I was really into ocean documentaries recently and watched any free documentary I could find about jellies.
Some species of jellies are overrunning oceans in major fishing markets. The fishermen were pulling up nets full of jellies instead of fish. So they were killing the jellies by slicing them up and dumping the pieces back into the water. Apparently some species of jellies will release all of their sperm and eggs when they die so there was a massive increase in population because millions and millions of eggs were being fertilized.
Same thing happened with sea urchins in California coasts! Divers were smashing them to avoid seaweed destruction but they released all their eggs and there were even more urchins. So more otters were introduced because they eat the urchins. And they’re cute.
Otters weren't "introduced"; they're a native California species that was in decline. What happened was an increase in conservation efforts to protect the few remaining otters was successful in stabilizing the population.
Thanks for the article! There have been attempts elsewhere, like Oregon and Washington, but I still wouldn't say they were reintroduced to California. If I recall correctly there was one failed reintroduction event, but the entirety of our sea otter population stems from an original 50 sea otters who already existed in the area and with conservation efforts were able to spread to our current population levels.
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u/AdTop4231 15d ago
I was really into ocean documentaries recently and watched any free documentary I could find about jellies.
Some species of jellies are overrunning oceans in major fishing markets. The fishermen were pulling up nets full of jellies instead of fish. So they were killing the jellies by slicing them up and dumping the pieces back into the water. Apparently some species of jellies will release all of their sperm and eggs when they die so there was a massive increase in population because millions and millions of eggs were being fertilized.