The New Kings of the Ocean

I can't believe I have been writing this blog for almost two years and I have barely touched on the subject of jellyfish.  What on earth is wrong with me?  How could I have overlooked these gelatinous denizens of the deep for so long?

At this point weary readers (assuming there are any of you left) you could be forgiven for thinking this blog is slowly mutating into a deranged version of the discovery channel.  What with dinosaurs, owls and crocodiles occupying valuable blog space in the past and now jellyfish.  "Why?"  I imagine you cry, "why jellyfish?  What could possibly be interesting about jellyfish?"  Well for starters they might be the only thing in the oceans apart from garbage and sewage run off in a few decades time.  Seafood restaurants are going to be pressed getting customers when all they can offer is mucus on a plate.  Apparently the climatic and pollution changes the oceans are undergoing may be bad for a lot of creatures but jellyfish are thriving.  And stinging, let's not forget the stinging.

One of the prime movers in the stinging stakes is the box jellyfish (so named because people give them as gifts to relatives they really don't like).  Unlike other jellyfish which are mindless blobs box jellyfish show distressing signs of intelligence.  I'm not sure I'm crazy about this.  I don't mind dolphins being intelligent and I have a sneaking affection for the octopus as well but jellyfish?  Really I don't want to live in a world where a being that looks like something sneezed out of my nose after a big night out might be able to beat me in an IQ test.  It's already a better swimmer than I am, surely that's enough.

Jellyfish have been around for hundreds of millions of years and they haven't actually changed all that much.  Think of them as the crocodiles of the ocean.  Personally I suspect that sitting around for six hundred million years without evolving into anything shows a lack of ambition.  It doesn't seem to have hurt the jellyfish though, they're thriving.  Specifically they're thriving in those parts of the ocean where we have successfully eradicated most other life.  Areas of low oxygen, high pollution and generally low property values are getting filled up with jellyfish.  At this rate it won't be long before they're moving into the suburbs.  Our oceans are getting all squishy and there doesn't seem to be much we can do about it.

The truth is we don't know very much about jellyfish, this is partly because they dwell in the ocean depths and partly one suspects because nobody is particularly interested in jellyfish.  I defy anyone to think of jellyfish without going uggh.  We'd better get interested though because the jellyfish are invading our domain.  Well, no they're not but they're invading those parts of the ocean we like to think of as our domain ie where we go swimming and fishing.  Our aforementioned friend the box jellyfish is swarming in the region of Waikiki Beach to the distress (and sometimes blinding pain and occasional death) of human swimmers.  As the oceans are cleared of everything else jellyfish are stepping (swimming?) eagerly forward to fill the gap.  Fishermen, too, are suffering.  In some areas of the world trawlers are hauling in nets largely filled with jellyfish which strangely have a low resale value.  It's also really difficult to impress anyone by boasting that you caught a jellyfish twenty feet long.

Once jellyfish learn how to function on land we're all going to be in terrible trouble.  If you think being stung by a jellyfish is bad wait until you slip on one on the stairs and break your neck.  You'll be begging for a little box jellyfish sting on your beach holiday.  Possibly the only thing that will keep the jellyfish menace in the oceans is the fact that they don't seem to be particularly interesting in changing.  As I mentioned before six hundred million years is a long time between growth spurts.

There are things we can do of course.  If we can cancel out global warming, eradicate pollution, stop overfishing and find some way of replacing the species that have been all but wiped out the jellyfish population will probably return to normal levels.  Or we could see if we can find a use for them.  Guess what direction research is currently travelling in?  Jellyfish have all sorts of applications.  I say that without hesitation because pretty much everything has all sorts of applications.  Take a stick for example, it can be a club, a lever, a back scratcher, a bat, a marker, a support, an impromptu fishing rod, a crude spear, an arm extension or one half of a metaphor relating to rewards and punishments.  Compared with a jellyfish a stick is a veritable polymath (note to self, write a blog entry on sticks).  So I have no hesitation in saying that jellyfish have lots of applications.

One of the applications is to injuries.  Are you injured?  Perhaps you've been ripped to pieces by a pack of ravening jellyfish.  No problem, slap a jellyfish on the affected part and wait for it to get better.  If the jellyfish doesn't get better stick it on somebody elses injury and hope for the best.  Seriously though apparently box jellyfish carry some sort of something or other (I believe the word collagen was mentioned) which might be very helpful in the making of bandages.  This is before we get into the fact that apparently they're chock full of protein.  Actually they're chock full of water but it seems there's some protein in there too.  The oceans may be full of jellyfish in forty years time but I'm prepared to bet that in sixty years time they'll be an endangered species too.  Evolve your way out of that one jellyfish.