Author: Nancy Keane
Perfect breeding conditions have resulted in thousands of mauve stinger jellysish - pelagia noctiluca - are set to wash up on French Riviera beaches in the coming months, including popular beaches at Nice and Monaco.
The beach of Darse on the Cote D'Azur was closed this month after an invasion of the bright purple jellyfish that glow an eerie yellow at night. The stinging jellyfish have eight tentacles that can reach six feet long. Their stings are painful and can provoke asthma, allergic attacks and, in rare cases, heart failure.
Millions of the creatures can sometimes be seen drifting out at sea in trails that are sometimes many miles long. Increasing numbers have been landing on beaches from Spain’s Costa del Sol to Sicily. Now experts warns that France could suffer.
Last year, Cannes put up a floating barrier to keep them at bay and Italy has launched a boat surveillance operation “Jellywatch”. Jellyfish swarms can be tracked by satellite.
Marine biologists say the jellyfish population explosion and their drift further north is partly due to climate change. Rising water temperatures can cause a decline in jellyfish predators such as turtles and tuna. Last year, a salmon farm in Northern Ireland lost imore than 100,000 fish to a mauve stinger attack.