A PERSEUS international workshop entitled Coming to grips with the jellyfish phenomenon in the Southern European and other Seas: research to the rescue of coastal managers will be taking place in March 2015, in Cadiz, Spain. The workshop is organised by the PERSEUS partner institute CSIC and it is co-funded by IOC-UNESCO and CEIMAR.
Jellyfish swarms in the Southern European Seas (SES: Mediterranean and Black Seas) are a recurrent phenomenon of high scientific interest and public awareness with impacts for the public health, recreation, tourism, fisheries, aquaculture and ecosystems. But this phenomenon also occurs in other areas of the globe, requiring a broad point of view for a larger frame than just the SES.
The goal of this International Workshop is thus to bring together people involved in jellyfish research and in management for two full days, but opening the discussion to a wider community that found in the SES. The Workshop will tackle ecosystem services provided by jellyfish and potential societal benefits, and impacts of jellyfish and their aggregations on PERSEUS study areas and in other oceans.
The main focus of the Workshop is to review progress in our understanding of jellyfish blooms and their dynamics, and to discuss the development of observational systems that will eventually enable better management of their impacts. Some of the topics that will be discuss are:
- how to strengthen our capabilities to monitor jellyfish over time? (so as not to rely solely on citizen science for distribution and abundance data over time)
- how can we make use of recent technological advances for research and monitoring of jellyfish blooms?
- how to include jellies into routine monitoring programmes that are carried out by specialists? (like for example phytoplankton or copepods)
- what knowledge gaps we need to fill to be able to advance our conceptual understanding of jellyfish blooms and to enhance predictive abilities?
- how to quantify the impact of jellyfish in the perspective of Good Environmental Status achievement?