Japan attacked by giant jellyfish!
Driven by the hand of man - including the dreaded Global Warming - and carried by ocean currents, monstrous jellyfish weighing up to over 400 pounds and with a diameter of over six feet are invading the Pacific side of Japan, Asahi reports.
The squiggly beasts - named Echizen kurage or Nomura's jellyfish and a very distant relative of the more famous godzillacus giganticus - are having a devastating impact on fishing, damaging fixed nets and scratching fish with their tentacles, reducing the value of a fisherman's catch.
Building like a breathless crescendo of fear, the sightings came in:
- In July off Kochi Prefecture...
- In mid-August, off the Kiisuido region, which covers coastal Wakayama to Mihama in Wakayama Prefecture...
- In October, off the Boso Peninsula in Chiba Prefecture...
- In late October, off Togawan in Oga, Akita Prefecture. At that time, fully 5000 of the gelatinous beasts were spotted...
- Off the Kurohime coast in Sado, Niigata Prefecture, a dozen fisherman found that almost all of their catch was the poisonously-tentacled beasts...
- "Hundreds" have been caught in nets in Aomori, Hokkaido, Iwate and Shimane prefectures...
- 12/7/05 UPDATE: Japan's Liberal Democratic Party has initiated a "countermeasures committee", and a multi-national summit featuring Japan, China, and South Korea is planned for this month... We wish them well...
And, the worst thing about this is... all of this could be prevented if only top scientists had been listened to. They warn that the root cause for this attack is overfishing and development in south Asia, especially China. The daunting solution: get all the coastal countries to agree to reverse the trends.
Of course, the ever-resourceful Japanese have come up with a temporary solution: conducting boat tours and enabling brave tourists to touch the monsters. And, even tastier, eating them.
WoW!!! That's crazy!!
Posted by: Airah on January 19, 2006 09:31 AMthat shit is straight ridiculous.
Posted by: steven on March 31, 2006 09:45 AMARE THESE JELLY FISH GOING TO BE IN NORTH CAROLINA WATERS
Posted by: CHRISITNE on August 8, 2006 10:57 AMgood god! hope those bastards don't start popin up in the atlantic!
Posted by: zach on September 15, 2006 05:40 PMThat's some crazy shiznat
Posted by: Roffles on November 3, 2006 06:51 PMYou people are morons. Theres no possible way that monster could get to North Carolina waters from the Sea of freaking Japan, dumbass.
Posted by: blah on December 7, 2006 11:19 AMthat is one fucking big jellyfish!
Posted by: steph on February 9, 2007 06:49 PM
