According to the news pink, slimy and repellent, the Nomura’s jellyfish is an authentic horror of the deep that’s been assaulting Japan. The creatures have sunk a giant fishing boat after it was capsized off Chiba in Japan, as its three-man crew was trying to haul in a net containing dozens of huge Nomura’s jellyfish.
The reason behind the increasing menace of giant jellyfish remains mysterious. But it is said that an armada of the gelatinous giants has gathered in the Yellow Sea off China and the Korean peninsula. Now it has drifted into the Sea of Japan, and brought down the Diasan Shinsho-maru. One of the largest jellyfish in the world, the Nomura’s jellyfish can grow up to 6 feet in diameter and weigh as much as 400 pounds.
It is reported that the boat’s crew was thrown into the sea, but the three men were rescued by another trawler. The local Coast Guard office reported that the weather was clear and the sea was calm at the time of the accident. Experts believe weather and water conditions in the breeding grounds, off the coast of China, have been ideal for the jellyfish in recent months.
Professor Shinichi Ue at Hiroshima University, told that a huge jellyfish typhoon will hit the country. In 2005, fishermen looking for anchovies, salmon and yellowtail began finding huge numbers of the jellyfish in their nets. When the Nomuras grow larger than a metre in diameter, half a dozen of them can destroy a fishing net. The fish caught alongside them are poisoned and covered in slime and rendered unsaleable.
The situation has become so serious that the salmon boats in northern Japan stopped going out, and in some places fishermen lost 80 per cent of their income. Even staff at some of the nuclear power plants along the Japan Sea coast found that the jellyfish got sucked into the pumps which take in sea water to cool the reactors.
