Coupling hydrodynamic drifting simulations and seasonal demographics to forecast the occurrence of jellyfish blooms

Abstract

Although jellyfish are an important component of coastal marine communities, their public perception is often tainted by their proclivity for aggregating in vast numbers, known as jellyfish blooms. Jellyfish blooms occur worldwide and are associated with major economic ramifications, particularly throughout the fisheries, aquaculture, and tourism sectors.Forecasting jellyfish blooms is critical in order to manage and mitigate their ecological and economic impacts, but the complex life cycles and cryptic life stages exhibited by most jellyfish species largely precludes accurate predictions of their temporal and spatial occurrence.Here we introduce a predictive framework, combining state-of-the-art hydrodynamic simulations and periodic population modelling approaches, to forecast spatial and temporal patterns in the formation of jellyfish blooms. While this framework is sufficiently flexible for accommodating various bloom-forming jellyfish species and impacted coastal regions worldwide, we focus on moon jellyfish (Aurelia aurita) populations within the Baltic Sea as an illustrative example.We emphasise how, through the iterative process of forecasting and model validation, this framework can provide valuable insights for resolving key gaps in our understanding of the drivers of bloom events. Indeed, our framework offers an approach for identifying the, to date, unknown locations of polyp-beds; a crucial parameter in enhancing our capacity to accurately predict the occurrence of jellyfish blooms. Accordingly, our framework, represents a key decision-support tool for mitigating the socioeconomic impacts of bloom formation.

Jellyfish blooms - an overlooked hotspot and potential vector for the transmission of antimicrobial resistance in marine environments

“…Together, this provides strong indication that the GZ-OM degrading communities have members that indeed possess the necessary genomic plasticity that provides a high potential of acting as donors and recipients of horizontally transferable ARGs. This could constitute a significant risk, as these GZ-OM colonizing communities enriched in AMR and potential pathogens that could acquire novel ARGs can hitchhike on these particle surfaces by drifting with ocean currents over long distances in the ocean interior and coastal environments where exposure to higher marine organisms (e.g., also commercially important species) and/or humans is likely 29,30 .…”

“…Furthermore, microbial degraders of gelatinous zooplankton detritus, potentially enriched in AMR, could hitchhike on these organic particle surfaces by drifting with ocean currents over long distances into the oceanic interior 29,30 and/or connect the microbiomes of upper and bottom ocean layers upon sinking to the ocean floor 31,32 . These bloom events could provide not only a yet overlooked hot spot for the spread of AMR but also a potential vector of AMR/ARG transmission in marine environments.…”