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  independent.ie 6 Aug 07
Mediterranean jellyfish plague
 What lies beneath

From Cannes to the Costa del Sol, holidaymakers are under attack. As millions of toxic jellyfish lay siege to the beaches of the Mediterranean, coastal communities are battling to turn the tide. Can they stop the stingers? John Lichfield and Elizabeth Nash report

JEAN-Marie Giorgis, assistant mayor of Cannes, has a view of the Gulf of Fréjus that foreign billionaires would die, or even pay taxes, for.

As he answers a telephone call from an official somewhere out in the bay, Giorgis is not interested in any of these things.

Not today. “Are there any jellyfish out there?” he asks. “No sign of them? Thank heaven for that.”

Giorgis is in charge of Cannes’ most treasured assets: its beaches and its waterfront. For the time being, that makes him the town’s “Monsieur Méduse” or “Mr Jellyfish”.

Like dozens of other resorts along the north Mediterranean coast, Cannes is under siege from a monstrous-looking primeval creature from the depths.

For reasons still little understood, this summer the coast is facing a plague of an especially poisonous and painful species of stinging jellyfish, the “mauve stinger”, or Pelagia noctiluca.

Luminous at night, it is armed with a ferocious sting that can swiftly paralyse humans.

Follow the coast further west from Cannes and the mauve stinger invasion is in full spate, threatening Spanish holiday beaches from the Costa del Sol to the Costa Brava.

The Spanish environment ministry has adopted new measures to combat the annual onslaught, which has been worsening steadily for two decades.

To the east, Italy’s beach resorts are braced for the worst. Last year, many of Italy’s most popular coastal stretches were attacked, but so far this season they have been spared.

Experts are divided as to the reason.

Some put it down to unusual wind and tidal conditions; others claim the creatures’ life cycle is at a low point. The jellyfish, in other words, are lying in wait. No one doubts they will be back.

Sixty million jellyfish swept up on Spanish beaches in 2006, and more than 70,000 holidaymakers were treated for painfully swollen limbs and allergic reactions — 300 in one day in Benalmadena, near Malaga.

The year before, four glaucous tons of stranded jellyfish were carted from the luxury coastal resort of Marbella.

The environment ministry has mobilised hundreds of volunteers, skippers of pleasure craft, divers and fishermen the length of the southern coastline in an early warning system to alert for poisonous swarms before they approach the beach.

Jellyfish stings can be very painful: “like touching a hot stove”, according to one victim. They can lead to unpleasant rashes or respiratory problems among the elderly or physically infirm. They are almost never fatal.

All the same, many visitors to the Côte d’A zur are wondering whether it is — in the words of the Jaws poster — “safe to go back into the water”.

Infestations of jellyfish come and go with the winds and currents. The beaches can be clear for days at a time then suddenly turn into a kind of jellyfish soup.

This uncertainty — and the difficulty of seeing the creatures — has made taking a dip in the Mediterranean somewhat less relaxing than it once was.

Last year, beaches were closed for brief periods from the Costa del Sol to Sicily via the Côte d’Azur and Corsica. Two weeks ago, one fairly early assault engulfed beaches at Xabia, north of Benidorm. Seventy bathers were stung before the beach was closed; usually the jellyfish don’t come to Xabia till August.

And last week 19 beaches in Catalonia, including five off Barcelona, flew the yellow flag indicating danger from jellyfish.

There is no sign of tourists staying away from the Mediterranean en masse yet. The terrible weather further north has blown and washed even more visitors towards the South of France and Spain this summer.

But local hoteliers, restaurateurs and politicians are worried, nonetheless. “Not all tourists want to swim or bathe. Some never even go on the beach,’’ says Lucas, the manager of a fish restaurant near the Cannes waterfront.

“But Cannes is not all about millionaires and starlets. Some of us depend on family tourists with children. To them, the beach is what a holiday by the sea is all about. They detest the idea that thousands of jellyfish are waiting to pour into the bay, sting their kids and ruin their holidays.”

Last month, Cannes took the lead in anti-jellyfish defence on the Mediterranean coast.

A sophisticated diamondshaped floating boom, attached to a fine, 2m-deep net, was deployed around three of the public beaches on the 10-mile waterfront.

“This is an experiment,” says Giorgis, the assistant mayor. “Until we try it, we have no idea whether it will work as we hope. There is no way of knowing how the barriers will react to storms, for instance, or whether small pieces of dead jellyfish might penetrate the netting."

The Cannes experiment will be widely watched along the Mediterranean coast. Similar small barriers have been erected elsewhere, but nothing has been attempted on this scale.

The problem, Giorgis explains, is how to fit jellyfish defences into all the other activities beloved of the energetic rich who flock to the Côte d’Azur.

The bay of Cannes is used by waterskiers, jet-skis, yachts, launches and cruise ships. Placing a big, fragile net across the bay to keep the jellyfish out is not an option. Not yet, in any case.

Spanish authorities have also enlisted help from the jellyfish’s main predator since ancient times, the leatherback turtle (Caretta caretta). Spaniards call it the tortuga boba — stupid turtle — because of its clumsiness in catching fish, a deficiency the creature overcomes by preying on jellyfish instead.

Authorities have planted some 800 turtle eggs along the coast, in the hope that they will hatch and eat the translucent invaders before they harm holidaymakers. Some 60 live turtles have also been released around the Cabo de Gata in Almeria.

But why have the jellyfish suddenly become so abundant in the Mediterranean?

There are more than 10,000 species of jellyfish. They are not, to be accurate, fish at all, but a kind of giant plankton, which cannot swim but float on currents and the tide.

Some scientists and ecological campaigners explain the new prevalence by pointing to a rise in average sea temperature, linked to the warming of the planet.

Others blame the fact that natural jellyfish predators — such as the bluefin tuna and the turtle — have been driven almost to extinction, a consequence of overfishing and pollution.

Still others think that the jellyfish explosion might be connected to the overfishing of other species, such as the anchovy and the sardine, which used to compete for the minute creatures and plankton on which jellyfish voraciously feed.

There also seems to be a connection with a change in the wind and the pattern of the Mediterranean currents, which may themselves be linked to global warming.

Jellyfish live deep in the sea during the day but rise to the surface at night to feed. For all their undulating mobility, jellyfish have little control over where they travel, and are mostly swept along by currents and prevailing winds that propel the creatures landwards.

It all signals a deep malaise in the Mediterranean.

“Every jellyfish that comes ashore brings us the message that the sea is sick,” says Josep Maria Gigli, scientific coordinator of the Spanish environment ministry’s Medusa Plan.

“Jellyfish are a natural part of the marine environment, but the scale of what’s happening now is a warning that something’s going very wrong,” says Dr David Santilo, a marine biologist for the Greenpeace research laboratories at Exeter University.

“This plague of jellyfish is like a hazard warning light. It’s a wake-up call,” adds Dr Santilo.
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