PARIS - Thousands of them plague our beaches to the horror of holidaymakers who dread their sting, but thanks to man's disruption of the oceans, jellyfish are thriving.
The proliferation of the jellyfish could lead to what some observers are calling the"jellyfication" of the oceans, which are facing profound changes according to a draft UN report due out on Wednesday . It is not clear if their presence has increased in other parts of the world, because it is difficult to actually count them, although worldwide database was set up in 2014 to track them.
Adults spawn, releasing a huge quantity of eggs and sperm into the water. The fertilised eggs sink to the ocean depths before hatching a small polyp, which can then clone itself.In the past, these would happen at regular intervals, said Dr Anais Courtet, a biologist at the Paris Aquarium - every 12 years in the Mediterranean, for example.
THE HUMAN FACTOR Deep-sea trawling has also helped them. The trawlers drag giant nets across the ocean floor pulling up everything indiscriminately: sponges, worms and coral.And they have made human objects part of their own habitat too, from buoys right up to oil rigs. Their proliferation has got to the point where they are even now interfering with human activity - and this goes way beyond stinging unwary holidaymakers.
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