Friend or Foe?

The scourge of of the ocean? No, not really.

Actually as important as any other animal in the food chain and the marine environment.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder...

After reading an article on the website of the Guardian we thought it best to balance the story a little.

The article does give some valid points as to why we are seeing jellies in such large numbers, over fishing, global warming, the same muted facts that never seem to change anything.

The worst part is the section on jellyfish sting prevention which tells the reader to use more suncream as this prevents the venom from penetrating the skin! Whilst that may be true its really not a good idea to be adding to environmental damage by filling the seas with slicks of suncream which is highly toxic to many of the delicate marine life.

Best prevention would be to where wetsuits, skin suits or rash guards.

One point the article barely touches on is the decline of turtles. The Mediterranean used to be home to three species, the Green, Loggerhead and Leatherback.

All three species are in sharp decline for the same reasons plus the fact that the seas are now full of plastic which the turtles mistake for jellyfish and eat them, suffocate and or drown.

Just another story of too little too late for the marine environment. The problem is that things people can't see, they generally don't care about.
If we can get more people interested in diving and snorkelling and help them to understand the threats and learn how easy these problems can be reversed the world would be a much more harmonious place!

Here is a link to the article and also a link to Litterati which is a website set up in conjunction with Instagram to record and remove trash and rubbish from the planet.

Litterati

Jellyfish article


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