ROME (Reuters) – Jellyfish have filled the port of the northern Italian city of Trieste, drone footage shows, an invasion scientists say could be due to wind effects and changes in sea temperature.
The same phenomenon was observed in April last year, when thousands of ‘rhizostoma pulmo’ jellyfish found their way into the harbour.
“We are observing a warming of the sea and the increase in jellyfish may in part be an effect of this,” Valentina Tirelli, a researcher at the National Institute of Oceanography and Experimental Geophysics, told newspaper la Repubblica.
“Small changes in temperature that are not so important for us are important for these invertebrates, the fact that they start reproducing 3 weeks or a month earlier is of great importance,” she said.
Tirelli said another cause could be the Bora, a north-easterly wind that often blows strongly over Trieste and its gulf. It can cause water to rise from the depths, moving the jellyfish towards the coast.
(writing by Angelo Amante, editing by Gavin Jones and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
