Pink, slimy, six-foot-wide, 400+ pound jellyfish are preparing for a holiday in the Sea of Japan. Millions of Echizen kurage, or Nomura’s jellyfish, are cooling their tentacles near Korea before their drift towards Japan over the next few months. Good thing the island nation doesn't have a diet that relies much on fish, because the jellypocalypes has completely shut down commercial fishing in the past. Doh!
According to the Wall Street Journal's 2007 report on the jellyswarm, the Nomura jellyfish were historically only occasionally spotted in the Sea of Japan. But during the largest outbreak yet in 2005, an estimated 500 million jellyfish splashed down EVERY FRICKEN DAY!
The Times Online UK continues: "No one is sure about the reasons for the slimy plague. One theory is that global warming is heating up the sea water and encouraging them to breed. Another blames effluent from rivers in China [see: Three Gorges Dam], which carries nutrients on which the jellyfish feed. Another blames over-fishing of other species, leaving a surfeit of plankton for the Echizen kurage to feed on.
Meanwhile, enterprising Japanese are making the most of the maritime catastrophe. Fishermen have devised ways of keeping the jellyfish out of their nets with sharp wires. Scientists have discovered a method of extracting collagen form the jellyfish, an ingredient of cosmetics and pharmaceuticals, increasingly valued as a health food, and usually extracted from pig or fish carcasses."
So you can inject jellyfish into your lips to make them full and supple. Cool.Even cooler, you can inject jellyfish into your belly (via your esophagus) to make it, uh, full and supple. Thanks to the Tango Jersey Dairy, that is. The company will hunt inside the jellyfish blizzard to create it's now seasonal vanilla jellyfish ice cream. The product is described as "slightly chewy." Please celebrate environmental doom with a bowl. This story ends on a happy note.
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