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  National Geographic 19 Jan 06
Photo in the News: Giant Jellyfish Invade Japan
Blake de Pastino

PlanetArk 20 Jan 06
Japan Grapples With Invasion of Giant Jellyfish
Story by Isabel Reynolds

TOKYO - A slimy jellyfish weighing as much as a sumo wrestler has Japan's fishing industry in the grip of its poisonous tentacles. Vast numbers of Echizen kurage, or Nomura's jellyfish, have appeared around Japan's coast since July, clogging and ripping fishing nets and forcing fishermen to spend hours hacking them apart before bringing home their reduced catches.

Representatives of fishing communities around the country gathered in Tokyo on Thursday, hoping to thrash out solutions to a pest that has spread from the Japan Sea to the Pacific coast.

"It's a terrible problem. They're like aliens," Noriyuki Kani of the fisheries federation in Toyama, northwest of Tokyo, told Reuters ahead of the conference.

There are no official figures on the size of the problem, but Kani says the financial losses are obvious. "If your nets are full of jellyfish, of course there is no space for fish," he said.

Cutting up and disposing of the giants can turn a three-hour fishing trip into a 10-hour marathon, while valuable fish are poisoned or crushed under the weight of the unwanted catch.

And what a catch. One Echizen kurage can be up to 2 metres (6 ft 7 in) in diameter and weigh up to 200 kg (440 lb). Despite their size, the invertebrates aren't toxic enough to cause serious harm to humans, but fishermen often wear goggles and protective clothing to avoid stings when dealing with them.

Much about the jellyfish, the largest variety found in the Sea of Japan, remains a mystery, according to Hitoshi Iizumi of the Seikai National Fisheries Research Institute in Niigata.

Researchers have suggested they drift to Japan on currents after reproducing in South Korean or Chinese waters, a theory that Japan wants to investigate with the other two nations.

But with relations between Japan and its nearest neighbours at a low ebb, Tokyo is anxious to avoid apportioning blame. "We have a neutral stance," said Yukihiko Sakamoto of the National Fisheries Agency, which organised Thursday's conference.

CULINARY SOLUTION?

"It doesn't matter whether the jellyfish come from South Korean waters or Japanese waters. We just want to do something to minimise the damage to the fishing industry," he said.

One-off spikes in population have occurred in the past, notably in 1958, but consecutive outbreaks in 2002 and 2003 prompted the government to seek reasons and solutions.

Scientists have suggested global warming might be a factor.

Some fishermen have had some success in combating the intruders by introducing guide nets with larger than usual holes. Jellyfish are simply swept through the holes by water currents, while other fish tend to notice the nets and swim alongside them, eventually being trapped in the fishing nets.

"By altering the way we fish, we have probably secured 80 to 90 percent of our normal catch," said fisherman Masatoshi Kuruma, who said he has in the past found up to two or three thousand jellyfish in his nets off Nyuzenmachi in Toyama prefecture.

Officials at Thursday's conference are also set to propose a forecasting system that would allow fishermen to prepare for the next onslaught of the jumbo jellyfish.

South Korean fishermen have been suffering similar woes but China, where giant jellyfish are a delicacy often served dried and dressed with sesame oil, does not seem to have registered the outbreak as a major problem, Japanese officials said.

Seaside communities in Japan have tried to capitalise on the menace by developing novel jellyfish dishes from tofu to icecream, but for some reason the recipes have failed to take off.

Participants at Thursday's conference said they had experimented with feeding the jellyfish to farmed crabs and using them as fertiliser.

National Geographic 19 Jan 06
Photo in the News: Giant Jellyfish Invade Japan
Blake de Pastino

Pitting two hands against thousands of stinging tentacles, a diver attaches a tracking device to a giant Nomura's jellyfish off the coast of Japan on October 4, 2005.

Since last summer, Japanese waters have been inundated with the massive sea creatures, which can grow 6.5 feet (2 meters) wide and weigh up to 450 pounds (220 kilograms).

Though the jellyfish are more common in Chinese and Korean waters, their numbers have grown a hundredfold in some areas off Japan, causing a crisis in the local fishing industry.

The invertebrates are choking fishing nets and poisoning the catch with their toxic stingers, fishers say. And although reports of serious human injury are rare, there are records of people dying from the creature's noxious sting.

The invasion has prompted a series of studies by the Japanese government to research the animal, whose mating and migration habits are poorly understood.

Last month, Japanese scientists speculated that the jellyfish are drifting from China's Yangtze River Delta, where unusually heavy rains may have created a flow that is pushing the jellyfish flotilla to Japan.

Another theory suggests that seas heated by global warming are better suited for breeding, turning the Nomura's otherwise modest numbers into an armada.

As the research continues, Japanese fishers continue to grapple with another issue: What to do with all the jellyfish they've caught? So far, resourceful anglers have turned their unwanted catch into crab food, fertilizer, and novelty snacks--served dried and salted.
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