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This summer, I wrote about the crisis of unprecedented swarms of jellyfish closing beaches in Spain, their growth spurred by increased water temperatures, one of many signs of global warming. Months later, with waters cooling as winter approaches, a jellyfish eruption of a different kind has occurred, showing yet another manifestation of the economic threat that the Earth’s rapidly warming climate has brought.

In the waters off the coast of Ireland, the Northern Salmon Company has lost 2 million dollars worth of farmed salmon in one freak incident. That’s 100,000 fish.

It was a jellyfish attack, in a swarm of a sort that’s never been seen before in the area. There were billions of jellyfish in a gigantic horde that covered ten square miles of ocean, 35 feet deep. The jellyfish came upon the Irish salmon farm, and before the Northern Salmon Company could do anything about it, their salmon were all dead, all stung to death or killed by the effort of trying to escape.

The jellyfish were so thick in the water that people trying to rescue the salmon took three hours to get to where the fish farm had been.

One employee, a man with 3 decades of experience in the business, said he had never seen anything like it before. “It was unprecedented, absolutely amazing. The sea was red with these jellyfish and there was nothing we could do about it, absolutely nothing.”

Here’s the kicker: Pelagia nocticula, the species of jellyfish that attacked the salmon had never been seen at all in those waters before. It’s a species that’s native to the warm waters of the Mediterranean. Normally, the waters off the coast of Ireland are far too cold for Pelagia nocticula to live in.

Not anymore.

There were billions of jellyfish in a gigantic horde that covered ten square miles of ocean, 35 feet deep. If attacks by gigantic swarms of jellyfish triggered by global warming won’t convince you to listen to the calls from progressives to take bold steps to slow down climate change, what will?

(Source: Associated Press, November 21, 2007)