Thousands of Jellyfish Surround Fisherman Off Dorset Coast

Thousands of jellyfish surrounded a fisherman's boat off the coast of Dorset County in southwest England, it was reported on Friday, June 23. The angler Chris Hinton said the jellyfish, collectively known as a smack or fluther, covered an area a size of a football pitch, as cited by the BBC. The gathering of marine animals in large number occur in different parts of the world and experts link them to several factors.

Dorset Jellyfish Incident

Hinton captured images of the smack of jellyfish with an estimated number in the thousands when he spotted them in the waters off Charmouth village, located in west Dorset, the BBC reported.

David Braine, a senior BBC meteorologist, stated the jellyfish population is soaring due to "unusually high sea surface temperatures." Braine explains the population of plankton increases because of sunlight and higher temperatures, which gives more food for the jellyfish.

Charmouth's local coastline is popularly known as the "Jurassic Coast" due to the many discovered fossils along its beaches. UNESCO also recognizes the said area as a World Heritage site due to the insight it holds into millions of years of evolution, according to the Charmouth Traders Association.

Warm Ocean Temperatures

Warmer ocean temperatures are known for being synonymous with large jellyfish population. Scientists believe that the rapid population growth is also amplified by climate change and global warming, as previously mentioned. However, the process is not linear since there are various conditions that must be met for a fluther of jellyfish to thrive.

The University of California San Diego (UCSD) explains a warmer ocean paves the way for more jellyfish when their food, such as other types of plankton like krill larvae, copepods, or fish eggs, also increase in population at the same. However, there will be fewer jellyfish when their prey's population decreases amid a warm ocean.

As climate change continues to alter the temperatures of the world's oceans, jellyfish population is expected to increase in some parts of the world, while decrease in others, the UCSD adds.

Global Warming Threat

Despite the benefits of warmer oceans, climate change and global warming are known for causing deaths of some marine animals worldwide in recent years, and even likely to do so in the future, according to climate scientists. Extreme weather events such as heatwaves can make temperatures spike more than any marine organisms can withstand.

While above-average ocean temperatures are favorable to jellyfish, under the circumstances their food increases, these conditions could be detrimental to other sea creatures, ranging from plankton to small fish, and large mammals like whales. This phenomenon has been going on over the past decades and even recently.

On Thursday, June 22, thousands of fish washed up dead along a beach in Thailand's southern Chumphon province. Experts say that climate change may have caused a plankton population bloom that resulting in the mass fish deaths, according to CNN.