 CONFUSION SURROUNDS POSSIBLE NO-FISH ZONES Miami Herald -- Wednesday, July 4, 2001 By: Phil Long, Herald Staff Writer VERO BEACH -- Australian spotted jellyfish, the latest unwanted pest to hit Florida's largest Atlantic coastal lagoon, were easy to spot from the air Tuesday. Researchers flying low over the water saw enough of them to estimate there are about 500 of the jellyfish, some as big as basketballs, in the Indian and Banana rivers not far from Cocoa Beach. What marine researchers James Masterson and Monty Graham saw from the air was nothing compared with the more than 10 million that invaded the Mississippi-Louisiana coast last summer, devouring tons of fish eggs and fouling shrimpers' nets. More worrisome is the fact that these Australian spotted jellyfish are the first to be seen on the Atlantic coast, researchers say. Where they came from, whether they will remain and reproduce and what damage they might cause remain a mystery, Masterson and Graham said Tuesday. "Seeing as few as we did was about the best news we could have hoped for," said Masterson, biologist and educational specialist at Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution, between Vero Beach and Fort Pierce. "The threat depends on whether the population is able to establish itself and be self-sustaining." "The lagoon is a very hospitable environment for them,'" added Graham, a biologist and expert on Australian spotted jellyfish with the Dauphin Island Sea Lab in Alabama. The lagoon is more hospitable than the Gulf coast where the jellyfish population exploded last summer, he said. "You have to wait and see whether they come back next year," Graham said, noting that the marine creatures are seasonal, so the current bunch will disappear near the end of the summer. The two researchers flew over the shallow water lagoon from Vero Beach to Cocoa Beach after two of the large jellyfish were netted near Melbourne and brought in for examination last week. Some of them looked like "floating basketballs with cauliflower hanging off the bottom," Masterson said. The lagoon, recognized as the most biologically diverse estuary in North America, stretches 156 miles from northern Palm Beach County to just south of Daytona Beach. Three feet deep on the average, it's as narrow as a half-mile near Vero Beach and as wide as six miles in northern Brevard County. The lagoon is home to more than 1,350 species of plants, ranging from single-cell phytoplankton to mangrove trees. Its waters teem with just under 3,000 species of animal life, from tiny critters eaten by shrimp all the way up to 600-pound manatees. About a third of Florida's 3,600 West Indian manatees live in the lagoon. There are 700 varieties of fresh and salt-water fish and 310 species of birds. The state has set up a hot line for future sightings. People who see one should call the St. John's River Water Management District at 321-984-4950. Copyright (c) 2001, The Miami Herald |