Europeans advised to eat jellyfish to control its population surge

PanARMENIAN.Net - Marine scientists have offered their solution to an ongoing population surge of jellyfish: to make the organism more palatable to Europeans so that they could eat the problem away, according to an article carried on Monday, May 28 by the official website of the German Federal Government, Xinhua reports.

According to the article, rising water temperatures, ocean acidification and overfishing seems to have offered favorable environment for the development of jellyfish, and as a result, jellyfish have already destroyed fish farms on European coasts and blocked cooling systems of offshore power plants.

A consortium of scientific institutions from mainly European countries, Israel and China, joined to find how to make good use of jellyfish in the future.

The project, called GoJelly, on jellyfish research was carried out under the direction of the German Institute, Helmholtz Center for Ocean Research in Kiel (GEOMAR), and funded by the European Union under the Horizon 2020 Framework Program.

The biologist Jamileh Javidpour prescribed serving jellyfish on the dinner table. "We will be nine billion people in the not-too-distant future. That's why we have to look for new food," he was quoted as saying in the article. "Jellyfish are already an integral part of East Asian cuisine. We are now exploring how we can make jellyfish palatable to people in Europe."

For this, the scientists are working together with an Italian star chef who writes a cookbook with jellyfish recipes.

Scientists are also working on another potential use of the organism, i.e. as a biofilter. They are exploring whether the jellyfish slime can be used as a biofilter that is used in sewage treatment plants. Thus, the entry of micro-plastic into the sea could be reduced.