Billions of “By the Wind Sailors” (Velella Velella) or a giant colony (depending on how you look at it) are washed up on Washington’s Long Beach peninsula. It’s at least 5 times as many as anyone has ever seen there at one time. Although no one in the media is yet attributing this to climate change, Velella thrive in warm water and the U.S. West coast has been plagued by a blob of warm water that is effecting everything from sea life to weather patterns. This 1,000 mile wide X 100s of feet deep”blob” and recent ocean acidification are undeniably part of global warming.
Now, the shorebirds seem to be having a hard time finding their food with so many of these jellyfish at the tide line.
We’ve all heard that Florida has an unwritten law forbidding government “scientists” and the media from mentioning climate change/global warming–the same must be true on the West coast. After an extensive search, I finally found someone who dared to risk uttering the words “climate change” in association with these jellyfish.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egEy4fSfkIo
It would not surprise me to learn that climate change-related Velella Velella blooms are responsible for the collapse of entire marine food chains. Sardines (which young California sea lions depend on) have nearly disappeared. Sardines likely depend on the plankton the jellyfish are eating.
Oceans filled with nothing but jellyfish is a depressing vision of the future as anthropogenic climate change and mass extinction scenarios play themselves out…
Exposing the Big Game 
I wish people would stop calling this an “invasion”. It is not an invasion. The jelly fish are simply being washed up on the shore and are not invading anything.
Right, like the notion of “invasive” species, humans are ultimately responsible for anything seeming out of place. In this case, human-induced climate change is resulting in more jellyfish than ever and unusual winds are causing them to wash up in droves.
I agree. Some species, though, are moving northward because of temperature and other climate changes. When they show up in a new state they are labeled “invasive species”. Case in point is the broom (Genista) moth. The reaction to it from so-called nature-lovers is truly amazing.
The use of words like “invasive” when applied to some plant or animal seems to inevitably lead to a war mentality and that we must battle these creatures. I have seen people who claim to care about the environment actually crush earthworms because the worms are designated as “invasive species”.
Yes, the “invasive” label has gone too far in so many cases. On the West coast the war mentality is rampant against the California sea lions where they are falsely accused of being “invasive” in OR and WA.
I never accused the jellyfish of being invasive, just far more numerous thanks to global warming…
Especially since the California sea lions are eating “our fish” or salmon endangered by human-made dams. Aren’t OR and WA part of the species normal native range and CA only their preferred breeding area?
Always, it seems, the animals are to blame for our shortsightedness.
Always.
You’re right about the CA sea lions and the “our fish/all here for us” attitude against them.
I hear the same things said about wolves here (MN) “They’re eating all our deer!” Well, so are cars which kill about 30,000 deer/year vs wolves killing about 36,000/year and hunters killing about 53,000 deer per year. So humans take out 83,000 deer a year. Yet, the total MN deer population is about 250,000 from year to year and these hunters can’t get one? Blaming wolves is just an excuse to get a hunting season on them. Maybe these people just don’t have any hunter-gatherer skills or any woodland skills at all.