SANTA CRUZ, California 鈥� The balloon-sized, orange Pacific sea nettles have been conspicuously absent of late from the central California coast鈥檚 briny waters.
Swimmers surely won鈥檛 miss their nasty sting. But the dramatic population booms and busts of sea nettles and other jellyfish have intrigued researchers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute and the University of California, Santa Cruz. And they鈥檝e developed a very Silicon Valley solution to learn more: a website called JellyWatch to monitor jellyfish cameos around the world.
鈥淚f somebody sees some weird blob on the beach, I try to figure out what it is so they can learn more about it,鈥� said marine biologist Steve Haddock, a scientist at the institute and adjunct professor at UC Santa Cruz who created JellyWatch.
He鈥檚 teamed up with UC Santa Cruz oceanographer Chris Edwards to study just how jellyfish move through global seas.
JellyWatch puts a friendlier face on the oceanic blobs with a smiling jellyfish logo created by Haddock. And while the site is helping the researchers gather data, it鈥檚 also becoming a hit with amateur jellyfish fans. The website, which added a multilingual mobile app last year, has amassed almost 5,000 posts from around the world.
鈥淛ellyWatch helps amateurs and enthusiasts get an idea of where different jellyfish species are,鈥� said Thomas Nilson, an amateur naturalist from British Columbia who follows the JellyWatch Facebook page and uses its mobile app. Nilson has proposed science-based names for JellyWatch groupies. Among them: 鈥淢edusians鈥� and 鈥淎nthozoans.鈥�
Haddock began studying the diversity of jellyfish as a graduate student, exploring how some glow and others don鈥檛, how some sting and others don鈥檛, and how some have long, thin filaments for tentacles while others have what look like stocky limbs. But he soon realized that mysterious population booms and busts posed a major obstacle to understanding them. The phenomenon is well documented but mysterious.
鈥淵ou see all these articles about it,鈥� said Haddock, who has found newspaper articles on the subject dating back to 1905. 鈥淧eople always say, 鈥極h they鈥檙e taking over the world.鈥� 鈥�
Haddock realized he needed to understand jellyfish populations on a global scale. So in 2010, he led a team to create JellyWatch. The website allows anyone in the world to record a jellyfish sighting, with a location, description and photo. Haddock created the platform with dual purposes in mind: to gather data on jellyfish populations and to counteract the creatures鈥� reputation as an ocean menace.
鈥淢ost of the jellyfish people see on the beach are not at all harmful to humans,鈥� Haddock said.
But JellyWatch also is yielding research benefits. The website鈥檚 reports in 2014 and 2015, for example, revealed a population burst of Velella 鈥� small, blue jellyfish with translucent sails known as 鈥渂y-the-wind sailors鈥� 鈥� along the coast of North America, from Mexico to Alaska. Meanwhile, JellyWatch showed that reports of sea nettles in Monterey Bay have trailed off.
Haddock has a hunch about what drives these capricious populations. Many jellyfish species begin their lives in a 鈥減olyp鈥� form, resembling tiny sea anemones. Each species needs its own special water temperature and nutrient mix to bud into a jellyfish, and polyps wait years for the right conditions. When the time comes, they morph into tiny juvenile jellyfish all at once, creating a bloom. These jellyfish mate, but it may be years before the new polyps produce more jellies.
The oceans鈥� fluctuating currents complicate the picture. Edwards said the mystery of the missing sea nettles might be solved by ocean conditions that carry jellyfish on journeys spanning hundreds of miles over weeks or years.
His lab uses moorings at sea that send out pulses to measure waves, and members of the team use weather vanes to track wind. They feed the data into a supercomputer, which creates a complex model of how jellyfish move through the ocean. Eventually, Edwards said, the model also could track commercially important species, such as Dungeness crab.
Edwards鈥� lab is still working with Haddock on the model, but for some beachgoers, a model of jellyfish transport can鈥檛 come soon enough.
鈥淚 don鈥檛 like them,鈥� said 10-year-old Alexis Gastrejon as she overlooked the ocean from a seaside bench in Santa Cruz.
鈥淚鈥檓 scared. ... Other people who have been stung say it really hurts.鈥�
But others, such as Barbara Williams, said they like jellyfish. Williams swims triathlons and has been stung in the process. Still, she said, 鈥淚 think they鈥檙e part of the marine habitat.鈥�
And that, according to Haddock, is the right attitude. The ocean always will be home to jellyfish.
鈥淲e鈥檙e the intruders,鈥� Haddock said, 鈥渘ot the jellies.鈥�
