Stephen King or Global Warming?

Add freakishly large jellyfish interfering with Japanese fishing to the list of possible global warming side effects.

From Environmental Economics: Holy smokes. And yes, there is a real economic issue here (from Reuters via ENN.com):

"It's a terrible problem. They're like aliens," Noriyuki Kani of the fisheries federation in Toyama, northwest of Tokyo, told Reuters ahead of the conference.

There are no official figures on the size of the problem, but Kani says the financial losses are obvious.

"If your nets are full of jellyfish, of course there is no space for fish," he said.

Cutting up and disposing of the giants can turn a three-hour fishing trip into a 10-hour marathon, while valuable fish are poisoned or crushed under the weight of the unwanted catch.

More from Reuters:

A slimy jellyfish weighing as much as a sumo wrestler has Japan's fishing industry in the grip of its poisonous tentacles.

Vast numbers of Echizen kurage, or Nomura's jellyfish, have appeared around Japan's coast since July, clogging and ripping fishing nets and forcing fishermen to spend hours hacking them apart before bringing home their reduced catches.

Representatives of fishing communities around the country gathered in Tokyo on Thursday, hoping to thrash out solutions to a pest that has spread from the Japan Sea to the Pacific coast.

[...]

Scientists have suggested global warming might be a factor.

Some fishermen have had some success in combating the intruders by introducing guide nets with larger than usual holes.

Jellyfish are simply swept through the holes by water currents, while other fish tend to notice the nets and swim alongside them, eventually being trapped in the fishing nets.

"By altering the way we fish, we have probably secured 80 to 90 percent of our normal catch," said fisherman Masatoshi Kuruma, who said he has in the past found up to two or three thousand jellyfish in his nets off Nyuzenmachi in Toyama prefecture.

Officials at Thursday's conference are also set to propose a forecasting system that would allow fishermen to prepare for the next onslaught of the jumbo jellyfish.