What jellyfish and tornadoes have in common

“Some species of jellyfish are now a food source in some parts of the world.”
Some species of jellyfish have been a food source in some parts of the world for centuries if not millennia. Hei zi pi, a chinese jellyfish salad, is one such food. Try some at a chinese restaurant if you can find one which offers this treat. Expand your culinary horizons while working to combat this pernicious rise in jellyfish population, and feel good about doing your bit to both provide restaurant workers with work and to combat this jellyplague! /partial snark as the jellyfish salad is delicious!

Hey Anthony, did you hear that David Suzuki quit his foundation? WUWT?

David Suzuki’s Smoke & Mirrors:
http://climatechange.mensnewsdaily.com/2012/04/18/david-suzukis-smoke-mirrors/

David Suzuki Foundation annual revenue: $8.7 million. Isn’t this tons more than Heartland Institute?
Suzuki isn’t special: The rules for charities apply to everyone:
http://www.calgarysun.com/2012/04/18/suzuki-isnt-special

the first global study of jellyfish abundance
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and somehow they know how many jellyfish there was before
“We can also see that the places where we see rising numbers of jellyfish are often areas heavily impacted by humans, through pollution, overfishing, and warming waters.”
either they are saying that jellyfish have better conditions and more food……
…or they are saying that through some miracle, all of a sudden jellyfish are less sensitive to water quality
Either way, they are finding out that there a lot more animals out there than they thought….that they are obviously not going extinct and in danger…..just like penguins in Antarctica and corals and poley bears and manatees and ………………………….

Overfishing makes sense. Lack of predators? Bottom trawling the cause?
From Wiki:

Bottom fishing has operated for over a century on heavily fished grounds such as the North Sea and Grand Banks. Although overfishing has caused huge ecological changes to the fish community on the Grand Banks, concern has been raised recently about the damage which benthic trawling inflicts upon seabed communities. A species of particular concern is the slow growing, deep water coral Lophelia pertusa. This species is home to a diverse community of deep sea organisms, but is easily damaged by fishing gear. On November 17, 2004 the United Nations General Assembly urged nations to consider temporary bans on high seas bottom trawling.
Bottom trawling stirs up the sediment at the bottom of the sea. The suspended solid plumes can drift with the current for tens of kilometres from the source of the trawling. These plumes introduce a turbidity which decreases light levels at the bottom and can affect kelp reproduction.
Ocean sediments are the sink for many persistent organic pollutants, usually lipophilic pollutants like DDT, PCB and PAH.[6] Bottom trawling mixes these pollutants into the plankton ecology where they can move back up the food chain and into our food supply.
Phosphorus is often found in high concentration in soft shallow sediments. Resuspending nutrient solids like these can introduce oxygen demand into the water column, and result in oxygen deficient dead zones.
Even in areas where the bottom sediments are ancient, bottom trawling, by reintroducing the sediment into the water column, can create harmful algae blooms. More suspended solids are introduced into the oceans from bottom trawling than any other man-made source.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bottom_trawling

Another squeal of discomfort from yet another cash-draining nacre-tower partnered with guess who? Geenpeace and WWF. Didn’t the Canadian feds pull some of their funding? We can only hope.

Yet another squeal from a WWF- and Greenpeace-partnered alarmist-powered nacre tower. Aren’t the Canadian Feds cutting off their own funding of this group?

I’ve seen a bit of this myself at Beaufort, although I don’t have a good long term baseline and my observations are anecdotal. But one explanation could easily be population reduction among jellyfish predator species like sea turtles, quite possibly due to human activity (but not global warming). In the waters around Beaufort, at least at certain times cannonball jellyfish are very, very common, and I believe that they are the natural food of at least two of the sea turtles that nest along the carolina coast. But as noted these are not systematic scientific observations on my part, just stuff I see looking out of my boat or floating in and out of the beaufort channel.
rgb

An increase in nutrients (what greenies call pollution) and a decrease in predation (what the greenies call overfishing) will cause a population to increase to a new STABLE state. Warmer waters have absolutely nothing to do with the phenomena. All a changing water temp would do is to SHIFT the population!

Where exactly are these “warming waters” located? Since jellyfish are abundant in both cool and warm waters I don’t understand why “warming waters” would produce an increase.

I have seen this before locally and it does appear tied to pollution. Hopefully it will allow for an increase in sea turtle populations as they are a favorite food.

Some species of jellyfish are now a food source in some parts of the world.
They’ve always been a food source for loggerhead turtles, but I believe I’ll pass on them until science perfects the peanutbutterfish,..