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What is the biggest jellyfish in the world?

Oceanography: What happens if jellyfish continue to take over the world's oceans?

  • Answer:

    They're slow, brainless, floating masses of protein. Most likely, some type of predator will figure out a good way to eat them. All it takes is for a fish to develop resistance to their sting chemicals. Or a smart chef to make them appetizing. The only tricky part is that we may have to slow down our habit of eating all the jelly-fish-predators long enough to restore some balance. Or maybe something that tastes disgusting to humans will start eating jellies -- wouldn't that be nice? A billion years of evolution has proven that nature is quite good (in the long run) at self-regulating species that grow unchecked. Otherwise, each continent would only have a few dominant species in their food webs. Instead, we see an incredible amount of biodiversity as creatures find niches and compete for resources. Evolution makes ecosystems extremely good at re-establishing equilibrium after an external upset. Humans are now one of those external upsets -- there is definitely short-term damage from human activity, but on the evolutionary scale, things will balance out. For example, ocean fish are already evolving to compensate for pressure from humans. Popular fishing species are evolving to reach maturity at a smaller size, because fishermen throw back smaller catches. It's really fascinating to be able to watch nature adapting around us in real-time.

Ryan Carlyle at Quora Visit the source

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It's a good thing. Jellyfish are protein. In the future, because of global heating, one possibility is that all is left is peanut butter and jellyfish. So as Ryan suggests, a great adaptation path is to get used to making them delicious. Using peanut butter. Or, we could switch to non-carbon energy sources, and start carbon drawdown from the atmosphere soonest.

Andrew Ross Long

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