Ghost Jellyfishes off Stressed Northern Pacific Coastal China and Japan

Summary: Ghost jellyfishes accumulate off coastal China and Japan despite scary agro-industrial development, algal blooms and globally warmed climate change.

Japanese fisheries biologist and cnidariologist Kamakiche Kishinouye is credited with describing ghost jellyfish (Cyanea novaki) in 1891; ghost jellyfish at Onomichi-shi, southwestern Honshu Island, Japan; Aug. 7, 2015: harum.koh, CC BY SA 2.0, via Flickr

Ghost jellyfishes abound off China and Japan in northern Pacific Ocean waters where they adapt to environmental extremes and stresses and avoid predation because of sea animal populations annihilated by sea-bottom trawlers.

Ghost jellyfishes bear their common name because of creamy to pale yellow bodies that blend with the wave colors, foam and patterns of coastal sea waters. They carry the scientific name Cyanea nozaki ("Nozaki's blue-colored [jellyfish]") as Cyaneidae (from the Greek κυάνεος, kuáneos, "blue-colored") true jellyfish family members and for dark-colored centers. Descriptions by Kamakiche Kishinouye (Nov. 29, 1867-Nov. 22, 1929) in 1891 drive ghost jellyfish taxonomies even though they do not survive in English language-distributed scientific literature.

Ghost jellyfishes exist as ever-expanding populations that encounter few natural enemies with equivalent tolerances of coastal water development, extreme weather events and globally warmed climate change.

Ghost jellyfishes flourish as particularly high-profile marine presences off coastal eastern China, along with common (Aurelia aurita) and Nomura's (Nemopilema nomurai) jellyfishes, during July and August.

Algal blooms, nutrient overloads and oxygen depletion from agricultural runoff and industrial sewage and over-fishing through sea-bottom trawling give common, ghost and Nomura's jellyfishes predator-free waters. They hinder commercial catches in August and September of pond-reared flame jellyfishes (Rhopilema esculentum) released in May and June into Bohai Gulf waters at Liaodong Bay. They impede benthic (sea-bottom) fishes, sea slugs, shrimps and starfishes that inhibit ghost jellyfish polyp (from the Greek πολύς, polús, "many," and πούς, poús, "foot") over-population.

Ghost jellyfishes journey, in under 12 months, as fertilized eggs; pelagic (open-ocean) larvae; and polyps asexually producing free-swimming ephyrae, predecessors to free-swimming, open-ocean, sexually productive medusas.

Bohai Gulf and Shandong provincial port city Qingdao coastal waters know Yellow Sea benthic temperatures between 50 and 59 degrees Fahrenheit (10 and 15 degrees Celsius).

Globally warmed climate change lets ghost jellyfishes lead life cycles at ever more polluted depths and variable temperatures as fingernail-sized larvae looking for secure, solid structures. Ghost jellyfishes maintain China's and Japan's coral reefs with their dead, stone-anchored, tube-like bodies and subsequent generations through asexually reproduced ephyrae, miniatures of mature medusa stages. Medusas net flat-topped swimming bells (bodies) with up to 19.68-inch (50-centimeter) diameters lobed into eight marginal lappets (from the Old English læppa, "garment flap or skirt").

Four orange to red-brown, tangled tentacles occur around the manubrium (from the Latin manūbrium, "handle"), as the food-inputting, waste-outputting, tubular central mouth to a simple stomach.

Ghost jellyfishes possess hollow, thread-like tentacles, with neurotoxin-filled nematocysts (from the Greek νῆμα, nēma, "thread," and κύστις, kústis, "anatomical sac"), in one 100-plus bundle per lappet.

Malabar kingfishes (Carangoides malabaricus) and razorbelly scads (Alepes kleinii), when smaller, and stalked barnacles (Alepas pacifica) permanently queue up respectively amid tentacles and on bell margins. Stinging, stunning neurotoxins remain reserved for comb jelly, crustacean, moon jelly, smaller fish and jellyfish, and zooplankton prey; and predatory fishes, jellyfishes, sea turtles and seabirds. Sun Sung, director of the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Oceanology in Qingdao, sees predator-free, stress-tolerant polyps as "key to jellyfish outbreaks" despite algal blooms.

Dr. Sun treats ghost jellyfishes as triumphing throughout 500 million environmentally traumatic years since "When ecosystems deteriorate, they [jellyfishes] are likely to thrive when others fail."

ghost jellyfish (Cyanea novaki); Onomichi-shi, Hiroshima Prefecture, Chūgoku region, southwestern Honshu Island, Japan; Aug. 7, 2015: harum.koh, CC BY SA 2.0, via Flickr

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

Japanese fisheries biologist and cnidariologist Kamakiche Kishinouye is credited with describing ghost jellyfish (Cyanea novaki) in 1891; ghost jellyfish at Onomichi-shi, southwestern Honshu Island, Japan; Aug. 7, 2015: harum.koh, CC BY SA 2.0, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/harumkoh/20396139785

ghost jellyfish (Cyanea novaki); Onomichi-shi, Hiroshima Prefecture, Chūgoku region, southwestern Honshu Island, Japan; Aug. 7, 2015: harum.koh, CC BY SA 2.0, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/harumkoh/20208147448/

For further information:

Purcell, Jennifer E. "Scyphozoa (Jellyfish)." In: Michael Hutchins, Dennis A. Thoney and Neil Schlager, eds. Grzimek's Animal Life Encyclopedia. Second Edition. Volume 1, Lower Metazoans and Lesser Deuterostomes: 153-157. Farmington Hills MI: Gale Group, 2003.

Qiu, Jane. 29 October 2014. "Coastal Havoc Boosts Jellies." Nature > News & Comment.
Available @ https://www.nature.com/news/coastal-havoc-boosts-jellies-1.16236