Swarms of venomous jellyfish move toward British waters

Published: 10:15AM BST 07 Apr 2010 The lethal mauve stingers – Pelagia noctiluca in Latin – are tiny but can cover hundreds of thousands of square miles in one “bloom”. They are normally found in the Mediterranean and Caribbean. But billions of them are swarming far more frequently into waters in the north east Atlantic as sea temperatures are rising and currents are changing, scientists have discovered. These venomous creatures can devastate fish farms and in one recent incident 100,000 salmon were killed. Mauve stingers “bloom” when they move into waters where there is plentiful food, and the north east Atlantic has bountiful supplies of plankton and young fish. They are also thought to breed more quickly in warmer waters and the seas off the British coast have warmed by up to 1C since 2002. Experts researching plankton discovered the movement towards British waters, according to a study published in the journal Biology Letters. The trend may continue if climate change follows the predictions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. While people bathing in the waters off the UK coast are in no serious danger yet from the Pelagia noctiluca, fish farms and other businesses could be affected. The study was led by Dr Priscilla Licando at the Sir Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science, and Dr Richard Kirby, a Royal Society Research Fellow at the University of Plymouth. … In 2007 an enormous 10 square mile swarm of billions of the jellyfish wiped out a 100,000-fish salmon farm in Northern Ireland, causing around £1m in damages.

Swarms of venomous jellyfish move towards British waters