“But that doesn’t mean they aren’t interesting. “Well, they do have a simplistic form,” says Gordon. Possibly because the jellyfish is a brainless, heartless blob occupying a low bough on the evolutionary tree of life? You have to wonder why none of the country’s science graduates have chosen to become a jellyfish expert, given that the species is of such medical and public interest. We’re not even sure if any of them are endemic. Little is known about the life cycle, ecology or behaviour of our jellyfish. Even though this is an island nation where scores of jellyfish wash up on shores every year, there isn’t yet a scientist in the country who has chosen jellyfish as their area of expertise. Jellyfish are poorly represented in museum collections, partly because they are hard to handle and tend to fall apart, and partly because nobody has really given them much attention. Several of the species have been described in the literature, but many haven’t been seen since they were first described. The spectacular Cyanea genus is found in New Zealand waters, this species, named for Haeckel’s late wife Anna Sethe, is not. It’s the first time anyone has seriously looked at local jellyfish for over a century, and it was not an easy task. The review will be published in the middle of this year, and will include 34 jellyfish, including three new species. “When there’s an international jellyfish conference, it usually means I’ve gone somewhere,” she says.ĭennis Gordon, editor of The New Zealand Inventory of Biodiversity and a principal scientist at NIWA, recently invited Gershwin to help review and update the taxonomy of jellyfish found in New Zealand waters. In fact, she is one of their greatest fans, one of the world’s few jellyfish experts, and probably its only jellyfish taxonomist. Gershwin is concerned about the state of the oceans and the fate of the creatures within it, but she is not inherently averse to jellyfish. “There are many locations around the world that have flipped to jellyfish-dominated environments.” “It’s pretty scary, actually,” says Dr Lisa Gershwin, curator of natural sciences at Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery in Tasmania and the former national marine stinger adviser to Surf Lifesaving Australia. Some would, and have, argued that we might as well get used to eating them, because if we continue fishing the oceans at the current rate, there won’t be much else left. It seems that one of the most primitive life forms is poised to inherit the Earth-its watery parts at least. They don’t have many predators, and many of them are better suited to warmer water. As larger oceanic creatures are fished out, there is more food for jellyfish. Many species of New Zealand jellyfish were first described in other parts of the world, a number by German biologist Ernst Haeckel, who illustrated them vividly, particularly in Kunstformen der Natur (opposite).Įvidently something is out of balance, but, as many species suffer, the jellyfish prospers. (left) broods many thousands of planula larvae that make up the white-edging of her oral arms. According to numerous scientists, these blooms suggest that all is not well within the ocean, perhaps something to do with climate change, pollution, overfishing, or a combination of all three. In recent years, there have been reports from all over the world of uncommonly large blooms of jellyfish driving people out of the water, suffocating commercial fish farms and clogging up fishing nets and the intakes of ships and power plants. And while hundreds of people will turn up to rescue a beached whale, few of us would stop to re-float a stranded jellyfish.Īnd yet humans are probably responsible for what seems to be an international jellyfish explosion. If we see them in the water, we tend to get out. We don’t generally hold jellyfish in great regard. They have a pouch for a stomach that doubles as the reproductive system, a mouth that doubles as an anus, and the rest is mostly water and a bundle of nerves.ĭuring the Renaissance, jellyfish were thought to be plants, and while 18th century naturalists allowed them entry into the animal kingdom, they were initially classified as zoophytes, something between plants and animals. Jellyfish keep things simple: no heart, no brain, no circulatory system and no bones. For shrimps and small fish, pelagic jellyfish of this sort act both as a floating cafe and a predator fence as they drift in open seas. capillata), or-if there are raised gelatinous warts on the (unseen) surface of its bell-the recently-described endemic species of Cyanea. This animal is likely to be a lion’s mane jellyfish (C. Playing host to larval fish at a depth of 24 m off subantarctic Campbell Island, a large Cyanea sp. Written by Margo White Photographed by Kim Westerskov
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