishing happening outside shrimping season, including in the bit you quoted. To play devil's advocate, as imported shrimp get cheaper, fishermen's margins get squeezed, so they find other things to fish when shrimp are not available, and return to their prior standard of living that way. Viewed that way, the article is less a story about environmental change than about globalization.
I feel more jellyfish stings when I swim (and see more washed up on the shore) now than I remember from when I was a kid in Florida, so I am sympathetic to the idea that there are more jellyfish out there -- and I recall seeing some study results to that effect -- but my experience is anecdote rather than data and is confounded by shifts in my age and memory, allergies, where I vacation, and so forth.
In jellyfish markets and sting counts, as in most real-world statistical studies, it is hard to tease out the influences of independent factors. That may be one of the ideas behind Shifting Baselines, but it also makes it harder to say that increased jellyfish harvests by themselves indicate that the ocean is in a degraded state. I have to think that evidence linking that article's observations to oceanic change would be pretty strong evidence of shifting baselines on its own, and the article would do little to help make the point.
Posted by: Michael Poole | January 8, 2008 9:29 PM