Tuesday, September 17, 2013

JELLYFISH AND THEIR PREDATORS


Jellyfish are amazing animals. Almost entirely made of water, without a brain or central nervous system, they manage to get around the oceans very successfully.

One of the common species in the eastern North Pacific is the sea nettle, Chrysaora fuscescens. This species is among the better known Pacific coast jellyfish because it can be kept in aquaria. It can become superabundant in our waters, presumably when the zooplankton on which it feeds are similarly abundant, but it also may be because of the vagaries of ocean currents. Jellyfish generally swim upcurrent so they encounter a regular supply of the tiny animals on which they feed.

Not very many animals feed on jellyfish because of a combination of their fairly effective antipredator adaptions and their very low nutrient content. Two of these that do so are actually specialists, large animals that roam slowly around the world’s oceans and eventually run into single or even concentrations of jellyfish.

The Ocean Sunfish (Mola mola) is the more common of these two species. This is the largest and best-known species of its family and in fact the heaviest bony fish in the world, with an average weight of 1,000 kilograms. It looks about like a head with fins, swimming with a sculling motion of the big dorsal and anal fins. A long fin waving at the water surface is usually a good indication of one of these two-meter monsters.

Ocean sunfish are usually found floating at the surface on their side, perhaps taking advantage of the warmest surface water to more effectively digest the great amount of jellyfish they have to eat to gain adequate nutrition. We see them when they are at the surface, but in fact they spend much of their time well below the surface and perhaps come up just to warm up!

Ocean Sunfish are known to lay the most eggs of any animal in the world, up to 300 million eggs at one time. The larvae look nothing like the adults but are more like the larvae of other members of their order, including puffers and porcupine fish. It is rare to sight groups of juveniles, but five such groups were seen off Grays Harbor in September 2013; presumably like other fish, they school for protection from predators, among them sharks and sea lions.

The other main medusivore, as a jellyfish-eater should be called, is the Leatherback Turtle (Dermochelys coriacea). This is also huge for its group, the largest living turtle at an average weight of 400 kilograms. The largest ever recorded had a carapace length of over 2.2 meters. These animals are very different from the sunfish in that they have to go to shore to nest, and the ones in our waters are migrants from, amazingly, the Southwest Pacific.

Of all the sea turtles, this is the one most capable of living in cold waters, even north to the Gulf of Alaska. They generate metabolic heat by swimming, and they are insulated by fat as well as warmed by counter-current heat exchange in their blood vessels. Although “cold-blooded” like other reptiles, their body temperature has been recorded as up to 18° C. warmer than the water in which they swam.

Northern Fulmars (Fulmarus glacialis) also eat large jellyfish, among the few birds that do so. The cnidarians because of their watery nature are poorly represented in stomach contents, but observers have seen them picking at jellies. They appear to go after the gonads, which are doubtless more nutritious and oil-rich than the rest of the animal.

And all these animals eat their jelly without peanut butter!

Dennis Paulson

12 comments:

Mayra|Timeshare Weeks said...

Omg, i had no idea that jellyfish was food for others, nice article!

Madeline Harris said...

It is interesting that there are only two known predators of the jellyfish and both are incredibly hefty! Are jellyfish their only source of nutrition?

Anonymous said...

Are these Jellyfish non-poisonous? why doesn't their poison affect their predators?
--Casimir M--

Anonymous said...

Do these listed predators have to worry about being stung internally by the jelly fish? This post also makes me curious about why they target jelly fish as a food source instead of other organisms. Perhaps it is there large size (of the turtle and fish) that allow for their bodies to digest the jelly fish despite its "zing."

Anonymous said...

This was really interesting. I was just wondering if there was a certain species of jellyfish that these predators (i.e the Leatherback turtle, Northern Fulmars, or sunfish) go after? Do they only eat the Sea Nettle? Because it is less poisonous or just because it is more abundant?

Anonymous said...

I haven't heard much in the past about jellyfish being a source of food for any animal. You'd think given their difficulty to eat and low nutrition they'd be last on the menu for most any animal...

Medusivore94 said...

I'm shocked that there are so few species of medusivores! I was pretty sure that more animals like Spongebob and Sea Stars caught and milked (jellied) jelly fish.

Anonymous said...

So surprising that they are eaten by so many things considering how hazardous they can be to us!

Fish said...

Ha.... some jellyfish killed many people, for example, sea wasp killed about 80 people. As for jellyfish no brain no pain)) Jellyfish eating fishes, fishes and other animals eating jellyfish, just life cycle

Unknown said...

My friend wants to know what happens to a jellyfish whose gonads have been eaten.

Unknown said...

ok i already know all this stuff -_-

SimonaGabriele said...

It is fairly uncommon knowledge, even for turtle owners, that turtles can actually make sounds. Most of the time, the noises are correlated with the current behavior of the turtle. what sound does a turtle make

Nature Blog Network