Warm Weather Leads to Jellyfish Boom in UK

Rise in temperatures has led to a jellyfish boom along the British coastline, a new study found. Researchers are advising people not to touch these fish as they have a powerful sting.

The Marine Conservation Society said that they have been receiving reports of jellyfish bloom from many parts of the country.

"There is some evidence that jellyfish numbers are increasing in places around the world, including UK seas, although some scientists argue that jellyfish numbers increase and then decrease normally every 20 years or so," said Dr Peter Richardson is the charity's Biodiversity Programme Manager and jellyfish expert.

"However, others believe these increases are linked to factors such as pollution, over-fishing and possibly climate change. I think we should consider jellyfish populations as important indicators of the state of our seas, and the MCS jellyfish survey helps provide some of the information we need to understand more about them," Richardson added in a news release.

Rise of the jellyfish population has led to downturn of fisheries in many parts of the world. A study that was published last year said that jellyfish population was increasing in 82 percent of the regions analyzed which included East Asia, the Black Sea, the Mediterranean, the Northeast U.S. Shelf, Hawaii, and Antarctica.

Recently, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization too had claimed that the recent decrease in fish population in the Mediterranean Sea was due to the rise of jellyfish population.

The year saw surprisingly slow growth of jellyfish population in the U.K. as there were very few reports of jellyfish population until May 2013. Researchers attributed the slow growth to the long, cold winter in the region. However, now the jellyfish seem to have made a come-back and have registered a huge rise in population.

Richardson said that they have received many reports on sightings of moon jellyfish, followed by reports of compass and blue jellyfish in the south west.

He said that Lion's mane jellyfish, seen in parts of North Wales and North West England, carry a deadly sting and should not be touched at any cost.