Perhaps Gaea has more weapons in her arsenal. The New Scientists reports on the growing menace of... jellyfish.
For a long time, it didn’t matter that we knew so little about these animals. They were just a mucous mess that washed up on beaches, or a painful nuisance for swimmers. But then huge invading swarms – jellyfish blooms – started making the news. In their millions, jellyfish are capable of spectacular acts of sabotage. Yet nobody knows where these blooms come from or how to get rid of them.
There are precedents for the rising jellyfish menace:
When the power went out on the island of Luzon in the Philippines in 1999, locals thought a long-feared military coup was under way. They were wrong. Sucked into water intakes, jellyfish had taken out vital services from power stations to data centres and water treatment plants. In 2006, a jellyfish bloom temporarily disabled the Ronald Reagan, one of the US navy’s flagship nuclear-powered supercarriers.
Mother Earth: her struggle against humanity continues.
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