Jellyfish Gone Wild!
December 14, 2008 10:53 am Industry News/CommentaryI was just bumping around the internet, looking at my favorite news sites, when I saw an interesting article written by Reuters reporter Maggie Fox and reported on Yahoo! News. It seems that larger than normal jellyfish blooms are ruining lots of vacations and causing pain and discomfort for swimmers worldwide. The text from Yahoo! News follows.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Huge swarms of stinging jellyfish and similar slimy animals are ruining beaches in Hawaii, the Gulf of Mexico, the Mediterranean, Australia and elsewhere, U.S. researchers reported on Friday.
The report says 150 million people are exposed to jellyfish globally every year, with 500,000 people stung in the Chesapeake Bay, off the U.S. Atlantic Coast, alone.
Another 200,000 are stung every year in Florida, and 10,000 are stung in Australia by the deadly Portuguese man-of-war, according to the report, a broad review of jellyfish research.
The report, available on the Internet at http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/jellyfish/index.jsp, says the Black Sea’s fishing and tourism industries have lost $350 million because of a proliferation of comb jelly fish.
The report says more than 1,000 fist-sized comb jellies can be found in a cubic yard (meter) of Black Sea water during a bloom.
They eat the eggs of fish and compete with them for food, wiping out the livelihoods of fishermen, according to the report.
And it says a third of the total weight of all life in California’s Monterey Bay is made up of jellyfish.
Human activities that could be making things nice for jellyfish include pollution, climate change, introductions of non-native species, overfishing and building artificial structures such as oil and gas rigs.
Creatures called salps cover up to 38,600 square miles (100,000 sq km) of the North Atlantic New York Bight, but researchers quoted in the report said this one may be a natural cycle. in a regular phenomenon called the
“There is clear, clean evidence that certain types of human-caused environmental stresses are triggering jellyfish swarms in some locations,” William Hamner of the University of California Los Angeles says in the report.
These include pollution-induced “dead zones”, higher water temperatures and the spread of alien jellyfish species by shipping.
Jellyfish stings are certainly painful. Over the past 5 years, we have seen a gigantic growth in the sales of various products to prevent jellyfish stings or to mitigate the pain and misery once they occur. Products such as Safe Sea Jellyfish Protectant suntan lotion, Mitigator Jelly Fish Extreme Scrub, and Sting Zapper first aid medication have been very popular products on our website. Apparently, the news is out and it appears to be getting worse. Jellyfish stings hurt!
Phil Ellis
Protect Yourself from Jellyfish with DiveSports.com
December 15th, 2008 at 11:57 AM
I would respectfully ask you to consider StingMate as the only proven effective jellyfish sting first aid gel on the market
StingMate has been field tested by the beach and dive community on all coasts of the U.S. as well in controlled lab tests. StingMate has all natural active ingredients and is Lidocaine free. StingMate was a new product feature at 2008 DEMA Show and has since been picked up for distribution worldwide. Convenient, low cost and effective.
With all due respect to what’s out there, StingMate works on a variety of stinging species and portends relief rather than suggest a repellant as does Safe Sea. Jellyfish Squish’s active ingredient is Lidocaine. Wipe applicators press the firing nematocysts into the skin and so on.
It should be noted, for unknown reasons, Safe Sea is no longer available on the market or is at the very least temporarily been removed from retail shelves.
StingMate is available in pharmacies, dive, surf and beach shops..StingMate is being continually tested in the waters of Australia, South Africa and the Mediterranean along with many other world wide locations.
Thank you
Ron Adley
V-P Sales and Marketing
StingMate
December 15th, 2008 at 2:43 PM
Ron, I look forward to seeing your product. If it has merit, we will certainly consider it for http://www.divesports.com.
On the issue of Safe Sea, you are correct that there are very few retailers. It seems that the North American distributor is unable to purchase in large enough quantity to make it feasible. That leaves only retailers like Dive Sports, who are willing to make the import purchase.
I look forward to giving your product a whirl. Thanks for posting to our blog.
Phil Ellis
http://www.divesports.com