What do tourists and jellyfish have in common? They both love warm water and proliferate along Spanish beaches in the summer.And that's bad news for Spain, the world's top tourist destination after France.
On Friday, the government approved a plan to create an armada of recreational boaters to spot the stinging blobs and summon help.
"The important thing is that anybody who comes to the beaches here in Spain should know that a serious plan is under way to keep this from being a problem," said Josep-Maria Gili, the biologist coordinating the project.
Spain's Mediterranean waters are home to half a dozen kinds of jellyfish. Some areas have seen an exponential rise in jellyfish populations, called a bloom. Last year the proliferation was so bad in parts of Spain's Catalonia, Valencia and Almeria regions, some beaches had to be closed for a few days.
Scientists blame the problem in part on overfishing, which has sapped stocks of natural jellyfish predators like tuna and turtles, and of small fish that compete with jellyfish to feed on plankton.
Another factor is global warming: jellyfish are drifting close to beaches more frequently as decreasing rainfall causes a drop in cooler, freshwater runoff from rivers — a natural barrier for the creatures, said Josep-Maria Gili, a marine biologist coordinating the project.
"The fact that jellyfish make it to the coast is a sign the sea is sending us about how badly we treat it," said Gili, who works at the Barcelona-based Institute of Sea Sciences, affiliated with Spain's top research body, the Superior Council for Scientific Research.
"It is like a symptom of how we have changed the sea more than we thought," he said in a telephone interview.
Source: Yahoo News
Image: Pink Tentacle
Tags: Spanish | Beaches | Jellyfish
Comments