A deep-sea diver fits a giant Nomura's jellyfish with a sensor that will transmit data about the depth and temperature of the waters it visits.
The scientists recently found, the rate of acidification in the oceans is the highest its been in over 300 million years. Additionally, de-oxygenation--caused by both warming and industrial runoff--is stripping the ocean of its ability to support the plants and animals that live in it...but are ideal conditions for Gaia's next reaction to the forcing being put on it by humans, jellyfish.
First perhaps came Gaia's atmospheric phalanx, the air war. Now we're seeing another front open up, Gaia has enlisted the potential of King Neptune's legions. "Jellyfish are opportunistic creatures; the key to their 500-million-year success is their adaptability. Once jellies get to a new habitat, they're very good at sliding in and taking advantage of excess food." says Monty Graham, an assistant professor of marine sciences at the University of South Alabama.
Excess food, according to Graham and other researchers, is often a result of overharvesting of the fish that feed on the same resources. Eutrophication, a process in which nutrient-rich runoff from agriculture, sewage-treatment plants and other sources boosts algae growth, also contributes. The algal blooms, as they're called, reduce the amount of available oxygen in the water, thus killing off competitors like fish. Jellyfish, on the other hand, can thrive in this oxygen-deprived environment.
Biologist Lisa-ann Gershwin blames the recent blooms on the jellyfish's own invincible biological makeup and the usual suspects: us. Overfishing has tipped the balance of complex ecosystems; plastic waste and fishing methods are destroying the few natural jellyfish predators; oil and gas drilling platforms and other floating rubbish serve as jellyfish nurseries; industrial and agricultural waste have caused low oxygen, high nitrogen and rising acidity in oceans in which fish cannot survive, but jellyfish can; and climate change exacerbates it all. Startlingly, Gershwin finds jellyfish displacing penguins in Antarctica, crashing the world’s fisheries and taking over "the oceans as we know them...one bite at a time."
We now see that Gaia, choosing from a near infinite range of responses to our hubris, has the Cnidaricians on the move, invasions of up to four million jellyfish at a time have closed nuclear plants in California, Sweden, Japan and India, as well as causing a Filipino power blackout (coal-fire power plant) and U.S. aircraft carrier shutdown. This past week a several-ton bloom of jellyfish clogged the pipes and shut down Sweden's Oskarshamn plant, one of the world's largest nuclear reactors.
