They might as well surrender. All hail our Scyphozoan Overlords! Really, tabloidy news doesn’t get any better than “Japan surrounded by plagues of giant jellyfish” unless we could somehow work KFed and Posh into it.
From the Daily Yomiuri Online, via Japanprobe, who blames it on China. I thought everything was Korea’s fault?
“Doctor, there’s trouble! The sea is full of jellyfish!” the student shouted…
300 million to 500 million Echizen jellyfish were flowing into the Sea of Japan from the Tsushima Strait every day. After moving northward through the Tsugaru Strait, the jellyfish swam into the Pacific Ocean, ringing the coast of the nation. During their seagoing voyage, the jellyfish grow up to 1.5 meters in diameter and 200 kilograms in weight…
“The only solution seems to be to contain the source of the plague. We urge researchers to determine the cause of the plague. We also ask officials involved in the industry to hold talks with their counterparts in neighboring nations to tackle the plague,” Nishiyama said.
Ah, isn’t this the point at which the smart people start ignoring the experts and invading radio stations with old 78’s of Indian Love Call? Buy land UPHILL, people, buy land UPHILL.
raincoaster 
The foreign invaders must be stopped!
Or at the very least, braised and served with a nice brown sauce.
It is an amazing occurance in nature that is so adaptable to what humans are doing to the ocean waters and the living environment. Nature is just taking advantage of the situation. Under the auspices of the taking advantage pardigm why not respond in again in like fashion in the harvest of the jellyfish on a larger scale by marketing it for the food source that it offers? Sushi, protein source in tofu production (eel protein has been found to make a good source for icecream that is low in fat and calories).
There should not be not one starving person on this planet for the resources that are afforded us in nature by what some might call human error introduction of a species to an area, that has gone sour, ie rabbits, fox, wild pig in Australia. Rather than view the situation as a problem, why not view it as an opportunity?
My base fear is not the over population of the jellyfish in far world waters of this jellyfish but the response of humans in their anger of the invasion which usually results in just more than using nets to “chop them to bits”. I wonder if agricultural science will use their knowledge and energy in genetic ways to destroy them or find a poison that will be dumped by millions of gallons to kill them (that will result in a catastrophe later on down the road that destroys a balance of nature in the waters some place else) Every time in history documentation proves that route fails when trying to change the natural path of things to human convenience. So Raincoaster, I hail your suggestion to “braised and served with a nice brown sauce”. I wonder if then, Science could find another resource in this species to use it for other things than just fertilizer, bait for farming crustaceans; such as in the field of medicine? Does the poison in a refined form aide in the dissolution of cancerous tumor growth, does it have antibacterial properties that can be used in humans? I have seen that the left over crustacean shells of the crabbing harvest at one time was a pollutant to oriental waters and now has been discovered that the cellulose material is used in manufacturing a material that is a benifit to burn victims that are benifiting from the cellulose as grids to encourage skin growth. Anything possible to use the resource other than using a toxic approach that in a long run create and imbalance somewhere else.
I wonder if what we’re seeing are actually perfectly normal populations of jellyfish, but pushed north by Global Warming. They’d have been in the open ocean before, where nobody would have particularly noticed them. Effectively, Japan has been moving southward in the ocean in terms of thermic regions, and it’s entered the Jellyfish Zone.
And the Japanese will eat almost anything. Believe me, if these can be digested, they will be.
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I say we boil them and cut them up and serve with a nice chili dipping sauce! and maybe we can try and make a dessert out of it, like jellyfish jelly :P
You had me up to the “jellyfish jelly” part, although that WOULD explain some of the desserts they gave me on Mindanao. They never would tell me what was in those things.
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Don’t worry, they’ll figure out a way to eat them and then push them to the brink of extinction.
Wow, im doing a study on this in Science and i find it very interesting. The reason jellyfish are over populating is bcuz of the pollution in the water. Jellyfish eat plankton and nutrient in the water and more pollution in the water the more jellyfish. So really its our fault these creatures have become so big and why there are so many.