The 5-year research project on “Key Processes, Mechanism and Ecological Effect of Jellyfish Bloom in China Coastal Waters” was launched in Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IOCAS) on Jan.15, 2011 to fight against overwhelming jellyfishes that have impaired the development of fishery and tourism.

The project aims to find out biological features for jellyfish blooms around coastal waters of China, map out their impact on ecological system in these areas and bring forth countermeasures for them.

Being the National Basic Research Program (973 Program), the project received a research grant of 28 million Yuan ($4,248,440) from the Ministry of Science and Technology of China and had a research team of 30 members from institutes and universities, including IOCAS.

“The research will be carried out mainly in jellyfish-stuffed areas of East China Sea and Yellow Sea by adopting experiments and spot investigation”, said IOCAS director SUN Song, chief scientist of the project.

According to SUN, jellyfish blooms are thought to occur seasonally, when water is warmer and when there's more availability of their natural prey -- small fish, zooplankton and sometimes other jellies. However, when an ecosystem is dominated by jellyfish, fish will mostly disappear, posing severe threats to fish farms. Besides, tourism and other industries also suffer the impact of jellyfish blooms.

“Jellyfish blooming has become the priority issue in the field of marine and ecological safety. Much work needs to be done to find out the fundamental causes and countermeasures for it.” said SUN.