Spain’s invasion of the jellyfish
It’s like a scene from a cheap Hollywood horror flick, a B-movie from the 1950s.
This summer in Barcelona and up the coast to the Costa Brava the sea has been invaded by monsters, jellyfish the size of bins. It feels like there must be billions upon billions of the buggers.
And they can be a little dangerous; my little girl was stung by one a couple of weeks ago and had painful welts for several days after a monster dragged its tentacles up her arm. A bit of allergy cream soothed her pain and calmed the rash but others were less fortunate, some people have reportedly needed medical treatment after an altercation with a jellyfish or three.
Along the Catalan coast, 7,500 people were treated for jellyfish stings between May and August, an increase of 41% on last year. The two main species found in these waters are relatively harmless but stings can be more risky for people with weaker immune systems.
Medusas, as they call them in Spain, are always out there. We’ve lived in Barcelona for around a decade and we see them every year and usually just keep out of their way. We have never seen so many and we have never seen them so big.
My little boy and I were on the water on our paddle board last weekend and we tried to count all the sea monsters nearby (my girl, wisely, stayed safe on dry land) in an attempt to make a fun game out of not wanting to fall off and into those jellyfish battalions. They’re such strange creatures, they kind of throb and pulse by. Transparent white blobs with a blue-ish hoop at the base of their mushroom shaped ‘head’ and those evil trailing tentacles.
We tried to whack a few with the paddle, it’s hard not to. The game got a bit boring and we stopped after counting 37 then gently paddled back to shore. Not quite a billion but, still.
Back on dry land, it’s easy to imagine those monsters multiplying and growing ever bigger before gathering together into a gooey army then marching out from the ocean and up the beach with their flowing tentacles turned to limbs. Stinging sunbathers as they go.
Clearly the medusas of the Mediterranean are thriving. Maybe it’s just God’s will; blessed are the jellyfish for they shall inherit the earth.
Or maybe it’s science. I am no marine biologist but while we were busy battling the medusas, Spain reported its hottest August since records began with temperatures averaging 25°C.
The average temperature was two-tenths higher than the previous hottest Augusts in 2003 and 2023, said the AEMET meteorological agency in a post on X (Twitter). And 2024 may also prove to be the country’s hottest overall year on record too. The current record was for 2022, with an average temperature of 15.7°C.
“The jellyfish are becoming more common and are increasing both their seasonal and regional distribution,” Macarena Marambio, a researcher at the Institute of Marine Sciences in Barcelona, told The Guardian.
“Warmer seas aid reproduction and as a result we’re seeing increasing numbers of the purple barrel jellyfish.”
Overfishing of their natural predators plus man made structures such as ports and breakwaters is also helping them out. Many of Barcelona’s beaches are also, effectively, man made. A few decades ago the coastline was dominated by factories and shantytowns. Human activity and increasing population levels also reduces water quality.
The raw sewage that so often ends up in the sea north of the city, especially after it rains, must, surely, help create an unnatural environment in which the medusas thrive.
Jellyfish are not an issue solely up the Catalan coast, though. Almost 100 tourists and holidaymakers were treated for jellyfish stings near Cadiz in the south of Spain. The local authority even has a special flag to warn of jellyfish.
It may be a seasonal or cyclical thing, experts say, but it will take time to know. All I can say is, anecdotally, that I have been swimming with the jellyfish for years with no real dramas and no stings; they’ve clearly never had it so good. These monsters are massive, relative to previous encounters, and there are loads of them.
Josep Maria Gili, Marambio’s colleague, added: “There’s no short-term solution because it’s about climate. We’ll have to get used to sharing our beaches with jellyfish.”
Maybe it’s all just a clever ploy by the local government to scare away tourists, the other species that blights Barcelona’s shores every summer.
