Quote:
Japan faces a Jellyfish invasion
Tokyo: A slimy jellyfish weighing as much as a sumo wrestler has Japan’s fishing industry in the grip of its poisonous tentacles.
Vast numbers of Echizen kurage, or Nomura’s jellyfish, have appeared around Japan’s coast since July, clogging and ripping fishing nets and forcing fishermen to spend hours hacking them apart before bringing home their reduced catches.
One Echizen kurage can be up to 2 metres in diameter and weigh up to 200kg.
“They’re like aliens,” Noriyuki Kani of the fisheries federation in Toyama, northwest of Tokyo, said.
There are no official figures on the size of the problem, but Kani says the financial losses are obvious.
“If your nets are full of jellyfish, of course there is no space for fish,” he said.
