Fang Youqun was stunned when he heard this.
Chen Qingsheng also widened his eyes in surprise, "Fifty meters? Captain, are you kidding me?"
Xiang Yang shook his head and said truthfully: "I'm not kidding, the tentacles of stinging jellyfish can indeed be up to 50 meters long."
In many people's impressions, jellyfish are small, cute, but simple marine creatures that have toxins.
But Xiang Yang, who was familiar with jellyfish, knew that jellyfish were far more terrifying than that.
Especially the giant Echizen jellyfish that appeared in the Toi Sea in recent years.
The Echizen jellyfish is even more disgustingly greedy than other jellyfish.
And the Echizen jellyfish is very scary.
The largest Echizen jellyfish can grow to a diameter of two meters and weigh 200 kilograms.
An adult Echizen jellyfish can eat all the plankton in a large swimming pool in one day. Wherever the Echizen jellyfish appears, there is no place for fish to survive.
Thinking of this, Xiang Yang shook his head and said with emotion: "In such a vast ocean, fish have always lived at the top of the food chain. Even when there were dinosaurs and straight-shelled nautiluses, fish dominated the ocean. For billions of years, fish have never lost to any other marine life. I didn't expect that now, because of the appearance of the Echizen jellyfish, fish have actually lost to jellyfish."
"There's nothing we can do about it. The Echizen jellyfish is just too scary," said Xia Pengjie.
In fact, the Echizen jellyfish is also found within our territorial waters.
The Echizen jellyfish is called the sand jellyfish in our country and it also appears frequently in our waters.
Because the Echizen jellyfish is so destructive to our country's fishery resources, our country's Academy of Sciences has long regarded the Echizen jellyfish as the main jellyfish sample for research and has been raising and observing it.
After research, scientists discovered that the polyp of the Echizen jellyfish not only has amazing predation capabilities, but also has amazing reproductive capabilities.
Different jellyfish have different ways of reproduction. The Echizen jellyfish can also reproduce by foot sacs.
When the polyps of the Echizen jellyfish sink to the bottom of the sea, they can move around on the food they are attached to. As they move, they leave behind some tissue, which researchers call foot sacs, and these foot sacs can reproduce more polyps.
This self-replication, asexual reproduction method is enough to allow the initial 100,000 fertilized eggs to eventually evolve into billions of polyps.
As the polyp grows further, stacks of small jellyfish will split out one by one, and the final number will reach tens of billions.
The Echizen jellyfish has such a perverted reproduction method, which is definitely an important reason for the jellyfish outbreaks in recent years.
But Xiang Yang felt that this was definitely not the main reason for the jellyfish outbreak.
Because although the Echizen jellyfish is a newly discovered jellyfish, it is not a new type of jellyfish. It has existed in the ocean for hundreds of millions of years.
If a jellyfish outbreak could be caused by their rapid reproduction alone, then this ocean would have been dominated by jellyfish billions of years ago.
Of course, not all jellyfish are as scary as the Echizen jellyfish.
Some jellyfish are tiny and amazing.
Xiang Yang had seen a jellyfish called the Turritopsis dohrnii before.
Compared to the huge size of the Echizen jellyfish, the Turritopsis dohrnii jellyfish is very small, with a diameter of only about five millimeters.
The Turritopsis dohrnii jellyfish is very magical and is a truly immortal creature. It can rejuvenate, become a larva, and then grow again, which is incredible.
Many scientists around the world are studying why the Turritopsis immortalis jellyfish can live forever and thrive.
Of course, compared to the illusory immortality of the Turritopsis immortalus, the first thing humans should do is to solve the harm that jellyfish bring to humans.
After analysis, scientists found that the jellyfish polyp not only has a huge number but also has another characteristic, which is hibernation.
When external conditions are not suitable, the polyp can remain dormant on the seabed for decades, waiting until the time is right before it begins to move.
Based on this characteristic of the polyp, Xiang Yang believes that the main reason for the jellyfish outbreak in recent years is environmental changes.
The sea water temperature in my country's coastal waters has been rising year by year, and some subtle changes have been continuing for many years.
From 1980 to the present, the average eutrophication level of my country's coastal waters has increased three times. Xiang Yang believes that this is also one of the main reasons for the jellyfish outbreak.
Over the past sixty years, humans have taken hundreds of millions of tons of fish from the ocean, all of which are wild animals, not farmed.
At the same time, humans have discharged more than one billion tons of garbage into the ocean, causing major changes in the entire ocean.
The rapid development of human society has generated a large amount of industrial and domestic waste, and the discharge of pollutants has led to an increasing amount of excess nutrients in the ocean.
As a result, algae are rampant, and red tides and enteromorpha are rampant.
As a result, algae provided sufficient food for plankton, which multiplied in large numbers, and jellyfish that fed on plankton began to run rampant.
In the past, the marine food chain has always been a pyramid structure, from diatoms and single-celled plants at the bottom to large fish and marine mammals at the top. This structure has been stable for hundreds of millions of years.
However, the explosion of jellyfish populations caused them to rob plankton in large quantities, leaving fish without food sources and disrupting the marine food chain.
Xiang Yang said: "Whether the jellyfish outbreak is caused by global warming, overfishing or marine eutrophication, I think humans will eventually be responsible for the consequences of their excessive demands on nature. So since I have encountered these stinging jellyfish, I have to catch some of them no matter what."
"I support the captain's approach." Chen Qingsheng was the first to express his opinion.
"I support it too." Fang Youqun shouted loudly.
Xiang Yang smiled slightly, "In that case, let's start the salvage. Remember, you must pay attention to your own safety. During the salvage process, you must wear protective clothing from beginning to end."
As he spoke, Xiang Yang also put on a helmet, took a fish rake, and went into the sea to fish.
These stinging jellyfish are actually very easy to catch.
Their bodies are very soft, just like plastic bags, and at least 90% of their bodies are water.
Get close and use a long pole with a hook to scoop it into the water. Once the jellyfish is caught by the hook, just hold the pole and pull it onto the deck. There is absolutely no way it can escape.
There are a lot of stinging jellyfish in this area of water, and each one is fat and meaty, and is the best among stinging jellyfish.
Soon, Xiang Yang waved his fish rake and scooped up dozens of stinging jellyfish from the sea.
Because this job required little technical skills and was physically demanding, Chen Qingsheng and others on the side caught even more than Xiang Yang. Soon, there were several water tanks on the boat filled with stinging jellyfish.