|
|
|
|
H. Humbert
SFN Die Hard
USA
4574 Posts |
 Posted - 08/12/2010 : 14:58:35
|
I watched a crazy documentary last night called "Invasion of the Giant Jellyfish" which originally aired on the Discovery channel in 2006. Like many programs on television, I figured the title was intentionally over-dramatic. After watching it, however, I’m not so sure.
Apparently, outbreaks or “blooms” of giant Nomura's jellyfish (over 3 feet in diameter and weighing up to 450 lbs) have plagued Japanese fisherman periodically throughout history. However, recent blooms have stunned fishermen both by the size and number of jellyfish infesting coastal waters. Time after time they would haul up their nets to find them either torn to shreds or straining under the weight of countless giant jellies, each of which had to be picked out by hand. What few fish they did catch were heavily damaged by the jellyfish’s stings. Even men who had fished these waters their entire lives couldn’t remember an outbreak this bad. The Japanese government quickly asked scientists to investigate the problem. Their findings were astonishing...and alarming.
To understand why Nomura's jellyfish appear in such great numbers, it’s important to understand a little bit about the life cycle of jellyfish, which employ a method of reproduction so strange as to seem utterly alien. First, jellies release eggs and sperms which germinate to form polyps—small stalk-like creatures with a mouth surrounded by tentacles. These polyps can either float free or attach themselves to something solid like a shell or an exposed rock. Now these polyps are not baby jellyfish. They are baby jellyfish factories. Each polyp asexually buds off a number of tiny jellyfish—called medusas—which float off and grow up to be adult jellyfish.
So you can see how jellyfish are able to spawn in such large numbers. But the Nomura's jellyfish has an even better trick up its sleeve. Like other species of jellyfish, the polyps of the Nomura's jellyfish attach themselves to rocks via a single stalk. But unlike other jellies, they grow a second stalk that attaches to a nearby section of rock. Eventually, they totally detach themselves from the first stalk. Then they grow a third stalk and detach themselves from the second, and so on. In this manner, the polyps are able to “walk” across a rock’s surface. Each time they move, they leave a little bit of themselves behind. The scientists in the program called this “abandoned tissue.” But the tissue isn’t dead. Oh, no. Each dot of abandoned tissue grows into an entirely new polyp capable of generating its own medusas. This reproductive strategy produces an exponential explosion in the number of juvenile Nomura's jellyfish.
At this point, the jellyfish are numerous but they aren’t giants, so the scientists looked at the what the Nomuras were eating. Turns out the jellyfish are voracious if indiscriminate feeders. When small, they glom en masse onto bits of plankton and slowly digest them. As the jellyfish grow larger, they dangle thick webs of tendrils in the water and sting anything that gets near, then suck the bits of food into a central chamber. During the program, one scientist placed a Nomura into a tank clouded with plankton that had been artificially engineered to glow orange. Within a matter of minutes, the water in the tank appeared clear and the jellyfish’s dome glowed bright orange as it had literally vacuumed up most of the plankton. What little plankton that were left in the tank were weak or lifeless—casualties of the jellyfish’s stings.
Still, the scientists were puzzled as to why outbreaks of Nomura's jellyfish appear only sporadically, and why they appear to be getting worse. They concluded that the reasons for this are twofold. First, overfishing in the Yellow Sea had led to conditions which favored blooms of plankton. So the Nomuras enjoyed a super abundant food source. Second, the scientists discovered that the Nomura’s lifecycle was correlated with warmer temperatures. Whenever water temperatures went up, so did the numbers of Nomura's jellyfish. As the world’s oceans are increasingly overfished and the Earth’s temperature continues to rise due to global warming, the scientists concluded that giant jellyfish are perfectly poised to dominate this new environment. Outbreaks of these creatures are only primed to get worse. These plagues of jellies could potentially have devastating affects on the ecology of our oceans, perhaps wiping out sea life as we know it. In the future, our oceans may be little more than warm ponds teeming with only microbes and jellyfish. A terrifying future, indeed.
|
"A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true." --Demosthenes
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." --Richard P. Feynman
"Face facts with dignity." --found inside a fortune cookie |
Edited by - H. Humbert on 08/12/2010 15:22:10
|
|
|
filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 08/12/2010 : 15:46:01 [Permalink]
|
One small step for Nemopilema nomurai; one more giant stride for mankind.
An excellent article; thanks!
|
"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
|
| Edited by - filthy on 08/12/2010 15:48:32 |
 |
|
|
HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 08/13/2010 : 09:28:32 [Permalink]
|
| Thanks for the educational post, H.H.. This is some scary shit. I for one welcome our new gelatinous masters. |
“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
|
|
|
Dr. Mabuse
Septic Fiend
Sweden
9696 Posts |
Posted - 08/13/2010 : 12:25:35 [Permalink]
|
I wonder how those could be put to good use. Like putting them through a blender and make ethanol fuel out of them, or something...
|
Dr. Mabuse - "When the going gets tough, the tough get Duct-tape..."
Dr. Mabuse whisper.mp3
"Equivocation is not just a job, for a creationist it's a way of life..." Dr. Mabuse
Support American Troops in Iraq:
Send them unarmed civilians for target practice..
Collateralmurder. |
|
|
|
H. Humbert
SFN Die Hard
USA
4574 Posts |
Posted - 08/13/2010 : 12:37:07 [Permalink]
|
Originally posted by Dr. Mabuse
I wonder how those could be put to good use. Like putting them through a blender and make ethanol fuel out of them, or something...
|
I've heard the Chinese eat them, but I don't know how popular a snack they really are. This article says they are dried and salted and sold as a "novelty" food item. I've also seen some cosmetic companies tout the use of jellyfish collagen in skin creams, but I'm not sure how scientific their claims are. You'd think they could at least grind them up for fertilizer. All that biomass has to be good for something. Then again, considering the fact that jellyfish are something like 99% water, maybe the cost of harvesting these heavy giants aren't worth the effort once they've been dried.
|
"A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true." --Demosthenes
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." --Richard P. Feynman
"Face facts with dignity." --found inside a fortune cookie |
| Edited by - H. Humbert on 08/13/2010 13:15:09 |
|
|
|
Dr. Mabuse
Septic Fiend
Sweden
9696 Posts |
Posted - 08/14/2010 : 10:49:03 [Permalink]
|
Originally posted by H. Humbert
You'd think they could at least grind them up for fertilizer.
|
I wouldn't think that anyway. I suspect that they contain a lot of salt, and all that much can't be good to have in fertilizer. But then, I'm an electronics engineer, not a biologist. My layman reasoning is that the organism should have about the same salinity as the surrounding sea water, ie. too much for farming.
All that biomass has to be good for something. Then again, considering the fact that jellyfish are something like 99% water, maybe the cost of harvesting these heavy giants aren't worth the effort once they've been dried.
|
That's why I was considering a blender and perhaps yeast to ferment the soup for ethanol. The water it contains would support the process. |
Dr. Mabuse - "When the going gets tough, the tough get Duct-tape..."
Dr. Mabuse whisper.mp3
"Equivocation is not just a job, for a creationist it's a way of life..." Dr. Mabuse
Support American Troops in Iraq:
Send them unarmed civilians for target practice..
Collateralmurder. |
|
|
|
H. Humbert
SFN Die Hard
USA
4574 Posts |
Posted - 08/14/2010 : 23:03:08 [Permalink]
|
Originally posted by Dr. Mabuse
I suspect that they contain a lot of salt, and all that much can't be good to have in fertilizer. But then, I'm an electronics engineer, not a biologist. My layman reasoning is that the organism should have about the same salinity as the surrounding sea water, ie. too much for farming. |
Yeah, I don't know. I know fish excrete salt. I've heard of stranded sailors drinking fish blood to stay hydrated when no fresh water was available. This short article says that "many animals that live in or near the ocean have evolved ways to pump out the extra salt while keeping their water levels in balance." I don't know whether that includes jellyfish or not.
| That's why I was considering a blender and perhaps yeast to ferment the soup for ethanol. The water it contains would support the process. |
It's a good idea. The process of thermo-depolymerization can supposedly take anything organic and turn it into oil.
|
"A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true." --Demosthenes
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." --Richard P. Feynman
"Face facts with dignity." --found inside a fortune cookie |
| Edited by - H. Humbert on 08/14/2010 23:07:13 |
|
|
|
astropin
SFN Regular
USA
970 Posts |
Posted - 08/16/2010 : 12:04:09 [Permalink]
|
| Wow.....looks like we better find a viable use for them.....soon. |
I would rather face a cold reality than delude myself with comforting fantasies.
You are free to believe what you want to believe and I am free to ridicule you for it.
Atheism:
The result of an unbiased and rational search for the truth.
Infinitus est numerus stultorum |
|
|
|
H. Humbert
SFN Die Hard
USA
4574 Posts |
Posted - 08/16/2010 : 13:39:03 [Permalink]
|
On a whim, I decided to email Ryan S. Appel, whose company Changing World Technologies Inc. is pioneering the use of the thermal-depolymerization to create usable oil from biomass, about the potential of using Nomura jellyfish as an energy source. This was his response:
Jason,
That is not a naïve suggestion nor are you the first to make it. Unfortunately those animals would not convert to oil like the turkey offal did. They do not have a “fat” content high enough to produce oil. They would turn into other products like gas and maybe a fertilizer, but the economics would not be favorable for this animal. But thank you for your interest.
Regards,
Ryan S. Appel
Project Manager
Changing World Technologies Inc.
460 Hemsptead Ave.
West Hempstead, NY 11552 |
|
"A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true." --Demosthenes
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." --Richard P. Feynman
"Face facts with dignity." --found inside a fortune cookie |
| Edited by - H. Humbert on 08/16/2010 13:50:54 |
|
|
|
Dr. Mabuse
Septic Fiend
Sweden
9696 Posts |
Posted - 08/17/2010 : 00:54:12 [Permalink]
|
Then I guess my idea of fermenting them for ethanol seems more viable. Fermentation does not depend on fat content.
|
Dr. Mabuse - "When the going gets tough, the tough get Duct-tape..."
Dr. Mabuse whisper.mp3
"Equivocation is not just a job, for a creationist it's a way of life..." Dr. Mabuse
Support American Troops in Iraq:
Send them unarmed civilians for target practice..
Collateralmurder. |
|
|
|
Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 08/17/2010 : 01:48:22 [Permalink]
|
Originally posted by Dr. Mabuse
Then I guess my idea of fermenting them for ethanol seems more viable. Fermentation does not depend on fat content.
|
5% of their mass is organic matter, the rest is water. Doesn't seem viable from that alone. Then you'd have to have some way of preparing the complex protein structures to render them suitable for fermentation. There probably is some use for them, but I'm not sure fermenting them is going to be practical.
|
Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
Invasion of the Giant Jellyfish
