Jellyfish Spotting

The PERSEUS project has launched a large-scale outreach activity called “Jellyfish Spotting Campaign” which aims to encourage “citizen scientists” - mostly beachgoers - to record jellyfish sightings and submit them, together with photos where possible, on this dedicated sub-site of the PERSEUS website. 
 

Gelatinous plankton - referred to as jellyfish - is particularly hard to monitor because its presence patterns are often unpredictable. Consequently, programming field work to attest these events is hard, and remote sensing has not proved very helpful in documenting gelatinous plankton blooms. Direct observation remains the main method to monitor jellyfish population.
 

The campaign covers any location in the Mediterranean and /or Black Seas – meaning any jellyfish sightings recorded in these areas are considered valid for the purposes of the campaign.
 

The Jellyfish Spotting Campaign undertaken by the PERSEUS project aims to build on this successful citizen science experiment (carried out with the wider framework of the CIESM JellyWatch and as a synergy among various ongoing projects VECTORS, CoCoNet, MED-JELLYRISK, RITMARE) and create a wider framework of participating countries to help monitor jellyfish around the Mediterranean and Black Seas.

  

The Jellyfish Spotting Campaign has been launched for the summer 2013 and it estimated to run for three years under the PERSEUS project – i.e. 2013 till 2015 with the main focus/peak period being the summer seasons of 2013, 2014, and 2015. Of course, being a long-term enterprise, the campaign will continue beyond the life of the PERSEUS project as part of the LIFEWATCH.

 

Scientists will use sightings to form datasets establishing the history, distribution and abundance of OFS (outbreak forming species, including natives) and IAS (invasive alien species). The databases will also be integrated for predictive mapping using statistical models coupling species distributions and environmental variables (environmental bootstrap method). All of this in simple words means that the sitings will help scientists to better understand and give early warnings and recommendations for protecting our seas from possible environmental risks.
 

For those of you interested in more scientific information on jellyfish, you can download the latest study of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations entitled:

REVIEW OF JELLYFISH BLOOMS IN THE MEDITERRANEAN AND BLACK SEA, 2013