P6: Jellyfish Blooms

Question 1

Intro- causes of jellyfish blooms

Answer 1

There are also positive impacts of the interactions between humans and the marine environment. For jellyfish anthropogenic stressors such as; ocean warming, overfishing, eutrophication and ocean sprawl (resulting in increased habitats) have all contributed to a more favoured environment by jelly fish causing jellyfish blooms.

Question 2

critique of jellyfish blooms from anthropogenic causes

Answer 2

however the majority of studies only studied two wide spread highly invasive taxa and failed to represent the wider jellyfish taxa. Moreover studies were correlative and unable to establish causation.

Question 3

impacts of jellyfish blooms on fisheries

Answer 3

these jellyfish blooms had many negative impacts of fisheries including reduced fish recruitment, spoiling fish catches, and acting as direct competition with economically important fish

Question 4

economic damage

Answer 4

In Korea jellyfish were linked to reduced catches of up to 25.3%, damage to catch reduced value by up to 33.7%, damage to fishing gear up to 23% and the economic loss for Korean fisheries estimated to exceed US$ 200 million in a single jellyfish season (Kim et al., 2012), moreover there are also impacts to reduced toursim.

Question 5

benefits of jellyfish

Answer 5

however most of these studies of jellyfish are generally negative and ignore the important ecosystem services of jellyfish such as top down control on the food web which maintains water quality in the eutrophication process as well as being a sought after commodity in the fishing and aquaculture industry.